Archimedes Plutonium may have written:
    |I never had athletes foot fungus in all of my life. But I have had
    |the worrisome problem of keeping the ear wax at a tolerable buildup

    |level.

    Okay.

    |Did the Iceman of Otzi Austrian Alps have any earwax or hearing
    |problem??

    Well, that is an interesting question.  We know that the Iceman
    thawed and refroze a handful of times.  He lost his hair during
    that time.  But wax is a substance that lasts longer than skin,
    and yet - of course - the Iceman's skin is well preserved.  My
    best bet is that what little wax he produced was relevant to his
    immediate survival.  (Shall we ponder why so many modern Euro
    males have subcutaneous oil-producing glands that produce
    sebaceous oils and waxes - also known as sebum - and these glands
    are notoriously prone to inflammation and infection by the acne
    bacterium?)

Of the 5 senses, a person is extremely vulnerable to earwax problems.
What I mean is that earwax buildup takes special skill and modern
amenities to
remove without damaging the sense organ. So as we go back in time, loss
of
hearing by early humans must have been a weakpoint in the survival of
many. I
suspect the average lifespan of early humans was around 30 years but in
those
30 years loss of hearing due to earwax and attempts to remove it by
forcing
sticks into the ear must have been painful

I remember seeing on a Viking program of a archaeology dig in Ireland
where a
silver ear wax remover implement was discovered. Apparently by the metal
age
humans were routinely sticking metal into their ears to remove earwax.

I see earwax, unlike the other four senses, as posing a threat to early
man in
that by the age of 20 or 30 his/her hearing would go.

Now a question: An evolutionary question that a medical doctor must
answer.
Question: is picking the nose an evolutionary demand or does the lung
nasal
system
want us to never pick the nose in that the nose cleans itself? Can a
human live a
full life without ever picking the nose or will he/she quickly die? This
relates to
the earwax problem. Perhaps it is not a problem at all and that the
buildup of
earwax will self-clean out of the ear after months of discomfort.

I do not know, let us see if the medical science community can tell us
what is
kosher about earwax and nose-picking.

(Usenet kill engine)

--
Uncle Al
http://www.mazepath.com/uncleal/
http://www.ultra.net.au/~wisby/uncleal/
 (Toxic URLs! Unsafe for children and most mammals)
"Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?"  The Net!

A problem with any of the 5 senses is a serious one.

|What I mean is that earwax buildup takes special skill and modern
|amenities to remove without damaging the sense organ. So as we go back
|in time, loss of hearing by early humans must have been a weakpoint in
|the survival of many.

Why, certainly.  And the same thing can be said about loss of sight
(blindness), or loss of taste or smell (people eat stuff that poisons
them and kills them), or far worse, loss of touch (leprosy).

Although the loss of a sense is serious, you haven't provided me with
any statistical information to indicate that earwax is a problem with
most humans.  A good many of us have absolutely no wax buildup, and I
can make that statement from personal observation.

Are humans the only animals to pick noses to clean?

What if we never picked our nose to clean, does our body cleanse the nose by
itself? Same question with earwax buildup. Are we really suppose to let the
earwax somehow, no matter how much buildup sort of come out by itself?

Perhaps the nose and ear were never evolutionary-designed for cleaning-probing
but for self cleaning considering that all other animal species rely on self
cleaning. Or rather, it is a evolution advantage on our species that we
probe-clean both our ears and nose.

Maybe the medical doctors can tell us of experiments where a group never finger
probes the nose or ears for cleaning compares to the opposite. Perhaps our
little finger was a product of evolution just for this purpose of nose-picking
and ear cleaning and thus an Advantage.

--
+---+ With great effort, you move the boulder. ################
|..$|                                          # Josh Millard #


+---+  ########################################################

But sometimes a nose blow just won't get the crusty stuff out.  At least
not until after one spends fif{*filter*} minutes biking in cold weather, and
gets watery mucous running to clear the gunk out.

Heigene is not uniquely human.

--
"'No user-serviceable parts inside.'  I'll be the judge of that!"

Some Vitamin 'A' derivatives are useful in regulating the body's oil
and wax production.  Have you asked your doctor about the topical
application of Retin A on or in your ears to get them to dry out?

For the nose, I presume, it just gets snorted up into the throat, but
that's a wild guess.

Another interesting factlet (or urban legend), supposedly the colour
of your earwax is reflective of your general body odour (the more
intense the colour, the stronger the acridity of your 'scent').

I wonder if in the distant future we can engineer the lung to clean itself out
much better than our present condition. Perhaps in the far distant future we can
bio-tech the outer skin with a form of hair that almost automatically cleans
itself.
the only cost would be that we drink more water during the course of the day,
but what a difference of say having to drink 2 pints more water rather than 2
gallons to bathe oneself. Just some ideas that spring to mind.

Tell me, do these specialized hairs in the ear have a special name and have they
been analyzed in detail as to what distinguishes them from other hairs of the
body. A hair on the head seems to not have special functions but that hairs in
the ear have this special functions and duties.

    Eric Lucas

[snip]

Nothing.

(Usenet central kill engine)

(What follows was cribbed from Kibo, who was here before all.)

Archie-Poo was a cashier and then a dishwasher.  He started at
Dartmouth's Hanover Inn about 1990 (his previous employer was a
relative of the manager of the Inn so he got a good reference, he's
said) and about 1993 started posting to various sci.* newsgroups.  He
maintains he took the job at Dartmouth (paying $7/hour when the
relationship ended in 1999) to get access to Dartmouth's campus
computers, which is odd because he took the job about three years
before he discovered the the campus computers.  

He was "Ludwig Plutonium" when he started posting in 1993; previously
he was "Ludwig van Ludvig" and before that "Ludwig Hansen" [adopted
name] and "Ludwig Poehlmann" [birth name].  When he posted about a
run-in with some cops it was clear that the "legal" name changes he
effected weren't effective, because the cops looked him up as "Ludwig
Hansen".  He is also struts as "The King Of Science And Logic," a
title he awarded himself.

Archie-Poo's hot topics include (a) he invented spaghetti, (b) Allen
Greenspan controls OPEC's oil price increases, (c) he's trying to
install three wood stoves in his "homestead", and (d) he likes candy
of various kinds. (d) seems to be the one he comes back to the most.
Around 1998 he explained that the fact that he had a craving for
shredded coconut proved his theory that the Universe was a giant
plutonium atom that was making him superintelligent because the center
of his brain also contains a plutonium atom, unlike the rest of us who
have a carbon atom at the center of our brains.

--
Uncle Al
http://www.mazepath.com/uncleal/
http://www.ultra.net.au/~wisby/uncleal/
 (Toxic URLs! Unsafe for children and most mammals)
"Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?"  The Net!