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In 1994, an article appeared in Time magazine titled "How Man Began." Within that article was the following bold assertion: "No single, essential difference separates human beings from other animals" (Lemonick, 143[11]:81). Yet, in what is obviously a contradiction to such a statement, all evolutionists admit that communication via speech is uniquely human—so much so that it often is used as the singular, and most important, dividing line between humans and animals. In his book titled Eve Spoke, evolutionist Philip Lieberman admitted:
Speech is so essential to our concept of intelligence that its possession is virtually equated with being human. Animals who talk are human, because what sets us apart from other animals is the "gift" of speech (1998, p. 5, emp. in orig.).
In The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Human Evolution, editors Jones, Martin, and Pilbeam conceded that "[t]here are no non-human languages," and then went on to observe that "language is an adaptation unique to humans, and yet the nature of its uniqueness and its biological basis are notoriously difficult to define" (1992, p. 128, emp. added). In his book, The Symbolic Species: The Co-Evolution of Language and the Brain, Terrance Deacon noted:
In this context, then, consider the case of human language. It is one of the most distinctive behavioral adaptations on the planet. Languages evolved in only one species, in only one way, without precedent, except in the most general sense. And the differences between languages and all other natural modes of communicating are vast (1997, p. 25).
What events transpired that have allowed humans to speak, while animals remain silent? If we are to believe the evolutionary teaching currently taking place in colleges and universities around the world, speech evolved as a natural process over time. Yet no one is quite sure how, and there are no known animals that are in a transition phase from non-speaking to speaking. In fact, in the Atlas of Languages, this remarkable admission can be found: "No languageless community has ever been found" (Matthews, et al., 1996, p. 7). This represents no small problem for evolution.
In fact, the origin of speech and language (along with the development of sex and reproduction) remains one of the most significant hurdles in evolutionary theory, even in the twenty-first century. In fact, many evolutionists simply have stopped discussing the matter completely. Jean Aitchison noted:
In 1866, a ban on the topic was incorporated into the founding statues of the Linguistic Society of Paris, perhaps the foremost academic linguistic institution of the time: "The Society does not accept papers on either the origin of language or the invention of a universal language" (2000, p. 5).
That is an amazing (albeit inadvertent) admission of defeat, especially coming from a group of such eminent scientists, researchers, and scholars.
The truth of the matter is, however, that the origin of human languages can be discerned—but not via the theory of evolution. We invite your attention to the discussion that follows, which demonstrates conclusively that humans were created by God with the unique ability to employ speech for communication.
Many animals are capable of using sounds to communicate. However, there is a colossal difference between the hoot of an owl or the grunt of a pig, and a human standing before an audience reciting Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken." This enormous chasm between humans and animals has led to a multiplicity of theories on exactly how man came upon this unequaled capability. But there is a single, common theme that stands out amidst all the theories: "The world's languages evolved spontaneously. They were not designed" (Deacon, p. 110, emp. added).
Design implies a Designer; thus, evolutionists have conjured up theories that consider language nothing more than a fortuitous chain of events. Most of these theories involve humans growing bigger brains, which then made it physiologically possible for people to develop speech and language. For instance, in the foreword of her book, The Seeds of Speech, Jean Aitchison hypothesized:
Physically, a deprived physical environment led to more meat-eating and, as a result, a bigger brain. The enlarged brain led to the premature birth of humans, and in consequence a protracted childhood, during which mothers cooed and crooned to their offspring. An upright stance altered the shape of the mouth and vocal tract, allowing a range of coherent sounds to be uttered (2000, p. x).
Thus, according to Aitchison, we can thank "a deprived physical environment" for our ability to talk and communicate. Another evolutionist, John McCrone, put it this way:
It all started with an ape that learned to speak. Man's hominid ancestors were doing well enough, even though the world had slipped into the cold grip of the ice ages. They had solved a few key problems that had held back the other branches of the ape family, such as how to find enough food to feed their rather oversized brains. Then man's ancestors happened on the trick of language. Suddenly, a whole new mental landscape opened up. Man became self-aware and self-possessed (1991, p. 9).
Question: How (and why) did that first ape learn to speak? It is easy to assert that "it all started with an ape that learned to speak." But it is much more difficult to describe how this took place, especially in light of our failure to teach apes to speak today. In his book, From Hand to Mouth: The Origins of Language, Michael Corballis stated:
My own view is that language developed much more gradually, starting with the gestures of apes, then gathering momentum as the bipedal hominins evolved. The appearance of the larger-brained genus Homo some 2 million years ago may have signaled the emergence and later development of syntax, with vocalizations providing a mounting refrain. What may have distinguished Homo sapiens was the final switch from a mixture of gestural and vocal communication to an autonomous vocal language, embellished by gesture but not dependent on it (2002, p. 183).
The truth however, is that evolutionists can only speculate as to the origin of language. Evolutionist Carl Zimmer summed it up well when he wrote:
No one knows the exact chronology of this evolution, because language leaves precious few traces on the human skeleton. The voice box is a flimsy piece of cartilage that rots away. It is suspended from a slender C-shaped bone called a hyoid, but the ravages of time usually destroy the hyoid too (2001, p. 291).
Thus, theories are plentiful—while the evidence to support those theories remains mysteriously unavailable. Add to this the fact that humans acquire the ability to communicate (and even learn some of the basic rules of syntax) by the age of two, and you begin to see why Aitchison admitted:
Of course, holes still remain in our knowledge: in particular, at what stage did language leap from being something new which humans discovered to being something which every newborn human is scheduled to acquire? This is still a puzzle (p. ix).
A "puzzle" indeed!
In a chapter he titled "What, When, and Where did Eve Speak to Adam and He to Her?," Philip Lieberman commented:
In the five-million-year-long lineage that connects us to the common ancestors of apes and human beings, there have been many Adams and many Eves. In the beginning was the word, but the vocal communications of our most distant hominid ancestors five million years or so ago probably didn't really differ from those of the ape-hominid ancestor (1998, p. 133).
Using biblical terminology, Lieberman had written a year earlier: "For with speech came a capacity for thought that had never existed before, and that has transformed the world. In the beginning was the word" (1997, p. 27).
When God created the first human beings—Adam and Eve—He created them in His own image (Genesis 1:26-27). This likeness unquestionably included the ability to engage in intelligible speech via human language. In fact, God spoke to them from the very beginning of their existence as humans (Genesis 1:28-30). Hence, they possessed the ability to understand verbal communication—and to speak themselves!
God gave very specific instructions to the man before the woman was even created (Genesis 2:15-17). Adam gave names to the animals before the creation of Eve (Genesis 2:19-20). Since both the man and the woman were created on the sixth day, the creation of the man preceded the creation of the woman by only hours. So, Adam had the ability to speak on the very day that he was brought into existence!
That same day, God put Adam to sleep and performed history's first human surgery. He fashioned the female of the species from a portion of the male's body. God then presented the woman to the man (no doubt in what we would refer to as the first marriage ceremony). Observe Adam's response: "And Adam said, 'This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of man' " (Genesis 2:23). Here is Adam—less than twenty-four hours old—articulating intelligible speech with a well-developed vocabulary and advanced powers of expression. Note also that Eve engaged in intelligent conversation with Satan (Genesis 3:1-5). An unbiased observer is forced to conclude that Adam and Eve were created by God with oral communication capability. Little wonder, then, that God said to Moses: "Who had made man's mouth?... Have not I, the Lord? Now therefore, go, and I will be with your mouth and teach you what you shall say" (Exodus 4:11-12).
This circumstance should not surprise us, since the rest of the created order also was brought into existence fully formed and operational. Adam's body was that of a man—not a child. His body possessed reproductive capability (Genesis 1:28). His mind was mentally and psychologically functional on the level of an adult. Likewise, trees and plants were completely operational in their photosynthetic, reproductive, and fruit-bearing capability (Genesis 1:11-12). Animals, too, were created fully functional (Genesis 1:20-25). And, the Sun, Moon, planets, and stars were created instantaneously to provide the services they were intended to provide (Genesis 1:14-18). Once again, the biblical explanation of the beginning of the human race and linguistic functionality is logical, reasonable, and scientifically feasible. The evolutionary model is not.
Nobody knows exactly how many languages there are in the world, partly because of the difficulty of distinguishing between a language and a sub-language (or dialects within it). But those who have tried to count usually end up around the 5,000 mark (Aitchison, 2000, p. 26).
The Bible's explanation of the origin of multiple human languages is provided in the Tower of Babel incident recorded in Genesis 11:1-9. Scripture simply and confidently asserts: "Now the whole earth had one language and one speech" (11:1). When Noah and his family stepped off the ark, they spoke a single language that was passed on to their offspring. As the population increased, it apparently remained localized in a single geographical region. Consequently, little or no linguistic variation ensued. But when a generation defiantly rejected God's instructions to scatter over the planet, God miraculously intervened and initiated the major language groupings of the human race. This action forced the population to proceed with God's original intention to inhabit the Earth (cf. Isaiah 45:18) by clustering according to shared languages.
This depiction of the origin of languages coincides with the present status of these languages. The available linguistic evidence does not support the model postulated by evolutionary sources for the origin of languages. Evolutionary linguists believe that all human languages have descended from a single, primitive language, which itself evolved from the grunts and noises of the lower animals. The single most influential "hopeful monster" theory of the evolution of human language was proposed by the famous linguist from MIT, Noam Chomsky, and has since been echoed by numerous linguists, philosophers, anthropologists, and psychologists. Chomsky argued that the innate ability of children to acquire the grammar necessary for a language can be explained only if one assumes that all grammars are variations of a single, generic "universal grammar," and that all human brains come "with a built-in language organ that contains this language blueprint" (Deacon, 1997, p. 35).
Explaining this "innate ability," a "universal grammar," and the "built-in language organ" of humans has proven to be, well, impossible! Steven Pinker, the eminent psychologist also of MIT, candidly lamented this very fact in his best-selling book, How the Mind Works. In addressing the failure of "our species' " scientists to solve these types of plaguing, perennial problems, he wrote:
[T]he species' best minds have flung themselves at the puzzles for millennia but have made no progress in solving them. Another is that they have a different character from even the most challenging problems of science. Problems such as how a child learns language or how a fertilized egg becomes an organism are horrendous in practice and may never be solved completely (1997a, p. 562, emp. added).
However, the existing state of human language nevertheless suggests that the variety of dialects and sub-languages has developed from a relatively few (perhaps even less than twenty) languages. These original "proto-languages"—from which all others allegedly have developed—were distinct within themselves, with no previous ancestral language. Creationist Carl Wieland rightly remarked: "The evidence is wonderfully consistent with the notion that a small number of languages, separately created at Babel, has diversified into the huge variety of languages we have today" (1999, p. 22).
In contemplating how language arose, evolutionists frequently link the development of the brain to the appearance of languages. But when one considers that more than 5,000 languages exist, it is incomprehensible to suggest that the invention of language could be viewed as some sort of simple, clear-cut addition to human physiology made possible by an enlarged brain unique to Homo sapiens. Terrance Deacon commented on the intricacy of evolving a language when he said:
For a language feature to have such an impact on brain evolution that all members of the species come to share it, it must remain invariable across even the most drastic language change possible (p. 329, emp. in orig.).
|Left hemisphere of human brain with language centers—Brocas's area and Wernicke's area— highlighted
The complexity underlying speech first revealed itself in patients who were suffering various communication problems. Researchers began noticing analogous responses among patients with similar injuries. The ancient Greeks noticed that brain damage could cause the loss of the ability to speak (a condition known as aphasia). Centuries later, in 1836, Marc Dax described a group of patients that could not speak normally. Dax reported that all of these patients experienced damage to the left hemisphere of their brain. In 1861, Paul Broca described a patient who could utter only a single word—"tan." When this patient died, Broca examined his brain and observed significant damage to the left frontal cortex, which has since become known anatomically as "Broca's area." While patients with damage to Broca's area can understand language, they generally are unable to produce speech because words are not formed properly, thus slurring their speech.
In 1876, Carl Wernicke discovered that language problems also could result from damage to another section of the brain. This area, later termed "Wernicke's area," is located in the posterior part of the temporal lobe. Damage to Wernicke's area results in a loss of the ability to understand language. Thus, patients can continue to speak, but the words are put together in such a way that they make no sense. Interestingly, in most people (approximately 97%) both Broca's area and Wernicke's area are found only in the left hemisphere, which explains the language deficits observed in patients with brain damage to the left side of the brain. Evolutionists freely acknowledge that
[t]he relationship between brain size and language is unclear. Possibly, increased social interaction combined with tactical deception gave the brain an initial impetus. Better nourishment due to meat-eating may also have played a part. Then brain size and language possibly increased together (Aitchison, 2000, p. 85).
However, the human brain is not simply larger. The connections are vastly different as well. As Deacon admitted: "Looking more closely, we will discover that a radical re-engineering of the whole brain has taken place, and on a scale that is unprecedented" (p. 45). In order to speak a word that has been read, information is obtained from the eyes and travels to the visual cortex. From the primary visual cortex, information is transmitted to the posterior speech area (which includes Wernicke's area). From there, information travels to Broca's area, and then to the primary motor cortex to provide the necessary muscle contractions to produce the sound. To speak a word that has been heard, we must invoke the primary auditory cortex, not the visual cortex. Deacon commented on this complex neuronal network—which does not occur in animals—when he wrote:
There is, without doubt, something special about human brains that enables us to do with ease what no other species can do even minimally without intense effort and remarkably insightful training. We not only have the ability to create and easily learn simple symbol systems such as the chimps Sherman and Austin struggled to learn, but in learning languages we acquire an immensely complex rule system and a rich vocabulary at a time in our lives when it is otherwise very difficult to learn even elementary arithmetic. Many a treatise on grammatical theory has failed to provide an adequate accounting of the implicit knowledge that even a four-year-old appears to possess about her newly acquired language (p. 103).
The specific mechanics involved in speaking have anatomical requirements that are found only in humans. There is no animal living presently, nor has one been observed in the fossil record, that possesses anything close to the "voice box" (as we commonly call it) present in humans. As information scientist Werner Gitt observed in his fascinating book, The Wonder of Man:
Only man has the gift of speech, a characteristic otherwise only possessed by God. This separates us clearly from the animal kingdom.... In addition to the necessary "software" for speech, we have also been provided with the required "hardware" (1999, p. 101).
Furthermore, the complete lack of any "transitional" animal form (with the requisite speech hardware) in the fossil record poses a significant continuity problem for evolutionists. As Deacon noted:
This lack of precedent makes language a problem for biologists. Evolutionary explanations are about biological continuity, so a lack of continuity limits the use of the comparative method in several important ways. We can't ask, "What ecological variable correlates with increasing language use in a sample species?" Nor can we investigate the "neurological correlates of increased language complexity." There is no range of species to include in our analysis (p. 34).
To simplify the anatomy required for human speech by using an analogy, think of a small tube resting inside a larger tube. The inner tube consists of the trachea going down to the lungs, and the larynx (which houses the voice box). At the larynx, the inner tube opens out to the larger tube, which is known as the pharynx. It carries only sound up to the mouth, but it also carries food and water from the mouth down to the stomach. A rather simplistic description of how humans utter sounds in speech can be characterized by the control of air generated by the lungs, flowing through the vocal tract, vibrating over the vocal cord, filtered by facial muscle activity, and released out of the mouth and nose. Just as sound is generated from blowing air across the narrow mouth of a bottle, air is passed over the vocal cords, which can be tightened or relaxed to produce various resonances.
The physiological components necessary can be divided into: (1) supralaryngeal vocal tract; (2) larynx; and (3) subglottal system (see illustration at below). In 1848, Johannes Muller demonstrated that human speech involved the modulation of acoustic energy by the airway above the larynx (referred to as the supralaryngeal tract). Sound energy for speech is generated in the larynx at the vocal folds. The subglottal system—which consists of the lungs, trachea, and their associated muscles—provides the necessary power for speech production. The lungs produce the initial air pressure that is essential for the speech signal; the pharyngeal cavity, oral cavity, and nasal cavity shape the final output sound that is perceived as speech.
Imagine the conundrum in which evolutionists find themselves when it comes to speech and language. The animal that comes closest to producing anything that even vaguely resembles human speech is not another primate, but rather a bird. Deacon observed:
In fact, most birds easily outshine any mammal in vocal skills, and though dogs, cats, horses, and monkeys are remarkably capable learners in many domains, vocalization is not one of them. Our remarkable vocal abilities are not part of a trend, but an exception (pp. 30-31).
For instance, a famous African gray parrot in England named Toto can pronounce words so clearly that he sounds rather human. Like humans, birds can produce fluent, complex sounds. We both share a double-barreled, double-layered system involving tunes and dialects—a system controlled by the left side of our brains. And just like young children, juvenile birds experience a period termed "sub-song" where they twitter in what resembles the babbling of a young child learning to speak. Yet Toto does not have a "language" as humans understand it. Humans use language for many more purposes than birds use song. Consider, too, that it is mostly male birds that sing. Females remain songless unless they are injected with the male hormone testosterone (see Nottebohm, 1980). Also consider that humans frequently communicate intimately between two or three people, while bird communication is a fairly long-distance affair.
One of the big "success" stories in looking at the human-like qualities of non-human primates is a male bonobo chimpanzee known as Kanzi (see Savage-Rumbaugh and Lewin, 1994; Skoyles and Sagan, 2002, pp. 217-220). Kanzi was born October 28, 1990, and began his long journey to learn to "speak" as a result of the training provided for his mother, Matata, via a "talking" keyboard. Matata never did master the keyboard, but Kanzi did. Through many years of intense training and close social contact with humans, this remarkable animal attained the language abilities of an average two-year-old human. By age ten, he had a "spoken" vocabulary (via the keyboard) of some two hundred words. In fact, Kanzi was able to go beyond the mere parroting or "aping" of humans; he actually could communicate his wants and needs, express feelings, and use tools. Inasmuch as Kanzi could accomplish such things, does this prove that chimps are merely hairy, child-like versions of humans?
Hardly. To use the words of the famous American news commentator, Paul Harvey, someone needs to tell "the rest of the story." For example, in their 2002 volume, Up from Dragons, John Skoyles and Dorion Sagan discussed Kanzi at great length. Among other things, they wrote:
Kanzi shows that while chimps may have the potential to learn language, they require a "gifted" environment to do so. Kanzi was surrounded by intelligent apes with PhDs [i.e., humans—DM/BH/BT] who spoke to him and gave him a stream of rich interactions. They gave Kanzi's brain a world in which it could play at developing its ability to communicate.... Therefore, as much as in his brain, Kanzi's skill lies in the environment that helped shape it (pp. 215,216, emp. added).
Kanzi does not possess the anatomical equipment required for speech. Truth be told, no animal does. As Skoyles and Sagan went on to note: "Chimps lack the vocal abilities needed for making speech sounds—speech requires a skilled coordination between breathing and making movements with the larynx that chimps lack" (p. 214). Humans, however, do possess the anatomical equipment required for speech.
But there is more. Regardless of how much instruction such animals receive, there appear to be built-in limits on their progress. On February 15, 1994, the public television program NOVA aired the show titled "Can Chimps Talk?" (for a full transcript of the show go to www.primate.wisc.edu/pin/nova/html). The show began with a "conversation" with Kanzi, who was required to use a talking keyboard to respond to queries from his human counterpart. As the television program demonstrated quite effectively, Kanzi frequently responded incorrectly when asked a question. For instance, one of the humans asked, "Is there any other food you'd like me to bring in the backpack?" Kanzi's talking keyboard response was: "ball."
The program then focused on Washoe, a chimpanzee that, in the 1970s, was taught a portion of American Sign Language by Allen and Beatrice Gardner at the University of Nevada. By the time Washoe was five, the trainers reported that she could use 133 signs. Headlines were quick to report that a non-human primate was using human language. This spurred other scientists, such as Herb Terrace, to begin experimenting with animal language. Terrace set out to replicate some of the Gardners' study by using his own ape, Nim Chimsky (sarcastically named after MIT scientist Noam Chomsky, who believes language is confined strictly to humans). The main goal of the project was to determine if a chimpanzee could create a sentence. In the documentary, Terrace stated: "I have concluded that, unfortunately, the answer to that question is no." Nim's sign usage could best be interpreted as a series of "conditioned discriminations" similar to behaviors seen in many less-intelligent animals. This work suggested that Nim, like circus animals, was using words only to obtain food rewards. Terrace realized that while Nim seemed to be using a combination of signs, he actually was imitating the trainer. This prompted Terrace to examine some of the Gardners' films. He decided that Washoe, too, was being led by his teacher and was merely imitating.
As Skoyles and Sagan candidly admitted, Kanzi's skill was "in the environment that helped shape it." That is precisely what Terrace discovered. Such an assessment always will be true of "talking animals." But it is not always true of humans! Consider the following case in point.
As we mentioned earlier, the eminent linguist Noam Chomsky has championed the idea that humans are born with a built-in "universal grammar"—a series of biological switches for complex language that is set in place in the early years of childhood. This, he believes, is why children can grasp elaborate language rules, even at an early age—without adults to teach them. Powerful support for Chomsky's theory emerged from a decade-long study of 500 deaf children in Managua, Nicaragua, which was reported in the December 1995 issue of Scientific American (Horgan, 1995, 273[6]:18-19). These children started attending special schools in 1979, but none used or was taught a formal sign language. Within a few years, and under no direction from teachers or other adults, they began to develop a basic "pidgin" sign language. This quickly was modified by younger children entering school, with the current version taking on a complex and consistent grammar. If Chomsky is correct, where, then, did humans get their innate ability for language? Chomsky himself will not even hazard a guess. In his opinion, "very few people are concerned with the origin of language because most consider it a hopeless question" (as quoted in Ross, 1991, 264[4]:146). The development of language, he admits, is a "mystery." The fundamental failing of naturalistic theories is that they are inadequate to explain the origins of something so complex and information-rich as human language, which itself is a gift of God and part of man's having been created "in His image" (see Lyons and Thompson, 2002).
The fact is, no animal is capable of speaking in the manner in which people can speak. Speech is a peculiarly human trait. Steven Pinker, director of MIT's Center of Cognitive Neuroscience, stated in The Language Instinct: The New Science of Language and Mind:
As you are reading these words, you are taking part in one of the wonders of the natural world. For you and I belong to a species with a remarkable ability: we can shape events in each other's brains with remarkable precision. I am not referring to telepathy or mind control or the other obsessions of fringe science; even in the depictions of believers, these are blunt instruments compared to an ability that is uncontroversially present in every one of us. That ability is language. Simply by making noises with our mouths, we can reliably cause precise new combinations of ideas to arise in each other's minds. The ability comes so naturally that we are apt to forget what a miracle it is.... [H]uman language is based on a very different design.... Even the seat of human language in the brain is special... (1997b, pp. 1,365, emp. added).
Without detracting anything from primates like Kanzi and Washoe, fundamental differences between animals and humans nevertheless remain. Unlike human children, animals: (1) do not have a special region in the brain devoted to language; (2) possess a much smaller brain overall; and (3) lack the anatomy to speak the words they may think. In summary, humans have an innate, built-in, hard-wired ability to acquire and communicate complex language from the moment of their birth. Animals do not. Admittedly, animals do possess a measure of understanding. They can learn to respond to commands and signs, and in some instances even can be trained to use minimal portions of human sign language. But even though apes, dogs, and birds can be trained to do certain things, they cannot reason and communicate ideas with others so as to have true mental communion. Why? The intelligence of animals is, quite bluntly, unlike that of humankind. As biologist John N. Moore observed:
Animals can think in several ways...though only on the perceptual, not on the conceptual level. The key difference here is one between conceptual and perceptual thinking. The latter, which is typical of animal thinking, requires the actual or nearly immediate presence of the pertinent objects. Man's thinking, on the other hand, is independent of the presence of pertinent objects. It is, in fact, independent of objects altogether, as is the case with logical or mathematical exercises. Secondly, the difference between human and animal thinking resides in the fact that, whether or not the object of the mental operation is present, animals cannot make judgments or engage in reasoning. For example, animals are unable to conclude that such and such is or is not the case in a given situation or that if such and such is the case, then so and so is not (1983, p. 344, emp. and ellipses in orig.).
The issue is not "can animals think?," but rather "can they think the way humans do?" The answer, obviously, is a resounding "No!" Although animal trainers and investigators since the seventeenth century have tried to teach chimpanzees to talk, no chimpanzee has ever managed it. A chimpanzee's sound-producing anatomy is simply too different from that of humans. Chimpanzees might be able to produce a muffled approximation of human speech—if their brains could plan and execute the necessary articulate maneuvers. But to do this, they would have to have our brains, which they obviously do not (see Lieberman, 1997, p. 27).
No known language in the whole of human history can be considered "primitive" in any sense of the word. In her book, What is Linguistics?, Suzette Elgin wrote:
The most ancient languages for which we have written texts—Sanskrit for example—are often far more intricate and complicated in their grammatical forms than many other contemporary languages (1973, p. 44).
Lewis Thomas, a distinguished physician, scientist, and longtime director and chancellor of the Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in Manhattan, acknowledged: "...Language is so incomprehensible a problem that the language we use for discussing the matter is itself becoming incomprehensible" (1980, p. 59). It appears that, from the beginning, human communication was designed with a tremendous amount of complexity and forethought, and has allowed us to communicate not only with one another, but also with the Designer of language.
In a paper titled "Evolution of Universal Grammar" that appeared in the January 2001 issue of Science, M.A. Nowak and his colleagues attempted to discount the gulf that separates human and animals (Nowak, et al., 2001). This paper, which was a continuation of a 1999 paper titled "The Evolution of Language" (Nowak and Krakauer, 1999), used mathematical calculations in an effort to predict the evolution of grammar and the rules surrounding it. While Nowak and his team inferred that the evolution of universal grammar can occur via natural selection, they freely admitted that "the question concerning why only humans evolved language is hard to answer" (1999, 96:8031, emp. added). Hard to answer indeed! The mathematical models presented in these papers do not tell us anything about the origination of the multitude of languages used in the world today. If man truly did evolve from an ape-like ancestor, how did the phonologic [the branch of linguistics that deals with the sounds of speech and their production] component of our languages become so diverse and variegated? Nowak's paper also did not clarify the origination of written languages, or describe how the language process was initiated in the first humans, considering we know today that parents teach languages to their offspring.
Nowak and his collaborators believe that the "first step" in the evolution of language was "signal-object associations." They speculate that common objects, frequently utilized, were given a representative signal or sign (in a manner similar to modern sign language). These researchers also believe that early in evolution, these signals were "likely to have been noisy" and therefore "mistaken for each other." Nowak suggests that these errors necessitated the formation of words, and describes this step in the evolution of language as going "from an analogue to a digital system." However, there is no evidence that demonstrates how these "prehistoric" people made the quantum leap from signals to words. The last step Nowak describes is the evolution of basic grammatical rules in an effort to convey even more information than just simple words. While these speculations make a nice, neat, progressive path toward human language, they do little to explain adequately the anatomical differences found in animals and humans. The human supralaryngeal airway differs from that of any other adult mammal, and is essential for speech. While it is true that chimpanzees have been taught to communicate by means of sign language, they cannot speak, and do not appear to use any complex syntax in communication.
Nowak and his colleagues began with the assumption that language "evolved as a means of communicating information between individuals" (1999, 96:8030), and then went on to speculate that natural selection favors the emergence of a universal, rule-based language system. But if it is true that natural selection "favors" a complex language, how do we account for the non-vocal communication observed in animals, and why hasn't this communication "emerged" into a formal language in those animals? In an effort to explain this embarrassing lack of understanding, Nowak, et al. offered several speculations as to why animals have not evolved a better form of communication. In their explanation, they listed the following:
But such speculations leave gaping holes in regard to potential explanations as to why animals cannot use speech. As Deacon noted:
How could anyone doubt that language complexity is the problem? Languages are indeed complicated things. They are probably orders of magnitude more complicated than the next-most-complicated communication system outside of the human sphere. And they are indeed almost impossibly difficult for other species to acquire (1997, p. 40).
Also, consider that when language first appears on the scene, it already is fully developed and very complex. The late Harvard paleontologist George Gaylord Simpson described it this way:
Even the peoples with least complex cultures have highly sophisticated languages, with complex grammar and large vocabularies, capable of naming and discussing anything that occurs in the sphere occupied by their speakers. The oldest language that can be reconstructed is already modern, sophisticated, complete from an evolutionary point of view (1966, p. 477).
Chomsky summed it up well when he stated:
Human language appears to be a unique phenomenon, without significant analogue in the animal world.... There is no reason to suppose that the "gaps" are bridgeable. There is no more of a basis for assuming an evolutionary development from breathing to walking (1972, pp. 67-68).
The fact of the matter is that language is quintessentially a human trait. All attempts to shed light on the evolution of human language have failed—due to the lack of knowledge regarding the origin of any language, and due to the lack of an animal that possesses any "transitional" form of communication. This leaves evolutionists with a huge gulf to bridge between humans with their innate communication abilities, and the grunts, barks, or chatterings of animals. Deacon lamented:
So this is the real mystery. Even under these loosened criteria, there are no simple languages used among other species, though there are many other equally or more complicated modes of communication. Why not? And the problem is even more counterintuitive when we consider the almost insurmountable difficulties of teaching language to other species. This is surprising, because there are many clever species. Though researchers report that language-like communication has been taught to nonhuman species, even the best results are not above legitimate challenges, and the fact that it is difficult to prove whether or not some of these efforts have succeeded attests to the rather limited scope of the resulting behaviors, as well as to deep disagreements about what exactly constitutes language-like behavior (p. 41).
Another scholar who recognized this chasm between humans and animals commented:
The very fact...that human animals are ready to engage in a great "garrulity" over the merits and demerits of essentially unprovable hypotheses, is an exciting testimony to the gap between humans and other animals (Holloway, 1976, 280:330).
Gap indeed! Humans are capable of communicating in human language because God created them with the ability to do so! The Bible still offers the only plausible explanation for the origin of human language when it records: "Then God said, 'Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness;'...So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them" (Genesis 1:26-27).
Aitchson, Jean (2000), The Seeds of Speech: Language Origin and Evolution (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press).
Chomsky, Noam (1972), Language and the Mind (New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich).
Corballis, Michael C. (2002), From Hand to Mouth: The Origins of Language (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press).
Deacon, Terrance (1997), The Symbolic Species: The Co-Evolution of Language and the Brain(New York: W.W. Norton).
Elgin, Suzette H. (1973), What is Linguistics? (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall).
Gitt, Werner (1999), The Wonder of Man (Bielefeld, Germany: Christliche Literatur-Verbreitung E.V.).
Holloway, R.L. (1976), "Paleoneurological Evidence for Language Origins," Origins and Evolution of Language and Speech, ed. S.R. Harnad, D. Horst, D. Steklis, and J. Lancaster, Annals of the New York Academy of Science, 280:330.
Horgan, John (1995), "A Sign is Born," Scientific American, 273[6]:18-19, December.
Jones, Steve, Robert Martin, and David Pilbeam, eds. (1999), Cambridge Encyclopedia of Human Evolution (New York: Cambridge University Press).
Lemonick, Michael D. (1994), "How Man Began," Time, 143[11]:80-87, March 14.
Liebereman, Philip (1997), "Peak Capacity," The Sciences, 37:27, November/December.
Lieberman, Philip (1998), Eve Spoke: Human Language and Human Evolution (New York: W.W. Norton).
Lyons, Eric and Bert Thompson (2002), "In the 'Image and Likeness of God,' " Reason & Revelation [Parts I and II], 22:17-23,25-31, March and April.
Matthews, Stephen, Bernard Comrie, and Marcia Polinsky, eds. (1996), Atlas of Languages: The Origin and Development of Languages Throughout the World (New York: Facts on File).
McCrone, John (1991), The Ape That Spoke: Language and the Evolution of the Human Mind (New York: William Morrow).
Moore, John N. (1983), How to Teach Origins Without ACLU Interference (Milford, MI: Mott Media).
Nottebohm, F. (1980), "Testosterone Triggers Growth of Brain Vocal Control Nuclei in Adult Female Canaries," Brain Research, 189:429–436.
Nowak, Martin A. and David C. Krakauer (1999), "The Evolution of Language," Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, 96:8028-8033, July 6.
Nowak, Martin A., N.L. Komarova, and P. Niyogi (2001), "Evolution of Universal Grammar," Science, 291:114-118, January 5.
Pinker, Steven (1997a), How the Mind Works (New York: W.W. Norton).
Pinker, Steven (1997b), The Language Instinct: The New Science of Language and Mind (London: Penguin).
Ross, Phillip E. (1991), "Hard Words," Scientific American, 264[4]:138-147, April.
Savage-Rumbaugh, Sue and Roger Lewin (1994), "Ape at the Brink," Discover, 15[9]:90-96,98.
Simpson, George Gaylord (1966), "The Biological Nature of Man," Science, 152:467-477, April 22.
Skoyles, John R. and Dorion Sagan (2002), Up from Dragons (New York: McGraw-Hill).
Thomas, Lewis (1980), "On Science and Uncertainty," Discover, 1:59, October.
Wieland, Carl (1999), "Towering Change," Creation Ex Nihilo, 22[1]:22-26, December 1999– February 2000.
Zimmer, Carl (2001), Evolution (New York: HarperCollins).
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subset: commoncrawl


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Crown Regency Beach Resort - Boracay
Presidential Suite for Four (4) pax
Explore Boracay and free your mind from work's pressure and stress as you stay overnight in a Presidential Suite valid for four (4) pax.
(or RWV 18,000)
Other Deals
- Luxury is to be had in every corner of the country. Know what makes the Crown Regency line of hotels the very definition of luxury and indulgence with an accommodation for four (4) at Crown Regency Beach Resort - Boracay.
- Crown Regency hotels are known for elevating the hotel experience to a whole new level with their fantastic customer service, their lush furnishings, and strategic locations.
- Overnight Stay at a Presidential Suite for Four (4) pax
- Room is subject to availability.
- Reservation is subject to policy set by the hotel during peak season.
- No booking fee required.
- No breakfast included.
- Voucher Validity: One (1) year from purchase
- Voucher Redeeming Period: Upon reservation or booking
- Check-in Time: 02:00 PM
- Check-out Time: 12:00 PM
- Child Policy: Maximum of two (2) children under four (4) years of age are free to share room with parents/adults (meal excluded)
- Extra Bed Policy: Subject to hotel's published rate
- Pet Policy: Pets are not allowed
- Unlimited voucher purchase/use per person.
Its more fun in the Philippines according to our revamped Tourism campaign, and it is indeed true. But theres more to the country than just fun. Everywhere you turn, theres a paradox waiting to be captured in a poem, a kind of beauty so overwhelming that guidebooks have to reduce the descriptions of our oceans, landscapes, and diverse culture to adjectives that barely scratch beneath the surface. Raring to discover just what is more to the Philippines? Experience just what else makes the country awesome with an accommodation to any Crown Regency hotel anywhere in the Philippines. Diverse enough to sustain your interest but also consistent in the type of comfort, luxury, and service they provide, Crown Regency hotels offer the height of reasonably-priced luxury for anyone who wants to experience one of the establishments that contribute to the countrys greatness.
Hotel Name: Crown Regency Beach Resort - Boracay
Location: Boat Station 3 Area, Ambulong, Barangay Manoc-Manoc, Malay 5608, Aklan, Boracay Island, Philippines
Trunk Line Number: (+63 36) 288-1888
Facsimile Number: (+63 36) 288-1501
Corporate Sales Office
Location: Unit 102, Ground Floor, Le Metropole Condominium, Sen. Gil Puyat Avenue corner H.V dela Costa and Tordesillas Streets, Salcedo Village, Makati City 1227, Manila, Philippines
Direct Line Numbers: (+63 2) 401-8041 / 401-8064 / 401-8072
Facsimile Number: (+63 2) 812-4298
- Voucher is transferable and may be given as gift.
- Price is inclusive of all service charge and VAT.
- All paid transactions are non-refundable or exchangeable to any form of cash or credit alternative other than that described in the voucher.
- Voucher cannot be used in conjunction with senior citizen card and/or any discount/promotion card.
- Voucher cannot be used during special occasions/activities defined by the Merchant Partner.
- Failure to redeem vouchers within validity/redeeming period will render the voucher invalid.
- Tampered, altered, photocopied, damaged, defaced, or spoiled vouchers will not be accepted.
- CrownLifestyle.NET shall not be liable to any person in the event of a stolen, damaged, or lost voucher regardless of its redemption status.
- Airport transfers are not included. If requested, this will be paid separately at the hotel's front office.
- Members may verify and/or book their eVoucher directly on their personal URL at the CrownLifestyle.NET website or they may call/email the CrownLifestyle.NET Reservations Office.
- Reservations that are not guaranteed will be held only until 06:00 PM, otherwise, the reservation will be subject to room availability.
- Rebooking should be made at least three (3) working days before arrival.
- Notice of cancellation should be made seven (7) working days prior to arrival, otherwise, the voucher will be forfeited.
- Failure to check-in on the scheduled date of arrival will forfeit the voucher.
- Guest should print and present the voucher with a valid ID upon check-in.
- Hotel reserves the right to deny guest booking when voucher is proven invalid.


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The Longmont Downtown Development Authority has announced the lineup for its 2014 Downtown Summer Concert Series. The music will be held from 6 to 9 p.m. on an outdoor stage set up at Fourth Avenue and Kimbark Street. Along with some great tunes from regional artists, attendees can enjoy some great local food and drink from downtown businesses. Admission to the event is free.
June 6: Cat Jerky (rock) and Last Men on Earth (rock)
June 13: Thumpin' (funk/soul)
June 20: Slopeside (alternative rock)
June 27: Bobby Doran (indie/acoustic/pop) and Moors and McCumber (Americana/folk)
July 25: The ColoRODans Concert featuring The Back Line (classic rock) and Tripping Griswolds (classic rock)
The Downtown Summer Concert Series is sponsored by Guaranty Bank, City of Longmont Recreational Services, Visit Longmont and the LDDA.


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Madame Deals and Go Big Deals have teamed up to bring you a deal you can not pass up!
"There is no Magic needed for this Kingdom. Picture this: three nights in a Disney approved hotel and two passes to the Disney park of your choice. You will then travel to Daytona Beach for two days. Daytona is the perfect place to wrap up your trip."
All of this for only $159 and 90 minutes of your time watching a video! How sweet is that?? For more details on how you can go on a Disney Vacation on a Budget visit Madame Deals. Or you can go directly to GoBigDeals and get started!


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The U.S. Department of Justice allegedly told Apple and five of the nation's largest publishers that it will sue them for colluding to raise e-book prices.
While some of the companies have tried to stop an antitrust case from going to court by reaching a settlement, it appears to be unsuccessful, the Wall Street Journal reported and relied on unnamed sources. If the case is settled out of court, it could mean huge changes in pricing for the industry and maybe cheaper e-book prices.
The five publishers: CBS Corp.'s Simon & Schuster Inc.; Lagardere SCA's Hachette Book Group; Pearson PLC's Penguin Group (USA); Macmillan, a unit of Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrinck GmbH; and HarperCollins Publishers Inc., Apple and the Justice Department declined to comment on the story.
U.S. & World
According to MediaShift, most of the alleged collusion came about to battle Amazon and its competitive pricing. Publishers wanted Amazon to adhere to the "agency model" of pricing e-books the same as regular books rather than Amazon's signature $9.99 pricing. Apple's alleged interest was in benefiting by hurting Amazon's e-book profits.
According to the WSJ, the late Steve Jobs met with publishers to discuss using the agency model at the Apple iBookstore and asked that they not let rival retailers sell at a lower price. The exchange was found in Jobs' biography by Walter Isaacson.
The publishers were then able to impose the same model across the industry, Mr. Jobs told Mr. Isaacson. "They went to Amazon and said, 'You're going to sign an agency contract or we're not going to give you the books,' " Mr. Jobs said.
If the allegations are true, then it's a pretty cut-and-dried case. Apple wanted to hurt Amazon, publishers wanted more money, and both were happy about the outcome. The only negative? Consumers paid a lot more money for e-books than we should have.


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Asian Salad with Warm Hoisin Vinaigrette
Trim, wash and dry the Asian salad selection greens, and rinse and trim the spring onions, then cut the onions into 1-inch lengths. Place the greens in a large serving bowl, reserve the spring onions on the side.
Place a small sauté pan over low heat and add the oil. Add the garlic and ginger and sauté until fragrant and soft. Be careful not to burn the garlic.
Transfer the garlic, ginger and oil to a small bowl, and whisk in the hoisin, rice vinegar and soy sauce.
Toss the warm vinaigrette with the salad greens, and garnish with the spring onions. Serve immediately. Garnish with sesame seeds if desired.


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For the week ending 24 January 2009 / 28 Tevet 5769
Why Aren't You Eating?
A charming story about the great Torah leader and Rosh Hayeshiva of the Ponevez Yeshiva in Bnei Break gives us an insight into the sensitivity to others that characterized his entire life.
When Rav Eliezer Shach, zatzal, was a little boy at his mother's table he somehow was overlooked when portions were handed out to him and his siblings. Upon noticing that he wasn't eating his mother asked him "Why aren't you eating?"
Rather than embarrass her by pointing out that she had forgotten to give him a portion of the meal, little Eliezer simply replied:
"Because I can't find my fork."


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Any Excuse for Champagne
Words by Erin Ogilvie
It wasn't long ago that, after opening a bottle of champagne, most of us would automatically reach for our trusty flutes. However, over the past couple of years, the question has been raised about how to serve champagne to show it at its best. We've known for over forty years that a glass' shape has an impact on your perception of aroma and flavour, so why do we continue to think differently for champagne?
When you get down to it, the only difference between wine and Champagne is the bubbles. Champagne is made up of three grape varieties - Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, and Pinot Meunier - and many of the production methods are the same between still and sparkling wines.
The average bottle of champagne in Australia is about $60. Now, imagine that you've bought a $60 bottle of red wine. Would you crack it open and pour it into the closest mug or cup? Or would you perhaps decant it, monitor the temperature, consider the best glass to use, and savour it over a meal? We're happy to exchange our Pinot Noir glasses for Shiraz glasses when changing from one varietal to the next, so why are we letting champagne's bubbles dominate our habits?
It's mostly to do with tradition, and how the history of champagne has shaped our views of what vessel it belongs in.
The Coupe
Rumour has it that this glass was designed on Marie Antoinette's left breast. The origin of the glass predates the French Queen so, while a good story, it's not true. However the Champagne Coupe was popular during her time on the throne, as champagne produced at the time was sweeter and more syrupy, and the saucer's short sides and shallow bowl allowed the user to dip cake in. Indulgent, yes, but let's be honest: if you could soak your dessert in champagne, wouldn't you?
The glass had a resurgence in the 1920s, then again in the 1960s, and had another revival a few years ago to the disappointment of devout champagne lovers. While it may help you live the life of a flapper, its shape is completely ineffective when it comes to expressing the wine's profile. The open-bowled design causes both the bubbles and aroma to dissipate almost immediately, and if you consider that 70% of our perception of flavour comes from aroma, you're losing a lot of your experience for fashion's sake.
So where to after the champagne saucer?
About fifty years ago, champagne was significantly cheaper than it is today so was accessible by a greater portion of drinkers. While this might seem great for business, the champagne houses could only produce quality at a certain rate, and demand was outstripping supply.
They did what any group of smart business people would do: they changed the dialogue around champagne. Just as the diamond industry convinced us diamonds are the only option when proposing, the champagne industry convinced us that it is something special, to be saved for celebrations. This meant they could increase the price, making it less affordable and therefore consumed less. Which takes us to...
The Flute
Now thought of as something used primarily for special occasions, champagne drinkers needed a glass that allowed the bottle to be shared among many. The flute's slim design made it perfect for toasting and provided a measured pour. As a result, the glass itself has now become a symbol of celebration. If you turn up to a friend's place and see flutes on the bench, you automatically know you're in for a good time!
Flutes also have the benefit of enhancing the bead. All quality products include a small scratch or mark at the base that agitates the champagne, encouraging it to stay bubbly as you drink.
The downside is that it doesn't provide a very good expression of aroma due to its thin opening. Even more tulip-shaped flutes with more rounded bowls don't provide you with the full aromatic experience.
In 2013, Riedel began hosting sensory workshops to find the best glass shape for balance and expression. We discovered what we have long suspected: that the best glass for drinking champagne is a wine glass.
Drinking champagne from a wine glass is about simply that – drinking. It evolves champagne from something that is only for a toast, into something worthy of savouring and enjoying. From our workshops, we determined two winning shapes depending on the style of champagne.
The Glass
A tall white wine glass with a tulip shape is better suited for leaner champagnes like Blanc de Blanc, made primarily from Chardonnay grapes. Its modest bowl size develops the aromas without overwhelming them, particularly in vintage champagnes where time has allowed the characteristics to become more complex.
However, the New World Pinot Noir bowl is unbeatable when it comes to the more opulent rosé champagnes, derived mainly from Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier grapes. It outperformed all other glass shapes - and flutes by a mile - to show impressive depth of character.
Our Veritas series is the first in the world to feature a glass (not flute) designed specifically for drinking champagne, as you would still wine. The Veritas Champagne Glass features a curved egg-shaped bowl with a small opening to envelop the aroma.
We have since hosted flute vs. glass comparisons with everyday wine drinkers, and every participant is always amazed at the difference it makes. As a result, all of Riedel's newer lines are developed with this bowl shape for Champagne instead of a flute.
As 11th generation Maximilian J. Riedel's puts it: "Champagne is a wine and deserves to be treated as such. Whether enjoying a Blanc de Blancs or a Cuvée, our Champagne wine glass allows the range of aromas of Champagne to unfold in a way which is not possible with a narrow flute."
So what does this all mean?
Both sides of the debate continue to be hotly debated.
Dom Pérignon is said to have been the first to adopt the flute as Champagne's nominated vessel, saying he enjoyed being able to "watch the dance of the sparkling atoms." On the other hand, Olivier Krug, current Krug director and great-great-great-grandson of the founder, is adamant that, "A great Champagne cannot offer its fullest expression in a narrow glass."
Ultimately, Champagne is not just a drink but a symbol of celebration and festivity.
The best champagne glass shape for you is based on how and when you enjoy champagne, what styles you like to drink, and what you're comfortable with. While we wouldn't recommend drinking vintage champagne out of a plastic cup, you might be a content traditionalist who just can't go past the classic flute, or perhaps you love to be ahead of the curve and drink champagne from your stemless O Tumblers. It's just down to your preference.
However, if you count yourself among those who'd walk over hot coals for a glass of the good stuff, we suggest you try a glass comparison next time you opened something special. Our only warning is that we don't recommend that you try this experiment in large numbers, as once you drink champagne from a wine glass, you may not want to share!


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TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – Floridians are snapping up guns at a record pace.
Each day since the tragic Sandy Hook school shootings except last Sunday has seen a record for the number of background checks being made in Florida.
"Typically our two highest volume days are Black Friday and the Saturday before Christmas," said Gretl Plessinger, of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.
The latest data available on Wednesday shows 8,250 people underwent background checks. In fact, the number of background checks, according to the data have increased steadily over the past week.
Floridians are on track to buy 750,000 guns this year. That's 100,000 more than last year.
Gun dealer Mark Folmar said the people buying guns from him are not reacting to the shootings.
"Most of the guns we've sold this Christmas season have been guns that people had planned to buy anyway," said Folmar.
Florida State University Criminologist Gary Kleck said he agrees.
"They were gonna get them eventually," said Kleck.
Kleck said rather than focus on the Connecticut tragedy, policy makers should look at violent deaths overall.
"Because 99 percent of the homicides in America are not mass shootings," said Kleck.
One way to do that, Kleck said, is to do a better job of screening someone's mental health.
"We have wildly incomplete mental health records; records that would establish that a person has been declared by a court of law to be dangerous to themselves and others," he said. "And yet, the guy doing the background check is not likely to have access to the vast majority of those records."
It is illegal for someone with mental health problems to purchase a gun in Florida, but without adequate background checks or mental health services, the law is meaningless.


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"Lovingly rendered. . . . A vivid tableau of a family and an era." –People
"Terrific stuff. . . . The See family's adventures would be incredible if On Gold Mountain were fiction." –The New York Times Book Review
"Weaves together fascinating family anecdotes, imaginative details, and the historical details of immigrant life. . . . Enviably entertaining." –Amy Tan
"Astonishing. . . . as engagingly readable as any novel. . . . comprehensive and exhaustively researched." –Los Angeles Times Book Review


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iGel Orion Mattress Toffee
Product Code: 382700064
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Mattress Size Guide
Nothing should get in the way of you enjoying your new bed or mattress. When it comes to finding the perfect mattress, you need to firstly know how big you can go. Here's a basic guide to UK standard mattress and divan bed sizes to help you make the most of your bedroom space:
|Bed Size
|Feet & Inches
|Small Single
|2'6" x 6'3"
|29.5" x 75"
|75 x 190cm
|3' x 6'3"
|36" x 75"
|90 x 190cm
|Small Double
|4' x 6'3"
|48" x 75"
|120 x 190cm
|4'6" x 6'3"
|54" x 75"
|135 x 190cm
|5' x 6'6"
|60" x 78"
|150 x 200cm
|Super King
|6' x 6'6"
|71" x 78"
|180 x 200cm
Please note
- Metric and imperial sizes are not exact equivalents
- There can be a tolerance of +/-2cm (+/-0.8ins) with all quoted measurements
Need more information on bed sizes? Unsure if your new bed will fit in your bedroom or go up your staircase? Check out our complete Bed and Mattress Size Guide
FREE DELIVERY ON ORDERS OVER £100 - all beds, mattresses and furniture items are also delivered, not just to your front door, but to any room of your choice. Don't worry, we'll take every care carrying your new bed through your home (but we also recommend that you move valuables such as vases and wall hangings out of the delivery path). You can check out our home measuring guide here for advise on how to measure your home prior to your delivery.
Please be aware that our Standard delivery times are on Monday to Friday between 7am and 6pm depending on your location within the UK. You will receive a call from our Customer Services team to arrange your perferred time slot.
For divan beds, we can also professionally assemble your bed for you. For £20, We will unpack and fully assemble your new divan bed plus assemble and fit your new headboard (if purchased and delivered with your bed). We'll also clear away all unwanted packaging and recycle it to ensure you're ready for a good night's sleep:
If you have any questions or concerns regarding your delivery you can call us FREE on 0333 222 6800 or email us on firstname.lastname@example.com.
Customer Reviews
Reviewer: fuller
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Credit Calculator
Finance options are available on basket order total of £300 and over Credit is available subject to status to UK residents aged 18 or over. Bensons For Beds Retail Ltd is an appointed representative of Product Partnerships Limited which is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority.
Product Partnerships Limited's FCA registration number is 626349 and its address is Salts Piazza Offices, Salts Mill, Victoria Road, Saltaire, BD18 3LA. Bensons For Beds Retail Ltd acts as a credit broker not a lender. We can introduce you to a limited number of lenders who may be able to offer you finance facilities for your purchase. We will only introduce you to these lenders. You may be able to obtain finance for your purchase from other lenders and you are encouraged to seek alternative quotations. If you would like to know how we handle complaints, please ask for a copy of our complaints handling process. You can also find information about referring a complaint to the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) at financial-ombudsman.org.uk Bensons For Beds Retail Ltd
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Duration of the loan: 6 months
6 Monthly Payments of £100


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Jordan Tyner, Derrick Holifield, Brandon Chestnut and Jerry Mobley of the Phi Chapter of the Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity lead Ohio University students and faculty in a silent march on Martin Luther King Jr. Day.
Photographer: Olivia Wallace
Keynote speaker Fredrick Harris, professor of political science and director of the Center on African-American Politics and Society at Columbia University, speaks at the Martin Luther King Jr. Celebratory Brunch.
Photographer: Olivia Wallace
Janae Potts, Betsy Oellermann and Raven Reid, members of the Athens Black Contemporary Dancers, perform at the 14th annual Martin Luther King Jr. Celebratory Brunch.
Photographer: Olivia Wallace
Jan 21, 2014
By Jill Wallenhorst
"Let us not forget that this day really symbolizes what a man gave his life for, what a great American contributed to society, what ideals he espoused, what values he stood for and what he committed to the cause."
That was the message Ohio University President Roderick J. McDavis delivered in his opening remarks at the annual Martin Luther King Jr. Celebratory Brunch, held in the Baker University Center Ballroom.
OHIO's weeklong celebration honoring civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr. and his legacy kicked off Monday morning with the MLK Jr. Silent March followed by the brunch, which was hosted by the Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity. The theme of this year's celebration is "OHIO's Legacy: Living the Dream."
Fredrick Harris, professor of political science and director of the Center on African-American Politics and Society at Columbia University, was the keynote speaker at the brunch. His research interests include the studies of race and politics in America, political participation, social movements, religion, political development and African-American politics.
Harris delivered an inspiring speech in which he spoke of civil rights activists such as King, Malcolm X, and James Baldwin, an American writer whose work focused on the black experience in America and explored both racial and social inequities.
Emphasizing that racism still persists today, Harris noted Baldwin's ideals in particular and the notion that we must recognize the past in order to change our country, which Baldwin referred to as "a house that was built by race."
"The nation's architects laid a foundation rooted in slavery and capitalism," said Harris. "The foundation of the house has lasted far longer than the tools that were used to dismantle the most egregious practices of racial subordination."
Harris spoke of this house built by race and the seemingly impossible task of dismantling it; however, he also expressed a message of hope as he shared the words of Baldwin.
"If we … do not falter in our duty now, we may be able, handful that we are, to end the racial nightmare and achieve our country and change the history of the world."
Raven Reid, a first-year student majoring in child life studies, shared her excitement in attending the event for the first time both as a guest and as a performer with the Athens Black Contemporary Dancers.
"I think that it's important for people to reflect on who Martin Luther King Jr. was and all that he did, especially on this day," said Reid. "I think Ohio University has done a great job in honoring that, and I would love to be a part of this as either a dancer or in any other way in the future."
Among the distinguished guests at Monday's brunch was a delegation from the Ministry of Education and Skills Development in the Republic of Botswana. The delegation is visiting the Athens Campus this week, and McDavis took the opportunity at the brunch to welcome the group to Ohio University and to talk briefly about the growing partnership between OHIO and Botswana.
Labane E. Mokgosi, director of international marketing and business development for the Botswana Education Hub, spoke of the positive experience he was having during his first trip to OHIO. He also spoke about what he hoped people would take away from Monday's brunch and the week as a whole, noting that he would love to be a part of these celebrations at OHIO in the years to come.
"I hope that it will refresh our minds on the history of America, especially since the 1960s and the time of Martin Luther King Jr., and I hope people will see it as a celebration of how far we have come and where we are going," said Mokgosi.
McDavis noted that while our country has by no means eradicated racism, celebrations recognizing the legacies of activists like King are perfect opportunities to work toward doing so.
"We're getting there, but we're not there yet," said McDavis. "Today's gathering provides an opportunity for us to be revitalized, rejuvenated and recommitted to answer the call to service."
McDavis stated that King's work encompassed "a simple idea that somehow, someway all of us could learn how to live together, to work together, to be one."
Those attending Monday's brunch were treated to a group performances from student organizations across campus as well as a video that paid tribute to the lives and work of late social activist Nelson Mandela and Amiri Baraka, an African-American writer who spent a great deal of his life fighting for the rights of African Americans. The event also included a musical performance by Anointed Praise, a choral group made up of Ohio University students.
Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration events continue throughout this week. For a full list of events, visit http://www.ohio.edu/diversity/mlk/.


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No obstacle: Voice didn't stop her
Here's a tale to show that no obstacle is too high when it comes to career success. It's about my friend Ann, who has a really deep voice. It isn't a sexy deep voice; it sounds more like Oscar the Grouch with a sore throat or Darth Vader on Prozac.
Her voice, which is a result of a birth complication, is a disability that she must deal with daily and for the most part, has overcome. While I know this now, I didn't always see things that way.
I knew Ann in grade school where I confess to having had evil thoughts:
1. Why is she first chair in saxophone and I'm last chair in oboe? She has the right mouth for wind instruments, and I don't. It's not fair.
2. Why is she class president and I'm not even getting invited to boy-girl parties? How can someone with such an awful voice be so much more popular than I am?
When Ann and I ended up on the high-school track team together, we became close friends. I spent so much time with her that I stopped noticing that her voice was different than other people's. It seemed normal to me.
But there were constant reminders: Restaurant customers stared when they heard us talking. Often, salespeople did not hear what she wanted because they were so stunned by the sound of her voice. Ann never lost patience, never seemed uncomfortable. I never knew how she did it.
In the track world you meet tons of kids from schools all over the state, and when Ann walked by, I heard lots of them say: "What's wrong with her voice?"
When I asked Ann if she felt weird about how she sounded, she'd say no. "A deep voice sounds authoritative," she'd tell me.
Ann flourished in college. She learned to be extra nice to people because they usually would be extra nice back. She became very loyal to friends who stuck by her because so many others shied away after hearing her speak. Naturally, she knew she was different, but since good grades could help her overcome prejudices, she excelled in school.
After college she went to a top advertising firm. I assume that her voice was not a problem during job interviews, or at least that interviewers believed Ann could overcome her voice impediment enough to impress potential clients.
But then she was assigned to a manager who hated her and he became her bete noir. He berated her intelligence, made sexually explicit comments around her, and generally let her know he did not want her around. In truth, his actions amounted to harassment. But harassment is usually considered to be wielded by powerful men over women who are less powerful. I found it hard to believe that anyone would harass Darth Vadar girl. But her harasser had leverage, so Ann had to leave the company.
Once you leave a high-profile company without recommendations, you can forget going to another company in the same industry. So Ann returned to where she flourished: school. She took programming classes, and a classmate liked her so much that he got her a job. His software firm needed someone who knew advertising and someone who knew programming, and the company liked the idea of Ann wearing two hats.
Although the company went under in the tech meltdown of 2002, Ann found that she had developed a new specialty, which is in a very narrow niche that she now dominates and doesn't want me to identify in this column because she didn't want me to write the column in the first place. But the bottom line is that things are good for Ann now. She weathered many storms and is successful despite her disability. Her tips for others who are struggling with some kind of impediment are applicable to all of us:
1. Convince yourself you're great. Then convincing other people is much easier.
2. Don't blame other people for your failures. Take responsibility for your life and move past people who don't help you.
3. Have patience with yourself if you don't choose the right career on the first try. Trust that you will find a place that's right for you, and keep looking.
4. Don't make friends with a writer. They will always use their friends' lives as fodder.


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We heard it through the grapevine – Terrence Howard is in talks to play Motown legend Marvin Gaye.
"Nothing's been signed on paper yet," the actor told Deadline. "Everybody who loves music will hate me if I get this one wrong."
The site reported that Terrence, a musician himself who played an aspiring rapper in 2005's "Hustle & Flow," would join director Cameron Crowe for the biopic, which has the backing of Motown founder Berry Gordy Jr.
While Marvin's career, which included hits such as "I Heard It Through The Grapevine," "What's Going On" and "Sexual Healing," was musically exuberant, his personal life was rife with drama – the death of colleague and frequent duet partner Tammi Terrell from a brain tumor, a difficult divorce from first wife Anna Gordy, and, tragically, his own untimely death from being shot by his father.
Coincidentally, Don Cheadle, who replaced Terrence as James Rhodes in "Iron Man 2," is also developing a long-gestating music biopic, with his focused on jazz great Miles Davis.
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MORE ACCESS ON THESE TOPICS: Terrence Howard - Movies - Music - TV One


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Approximate dimensions
Height: 20.5cm /8.1in
Width: 11cm / 4.3in.
Dinosaur Designs resin products are hand made in Australia. Each piece is unique and we cannot guarantee you will receive an item exactly identical to what is that shown online. Colours and swirls shown are a guide only.
Resin is strong and durable and should be treated like a ceramic, as it can break if dropped or knocked against a hard surface.


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I thought it'll be nice to blog about this before the Documentation Hackfest was started.
I am quite frustrated with the current situation with regards the API reference browsing experience in the GObject world, some of the problems are these:
- I can't quickly get a compact overview of all the properties, methods and signals of a given class
- On top of that, I need to open each super-class or interface page separately to know which properties are inherited from those
- I can't figure out all functions/methods use a given class as an argument or return type, or which classes use it as a property.
- People can't add comments or code samples to each struct/class/method/…
- People can't easily suggest amendments to the documentation without diving into the code and generating a patch + a bug in bugzilla.
On top of that, usability wise I'm not too happy with the current web frontend and/or devhelp. The information to figure out all these things are all in GIR files, so I gave it a thought and figured out what's needed. Turns out we are not too far.
So I've been developing GDN (GNOME Development Network) a little django app hosted in github using kamstrup's giraffe. which takes GIR files and dumps them into static HTML code. The GIR parsing stuff is quite clever and useful, but we need a dynamic app if we want to provide some of the most interesting features, so I'm ussing giraffe's AST to dump all the cross referenced information into an SQL database.
So far I've managed to dump most info, the Django data model is pretty much done, I need to fix some bugs with regards to resolving specific types while crawling the parameters and return.
You need to install my personal giraffe's branch for now until Mikkel comes back from vacation and if you want it to work as I've been adding some missing features to the AST code.
So far I only have backend code no frontend code at all. Stay tuned for more info on this, and if anyone is willing to help make sure you send me an email to aruiz at gnome dot org


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The roundabouts near campus, however, are a different matter. Because they lack traffic lights, there's no way to audibly indicate when it's safe to cross. In addition, the movement of vehicles through a roundabout is essentially random, making it impossible for the blind to rely on their experience with normal traffic patterns.
Researchers from NC State's Institute for Transportation Research and Education (ITRE) weren't necessarily thinking of those problems when they took their first tour of the new Hunt Library. But a 3-D printer in the Hunt Library's Makerspace inspired them to come up with a solution: a tactile map of a real-world roundabout, modeled to represent landscaping, crossings and the boundaries between street and sidewalk.
"It was a creative, spur-of-the-moment idea," says Bastian Schroeder, assistant director of highway programs for the ITRE.
Tactile maps are common tools for transportation planners. But the companies that create tactile maps usually make them in bulk, so custom-designed maps are rare. The Hunt Library's 3-D printers offered Schroeder and ITRE research assistant Jeffrey Chang a chance to turn their own custom design — a map of the busy roundabout at Pullen Road and Stinson Drive — into a scale-model reality in a matter of days.
The tactile map has a range of possible applications, Schroeder said. Most obviously, it's a useful tool for teaching the blind to identify and navigate existing or planned traffic circles. It can also provide a design model for engineers building roundabouts.
"Being able to present a tactile map that says 'this is what your experience is going to be like' is really powerful," Schroeder says.
Like the ITRE researchers, students from NC State's College of Design are using the 3-D printing and scanning equipment in the Makerspace to build prototypes for their own projects. In the Hunt Library's media production studios, professional tools for recording and editing audio and video are allowing users to create polished media projects.
The Hunt Library's cutting-edge technology enables students and faculty to turn their bright ideas into beautiful solutions.


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Talking the walk: Is Antiquer's Mall salvageable?
In a recent full-page advertisement in the Daily Progress, the new owners of the Riverside Mall, more popularly known as Antiquer's Mall, announced a "Stop, Shop, & Stroll Day." Under the mournful slogan, "You Drive By Us Every Day," the ad invited shoppers to "stroll" the mall and visit the various shops, much like shoppers are encouraged to stroll around the Downtown Mall or the Barracks Road Shopping Center.
It would seem like a normal holiday promotion for a shopping mall, except for one thing: there's precious little place to "stroll" at Riverside.
As Ricky Ricardo used to say to Lucy, "You have some 'splainin' to do!" Unfortunately, Riverside Group LLC.– the current owners who paid Wendell Wood $12.5 million for the 9.7-acre property in May– did not return the Hook's phone calls by press time.
But according to commercial real estate broker Stu Rifkin, the beleaguered mall, which Wood developed in the 1980s, could be on its last legs. At one time, says Rifkin, Antiquer's Mall took up most of the space at Riverside and was a real destination for antiquers.
"It was great," says Rikin. "It was like Circa on steroids." Now it's uncertain whether there'll be an Antiquer's Mall at all. According to Antiquer's owner Mike Woorley, they're breaking ground for a new place further up 29 North in a few months.
"I think the landlords have done more advertising for Wal-Mart than Riverside by always referring to us as 'the place near Wal-Mart,'" says Woorley. "It would have been nice to have a sign for the mall, too."
Still, Woorley says he has no hard feelings and is looking forward to cheaper digs up the road. Of course, that leaves the mall without its signature store. But somehow it survived the several years-ago departure of Federal Express. (Before that, doomed Internet retailer Value America filled some retail frontage with offices!) Today, the mix includes a pizza joint, luxury spa and wood stove purveyors, and gymnastics and tae kwon do lessons.
Riverside faces design and location challenges beyond their mix of neighbors. For starters, people "drive by" them every day because, as Woorley points out, no sign exists to identify the space as a mall, and because access from Route 29 is so confusing.
The entrance for people heading north is at the Wal-Mart intersection– well before Riverside is even visible, visually confusing no matter which way you're headed. Even folks hoping to get there by bus face a death-defying run across the wide, high-speed 29. Charlottesville Transit Service's Route 5 goes all the way to Wal-Mart and Sam's Club, but the bus comes in from Berkmar Drive and stays on the Wal-Mart side of Route 29.
And even for the intrepid shoppers who mange to find the place, an array of design features make it less than ideal for a stroll when compared to some better-known shopping venues.
The Downtown Mall, for instance, provides strollers with a car-free zone and acres of brick, and Barracks Road has broad sidewalks ranging from 12 to 20 feet wide. There's even a fountain in a courtyard.
The sidewalks at the Riverside? At the widest spot measured by the Hook's trusty tape-measure, they're a measly 5' 9" inches wide. That's barely enough room for two people to pass each other.
In addition to the shrunken sidewalks, there are no places to sit and no gathering points (except for lines of eager wood-stove buyers thronging to relocated Acme Stove Co.) that might encourage a stroll.
In contrast to the wide Barracks Road sidewalks that circle around and weave through the place, Riverside's unconnected pavement leads to lots of dead-ends.
As last week's column noted, the proposed streetcar project– which former mayor Maurice Cox said would "structure Charlottesville's growth for the next 25 years"– rests upon a vision of pedestrian-oriented development. But how far outside the urban core between the Downtown Mall and the Corner can that vision realistically extend?
Cox includes Barracks Road as a future stop for the streetcar, but beyond that, it's hard to imagine an area not ruled by the automobile. Still, the growing emphasis on promoting Charlottesville as a pedestrian-friendly city may prove to be contagious. In September 2003, Charlottesville City Council rewrote the city's zoning laws to allow for more pedestrian-oriented development, and the recent Court Square renovation was made possible in part by a federal grant to make it more pedestrian friendly, with wider sidewalks and underground utilities.
Now it seems the Riverside owners are experiencing delusions of pedestrian grandeur. What's next? "Stop, shop, and stroll day" at Hollymead Town Center?
The marketing folks are undoubtedly working on it right now.
A bold claim


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This is my theory... hear me out for a minute... I believe that educators who are highly transparent (I am just focusing on the professional world at this point because high levels of transparency in one's personal world can go either way) tend to engage their students, colleagues and families in the community on a different level because they are often powerful storytellers;
I believe that educators who are highly transparent (assuming it is authentic stuff... remember, the brand experience must match the brand promise) tend to connect with the students, staff and community around them on a deeper level because what they share is consistent and visible to all;
I believe that educators who are transparent can develop relational trust with and within their community because their message will be loud, consistent and visible to everyone! The message these educators are sharing will be rooted in their beliefs and the non-negotiables that are in the best interest of children... that all leads to trust! Kids, families and colleagues will trust you if they know what you are doing, why you are doing it and that it is best for kids!
I believe educators who develop trusting relationships (thanks to Melinda, Amber, Pernille, Todd, Leah, Curt, Jay, George, Jimmy, Eric, Tom, Jeff, Jessica, Lisa, Vicki, Peter, John, Brad, Tim & Tom to name a few for reminding me of this each day) and within their communities then build a significant amount of social capital... and that is the proverbial gold mine... social capital!
Social capital is defined by Google as...
- the networks of relationships among people who live and work in a particular society, enabling that society to function effectively.
When we, as educators, amass social capital within our communities we have the foundation for enacting change, trying new things and telling our school stories because there are trusting relationships at the core that were developed by being consistently transparent!
So, are tech tools such as Twitter, Instagram and Facebook important for telling our school story and branding our space? Absolutely because technology allows us to amplify our school story beyond the four walls of our school and accelerate the building of healthy relationships within our community and beyond! Are pictures of students and staff in action important for telling our school story and branding our space? Absolutely because pictures are engaging and allow us to go from "information sharers" to storytellers who are shaping the narrative of our community (thanks Joe for helping me learn and understand this notion) and contributing to the developing healthy relationships.
Yes - there are many pieces that must be in place to successfully tell our stories and celebrate our students but at the core must be a positive culture and identity that is developed through high levels of transparency and built on healthy relationships! So, as we kick off the new school year, I implore my fellow educators to embrace the notion of being highly transparent (at least on a professional level) because...
leads to
Relational Trust
which helps build
Social Capital
which must be in place to be