Monday morning nerdy

Two things:

1. A student comes by to hand in her biostats final. It's finally turned seasonably cold here, and she remarked in frustration: "Why does it have to be so cold outside?"

So I looked at her (knowing she had earlier had my ecology class) and began to talk about the 23.5 degree tilt of the earth on its axis, and that the northern hemisphere is angled away from the sun right now...

She just laughed. (Some people might get mad at that but I knew her well enough to know she wouldn't).

2. There's a thread up on Craft Bronies (on Ravelry) speculating as to the fact that the current generation look "more like cats" (I think she is responding to the fact that the eye placement on the current generation is unhorselike). I observed that the Ponies in the current generation have "binocular" vision ("eyes in the 'predator' position" - both eyes on the front of the head) rather than the "prey" position (eyes on the side of the head - it gives the widest possible field of vision. I can't remember if there's a term for that like there is for binocular vision). So what the designers of the current Gen have done, is make the ponies more human-like, actually. (Also, the big anime-style eyes, and the large-in-proportion heads). Actually, they've made them NEOTENOUS human. Which then triggered a memory of an old Stephen Jay Gould essay on the "evolution" of Mickey Mouse (Evolution in quotation marks because an individual does not actually evolve, but whatever) - Gould's hypothesis here is that as Mickey "cleans up his act" (he was ruder and less mannered in the early films), his body and facial proportions become less ratlike and more like a human child.

And while I wouldn't say the current generation of Ponies is better behaved than their earlier counterparts (I never really watched the earlier generations; I was too old for them then). I only know the earlier cartoons from a moment watched here or there, and they seemed rather treacly, to be honest.

But anyway - I'm not the only one who has noticed this (though I am not sure Bratz dolls fit the trend; there is too much about them that seems hypersexualized for them to truly fit the neotenous mold. Or perhaps I want things that are neotenous to seem increasingly INNOCENT.) Of course, it could be not a conscious use of neoteny, but rather either going with what focus-groups like, or they are aping anime, which is sort of Neoteny Central.