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#1
Mr. Green

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I was on gaurd duty the other day and the person I was on gaurd with got into a wierd conversation: do you consider your thumbs a finger? We agreed that they can be considered digits, appendages and phalange but is a thumb a finger? The arguement goes that you have 4 fingers and a thumb or 5 fingers with the thumb included. What do you think?
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#2
dsenette

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is your big toe a toe? or just a malformed foot-thumb? why is the middle finger named "the bird"?

i would say that a thumb is a thumb and a finger..(it is, after all, the greatest multitasker since the tongue) can it really be relegated to one name? should we really be pigeonhole-ing it into this form of denotation? can it not be one without the other? ergo making "thumb" and "finger" mutually exclusive?

i say NAE let the thumb be a finger and a thumb! do not try to force your oppressive naming conventions upon the glorious appendage that is the thumb! let it be free to "thumb" through the pages of life, for if you make it angry it may give you "the finger" and "thumb a ride" leaving you with no way to hold your toilet paper!

(p.s. for anyone who has no idea what a phalange is http://www.bartleby.com/107/56.html)

Edited by dsenette, 07 August 2006 - 07:32 AM.

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#3
sari

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*sari takes the caffeine from dsenette...
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#4
dsenette

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*dsenette kills sari and hides the body
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#5
frantique

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Read a couple of years ago that babies are now born with the thumb being the strongest digit whereas the pointer finger had up until a couple of years ago always (well since they first started checking!) been the strongest digit. Was assumed that it was an evolutionary thing (you know all the hand held games kids had been playing for some years and currently I guess with texting on phones).
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#6
james_8970

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*dsenette kills sari and hides the body


*James_8970 finds the body and chases dsenette down the street

Edited by james_8970, 08 August 2006 - 09:40 PM.

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#7
SRX660

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I have heard it is called the thumb because it has only one joint instead of the 2 that fingers have.

the freeing of the hands from their walking requirements—still so crucial for apes today, which in its turn was one of the consequences of the gradual pithecanthropoid and anthropoid adoption of the erect bipedal walking gait.

I think people needed to call this opposable finger something other than a finger. It is unique in that it is the only one that has a 90° rotation ability. You really can't call it a finger.

SRX660
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