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From: jnp@calmasd.GE.COM (John Pantone)
Newsgroups: sci.med,sci.bio
Subject: Re: Dating age of humans
Message-ID: <2369@calmasd.GE.COM>
Date: Fri, 4-Sep-87 12:25:37 EDT
Article-I.D.: calmasd.2369
Posted: Fri Sep  4 12:25:37 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 6-Sep-87 06:06:08 EDT
References: <26333@sun.uucp> <1960@kitty.UUCP> <3836@cit-vax.Caltech.Edu> <1421@mmm.UUCP>
Organization: G.E.- Calma R&D, San Diego, CA
Lines: 28
Keywords: Ageing Human Carbon
Summary: Apples and oranges
Xref: mnetor sci.med:3139 sci.bio:637

(Andre Guirard) writes:
> (Spencer W. Thomas) writes:
> >doctor .... would not be able to do as well at guessing ... age as 
> >the guy at the carnival.
> 
> Sounds like they should hire one of these carnival guys to tell them
> what to look for.

If they did - they would be very dissapointed.  A good friend of my family
was a carny for many years.  Among other specialties he did an age-guessing
concession.  According to him the giveaways are clothing styles and speech
patterns. Given a generalized guess based on the person's physical
appearance he would further refine the guess with info based on the style
and age of their shoes, accessories (purses, watches, etc.) and then try to
get them to talk to their companions - to detect any key slang phrases which
would help pin down the age.

He hastened to add that this worked only (for him anyway) with what he
called the "typical white rural types" and that he couldn't handle any other
racial/ethnic groups anywhere near as well.

So, the conclusion is that the carnies are using social clues as their
principal information, not the "body" of the person - at least not
exclusively.
-- 
These opinions are solely mine and in no way reflect those of my employer.  
John M. Pantone @ GE/Calma R&D, Data Management Group, San Diego
...{ucbvax|decvax}!sdcsvax!calmasd!jnp          jnp@calmasd.GE.COM