Markipedia 2010-003

In the last few weeks, I have been busy getting locally famous on Brown’s Island during Dominion Riverrock as well as relaxing in the outer banx. The following  are artiFACTS from conversations that have occurred with friends in a variety of social settings.

* Babbling and Phonemes… supposedly little babies are born with the ability to form a variety of sounds from all languages, but then they mature and specialize the sounds that they can say… for example, Chinese babies start to babble in chinese phonemes and American babies babble in english phonemes.   I couldn’t find exact proof of this, but I did find out that there are five stages of babbling, that begin at approximately age 5 months… “Stage one is crying, stage two is cooing, stage three is vocal play, and stage four is canonical babbling. The fifth and final stage is conversational babbling, also known as the “jargon stage” (usually occurring by about ten months of age). This jargon stage is defined as “pre-linguistic vocalizations in which infants use adult-like stress and intonation””

* DOMINION VEPCO — VEPCO got their start as the power company that ran the trolley system in RVA… the question was when Dominion Virginia Power stopped being known as VEPCO and whether Dominion does more than Virginia Power.  Answer: Dominion is also known as Dominion Resources and is the parent organization of VA power, NC power, and WV power. More history from wikipedia: “In 1909, [Dominion] began operating as an investor-owned electric utility under the name Virginia Railway & Power Company. In 1925, the name was changed to the Virginia Electric and Power Company (VEPCO), and Dominion was operated as a regulated monopoly. In 1940, Dominion doubled its service territory by merging with the Virginia Public Service Company. In 1980, Dominion Resources, Inc., was incorporated as the holding company for VEPCO. In the 1980’s, VEPCO was divided into three operating divisions, Virginia Power, North Carolina Power, and West Virginia Power.

* rwmd is moving to Greenville SC… want to know some fun facts about greenville? Well that whole northwestern part of SC was ceded to the Cherokee nation after the French and Indian war, but then the Cheokees sided with the brits during the revolutionary war, and as part of the treaties, white people were allowed to occupy the area around greenville…It wasn’t called greenville until the 1830s..  three more fun facts and then I have to move on.. (1) Bob Jones University is near there (2) greenville is 120 miles from both Atlanta and Charlotte (3) greenville is near the mountains and there have been lots of earthquakes there.

* Predestination versus predeterminism — Predestination is the sense of ultimate eternal destiny about whether you are saved or not…Predeterminism ( more commonly seen as “determinism” among philosophers) the idea that earthly events, choices, and decision are influenced or determined by a causal chain that extends to the beginning of time.

Ok I am going to publish this Markipedia Volume and then issue the next one as beachypedia.