Wait until the IRS finds out....

Of course, I know you all reat the MIT news regularly, but just in cast you missed it.

JUNE 24 MIT NEWS
An Amazonian language with only 300 speakers has no word to express the concept of "one" or any other specific number, according to a new study from an MIT-led team.

The team, led by MIT professor of brain and cognitive sciences Edward Gibson, found that members of the Piraha tribe in remote northwestern Brazil use language to express relative quantities such as "some" and "more," but not precise numbers.

It is often assumed that counting is an innate part of human cognition, said Gibson, "but here is a group that does not count. They could learn, but it's not useful in their culture, so they've never picked it up."


It's not useful in their culture? Help me out here folks. Unless you only had one of any given object, you'd think counting would come in handy....