I did know that, but until following some links from that Wikipedia article I didn't know anything about Anacreon himself, who sounds like an interesting figure. I also like the name of his hometown.
Key went to St. John's, and is probably still its most famous alumnus.
1: Is it common knowledge that our national anthem takes the melody of a British pub song? I was treated like a n00b for not knowing this to be the case.
I'd say it's common knowledge among the sorts of people who know this kind of trivia.
Yes, 6 posted before reading 5, and I learned it around a table of people who knew this sort of trivia, including a friend fresh from being on Jeopardy!.
Why "sampling"?
I have no idea how to answer this question.
F. Scott Fitzgerald was some manner of descendant of Key's and is named for him.
It's probably not common knowledge among, say, drummers.
It was covered in my middle school history class.
12: The drum part to the song is really, really boring. You just roll the whole time. No wonder I missed out.
The drum part to the song is really, really boring.
That's where the drinking comes in.
15: Oh. I have not ever mastered the one-handed drum roll, so I've been missing out.
I did not know it Stanley, although it seems somewhat familiar so I may have known it at one time. My daughter knew from middle school, so maybe it is something that *young* people know.
The post title reminds me of the crazy brouhaha last year over the supposed indignity of translating our national anthem into Spanish. I say the more the merrier. Of course, I'm the heathen who loves the Hendrix version too, so you can't trust me.
19: That's the best pun I've heard in a week.
Because I spit on people who make puns around me, but still.
¿José, puedes ver
que les gusta joder?
translating our national anthem into Spanish
According to the terms of the licensing agreement for the British pub song, the national anthem can be translated into only 5 languages at any one time. Takedown notices will be issued if additional translations are made unless one or more previous translations have been deauthorized.
In the course of looking up "joder" (which I was not familiar with), I found the remarkably detailed Wikipedia article on Spanish profanity. Turns out there's a lot of it, and it varies enormously by region.
26: Excellent. In 24 I meant it as "fuck shit up" more or less.
Love Aikman: "Jennings has been an understated receiver for a long time. You don't hear much about him."
I would like to hear some Anacreon in the Ionian Dialect, as best we can manage. My thought was that "To Anacreon in Heaven" might have some sonic relation to Greek, but apparently those Londoners were drinking to translations. I think.
Looked around a little, but didn't care enough to dive into Perseus. Wiki should have everything, and then one more link.
I hear that undertakers don't get much.
19 and 25 both made me laugh. 24 sent me elsewhere to verify, where I picked up some helpful other terms that I now have to remember never to use. (Learning taboo words in other languages is so much more dangerous, because you don't have any emotional attachment to the taboo. I live in fear that someday I will say a grossly offensive word in a situation where I mean a mild joke.)
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Who these days still has an answering service? I feel like I'm in the 1950s.
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26:Wikipedia surprises me with its uncensored content.
"O'zog, kenstu sehn": the Star-Spangled Banner in Yiddish.
From the link in 26:
Sometimes the term lavahuevos ("ball-washer" or "testicle-scrubber") is used in the same context as "brown-noser" in English (personally degrading oneself for another's approval).
::chanting under breath:: Do not learn this term, do not learn this term, do not learn this term.
I know lots of Spanish slang. It's often country-specific. Argentines are boludos and have boludeces, but only if you really know them or want to offend. Dominicans have vainas, maybe less offensive, but I wouldn't say it to my grandmother. Spaniards say joder a lot, which means "fuck" and is more or less as appropriate as saying so in English. Mexicans have the verb chingar and calling something a chingada. I should write a book.
I meant it as "fuck shit up" more or less.
Literally.
I think I should have been watching that playoff game. I guess I still can.
I should write a book.
Already done, and it was very titillating to teenage me.
36: Don't even get me started on the difference between honear and homear, huevón.
35: You should write a book, but it may already have been written, somewhere out there! Alas. We had at the bookshop a fascinating book -- sold now -- on obscene or offensive gestures in various cultures, with excellent drawings. Anthropology, you know. There's nothing like paging through drawings of the thumbing-of-the-nose, the flicking of the chin, the, uh, upthrusting forearm from the elbow gesture of, I think, Italians, and so on. Lo, we also had many lesser known gestures. It was great.
Holy shit. 96 points altogether but AZ finally wins it in OT when a defender forces Rodgers to fumble and another dude runs into the end zone for the final TD.
I know lots of Spanish slang
English--outside some of its Urban Dictionary documented micro-cultures--is really impoverished in vulgar slang.
A good one: "Me cago en la leche que mamaste."
Most of the Spanish I know (not much, and I've forgotten a lot) is Mexican. The main offensive phrase I've heard used in NM is pinche güero. Wikipedia defines pinche more or less as I'd expect, and güero as meaning a blond or light-haired person, which I suspect in NM means an Anglo. Note that the racial dynamics in NM are rather different from those in Mexico.
42: The canonical version I've heard is "Me cago en la leche de tu puta madre". Which is not polite.
Also not polite in Chile "la concha de tu puta madre". Don't say that unles you're ready to fight.
On the OP, that was anything but innovative. Before the recent perversions in copyright law, people would freely re-use melodies however they saw fit. cf. Amazing Grace, Yankee Doodle, Brahms' Hungarian Dances and so on.
Wikipedia defines pinche more or less as I'd expect
Yeah, although in Chile it means barrette. (Actually, that entire post is directly on point to this thread.)
I wonder when she worked at Frontier. I used to go there a lot in the few years before that post. She doesn't look very familiar, but it was a while ago.
although in Chile it means barrette.
In Chile, "guagua" means small child. In Cuba, it means bus. In Cuba, "coger" is devoid of double entrende and means get/take. In Chile, it's almost exclusively used as a swear.
There are many (possibly apocryphal) tales of Cubans asking very taken aback Chileans, "donde puedo coger una guagua?"
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For some reason I always just Google Unfogged rather than typing the url or making a bookmark. But it lets me be amused by the subtopics that come up. The current crop and layout are pretty good.
About Heebie-Geebie My Match
I'm Sufficiently Into You Greetings
I have here in my hand a list French Laundry
Ogged Fuck Me. Heels
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Isn't anyone going to bring up the "urban cavepeople" story in the Times so we can all make fun of it?
Doesn't everyone love
(a) Hendrix's "Star-Spangled Banner"
(b) Elyse Sewell
?
This thread reminds of the scene in El Norte where the guy starts swearing in order to make the immigration officials think he's Mexican.
I've been getting told that I've posted too many comments in too short a time, and so cannot post a comment. Maybe this will get through.
Please don't use objectless "reminds".
I've been getting told that I've posted too many comments in too short a time, and so cannot post a comment
Time stamp correction fallout would be my guess.
51: Sure. I'm generally inclined to a more positive view of the hunter-gatherer lifestyle than most people, but the people in the article sound insane.
Please don't use objectless "reminds".
This reminds of a certain question for you.
The metafilter thread on the cavemorons was pretty good.
I was a little puzzled by why the caveman needed a special 'meatlocker' in his living room. Putting his meat in the regular refrigerator would have been less Paleolithic somehow?
A little truth barks loudly around the outskirts of the cavedudes' lifestyle: hunter-gatherer living sucks. Everything about it is a tedious, exacting pain: finding food, finding water, finding shelter, making fire, freezing by night, burning by day, smelling like Kit Carson's old shoes, trying not to get dysentery and failing.
He probably didn't have enough room in his refrigerator for all the meat he thought he needed.
61: Exactly, which is why none of them seem to want to actually live like hunter-gatherers. They mostly just want to eat lots of meat and brag about how strong they are.
I first thought 51 would be a link to the article about the couple who left their scientific jobs to live in a yurt in Alaska. "Hey, they shouldn't be figures of fun", I thought.
I think it's also likely that the cuts of meat he wants to store are larger than your standard filets.
smelling like Kit Carson's old shoes
Kit Carson didn't have old shoes. He just had skin that had served its purpose.
Most food most hunter-gatherers ate came from gathering.
They mostly just want to eat lots of meat and brag about how strong they are.
Most people with those two characteristics are kind of troglodytic.
I don't buy far into the idea, but Art DeVany or whatever his name is had what seemed to me a good heuristic for vegetable-eating: as many colors in addition to green as you can manage.
I have kind of a lot to say on the general subject of hunter-gatherer versus agrarian lifestyles, actually. More than I can really say coherently here and now. This article would be a good news hook for a post. Briefly, though, these people are totally missing the point.
these people are totally missing the point
As presented, they do seem a little simple-minded on the subject.
I wouldn't have thought there was a point to being a hunter-gatherer.
I thought the point was hunting and gathering.
There isn't a point to being a hunter-gatherer in a hunter-gatherer society. There generally is a point to deciding to live like a hunter-gatherer in an industrial society.
Hunter-gatherers are beings whose being is an issue for them, just like all of us.
Not that the people in the article are actually living like hunter-gatherers, of course; they're just pretending to. But the way they present their lifestyle owes a lot to some very strange ideas about hunter-gatherers and human evolution. Note that the anthropologists quoted in the article don't seem supportive of the idea.
There generally is a point to deciding to live like a hunter-gatherer in an industrial society
But I don't think that's necessarily what people on paleo diets are up to. They're just trying to come up with a diet and exercise plan that has some supposed scientific rationale for being more effective than others.
There generally is a point to deciding to live like a hunter-gatherer in an industrial society.
What point is that, and how are they missing it? It seems to me that they mostly go wrong in having utterly ridiculous ideas about what any hunter-gatherers actually did.
They're just trying to come up with a diet and exercise plan that has some supposed scientific rationale for being more effective than others.
I suspect the science stuff is mostly façade and the real appeal lies in getting back to soil.
I'm just now reading the article, and this:
These urban cavemen also choose exercise routines focused on sprinting and jumping, to replicate how a prehistoric person might have fled from a mastodon.
is really wonderful.
I suspect the science stuff is mostly façade and the real appeal lies in getting back to soil.
Williamsburg or Portland cavemen, maybe. But a lot of these diets are pitched at suburban gym rats who just want to be buff: Amazon search for "paleo diet".
From the picture in the article, I see they have one cute girl with serious glasses. Back in the 90s, that was most of what you needed to start a band, so I think they know how to go about starting a trend.
From the picture in the article, I see they have one cute girl with serious glasses.
From the text of the article, it appears that she's the only girl in the entire movement.
she's the only girl in the entire movement
That's why so much of the music in the 90s was so angst-ridden.
What point is that, and how are they missing it?
Depends on the person making the choice, I suppose, but the general idea is that hunter-gatherers were healthier than early agriculturalists, so emulating a hunter-gatherer lifestyle would be a way to capture some of those benefits. I don't actually buy that this is true, but given a realistic idea of what a hunter-gatherer lifestyle consists of (which these people are decidedly lacking) it has a certain plausibility and is unlikely to do any serious harm.
Isn't so-called urban cavemoron M/l/ssa McEw/n also a noted blogger? Maybe this is one of these "Do a silly thing for 12 months" projects.
These urban cavemen also choose exercise routines focused on sprinting and jumping, to replicate how a prehistoric person might have fled from a mastodon.
I believe a profile of Nouriel Roubini claimed he had exactly this exercise and diet plan.
The main fallacy in the idea, of course, is that the unhealthy lifestyle of early agricultural societies is comparable to the supposedly unhealthy lifestyle of our own industrial society.
From the text of the article, it appears that she's the only girl in the entire movement.
Among the ten people in NYC who are mentioned in the article, you mean.
This is a hit piece, intended to make these people look as crazy as possible. (And there's plenty of ammo for that, I'll concede.) I'm certainly not "paleo", but, e.g., Cordain's book is surprisingly good.
Among the ten people in NYC who are mentioned in the article, you mean.
True.
Depends on the person making the choice, I suppose, but the general idea is that hunter-gatherers were healthier than early agriculturalists, so emulating a hunter-gatherer lifestyle would be a way to capture some of those benefits.
Then they aren't missing the point. That's what they think too.
The main fallacy in the idea, of course, is that the unhealthy lifestyle of early agricultural societies is comparable to the supposedly unhealthy lifestyle of our own industrial society.
That seems comparatively unimportant: all you need to do is also believe that hunter-gatherers were healthier than us currently. You don't need to think that their health compares to ours the same way it did with agricultural societies, except in being better overall.
This one is a real gem, also:
"New York is the only city in America where you can walk," said Nassim Taleb
Is it really, Nassim Taleb? The only one?
the supposedly unhealthy lifestyle of our own industrial society
What's the "supposedly" there supposed to mean?
Whoops, by "Nouriel Roubini" I mean "Nassim Taleb".
Then they aren't missing the point. That's what they think too.
Fair enough. If you're just quibbling over the proper use of the phrase "missing the point" I'll concede. The problem I'm pointing to is that they're totally wrong about what it means to live like a hunter-gatherer, so they're not going to be able to capture whatever benefits might accrue from living that way.
That seems comparatively unimportant: all you need to do is also believe that hunter-gatherers were healthier than us currently.
Right, but there's very little evidence for this, whereas there's tons of evidence that hunter-gatherers were healthier than early agriculturalists.
Now I'm wondering if this is the rationale behind the diet of someone I know who eats only one meal a day, which is a large, meat-intensive dinner.
What's the "supposedly" there supposed to mean?
That the "paleos" believe our current lifestyle to be unhealthy compared to their idea of a hunter-gatherer lifestyle.
No comments on the opening line?
LIKE many New York bachelors, John Durant tries to keep his apartment presentable -- just in case he should ever bring home a future Mrs. Durant.
Presumably the apartment needs to be clean should the occasion arise for getting down on one knee.
Or, you know, clubbing the potential suited and dragging her back to the cave.
96: There are so many sorts of diets out there whose names I can rarely manage to connect to their overall plans: there's just the protein-intensive one, and the carb-intensive one, and the ones suggesting many small meals per day, and the ones suggesting one large meal per day. And so on. Whatever. Which one is most appropriate depends a great deal on the rest of your lifestyle.
These paleo diet people aren't utterly ridiculous as long as they combine the meat-intensive diet with rigorous exercise.
96: my understanding is that's a different (though compatible and sometimes co-practiced) diet, known somewhat comically as the "Warrior Diet".
The tribe is not indigenous to New York. Several followers of the lifestyle took up the practice after researching health concerns online and discovering descriptions of so-called paleolithic diets and exercise programs followed by people around the country and in Europe. The group's lone woman, Melissa McEwen, 23, was searching for a treatment for stomach troubles. She started reading the blog of a 72-year-old retired economics professor who lives in Utah, Arthur De Vany.
Well, at least they're looking beyond the veldtway.
100.last: Pretty much any diet that isn't straight-up Corn-Nuts and Twizzlers isn't utter ridiculous combined with rigorous exercise.
I thought the focus on meat in the article was a little weird. I'm sure there's exceptions, but generally they're really not overly focused on meat, so much as focused on not eating foods that were unavailable prior to modern agriculture. So sure, there's meat, but also nuts and berries and fruits and vegetables--and I think most people recognize all those as equally or even more important than just meat.
Mr. Taleb, who rejects the label "caveman" in favor of "paleo," avoids offices (including his own) as much as he can [me too! - JPS]. He prefers to think on the go. Dressed in a tweed coat and Italian loafers, this paleo man is a flâneur sometimes walking miles a day, ranging from SoHo to 86th Street.
No early Early Agrarians need apply.
Isn't so-called urban cavemoron M/l/ssa McEw/n also a noted blogger?
As far as I can tell, that's a different person with the same name.
103: Yeah. Although. One wonders what a nutritionist would say to someone past middle age who's eating a meat-intensive diet, even combined with exercise. I only skimmed the article: are these people taking any vegetables to speak of? TJ upthread suggests yes.
"Are you going for a 24?" Matthew might ask Andrew, describing a fast by its duration in hours.
Hunter-gatherers are well-known for their adherence to time-discipline. It reflects perfectly the rhythms of the seasons and the life-cycles of flora and fauna.
Isn't so-called urban cavemoron M/l/ssa McEw/n also a noted blogger?
The picture in the article and a google search of the name should quickly convince you that there are at least two women with this name, and that the one is not the other.
Slate will soon publish a contrarian trend piece on the need to follow a "Eunuch Diet."
104: Except weren't most fruits and vegetables developed after agriculture, though I suppose not "modern agriculture." I mean, the actual hunter-gatherers usually had the ancestors of what we eat, but nothing like we would call an apple or carrot.
107 crossed with 104. Okay, the article does seem like a hit piece in that case.
I'm sure there's exceptions, but generally they're really not overly focused on meat, so much as focused on not eating foods that were unavailable prior to modern agriculture. So sure, there's meat, but also nuts and berries and fruits and vegetables--and I think most people recognize all those as equally or even more important than just meat.
If this is the case (and I have no reason to doubt it) it makes much more sense than the meat-centric diet implied by the article. As nosflow noted above, a hunter-gatherer diet is based mostly on gathered rather than hunted foods.
111: sure, that's true. And they also had nothing like a modern corn-fed cow. You approximate as best you can.
I know the article really made these people look silly, but they've actually thought about all this stuff.
It really just sounds like a low- or no-carb diet.
It's interesting how many variants there are on the general theme of primitivism. There's Zerzan and his bunch, who don't actually live anything like a primitive lifestyle. There's the folx who try to do everything with tools they flintknapped themselves, but aren't particularly political. And there's these folx, who seem to be just more suckers for the fad diet industry to exploit. The description of them as schmibertarians who grumble about vegans fits in pretty well with the individuals I've met who are plugged into the same nonsense. I'd rather hang out with a bunch of skinheads arguing about whether the new Fred Perry lines at Macy's are "strictly trad" or not, frankly. I mean, if there's one thing we know about human physiology, one thing that we can be abso-fucking-lutely sure of, it's that humans are consummate omnivores. There's Inuit people who eat almost nothing but fish and arctic mammals, vegetarians of all stripes and exceptions, meat-and-potatoes rural midwestern Americans, French people with their fancy sauces -- and pretty much anyone of those diets can easily keep you alive and relatively healthy into your 70s or so, which is a lot longer than paleolithic people generally lived. Just like that idiot who went on the "survival" course, and died because the instructors wouldn't let him drink when he was thirsty, these folx are totally missing the point.
but they've actually thought about all this stuff.
The soft bigotry of low expectations strikes again.
114: If by "stuff" you are excluding history and anthropology, sure.
As usual, wikipedia isn't a bad overview: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleolithic_diet.
Also, referring to a regular chest freezer, like you can buy for $175 down to Menard's, as a "meat locker" is really over-egging it a bit, as Frowner would say.
The focus on the Paleolithic is particularly odd, I have to say. I mean, hunter-gatherer groups are rare today (though not completely nonexistent), but they were common around the world well into the nineteenth century, and many are well-documented by ethnographers.
He explained that tomatoes are part of the nightshade family, arguing that they are native to the New World and could not have been part of humanity's earliest diet.
No hunter-gatherers in the New World. At least no real ones.
(You have to pull the period from the hyperlink in 123.)
I snort at any paleo who hasn't run down a pishkun.
The pemmican manifesto is not much of a manifesto.
I make fun, but the Paleolithic focus is at least intellectually defensible given their conception of time operating on a strictly absolute evolutionary scale with no understanding of culture.
125: I remember reading somewhere that some doubt the comparability of recent hunter-gatherers to the paleolithic sort as people with agriculture sort of pushed the hunter-gatherers on to more marginal tracts of land.
>i> I mean, hunter-gatherer groups are rare today (though not completely nonexistent), but they were common around the world well into the nineteenth century, and many are well-documented by ethnographers.
The focus is supposed to be on food we evolved to be able to digest well, not on the hunter-gatherer lifestyle per se.
I mean, hunter-gatherer groups are rare today (though not completely nonexistent), but they were common around the world well into the nineteenth century, and many are well-documented by ethnographers.
And almost all are held out by the "paleo" movement as examples of health. They draw a lot of their inferences about diet/lifestyle from those documentaries.
The article is obviously a hit piece, plus I wouldn't be surprised if some of the people were putting the reporter on. But who would read an article about mashing up gathered vegetables and such?
I was pwned in the Paleolithic.
What would a paleo do with an egg, a stove, a microwave, and a plastic cup?
And they don't seem to understand how important sleeping in the night air is to the whole thing. They should sleep out on the streets of NYC, with all their stuff.
I'm not seeing nearly enough fear in these people. They don't appreciate the role fear played in paleo times?
Basically, there are a lot of unknowns in the study of things like Paleolithic diet, which makes basing a lifestyle on it a rather dubious proposition. But, as I said above, it's unlikely to do any real harm.
I mean, hunter-gatherer groups are rare today (though not completely nonexistent), but they were common around the world well into the nineteenth century, and many are well-documented by ethnographers.
It's both, really. The "lifestyle" is held out as one worth mimicking. Which is why they base their exercise around lots of walking, with occasional sprinting and jumping and climbing.
143.last: Don't forget "playing catch with stones".
I feel weird defending these people, since I think they're fundamentally wrong, for a lot of the reasons teo is gesturing towards. But they're not nearly as wrong, or as silly, as that article would lead you to believe.
What would a paleo do with an egg, a stove, a microwave, and a plastic cup?
Set a trap.
Which is why they base their exercise around lots of walking, with occasional sprinting and jumping and climbing.
That's pretty much what my three-year-old does. He also eats like a caveman, at least in terms of table manners.
145: I actually agree somewhat. Also with 130.
Also, the idea that the one fellow walks A WHOLE FIVE AND A HALF MILES at a time, ALL THE WAY from Soho to 86th St. is more than a little ridiculous. I know plenty of folx who walk that much and more, because it's the way they get places, not on account of how they're pretend cavemen.
If this was a hit piece, the targets don't seem to have taken many precautions.
ALL THE WAY from Soho to 86th St.
That also cracked me up.
I've never read anything he wrote, but this article firmly convinced me that Taleb is a tool.
Taleb and Roubini both seem like tools, but they also seem to have been right about the economy.
It's gazelleschaft that's giving them more trouble.
I wonder what paleolithic man would make of Roubini's vulva-studded apartment.
the one fellow walks A WHOLE FIVE AND A HALF MILES at a time... I know plenty of folx who walk that much and more, because it's the way they get places
Really? I don't know anyone who walks that far regularly, unless they're doing it for the exercise. That's a long walk just to get somewhere. Why not ride a bike?
And speaking of New York, I just watched Metropolitan again. Sigh. Carolyn Farina, why won't you love me?
I don't think they'd have must of a problem with the idea.
139 -- Eat the egg raw, but keep the other stuff in the apartment in case a girlfriend comes around. Wouldn't want to be thought a freak . . .
158 to 154. Plus "much" not "must".
156: No, to be fair, most of the non-drivers I know would fain hop on a bike to go more than a few blocks. But I do know a bunch of confirmed pedestrians who walk at least 5 or 6 miles a day generally, and much longer treks when they need to.
So sure, there's meat, but also nuts and berries and fruits and vegetables--and I think most people recognize all those as equally or even more important than just meat.
It's about meat because meat is manly. All that other stuff requires women to be involved in order to gather - at least, that's much of the take-away I got from that article.
(And actually, most of the noted food foragers in the US right now are male.)
I never know how to balance the studies that show hunter-gatherers often worked less per day than agriculturalists, allowing for more leisure, with the sure knowledge that being a hunter-gatherer (in most environments) also meant periods of extreme want. I'm lazy, but I hate being hungry.
I just discovered today that the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, which I've been visiting for two full decades now, has a reproduction of a couple rooms from a Hopi house (or whatever the right term is) that you can enter and in which you can grind corn. Iris loved it, and all I could think was , "teo would have all sorts of criticisms of this."
Anyway, sounds interesting. I should go to Pittsburgh some day.
It's about meat because meat is manly. All that other stuff requires women to be involved in order to gather - at least, that's much of the take-away I got from that article.
Well yeah, but that was my point--the article seems deliberately intended to give you this false impression.
165: The Hopi are portrayed as wearing Steeler jerseys.
There are probably Hopi Steeler fans.
I have certainly encountered some "paleo" enthusiasts on the Internet that live down to the portrayal in the article, and others that do not.
170: Yeah, the article could easily be an accurate portrayal of the handful of people it discusses and at the same time a grossly inaccurate smear of the movement as a whole.
167: Sorry, Brock, I just wanted to make fun of them too, even though I was late to the party. I should have added the disclaimer that I don't believe all paleo-enthusiasts are quite as silly as the ones portrayed in the article.
which I've been visiting for two full decades now
And I thought the 8 hours I spent at the Met was a long time.
The focus is supposed to be on food we evolved to be able to digest well, not on the hunter-gatherer lifestyle per se.
There's an argument which isn't (I think) endorsed by a majority of palaeontologists but is definitely in the mainstream, that we (Homo sapiens sapiens) are in fact evolved to eat cooked food, both meat and grains/nuts, and our digestive systems and metabolisms have been adapting to this since the domestication of fire by Homo erectus. So you're llikely looking at an early Lower Palaeolithic diet here, which was followed by a different species.
174: Do the paleophilics consider that a diet suited to conditions where a little bit of arthritis meant getting eaten by something else also hunting out there on the veldt might not be a diet suited to being in one's sixties or older?
175. Good question. From what I can find, paleophilics seem to make it up as they go along. The version in the wikipedia article looks much like any other fashionable diet for people with loads of money to throw at expensive food. Plus low sodium. Well, d'uh.
The idea of extrapolating palaeolithic diets from what modern hunter gatherers eat is extremely suspect, because modern hunter gatherers live in marginal areas by definition (if they weren't marginal people would cultivate them). As far as archaeological evidence goes, I'm not an expert, but it seems to add up to: "hungry people will eat anything".
"hungry people will eat anything".
That's Taco Bell's motto.
The Hopi are portrayed as wearing Steeler jerseys.
This is true!
There are these little dolls that have some sort of cultural significance (it was late in the day at this point), and one of them was in a Steelers jersey!
Actually, the Arctic exhibit is pretty awesome, with mounted caribou and polar bear, plus (full size) dioramas of an Inuit hunting seal at a breathing hole and an guy in a kayak hunting a walrus. There's also a full-size igloo that you can walk through and there's a woman behind glass scraping sealskins or whatever. Scientifically what's interesting is that the Carnegie sent a team to the Arctic around 1925 or 1930 and then sent another one to the same place 40+ years later, so you get some longtitude to the study.
I would?
I think of you as having pretty definite opinions on such things.
I should go to Pittsburgh some day.
You should. We could totally give you the planner's-eye view tour of the city. Maybe we could borrow one of Moby's SUVs.
178: Just to be clear, I hadn't seen the Hopi exhibit. I'll look next time I'm there. (Actually, it probably won't be next time since that is already promised as a dinosaur trip.)
modern hunter gatherers live in marginal areas by definition (if they weren't marginal people would cultivate them)
Wasn't pretty much all of New Guinea h/g well into this century? Surely that entire island isn't "marginal"? I mean, perhaps not optimal for cropland, but it's certainly abundant by a variety of measures.
that is already promised as a dinosaur trip.
It's just right upstairs. Surely the promise of an Eskimo hunting a walrus is sufficient temptation to get you upstairs? In the Indian exhibit (which is through the Arctic one), there's a canoe you can sit in, which pleased both of my kids a fair bit.
If there's still reluctance, you can always promise corn-grinding. Kids love that.
182: New Guinea had a fair bit of slash and burn agriculture, I think.
I hadn't seen the Hopi exhibit
I know, that's what's so funny.
Actually, the Native Americans exhibit makes a point of covering the cultural history as it's evolved - the diorama of a Hopi wedding shows the groom carrying a sack of name-brand flour, and the vitrine with balls and dice also includes lottery cards from early* Indian casinos.
It was put together in the early 90s, so it's fairly modern in approach/outlook
* as in 1980s - early relative to Foxwoods and the like
There are probably Hopi Steeler fans.
The poor deluded fools. Clearly an example of the triumph of Hopi over experience.
First we gave them smallpox, then we stole their land. Now we're using them for cheap puns?
Wasn't pretty much all of New Guinea h/g well into this century?
The lowlands were, I understand (that's last century, to you); the highlands had some agriculture. But that's the point. The agricultural people turned up and took over the best foraging land for crops. Which was tough shit for the hunter gatherers who were marginalised, but so it goes.
I've been trying to think of a cheap, and yet not overly offensive, pun playing off the Hopi qacina in a Steeler jersey and GOP head Steele's recent troubles. I'm not having any luck, but I'm sure one of y'all can get it done.
First we gave them smallpox, then we stole their land. Now we're using them for cheap puns?
Excuse me, not cheap. That pun was the result of an education that was expensive, athletic and prolonged.
Any recommendations for details on a Banana Republican costume? I'm thinking navy blue suit, red tie, Honduras flag pin, and a straw hat.
191: A "Dole for president" pin and a "Dole banana" sticker?
What the hell happened there? That was supposed to read
Seersucker suit?
In camo, with sunglasses.
People, I'm not having anything tailored.
193 is clever.
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Where'd the word nerd thread go? Arg:
In an interview with the CBS news magazine "60 Minutes," Steve Schmidt described Palin as "very calm -- nonplussed" after McCain met with her at his Arizona ranch just before putting her on the Republican ticket. [My emphasis]
Amusingly, calm and confused would seem a believable description, even if it's presumably not what he meant.
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Other than the guy who eats raw grain-fed beef, this doesn't seem any more ridiculous than any other lifestyle fad.
Other than that guy? I've eaten raw grain-fed beef on several occasions, and doing as I do is no more ridiculous than any other lifestyle fad.
Mmm. Raw meat. I should eat someplace that serves steak tartare sometime. Or carpaccio.
Given the comment number, it should have been Kobe beef. It wasn't.
There are these little dolls that have some sort of cultural significance (it was late in the day at this point), and one of them was in a Steelers jersey!
Kachina dolls, which are mostly made for sale to tourists and museums these days. That one must have been made by a Steelers fan.
I think of you as having pretty definite opinions on such things.
I suppose I do, but they're not necessarily negative. I am, for example, on the record as being in favor of reconstruction as a way of presenting archaeological sites to the public.
200: Wait until the NYT Style article about you. You'll be considering seppuku then.
200: I had steak tartare once. Very good. In the same meal, I also had my first ever sweat meat (delicious, kind of like fried oysters) and fois gras (this was just too rich for me).
I assume MH is talking about sweetbreads?
206: Or sweaty bacon. Anyway, the waiter said it was the pancreas of something.
I'll remember that. As I said, it was delicious.
I'll have to see if Costco doesn't sell them in a big box.
211 to 209. I assume Costco does sell beef in a big box, though possibly not the kind of beef you want to eat without cooking.
Here is a more reasonable introduction to the Paleolithic diet.
String beans, peanuts, snow peas, and peas are not toxic when raw.
This is a little strange: "Since then, some other substances have entered the diet- particularly salt and sugar …"
Just try going without salt!
Just try going without salt!
No. It would kill me.
You'd think he'd also mention that apple seeds contain cyanogens.
Reading the link in 213, he includes potatoes in the group of things that are poor in vitamins. If you keep going down, it is clear that he counts sweet potatoes (and probably sweat potatoes) in this. That's pretty much straight-up wrong, isn't it?
There's a lot in that article that's straight-up wrong, and I'm actually using it to write a post explaining why this Paleolithic diet stuff is wrong. It's a hell of a lot more reasonable than the stuff in the Times article, though.
Moby, you can get a pretty good steak tartare at Braddock's in the Renaissance Downtown.
FYI.
