Something, something, Road to Wigan Pier, something, something, dripping bread.
I don't think I did that right. I'm going back to puns.
[You know where I'm going to go with this, right?]
On the veldt, most people didn't live to my age. Which probably explains why my hips hurt when I don't run and my ankles hurt when I do. Fucking evolution.
7: Hey, my hips hurt when I don't run. I thought it was from baby-having. (And my knee hurts when I run -- also maybe from baby-having! They fuck you up, your fe-tus-es.)
I've only had one baby, but it didn't hurt at all.
That interview is good, and seems hard to argue with. I'm curious to see how I"ll be proved wrong about that!
Right now I'm sitting in a chair, right, and I'm staring into a computer screen, and you know, we're definitely not adapted for those things.
I am doing the same thing, and it turns out that I'm very well-adapted to this. I'm trying to imagine what it is about his evolutionary lineage that makes him ill-adapted to it.
8: Crazy amounts of back and hip pain in my case. Working on core strength and hip rotators helps but I can't seem to maintain any muscle strength while nursing this kid.
This sort of speculation is always either trivial, tautological or wrong.
By his logic, humans evolved to smoke cigarettes. This is trivially true: Fish, for example, didn't evolve to smoke cigarettes. It's also tautological. If we can do something, we evolved to do it. And, of course, it's also just plain-old nonsense.
re: 14
If we can do something, we evolved to do it.
That's not normally how people understand the claim that we 'evolved' to do something.
There's a fairly standard distinction often invoked between selection for particular traits and selection of particular traits. The ability to smoke cigarettes would be a fairly obvious 'selection of' case, rather than 'selection for'.
I don't think it's just trivially true, nor is it a uniform claim about anything we "can" do -- the fact that nicotine is stimulating and addicting is part of our evolutionary inheritance, and so it's not surprising or a moral weakness that people smoke cigarettes; the problem is that the cigarettes are around, advertised, etc. He's not claiming anything about our response to nicotine specifically having provided a reproductive benefit in the past.
You can put a nicotine patch on a fish, but I don't know how long it will stay or if the nicotine will go through the scales.
the fact that nicotine is stimulating and addicting is part of our evolutionary inheritance as well as the evolutionary history of the tobacco plant.
Maybe evolution wants all but a few of us to die before 50 and by messing with nature we've created the Tea Party.
A fish without a nicotine patch is like a woman without a bicycle.
I'm thinking of getting e-cigarettes to see if I can't lose the weight I gained when I stopped smoking. It's probably not a good idea for a whole variety of reasons, but still.
I'm not saying that we don't have an inheritance that is the result of natural selection. I'd dispute 15 in only a very trivial way: 15 represents the correct way of thinking about evolution. It is Professor Hanscom who speaks for the common - and incorrect - understanding of evolution.
Like Hanscom, everybody knows that we evolved to find fat and sugar delicious. There's certainly a lot of evidence that people prefer it to, say, beans and lemons. Humans wouldn't exist had they not evolved, and therefore they evolved to like sugar and fat, right?
But there's no reason to suppose that people were evolutionarily selected for that preference. You'd be able to make that sort of argument about many types of food, if humans happened to love it the same way. Certainly protein is a pretty key part of human diets. So is vitamin C. If people craved beans and lemons, Hanscom's argument would be equally valid. He's got a one-part test to determine whether something was evolutionarily selected for humans:
-Is it a human trait?
Okay, maybe he's got a second test: Does it fit into some pleasing narrative?
As 15 and 16 point out, that's not a very useful way to think about evolution.
Humans wouldn't exist had they not evolved, and therefore they evolved to like sugar and fat, right?
That's not even the strawman version of his argument.
Lieberman's argument in the interview is that we evolved at set of preferences and abilities suited for one type of environment and now live in very different one so our previously evolved dietary preferences are now counterproductive. It isn't an unassailable hypothesis by any means, but I don't think you read the article.
I take back 10. I am no longer at all curious.
Other than a very very minor quibble that the semi-serious people who promote the paleo diet not only already understand but also fully agree with this guy's critique, I am totally on board with everything this guy says. Evolutionary fitness and aggressive nanny state-ism is pretty much the Halfordismo platform, aside from the palaces, sports cars, all-female bodyguard squad, etc.
but I don't think you read the article
Look, just because his arguments are ridiculous and he called the journalist conducting the interview "Professor" doesn't mean he didn't read it.
I don't usually read linked articles either. But I'm trying to commit science this morning.
But it makes sense for people on the veldt ( non sarcastically!) to crave sugar and fat; food was scarce, and sugar and fat are high calorie and therefore valuable for survival. A strong, universal preference for mint flavor, if it existed, could be dismissed as 'evolved for' in only a tautological sense, but where you have a behavior pattern (craving sugar and fat) that both demonstrably really does exist and which reasonably would support survival 'on the veldt', it means something to say that it was very likely selected for.
28: Takeaway: The paleo diet leaves a man too weak to defend himself!
food was scarce
Where does this assumption come from?
The assumption is that food was scarce often enough for it to have mattered for evolution. That seems a safe enough assumption given the high incidence of famine in recorded human history and the amount of starvation you see in nature.
That is, food doesn't need to have been scarce all the time. Just that there had to have been periods of scarcity.
The times when food was scarce are exactly the times when evolution is kicking into high gear, as lots of people are dying off. When food is plentiful and everything is hunky-dory evolution slacks off becuase even the mal-adapted are able to survive and reproduce.
...even the mal-adapted are able to survive and reproduce.
Laydeez.
I wouldn't think that food scarcity would have been much of a driving force for evolution at the pre-human primate level. We're fucking omnivores, for chrissakes. Maybe it's there to some extent, but it seems like it that would be dwarfed by evolutionary changes driven by danger-avoidance.
I'm looking forward to 50,000 years for now, when people are living their lives in completely different ways than they do now, and their lifestyles still give them aches and pains, and the evolutionary biologists explain it with, "well, when we all lived on the internet . . ."
Takeaway: The paleo diet leaves a man too weak to defend himself!
Chinese takeaway in particular.
Couldn't being an omnivore suggest that food scarcity was a driving force for evolution? I mean, eating anything is a good adaptation.
[E]ating anything is a good adaptation.
[Stifles cheap, easy punchlines.]
I wouldn't think that food scarcity would have been much of a driving force for evolution at the pre-human primate level. We're fucking omnivores, for chrissakes.
Omnivore doesn't mean we can eat absolutely anything except in your case.
Are we talking about evolutionary changes within homo sapiens or evolutionary changes that led to homo sapiens?
I have no idea. When were we on the veldt?
Eating everything seems like a poor evolutionary strategy. I mean, what if you succeed?
When were we on the veldt?
"We," or our evolutionary ancestors?
I mean, when was the last time you personally lived on the African savannah.
I've never been there. But I hear the food is great.
which reasonably would support survival
This is the catch. Just-so stories are easy to write. The genetics of traits regulated by a single locus are pretty easy to test, and it's possible to show that some allele is selected for, or for older genotypes, that there's selective pressure identified in Ka/Ks ratios. Complex traits like metabolism and fat storage are regulated by many genes, much harder to quantify selection there.
That said, people have started paying a lot of attention recently to Leptin. Basically every time that I read about it, I both learn something new and get sucked into a web of worthwhile background reading about metabolism.
Lieberman's argument in the interview is that we evolved at set of preferences and abilities suited for one type of environment and now live in very different one so our previously evolved dietary preferences are now counterproductive. It isn't an unassailable hypothesis by any means, but I don't think you read the article.
These arguments are invariably characterized by a lot of assumptions about the "ancestral environment" that serve a narrative. I am not claiming to know why some foods are more popular than others. I've got no narrative on that.
But in the "ancestral environment" we lacked access to calories but had (comparitively) easy access to other essential nutrients? Maybe. I'd like to see his evidence.
You could tell the evolutionary story about any nutrient that was scarce (that is to say, any nutrient). The existence of a modern preference is suggestive, but not dispositive.
But in the "ancestral environment" we lacked access to calories but had (comparitively) easy access to other essential nutrients? Maybe. I'd like to see his evidence.
Another way of putting it would be: If you're eating the kind of thing that you hunt or gather on the savannah, you'll have had enough protein and trace nutrients long before you've had enough calories. Vitamin C is in nearly everything, for example, and you need very little of it per day.
You could tell an evolutionary story about any nutrient that was scarce and in the past generation became so cheap that it was available in basically unlimited quantities to a very large portion of the human population. There just aren't many other candidates for that.
I agreed with Sifu's 10 and temporarily did with his 27. But with the arrival of urple on the scene has re-awakened my curiosity.
53: Gotcha - I've never seen that case made by any method other than assumption - that calories were scarcer than (say) protein in the ancestral diet. (Certainly Vitamin C was an unhelpful choice of counter-example on my part.)
Surely somebody out there has examined this issue. I've never seen it, though.
54: I'm willing to grant the assumption that if a strong preference meets abundance, the natural consequence is large-scale consumption, so it's unnecessary to actually have abundance in order to discuss this effect. All you need is to demonstrate is the craving.
Iron deficient diets are common in early farmers. Iron metabolism varies a lot between individuals. The effects of maternal anemia on development get a fair amount of attention.
57: But the actual discussion is about over-consumption to the point of adverse effects. That's very different.
53, 56: This is the sort of thing that should be really easily to establish -- so easy that I thought it was non-controversially accepted not because it was never examined but because the evidence was abundant and not in controversy. Coming up with a 'market basket' of available foods, weighted by scarcity and difficulty to obtain, in different hunter-gatherer environments isn't hard (it might be hard to do with precision, but I think the results are clear enough to not require provision), and doing a nutritional analysis of what's in those foods is also not that hard. My belief is that that work has been done, and reveals that calories, rather than other micronutrients, are the primary bottleneck in a hunter-gatherer diet.
Now, I'm pontificating online, I don't actually have the research at my fingertips. But this is my strong impression of the current state of knowledge.
59: We're perhaps talking about two different things.
Lieberman sees a linkage:
veldt-->craving-->overconsumption in situations of abundance.
It's the first link that I think is tenuous. I'm willing to assume the second link. I'm not disputing his program, just his insistence on linking it to the veldt.
51: I don't know whether we are talking about the macroevolutionary changes that occurred in very recent evolutionary history leading to the emergence of homo sapiens, or the microevolutionary changes than have occurred within the species homo sapiens over the course of its history. The scale of changes involved, and the factors that led to them, are obviously quite different.
60: I'd love to see that research.
Yet another way of phrasing my question:
When our hunter-gatherer was chasing that dinosaur*, was he after the fat more than the protein?
I mean, hunting is a shitload of work - and it burns quite a lot of calories. I've always assumed** that it was the protein that motivated the hunt. But maybe protein (like Vitamin C) is easy to come by. Bugs, for instance, are plentiful.
*Yes, yes, I know. But you get my point.
**I have no research either.
61.1: Whether it goes back to the veldt or not, I don't know. Obviously, food has been short for periods of human history more recent that the paleolithic. That would take more knowledge that I have. I'm arguing against the idea that his work is self-evidently nonsense and tautological.
Oh wearisome condition of Humanity!
Born under one law, to another bound
My belief is that that work has been done, and reveals that calories, rather than other micronutrients, are the primary bottleneck in a hunter-gatherer diet.
You think people literally could not find enough to eat?
Deer hunters use salt licks because?
Sometimes, yes. Animals get hungry sometimes, why would people be different? And it's not really a separate issue, evolutionarily, from evading danger -- fleeing predators takes energy.
Salt shakers are too easy to spill from the tree stand?
In 1628 at Warwick castle, Greville was stabbed and killed by Ralph Heywood, a servant who felt he had been cheated in his master's will. Having been stabbed, Greville's physicians treated his wounds by filling them with pig fat rather than disinfecting the cuts. The pig fat turn rancid, infected Greville's cuts and he died in agony four weeks after the attack.
Animals get hungry sometimes, why would people be different?
Primates?
(My incredulity rests on assuming that by "get hungry", you mean "starve to death". Of course they get hungry.)
I mean, sure, some primates starve sometimes. Not all are well adapted, if you know what I mean. And everyone has bad luck sometimes. But we're not like deer.
68: Yes, and yes and yes. The incoherent cuntfucks of Outer Cuntfuckistan seem to be demanding some kind of massively over-detdermined demosnstration of the details of evolutionary nutrition in support of Professor Lieberman's anodyne statements (which are really part of a more general lament on short-term evolutionary biases working against long-term issues). Look, we all know there are massive abuses of evolutionary arguments (I think there may be a catchphrase or something) but progressives going full retard on evolution are an even more ridiculous example of smart people acting stupid than when Ted Cruz does it.
I have no concrete idea what I'm talking about, but don't other animals starve sometimes? Droughts, whatever? Why would primates be different?
Also, if you're hungry enough to be at less than peak fitness, that can kill you through vulnerability to predation rather than by actually starving to death.
OK. What other topics do we want to discuss here today. I've got a lot of writing to do for work.
Maybe a nice cup of tea or something and some careful proofreading to catch any stray epithets before you finalize any professional writing?
73: You're incredulous that people starved to death in the past? I know there are arguments that prior to the greater population densities allowed by agriculture people didn't have large-scale famines as often, but that's not the same as saying paleolithic humans weren't often short enough on food for protections against starvation to have been selected for by evolution.
We're not the only animals that gorge themselves on fat and sugar if given the chance.
76: Of course, it's "Feed, Fuck or Fight" all the way down.
81: The bumpersticker sold much better after it was revised to "Gas, Grass, or Ass."
I have collected some evidence that the last common ancestor of both me and my dog lived in an environment extremely deficient in baked goods, for instance.
80: Cows crave salt, but they won't eat potato chips. At least they won't if a drunk guy holds out a handful and says, "Here cow."
I am struck by the fact that treatises on pre-historic calories never say what shape the calories had. Perhaps it is the shape of the calories that has evolved--and that it is this internal mismatch of calorie to calorie receptacle(square pegs, etc.), rather than some notional mismatch with the offerings of our external environment, that our atavistic tastes labour against.
They fuck you up, your fe-tus-es
Um, no. As I've explained before, it's the other way around. Don't you know what "fuck up" means?
85:Geez, you've got to neg them first. What a hayseed!
87: Had not checked that thread in a couple of years. Gratified to see that it still reels them in from time time.
The point being our recent (as in the last several hundred thousand years) history of starvation or its lack may be irrelevant.
91: It may have been a steer or a heifer.
paleolithic humans weren't often short enough on food for protections against starvation to have been selected for by evolution
Lactose tolerance seems like a good example within modern humans. People who were lactose tolerant weren't necessarily starving to death because of it, but lactose intoleration seems to have been beneficial enough in certain circumstances to have spread relatively broadly among human populations.
Perhaps this cow doubted your intentions.
Um, swap the tolerance and the intolerance in 94.
I can't quite follow your argument, but lactose tolerance would only be an issue post-agriculture, right? Hunter-gatherers wouldn't have access to (non-human) milk to find out whether or not they could tolerate it.
94: I thought that lactose intolerance (post childhood) was the baseline state and the lactose tolerance spread relatively quickly, quickly enough to suggest that food pressure was a selector in human populations.
95: Wasn't me. I just saw it.
"Yet another way of phrasing my question: When our hunter-gatherer was chasing that dinosaur*, was he after the fat more than the protein?"
Yes. And the internal organs, and the bone marrow. All the high-calorie bits. To a modern hunter-gatherer, these, not the lean bits of muscle, are the prime cuts.
You catch a dinosaur by putting salt on its tail.
You can starve to death on lean meat, even if you get enough vitamins and micronutrients.
Rabbits will kill you for the fat of your marrow.
Weren't there Ice Ages back then? That seems like it could have made it hard to find food.
Head. Wall. Bash. Bash. Bash.
107: I had never heard the term. Nice. And via Wikipedia a semi-on topic passage from Darwin:
... Yet the Gaucho in the Pampas, for months together, touches nothing but beef. But they eat, I observe, a very large proportion of fat, which is of a less animalized nature; and they particularly dislike dry meat, such as that of the Agouti. Dr. Richardson, also, has remarked, "that when people have fed for a long time solely upon lean animal food, the desire for fat becomes so insatiable, that they can consume a large quantity of unmixed and even oily fat without nausea:" this appears to me a curious physiological fact. It is, perhaps, from their meat regimen that the Gauchos, like other carnivorous animals, can abstain long from food. I was told that at Tandeel, some troops voluntarily pursued a party of Indians for three days, without eating or drinking.
110: the brain, also, is calorie-rich.
111: Relic of a misspent urban childhood spent reading wilderness survival manuals.
109: Exactly my thought. If you fail to catch the mammoth the sabre toothed tiger will eat your sorry ass.
The church was always there to provide charity.
114: It's true that as a primate I do forget (unlike elephants), but I'm not sure how that's relevant.
I always confuse rabbit starvation with rabbit fever. Beaver fever is not as fun as it sounds.
80, 84: I was thinking about that, but maybe dogs developed a lot of their tastes only after living around humans? I think I need to see how a wolf responds to bacon before I form an opinion.
114: Ice ages are associated with climate shifts in the whole planet, not just the parts with glaciers and shit.
The point is that primates don't starve. Wussy animals like deer starve, but primates roll with the punches. We know this because urple.
It's quite possible, on the evidence presented, that urple does not in fact require food in order to live. He may just be eating in an attempt to fit in (NOT WORKING).
urple could punch out a deer no problem.
I have seen a starving deer in my driveway. I could have shot it and eaten it, but it didn't seem worth it to kill an animal with no fat on it.
122: Someone who has documented personal experience in expanded definitions of "food" you must remember.
125: Poor thing. Probably hadn't seen a beluga whale in weeks.
I wonder how many people would call 911 if I shot a deer in my driveway.
Probably fewer than if you shot a deer in your pajamas.
"Starving" is a really lame punchline.
My point wasn't that it's impossible for primates to starve. (Obviously.) Just that it's not built into their nature, like lots of other animals. When primates starve, something has gone wrong.
BUT FOR US, IT'S THE NORM? BASTARD.
YOU KNOW MORE PEOPLE ARE KILLED BY DEER THAN BY SNAKEBITE EVERY YEAR, RIGHT?
I'M JUST SAYING, WATCH YOURSELF. RACIST.
And, to follow on to 131, and just to circle back to my original point, since it seems to have been controversial, although I don't think it should be: since primates aren't starving in the ordinary course, food scarcity isn't the primary driver of primate evolution. Avoiding dangers and attracting mates are more important.
135: On the veldt, there were very few automobile accidents.
When primates starve, something has gone wrong.
I wonder if that's always true, or just at the moment. What were the pressures that led early hominids to start incorporating so much meat in their diets that they underwent morphological modification to adapt to it? Non-trivial, I suggest.
137: I have no idea if primates ordinarily starve or not*, but food scarcity could drive evolution without starvation since fertility declines to very low levels well before anybody dies from lack of food and periods of food scarcity that aren't close to fatal will hurt chances of mating later in life by making for incomplete development and general being short.
* But I think they do.
In 140, when I say "starve" and "starvation," I'm using them to mean starving in the sense of dying from lack of food.
Primates starved in a way we can't understand anymore.
140/141: And I'm using "starve" as a proxy for "experience food scarcity".
143: Then I even more strongly dispute your premise that primates don't ordinarily starve.
Where are you getting "primates don't starve" from? You're taking it as a premise, and I've never heard anything of the kind before. Modern hunter-gatherers certainly experience food-scarcity sometimes.
142: With weary eyes, Urplik surveyed the icy landscape. Since before the time of his forefather's forefathers each year the Big Ice had crept closer. Food and game became harder to find, but Urplik was nothing if not resourceful and knew that there were many paths to food. Suddenly in the distance he spied a familiar shape! An aquarium!
Modern hunter-gatherers certainly experience food-scarcity sometimes.
"Sometimes" seems to be doing a lot of work here.
[WILDLIFE DOCUMENTARY VOICE]: "From 144 and 145 it looks like they're engaging. We'll crouch here and hope they don't notice."
Where are you getting "primates don't starve" from?
Space?
On what basis would primate food scarcity arise in the wild?
Drought, overpopulation, climate shifts, and Jane Goodall's staff getting the munchies.
None of those are relevant to primates.
Drought isn't relevant to primates?!
Wow. I'm glad I'm a primate then.
151. Habitat destruction, man made or natural. Let me google that for you.
Orangutans in particular are interesting to study, Vogel said, because they are the only documented species of non-human ape to store fat when food is abundant in the wild and use these fat reserves when preferred fruits become scarce, presumably something done by our early hominin ancestors.Vogel and her research team, analyzed samples collected over a five-year period to study the effects of protein recycling, which included examining urinary metabolites and nitrogen stable isotopes - compounds and byproducts in Orangutan urine. What they determined is that these primates are able to endure prolonged protein deficits without starving to death by consuming higher protein leaves and inner bark and obtaining energy from their stored body fat and even muscles for an extended period of time when low-protein fruit is unavailable.
Oh, man, I had to turn away from the thread for a bit to provide wise counsel to a puzzled coworker, and the last fifteen comments left me with literal tears of laughter rolling down my cheeks.
I love this thread. I wish Urple hadn't boxed himself into a corner in 153, an uncharacteristically badly played move.
162 gets it completely right. Except the part about loving this thread, I mean.
146 had me smothering guffaws here in my cubicle.
I'm not lazy, I'm just evolved to eliminate any unnecessary expenditures of energy.
OT: I just saw Fran Liebowitz on the street.
Fran Liebowitz looks older and shorter in person.
Loosely on topic, my gym owner/appealing to me nutcase who had been veering increasingly towards some kind of Italian futurist/protofascist position for a while ("Reason will teach you nothing! Strength and movement create will!") has now moved into weird conspiracy theories about how powerful, non-grain eating hunter gatherers built the original pyramids which were where the Bermuda Triangle is now and then taught the Egyptians how to make them, except the Egyptians introduced slavery (?) At least this is what I can figure out from some weird FB posts of his.
OT: I just saw Fran Liebowitz on the street.
Neat! I watched the Martin Scorsese documentary about her, a couple years ago, and was charmed.
Fran Liebowitz looks older and shorter in person.
So did Glenda Jackson the time I literally bumped into her n the street. Perhaps it's a well kept secret that all female celebs are actually little old ladies IRL.
Not sure where the primates don't have food scarcity thing is coming from, but it's a theory (google tells me Richard Wrangham's, specifically) for the differences between chimps and bonobos. He's been saying it for like 20 years now. See here and here.
The answer may lie in the history of the habitats they occupy. Both species of primates live in tropical forests along the Zaire River -- chimps north of the river, bonobos to the south. Their environments seem to be quite similar today. But about 2.5 million years ago, there seems to have been a lengthy drought in southern Zaire that wiped out the preferred food plants of gorillas and sent the primates packing. After the drought ended, the forests returned, but the gorillas did not. Chimpanzees in this environment south of the river had the forest to themselves, and could exploit the fiber foods that had previously been eaten by gorillas -- foods that are still eaten by gorillas to the north. With this additional food to tide them over between fruit trees, they could travel in larger, more stable parties, and form strong social bonds. They became bonobos.
Good christ a lot of this thread is annoying. La la la oh well look, butts.
Everybody seems so tense today. What's wrong with inventing a zoological fact and letting people who got their zoology from google rebut it?
Some types of Hyrax have a proportionally larger brain than do humans.
OT: I just saw Fran Liebowitz on the street.
Neat! I watched the Martin Scorsese documentary about her, a couple years ago, and was charmed.
I saw this, and thought "The hell? Why on earth would Scorsese do a documentary about her, of all people?" Then I clicked on the link, and realized I was thinking of Fran Drescher, not Fran Liebowitz.
The Hydrox was actually the original cream-filled sandwich cookie and the Oreo the cheap rip-off.
If the makers of Hydrox cookies hadn't chosen a product name better suited to a disinfectant cleaning spray, they might have a larger share of the cookie market.
Lieberman's book is good.
That "Comanche Empire" book that emerson recommended discussed rabbit starvation and how the Comanche need to raid/trade with agricultural people or they would die of it.
I'm fairly certain that I first heard the time "rabbit starvation" here. Probably not from Emerson. We didn't overlap for long.
Everybody seems so tense today.
I hope you don't mean me; cuz I'm a happy boy! (hubba hubba hubba hubba)
Do the five day drag once more
No one, nothing else that bugs me
More than workin' for the rich man
But hey, I'll change that scene one day.
I meant incoherent cuntfucks really friendly like.
Music more topical for this thread. From before they sold out, man.
Can I bring myself to write even one of these fucking evaluations?
Look out mama there's a white boat coming up the river ... don't look they're here to deliver the mail .... so the power's that be left me here to do the thinking ...
Don't even try to pretend that you're doing something more productive.
Correcting somebody's spelling on the internet? Don't think so.
185: Can't you just copy and paste? Protip: Be sure to get the right pronouns if you can.
Zie was very conscientious about beginning projects but in some cases zir follow through could have been improved.
You need something to start with for that work ... And I actually take these somewhat seriously* for about half the folks. I've got 2-3 hard ones that I have to think about.
*Because I fight the system from within, man.
190 -- here's the most recent comment, with some mild googleproofing:
these p/yramids went under water at least 13,000 years ago. There are many p/yramids all over the world and under the o/cean. (C/hina actually buries them with forests) The p/yramids of E/gypt were not built 3000 years ago. Everything we were taught in school about t/his is pretty much impossible to do. The humans of that time must of found them perfectly b/uilt and p/robably e/mptied and put their own p/haroahs into them.
193: That sounds like von Däniken.
Also reminds me of those classic lyrics:
The ocean is a desert, with it's life underground,
And a perfect disguise above.
"I believe in evidence not manipulation, for me pyramids likely built by pre-ag civs that could not handle post-ag disease. Not 3000 years old"
195: Ok, that's definitely a whole new level of crazy.
"W/hat does that h/ave to do with a/nything? All m/edia is c/ompromised"
193 is good stuff.
Is there any chance this could relate to aquatic apes?
Did these pre-ag humans have some lost technology? Or is it that humans were super-strong before grains weakened us?
The syntax and style of 195 exactly match the way my senior colleague writes.
I love this guy. Is there any chance that he's working up to attaining a paleo-enough state that he will be able to generate his own pyramids?
198.2: Is there any chance this could relate to aquatic apes?
I think it's probably just coincidental that ogged did a post today.
194.last: I always thought it was "the perfectest skies above".
I mean, what if the real paleo people lived underwater where they built there pyramids? Maybe the right diet is kelp and lobster.
Haven't we established that naturally occurring kelp is a myth, and that it's an industrial product produced by Scotsmen?
Plutocrats from an earlier age; they built underwater cities to the wrath of the civilization they wrecked with their deceptive liberal policies. They constructed pyramids in honor of their escaping.
206: This was not kelp as you or I know it. Kelp occurred naturally, but not in a way we can understand anymore.
OK, 5 of 10 done (did 2 earlier). I'm a zombie. I noted that they all showed insufficient enthusiasm for the underwater pyramid project.
OK, 5 of 10 done (did 2 earlier).
You're being disturbingly productive today. You'll make the rest of us look bad.
And it gets better, I logged back in and did one more. Just the 4 (hard ones) left!
204: aquatic apes invented crossfit. Kipping pull-ups are actually a vestigial swimming motion.
209.mid: I'm a zombie.
Last evaluation I did read: "I like him for the brains he brings to the table."
The aquatic apes perfected the paleo lifestyle, but then made the mistake of interbreeding with the grain loving pig-chimps.
Because they knew that then their children would never go hungry again.
Phew, JP saves 214 from sounding horribly, horribly racist.
I feel like I should have some substantive information to contribute to this thread, but I think it kind of works better without any.
Substance would weigh this thread down, so I'll refrain from providing any. I don't understand how anyone can claim aquatic apes built the pyramids when all overwhelming evidence points to aliens. Also, inquiring minds want to know: what sank Atlantis? My vote is early grain domestication produced a race of morbidly obese proto homo sapiens, and their collective girth sank the island. That or their lack of fitness made them lose the war against Neanderthals, who sank Atlantis out of spite.
Heretic! Everybody knows that anything remotely pyramid shaped was built by the ancient, wise inhabitants of the tunnels beneath the earth (mostly under Tibet). More recently they ancient wise ones have lost interest in pyramids and started building UFOs instead. My guess is that they're Denisovans.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9AUEjzVQwKo
Nice aquarium images.
From the link at 222:
The cave has been closed since October 25, 1632.
Sounds like a challenge. Or a movie set-up.
222 is great. I particularly like the "concave hollow Earth" idea that we're already living on the inside surface of the planet, and the Sun is in the interior.
Not just the sun, the entire universe. You're a physicist, what mechanism in a concave hollow earth would appear to the unenlightened as dark energy?
Further Hollow Earth gems here.
Sometimes it sucks to miss threads in real time, as I definitely fell for Urple's trolling during my late read through. At several points, I kept shaking my computer and (mentally) shouting "OF COURSE PRIMATES AND EARLY HUMANS STARVE. IT'S CALLED WINTER." (Or, for primates still living in the tropics, DROUGHT, FLOODING, etc.)
227: NONE OF THOSE ARE RELEVANT TO PRIMATES.
Following links from the one in 222, I learned this about Erich von Däniken:
Von Däniken wrote his first book while working as manager of the Hotel Rosenhügel in Davos, Switzerland. He was convicted of several financial crimes, including fraud, shortly after its publication. The revenue from the sales of his book allowed him to repay his debts and leave the hotel business. Von Däniken wrote his second book, Gods from Outer Space, while in prison.
APB for those in the Bay Area am at El Rio for 10th anniversary party for a nonprofit am on board of and the bands are killing it. $10 bucks! And what the hell else are you going to do?
229:
Ah, that reminds me. My younger paternal aunt gifted a von Däniken book to my brother because he was interested in physics. Seems like he stayed in the legal fraud business.
Von Däniken not my brother, that is.
I just love that he got his start with shady financial shenanigans in Davos, of all places.
228 made me laugh overly hard. This thread really did get under my skin.
Too bad his theme park didn't work out.
(Von Däniken, not Tiny Hermaphrodite's brother.)
You're glad TH's brother had a failed park.
I just think Six Flags Over Urea is not a very hygienic concept.
That's a common misconception. Urine is sterile and water sports don't even require a condom.