This topic has been moved to Off Topic.

http://www.rawpaleoforum.com?topic=1636.0

When I buy oysters they are still muddied up.
So first thing is to brush away the mud with a pail of water.
Then:

1. Use your knife and chip away at the edge of an oyster exposing its gap, opening.
2. Use your knife and jam it in and twist it to open the oyster.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAbX4DNVT3A

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/08/090813142506.htm

Early Human Hunters Had Fewer Meat-sharing Rituals

ScienceDaily (Aug. 18, 2009) — A University of Arizona anthropologist has discovered that humans living at a Paleolithic cave site in central Israel between 400,000 and 250,000 years ago were as successful at big-game hunting as were later stone-age hunters at the site, but that the earlier humans shared meat differently.

"The Lower Paleolithic (earlier) hunters were skilled hunters of large game animals, as were Upper Paleolithic (later) humans at this site," UA anthropology professor Mary C. Stiner said.

"This might not seem like a big deal to the uninitiated, but there's a lot of speculation as to whether people of the late Lower Paleolithic were able to hunt at all, or whether they were reduced to just scavenging," Stiner said. "Evidence from Qesem Cave says that just like later Paleolithic humans, the earlier Paleolithic humans focused on harvesting large game. They were really at the top of the food chain."

The Qesem Cave people hunted cooperatively, then carried the highest quality body parts of their prey to the cave, where they cut the meat with stone blade cutting tools and cooked it with fire.

"Qesem" means "surprise." The cave was discovered in hilly limestone terrain about seven miles east of Tel-Aviv not quite nine years ago, during road construction. Stiner was invited by Ran Barkai and Avi Gopher of Tel Aviv University's Institute of Archaeology to participate in the Qesem Cave Project.

Stiner analyzed the pattern of cut marks on bones of deer, aurochs, horse and other big game left at Qesem Cave by hunters of 400,000 to 200,000 years ago. Her novel approach was to analyze the cut marks to understand meat-sharing behaviors between the earlier and later cooperative hunting societies.

And the patterns revealed a striking difference in meat-sharing behaviors: The earlier hunters were less efficient, less organized and less specialized when it came to carving flesh from their prey.

"This is somewhat expected, since the tools they made took considerable skill and locomotor precision to produce," Stiner said.

Random cut marks, and higher numbers of cut marks, made by the earlier hunters show they attached little social ritual or formal rules to sharing meat, Stiner said. Many hands, including unskilled hands, cut meat off the bone during feeding.

By contrast, by later times, by the Middle and Upper Paleolithic, "It's quite clear that meat distribution flowed through the hands of certain butchers," Stiner said. "The tool marks made on bones by the more recent hunters are very regular, very efficient and show much less variation in the postures of the individuals cutting meat from any one bone. Only certain hunters or other fairly skilled individuals cut meat that was to be shared among the group."

Stiner stresses that her new findings need to be more broadly replicated before the implications of her research can be widely accepted.

Meat is one of the highest quality foods that humans may eat, and it is among the most difficult resources to harvest from the environment.

Archaeologists know that the roots of carnivory stretch deep into the past. But the details of carnivory and meat sharing have been sketchy. And they are important details, because they reflect the evolutionary development in human economic and social behaviors.

"It's interesting that these earlier people were skilled predators and very social, but that their social rules are more basic, less derived than those of the Middle Paleolithic.

"What might surprise most archaeologists is that I'm seeing a big difference between Lower and Middle Paleolithic social behaviors, not between Middle and Upper Paleolithic social behaviors.

"Neanderthals lived in the Middle Paleolithic, and they were a lot more like us in their more formal redistributions of meat than were the earlier hominids."

Stiner, Barkai and Gopher reported on the research in their article, "Cooperative hunting and meat sharing 400-200 kya at Qesem Cave, Israel" in a recent issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

What is your current Body Mass Index? BMI?
How long have you been on RPD?
What variant of RPD do you currently practice?

Use these tools so we have a common BMI calculator:

English system BMI calculator:
http://www.nhlbisupport.com/bmi/

Metric system BMI calculator:
http://www.nhlbisupport.com/bmi/bmi-m.htm

This topic has been moved to Off Topic.

http://www.rawpaleoforum.com?topic=1540.0

The whole family and just about every Filipino must be on a rambutan craze the past few weeks. Prices have gone down to 50 pesos per kilo or even less in the Metro Manila area. Rambutans have been in season since July, then this August and maybe until September. Yummy. If you haven’t had your fill of rambutan, get some today!



http://www.myhealthblog.org/2009/08/30/rambutans-in-season-july-august-and-this-september/

Sirius A and its faint companion, Sirius B. Credit: Hubble Space Telescope/NASA/ESA,
H. Bond (STScI) and M. Barstow (University of Leicester).


Siriusly Red
Aug 14, 2009
As has often been pointed out, by definition the uniformitarian creed precludes the very real possibility of rare and radical changes in nature.

Since the late 19th century, most geologists have fondly embraced the adage of the British lawyer and geologist, Sir Charles Lyell (1797-1875): ‘The present is the key to the past.’ Its naïve implication is that all phenomena that ever happened in nature still occur today and can be observed. Historical evidence is valuable precisely because it offers an even better key to the past than present-day analogues: eye-witness accounts.

A prime application of the historical method concerns the colour of Sirius A or ? Canis Majoris, the brightest star in the night sky. Sirius appears bright white today, but – as the English amateur astronomer, Thomas Barker (1722-1809), first pointed out in 1760 – was emphatically qualified as red in many classical texts. Poetical passages aside, Seneca commented that Sirius was of a deeper red than Mars, while Ptolemy labeled the star “reddish” and grouped it with five other stars, all of which are indeed of red or orange aspect.

Even as late as the 6th century CE, the Gallo-Roman chronicler, Gregory of Tours, could label the Dog Star rubeola or ‘reddish’. It is claimed that the earliest unambiguous reference to Sirius as a white star is found in the pages of the Persian astronomer, ‘Abd al-Ra?man al-Suf? (903-986 CE).

What to make of all this? The paradox has sparked a prolonged and fairly intense debate, which has led to a fair number of publications, including Noah Brosch’s recent book Sirius Matters (2008). The evasive explanation that Sirius’s red traced to a simple textual error is easily refuted by the eminent authority of Ptolemy and Seneca as well as the observation that the same attribution is attested in a number of other cultures. For example, the Pawnee, of the North American Plains, associated each of the four intercardinal points with a colour, a type of weather, an animal, a tree, and a star.

The southeastern corner was the domain of red, the “Red Star” – which might be the planet Mars – and the wolf, explicitly linked to Sirius. Another suggestion, that an optical illusion accounts for the confusion, seems merely a red herring. It may be so that the star, to the unaided eye, often appears to be flashing with red, white and blue hues when near the horizon, but such scintillations would not have deluded such a skilled observer as Ptolemy. The belief in a red Sirius was clearly genuine. But how can it be reconciled with the white hue seen today?

Two Canadian archaeoastronomers, David Kelley and Eugene Milone, followed a rather more promising direction: “We conclude that the bulk of the evidence supports a literal red Sirius interpretation … Thus, the discovery that the bright star, Sirius, was once described as red, when it is now clearly white, may light up formerly obscure paths of stellar evolution.” The trouble is that, on the current astronomical model of stellar evolution, no shift from red to white is possible over such a short time.

In 1985, the German astronomers, Wolfhard Schlosser and Werner Bergmann, concluded that Sirius B, the faint binary companion of Sirius A, had been a red giant in Antiquity. If correct, there must indeed be some hitherto “obscure paths” of stellar behaviour. With some exasperation, Kelley & Milone posed the questions: “Are there any instances in which stars have undergone shorter time scale changes than evolutionary time scales would require? … How then could it have been a red giant only 2000 years ago? … How reliable are the reports of a color change? … Are we interpreting the reports correctly?”

It is not that scholars have not tried. Remaining faithful to the accepted model of stellar change, Kelley & Milone experimented with the idea that a diffusion of hydrogen from the top layer into a lower layer of carbon inside the star could have triggered “a thermonuclear runaway … that would lead to a retracing of the star’s evolution back through the red giant branch, and making the star that became Sirius B to appear as much as 100 times more luminous than Sirius A.” While such a ‘red’ state could in theory be sustained for “hundreds of years”, a “major impediment” is “a 100:1 brightness ratio of a red giant to Sirius A”, which “would make it brighter than Venus at that planet’s impressive maximum, but its brightness is recorded by Ptolemy, and there is no evidence for any great change in the overall brightness of the Sirius system.” This obstacle effectively falsifies the idea.

A second thought-experiment is that the circumstellar matter moving from one star to the other may occasionally dim its companion “and thus the system as a whole, as well as redden it.” The objection here is the lack of evidence that any such nebulosity has taken place in recent times.

All of this should have raised a red flag for the validity of the thermonuclear model of stellar evolution. Before the development of this model, and of the so-called Hertzsprung-Russell diagram, in the early 20th century, scientists had no compunction to speculate that stars may occasionally change in brightness – as novae do – as well as in hue.

In fact, the answer must allow for recurrent fluctuations, as a white colour for Sirius has occasionally been reported in earlier times. The renowned Chinese historian, S?m? Qi?n (±140-86 BCE), produced an astrological statement to that effect: “When the Wolf changes colour, there will be much piracy and theft.” His western colleague, Hephaestio of Thebes (4th century CE), allowed for a clear variation: “… if Sirius rises bright and white and its appearance shines through, then the Nile will rise high and there will be abundance, but if it rises fiery and reddish there will be war”. Manilius and Avienus, meanwhile, reported a ‘sea-blue’ colour for the star.

If the behaviour of stars is controlled electrically, the puzzle receives an almost instant solution. In his book The Electric Sky, the American electrical engineer, Donald Scott, offers a masterful refutation of the accepted theory of stellar evolution. A list of counter-examples of this theory includes Sirius. On the substitute ‘electric star model’, the behaviour of stars as “balls of electric plasma” is determined by the intensity of electrical input. Repeated changes could have resulted in nova-like fluctuations in colour and brightness, which may have ended in a binary pair resulting from fissioning. Clearly, the entrenched idea that stars are fueled by nuclear fusion and evolve in a uniformitarian manner can no longer be taken as read.

Contributed by Rens Van Der Sluijs

http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2009/arch09/090814sirius.htm

My son has been diagnosed with TB.  Story below.  Need your insights and advice.

http://www.myhealthblog.org/2009/08/09/malnutrition-primary-complex-cure-plan-for-my-8-year-old-son/

Nigeria: 'I Eat Raw Meat, So What?'

Jaafar Jaafar

24 February 2008

analysis

Kano — Think of eating N6,500 worth of suya, barbecue, grilled meat, nay think of eating any other delicacy of that worth at one go - surely it will be a Herculean task. But a middle aged man eats raw meat worth N6,500, as Sunday Trust reports

Only last week in Kantin Kwari, Market in the heart of Kano city, a drama broke out when a trader dared a man to eat raw meat at his (the trader) expense. Without cutting the raw beef to more palatable size, he devoured the whole meat in no time! Waging his tongue around his lips after leaking his bloody fingers, he told the crowd: "I need more if you can buy for me." No one dared to buy again.

When the butcher whose meat was eaten raw treaded the nooks and crannies of the market vying for a costumer, grumbling inwardly that it was a bad day, little did he know that the meat worth N6,500 that dangles precariously on his head in a wide tray would be bought on that spot.

The butcher further narrated that he was about to leave the line when a trader beckoned him to bring his wares for a bargain, which he sluggishly delivered. "I have never seen a man like this in my life. He devours raw meat with haste and zeal of a hyena," the lucky butcher said.

Muhammadu Sani, a.k.a. Saiti dan Garba, a middle-aged man, is one silly character that draws crowd wherever he goes. The traders of Kantin Kwari Market attested that Saiti is very easy-going and trustworthy porter who is trusted by all the traders. Saiti is a man who earns his living by running errand for the wealthy traders and people sometimes pay him to play out the art of eating raw meat to them but no one ever bought to him raw meat of N6,500 worth.

On seeing that Saiti had cleared the raw beef in no time, the crowd chorused in unison: maye (a man who, in Hausa myths, has hereditary magical power of tormenting or killing people without physical encounter). But that quite irked Saiti, who said he is not maye, begging the crowd to stop calling him names. "It is unfair to abuse me, none of my parents and grandparents is maye," Saiti advised the crowd.

But lo and behold, when Saiti cleared the meat, he did not demand for a sachet of water but rather a stick of cigarette. Lighting a stick of Aspen , he dared the man who defrayed the cost of the meat to buy more for him. "If you can buy more for me I am ready to swallow it, and, mark you, nothing will happen to me," picking his teeth, Saiti boasted.

Saiti, who hailed from Jega, Kebbi State , has two wives with 5 children and has been in Kano for over 10 years, running errands. He said he came Kano with the main intension of selling balangu (a kind of grilled meat) not to be market porter. "But when I find the market people very accommodating I forsake the balangu business," he told Sunday Trust.

Saiti dan Garba is sane, very sane, he claimed. Despite the fact that he once lived with a cannibal in Lagos , Saiti dan Garba told Sunday Trust that he is also not cannibal. "I consider this nothing that merit the gathering of this large crowd," he stated.

The strange man told our reporter that he considers eating raw meat just as normal as eating a dish of tuwo. Dipping his sharp canines into a large chunk of uncooked beef, he explained: "The way you eat a dish of tuwo da miya with relish is the same way I eat raw meat with relish," he stated, adding that he sees nothing strange in what he does.

Saiti, who said he prefers uncooked meat to the cooked ones because it improves his health condition, said that he eats raw chicken, lamb, mutton, among others but the only meat he does not eat is pork because Islam does not allow that. He further stated that he prefers beef to any other meat because of its high cholesterol level. Buttressing his point in his heavy Kebbi accent, he stated: " kitsen shina vitamin din," meaning, the fat contains the "vitamin".

Saiti told our reporter that he also eats the bones raw and draws out the juicy marrows of sheep. He said that sheep bone is tenderer for chewing. Crushing a raw cattle bone to demonstrate his ability to this reporter, he said, "I can crush out any bone squeeze out the marrows of it but I prefer sheep bone because of its high level of juice."

He also said that during his days in Lagos , he was once a mayor of one notorious bridge where a cannibal was once arrested. "My days in Lagos were very adventurous. I was once a porter at Isolo and I was then very familiar. Even in Lagos , they knew me as raw meat eater. But in Lagos there was too much pomo and I hate eating raw pomo because there was a day it wrought serious havoc on my teeth," he expressed, adding that one of his precious teeth nearly went off in the process.

Saiti recalled that he started eating raw meat since he was seven years old and up till today it does nothing to him. On whether he learned eating raw meat from the arrested cannibal, he answered in the negative, saying he does not eat human flesh but can eat when some one dares him. Saiti, who was named so because of his marksmanship in all his endeavours, said: "I hate challenge in life and whoever dares to challenge me kisses the dust."

Don't you think it will be harmful to you? He replied Sunday Trust: I swear it will not do anything to me, he said, explaining to our reporter that it is just like taking a bag of 'pure water'. "If you drink a bag of pure water, what would happen to you?" he asked.

Revealing more on his novel art and how healthy uncooked meat makes him, Saiti said he has been certified healthy several times and no matter how much an intake he had at one go, he said he does not take drug to ease digestion.

"There was once a time that an incident occurred soon after I finished eating a bowl of raw meat. I was informed that two friends of mine were involved in an accident and they urgently need some pints of blood to survive, I rushed to the hospital and donated 3 bags of blood to them. Doctors gave me a clean bill of health, eating raw meat makes me even healthier," he declared.

According to Dr Faruq Garba Kazaure, the major diseases uncooked or contaminated meat are Listeria monocytogenes, a very deadly disease that has symptoms like sever headache, diarrhea, nausea, stomach pain, fever, among others. He added that eating raw meat also causes E-coli, a disease that affects kidney and often cause its failure, noting temperature of 165 degree Fahrenheit is needed to kill pathogenic bacteria like E-coli and Salmonella.

"Salmonella, cholera, food poisoning, bird flu, trichinellosis infection, toxoplasmosis and dysentery may also attack person who eats raw meat," Dr Faruq stated.

But the surprising side of the story is: According to Saiti, he is immune to all the diseases mentioned by the medical expert because the symptoms of all the diseases have never manifested in his body.

Copyright © 2008 Daily Trust. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com).

http://allafrica.com/stories/printable/200802250895.html

Listen to this former KGB agent explain how successful their brainwashing of the american public was.

My beef is regarding the ways of health and diet.  If I didn't suffer immensely with eczema and didn't face certain death, I would have never actively pursued alternative ways to health or alternative diets.  It was my dogged pursuit of better health which led me to find raw paleo diet.

How to convince more people?  How to convince our own loved ones?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zeMZGGQ0ERk

Anyone want to try eating a cloned Ibex?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/4409958/Extinct-ibex-is-resurrected-by-cloning.html

Lately the topic of the benefits of fermenting foods has cropped up, the benefits of bacteria, maybe humans evolved from scavengers.

Anybody looked into the Man is like a Vulture Scavenger thing?