[MD] Food for Thought

[Dan Glover]

Hello everyone

>From: "david buchanan" <dmbuchanan at hotmail.com>
>Reply-To: moq_discuss at moqtalk.org
>To: moq_discuss at moqtalk.org
>Subject: Re: [MD] The MOQ's First Principle
>Date: Sat, 09 Dec 2006 16:00:37 -0700
>
>Arlo said to dmb:
>..The MOQ gives us the breaks where a new level was able to emerge from the 
>complexity on the previous level. I'm not suggesting that the continuum is 
>"smooth" from quarks to Quantum Physics. Only that _in addition_ to the 
>emergentist "jumps" from one level to a completely new level, each level in 
>and of itself consists of a continuum... and that sometimes the gradations 
>within a level are important considerations...
>
>dmb says:
>Right. The morality of vegetarianism is really just about eating as far 
>down the food chain as possible. There is no such thing as non-biological 
>food, but we can make choices from within that level. I suppose that 
>cannibalism is taboo precisely because people are almost always more than 
>biological.

Dan:
Some time ago an article appeared at NationalGeographic.com concerning a 
mother gorilla, who during the course of her pregnancy suddenly developed a 
rather nasty habit of kidnapping other gorilla babies from their gorilla 
mothers, bashing their little gorilla heads against a rock, and eating the 
baby gorilla brains as they dribbled out. One researcher was particularly 
concerned for the welfare of the baby the mother gorilla carried but that 
concern proved unfounded.

After giving birth, just as suddenly as the behavior started, it stopped -- 
she quit kidnapping gorilla babies, resumed her normal diet, and became a 
model mother to her own offspring. The researcher who noted this aberrant 
behavior also wrote (almost as an after thought) that the boy gorilla she 
bore grew to be the most intelligent (by far) member of the group, and a 
natural leader.

It makes a person wonder what our ancestors may have been eating about the 
time the human brain began evolving into what it is today. Just how DID we 
get so intelligent? Does intellect breaking away from sociel level patterns 
have anything to do with biological level activity (and the gradations 
involved therein, taboos notwithstanding) tens or possibly hundreds of 
thousand of years ago?

>dmb:
>Still, I would very much like to have Kate Beckinsale for lunch. To hell 
>with the taboo.

Do you promise to clean your plate?