Blotter Paper

So, from the way various raw foodists have explained it to me (and bear in mind that they were almost certainly stoned at the time, and hence perhaps their reasoning does not represent the “party line”) the reasoning behind only consuming raw food is that this is somehow more natural to the human condition. Like, human beings were evolved to eat raw food, and only ate raw food always, until relatively recently, so our systems are all like confused by cooked food, man. And the cooked food, it just kind of shocks our bodies, and makes them go whoah, like what the hell’s happening. So we get all sick and fat and unhealthy, because what we’re eating is all just totally fundamentally not in even the form we’re suppposed to eat it in. Like, it goes beyond chemicals and junk. We’ve heated up the food, applied fire and heat to it, and totally just baked the hell out all the rich natural vitamins and proteins and minerals and nutrients and junk that are supposed to be in it.

Okay, that’s actually totally wrong, and here’s why. There’s evidence that our ancestors, Homo Erectus, used fire as early as 1.5 million years ago. By around 400,000 years ago, there’s widespread evidence that we were using fire in a fairly controlled way, including charred bone! As in the charred bones of things that we cooked and then ate! Modern humanity diverged from whatever common ancestor we had with the Neanderthals (who probably also used fire) 200,000 years ago. So actually, we are specifically evolved as a people who cooked our food. How can anyone think that eating only raw food (especially meat) is a good idea? I mean, I get it if it’s for, like, spiritual or ethical or moral or aesthetic reasons, or whatever. But if it’s for health reasons? Cmon.

I was driving in my car, listening to music today. And because it was some weird folk crap, I was thinking about how different music must have been back in the eras these musicians were riffing off of.

Music, unless one was a musician oneself, must have always been a communal activity. The notion of being listening to music by yourself would have been impossibly alien, not to mention impossible. Furthermore, you’d hear like one style of music, which would be whatever was prevalent wherever you were from. And most of it would be pretty bad. All music would be equivalent to the idiot in the dorm room across from you strumming on his guitar, rather than only listening to the cream of the crop, who’ve been skillfully packed into portable, recorded form.

Wow, we have more access to information than people in the past, I know, that’s hardly profound. But I wonder how constant access to an infinite variety of entertainments affects our life, qualitatively. Are we happier than those people in the past were? Is the quality of our thinking superior? Are we able to appreciate the world to a greater or more refined degree? What would it be like to be as profoundly ignorant as those people would have been?

I guess its tempting to just compare ourselves to people in impoverished nations (or our own nation) who lack many of our amenities, but I don’t think the case is the same. Those people are at least aware of what is out there. Also, even the most impoverished people in the world occassionally listen to a radio (unless they’re Sentinel islanders).

Or something flu-like anyway, which certainly came from my brother. But I’m feeling better now. I’m consistently amazed by how well over the counter medications work at not making me feel terrible. For many, many years I thought that tylenol or advil were something on the order of warm tea or chicken soup in terms of efficacy, until I started taking three pills instead of two (due to my larger size) and realized that they really can relieve headaches and fevers.

Although I do wonder, if fevers are our body’s natural response to being ill, then isn’t artifically suppressing them a bad thing to do?

Also, one of the top results for my name is now my John W. Campbell Award Nominations profile. For those of you not in the know, this is an award that I will absolutely not win, which I am eligible for by virtue of having made a professional sale in 2008. But, at the very least, I hope that the awards page will direct some traffic towards this site.