h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

He was the leader of one of the tribes of Israael, I think. Wonder what happened to the other 11?

I haven't found any references to it, yet, but there was a rather sophisticated, um, "science" dedicated to the detailing of how the sons of Noah repopulated the world and which race belongs to which son and so forth...
This is, of course, disregarding the equally sophisticated "science" that says that Noah and his sons were white and that the descendants of Cain, who's "mark of Cain" was their high melanin count, were not allowed on the boat.....
The intermixture of "science" and "religion" is a disgustingly fascinating one. Modern scientists try to play down how much their schools of thought owe to a bunch of over-educated Victorian bible-thumping dilletantes....never mind Schliemann....or Darwin...

I don't remember if I mentioned it, but this is a little piece I ran up yesterday:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/alabaster/A720334

Alabaster!

No, you hadn't mentioned it. I always thought it was suspicious that the priests didn't want the bible translated so that the 'common people' could read it for themselves. They also saw/see themselves as having a plug straight into God, where the 'commom folk' couldn't.

That said, I think there is something in the guru thing, where someone has devoted a life to the spirit. Bit of a paradox really.

Still suffering the sore throat and cough. What a way to spend Easter!

Possibly better a healer than a guru...
I've been reading about the Sufi and Sunni "idiots" and "clowns" and I'm trying not to anymore.
Wonder what the wives and mothers think of all these "wise" men...

Sorry about the alabaster...
Goo's contrasts hurt my eyes.
As a typist for many years, I find it hard to write on anything but a white space...

I find that to be the case with Alabaster. Goo seems friendlier to me. Still - one man's meat - as they say.

What was that about the Sufis?

But not if you're trying not to think of it.

I'm going to get some shut-eye for an hour or so. I've a terrible headache. Still, the throat's a bit better now.

I'll leave you to your own devices with the Sufis.
What their traditions and writings say and what they actually do are so confusing to me that I think they like it that way.

Meditation, whirling and zikr are meant to get you in touch with the divine.

I do remember one of my teachers telling me once that he thought that many Turks used zikr as a substitute for sex.

I was listening to Deepak Chopra talking about Ayurveda and he was saying that nations have their tendencies as far as doshas (physical types) are concerned. He thought the USA was mainly 'vata' - prone to anxiety, worry, paranoia (and loads of other things) and that the Middle East was 'pitta' - heat, anger and turbulence. Me, I'm 'kapha' with vata overtones.

I was walking past an audio book in the library the other day.
you know how you "half-see" things and your brain fills in the other part?

What I thought I saw was "Overcoming Your Fear Of Deepak Chopra Through Death"

What it was was "Overcoming your fear of death by Deepak Chopra"

I like the first one better.

I don't know much about primitive mysticism (as opposed to modern mysticism, the stock market and the fashion inudstry) but I'm like Henry David Thoreau:"Avoid all entrerprises that require new clothes."
Or something to that effect.

I see what you mean!

I'm not sure I would class Ayurveda as primitive mysticism.

From what I can see, science is just about beginning to prove some it its tenets, eg that the body is influenced by the mind.

There was something interesting about experimental work with a tribe of (Mexican?) Indians, who were susceptible to a type of diabetes. When they did some work with some of them who didn't suffer with it, involving doing difficult work with an irritating noise in the background, their blood sugar levels started to rise, showing that in a group predisposed to an illness, stress can bring it on.

I've a feeling that my present off colouredness is because I've just finished a very stressful period at work. R&R, that's what I need.

Rock and roll?

I believe those were in New Mexico and they were Zuni Pueblo Indians.
They have the highest incidence of type 2 diabetes per capita on the continent. Their bodies were designed for converting specific food stuffs down to the fiber during almost famine conditions. The recent (within the last 150 years) availablity of "processed" foodstuffs has sent their bodies off kilter.

Some peoples that we would consider "starving", including our ancestors, were actually functioning fairly well under conditions that they had been bred for over centuries. It is when you start moving people around and expecting them all to eat the "lowest common denominator" that you begin to have massive health problems because doctors are trained to deal with the "ideal" human body.

That's why I like that exhibit of "peeled" people that there has been so much controversy about. I think everybody aught to have a photo of a skinned person on the front of their fridge to remind them what they are made of.

Rest and recuperation!

Yes, it was the Zuni pueblo indians! I couldn't remember while I was making the posting.

Someone was saying that in the Roman times, the average age was 24, so that when Julius Caesar died at age 35 (or thereabouts) he was an old man and that when the American Constitution was being laid down, the men were all old men in their middle to late 30s.

On the other hand, there are people's, for example the mountain Georgians, who regularly live to their 120s. Strange thing was, they smoked. But they lived on a healthy diet including locally grown produce, worked the land and rode horses into their nineties and saw growing older as a glamorous thing. I think something similar applied to another race of Indians, where the thinking was that the older you got, the better you got and the older men ran faster than the younger ones.

Expectations seem to have a large part to play in this as well.

Ahhhh, some of the constitutional convention delegates were in their seventies.
Benjamin Franklin and John Quincy Adams lived into their eighties.

Don't know about the Romans.

Average life expectancy is a strange thing.

Be careful about those Georgians. That was a pre-Gorbachov(sp?) Soviet thing. I think the, um, birth records are a bit lacking in that area.

Ah, I know that the researchers were sometimes bamboozled by the Gerogians exaggerating their ages! I think one of the conclusions was that if age is seen as desirable and glamourous, living longer becomes easier and ditto if you expect to live longer.

I did see the space of an Americac couple (can't remember the name) who are promoting longevity. The husband died in his nineties - in a surfing accident.

Ah.
Very out of it at the moment.

? Catch you when you're back with it.

It's these stupid drugs and the weather.
It keeps flip-flopping back and forth.
And the lawns growing as I watch.
And I don't want to deal with it.
And the sink's full and I don't want to deal with it.

Ah, know the feeling. Two things I want to do today are to mow the lawn - it's not been done at all this year, and to do the ironing.

It's a beautiful day. Youngster would rather that I played chess or battleships with him (in my day we played it with pen/cil and paper) or take him for a bike ride.

Is the trick like Mary Poppins said finding the element of fun in everything that must be done?