191–200 of 256 posts
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Whoever is interested, here are two very good academic articles about persistent hunting (subscription required): http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/508695 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0047248408... Also, here is a video of a modern persistent hunter http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=826HMLoiE_o
How do they bring the prey home after hunting it 30km?
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My grandfather was born in Abakan, and published several books on the history of the region. He visited Agafia several times by helicopter with my uncle, after the other members of her family had passed. When I was around 15, he showed me a video of their first encounter with her, and to this day I cannot get the image of the pure terror on her face out of my mind. She had multiple visitors before, but something abou…
It turned out that this was the first visit where someone in the crew had brought video equipment, and Agafia would later tell my grandfather that she thought this thing would 'steal her soul.' Sorry? It might as well have been a log on his shoulder. Now, if it was viewing video of herself on this camera that brought a look of "pure terror" to her face (that you can't get out of your mind to this day, no less) I coul…
http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/8380/did-some-cu...
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> Living by yourself in the woods is apparently manly. Yes, men are more likely to live in the woods by themselves than females. I haven't looked up this fact anywhere, but I guarantee I can find you a reference if you want one. > But saying that she is "more of a man"... ... means she is better than most men at something they typically perform "better" (in a quantitive sense, mind you) than females. Which is complet…
It should be pretty self evident that that particular Twitter reply was sarcastic. And I would say that my view is highly normal, but I suspect that we will never agree with each other. Attributing gender as a broad label is sexist because it creates a gender definition where there is not one. There are women stronger than the average man, it does not make them "more of a man", it makes them "stronger than the averag…
I don't think the OP was being sexist on purpose, or maliciously, or even consciously. I just wanted to bring attention to it, because this is the sort of casual sexism that pervades a lot of people's thinking without them even realizing it.
> having slept in the open in 40 degrees of frost I'm no scientist, but I don't believe frost forms until 32 degrees. Maybe this was a mistranslation...?
I've been reading a book called "Cold: Adventures in the World's Frozen Places " ( http://www.amazon.com/Cold-Adventures-Worlds-Frozen-Places/d... ): "One degree of frost was one degree below freezing Fahrenheit. An explorer might write in his journal of fifty degrees of frost - negative eighteen degrees Fahrenheit"
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It isn't just "a bit Crocodile Dundee" - it is a genuine and persisting phenomenon (which happened to be mentioned in Crocodile Dundee). Indigenous Australians to this day have very different beliefs about photography and filmography than most hn users would. Even though many of them live fairly modern lifestyles, it is considered fairly offensive in their culture to show images of people who have since passed away.…
This is actually common in many cultures. In South-East Asia I have heard this many times, that people have/had this belief that taking pictures of them "steal their souls". You can see it mentioned in a movie from Wong Kar Wai, Chungking Express, if I remember correctly, when the protagonist talks about his father.
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It should be pretty self evident that that particular Twitter reply was sarcastic. And I would say that my view is highly normal, but I suspect that we will never agree with each other. Attributing gender as a broad label is sexist because it creates a gender definition where there is not one. There are women stronger than the average man, it does not make them "more of a man", it makes them "stronger than the averag…
Thank you untog, that was exactly my issue with the original phrasing. It's not that she was praised for being stronger than all the men the OP knew, but that she was being praised for, essentially, being better at being a man than all the men the OP knew. A small distinction, that makes the original sentiment come off as very sexist. I don't think the OP was being sexist on purpose, or maliciously, or even conscious…
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Indeed. My grandfather used to tell me tales of his day in the Civilian Conservation Corps, building roads in the southern end of the Appalachian Mountains in the 1930s. They'd be going along clearing out land for a road and they'd come across a hollow with residents who had been isolated for decades, if not a century or more. He said they knew nothing about the world at all, though they would have basic tools from w…
Interesting little story. Did your grandfather say anything about how the people out in the wilderness reacted?
Only vaguely related, but after his time in the CCC, my grandfather became a pentacostal preacher, which he remained for the rest of his life. His first "church" was a brush arbor he built himself. Funny how different life was then.
Brush arbor information: http://brusharborquarterly.com/about.html
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Would they have had tannin available?
They're readily available in bark and some leaves, though you'd need to know how to extract it. A simpler alternative is "brain tanning", there's an old saying that each animal has enough brain to tan its hide which is probably true enough for basic purposes. Brain tanning is still the way native americans do their tanning (colonists brought vegetable tanning to the americas, and modern mineral and chemical tannings…
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> How so? Because of the incest taboo.
Depending on how their created civilization viewed sexuality, there might not be this created taboo. There might be the natural aversion to incest, or there might not be. Since they were religious, there might be religious reasons to abstain. If the kids are that heavily religious that they are terrified of modern technology etc, it seems doubtful they would struggle too much with resisting temptation. That's just my…
On the other hand, it's not obvious at all that resisting breaking that taboo would be as easy as not using modern technology. This was hinted in one of the book's reviews on Amazon:
> A spectra haunted this group, as well as other remote old believers - incest! Peskov never can definitely state this is the reason why the two brothers established separate dwellings six kilometers from the main housing unit, but certainly it is high on the speculation list.
http://www.amazon.com/review/R2TGXPO509YNC0/ref=cm_cr_dp_tit...
It would be cool to isolate yourself just to return and be blown away by all the technological advancements made. Probably not worth it overall though.