Thursday, April 9th, 2009

[JonPorobil]

Tonight, a bunch of my friends are meeting at Whole Foods for dinner. I'll be there, though I'm not sure I'll be able to find anything I can eat.

QotD: Do you have any special dietary restrictions, seasonal or otherwise?

I keep kinda-kosher for most of the year (I mix poultry and milk, but I don't mix milk with red meat, and I don't eat pork at all), and during Passover, of course, I'm not eating any bread.

Follow-up question for fluffy (and any other Jews on the board): Do you allow yourself corn, rice, or other grains during Passover? It's always struck me as a little weird that we're supposedly not allowed to eat corn, which, during the events of the Book of Exodus, didn't even exist in the form we know it today.

[Niveous]

Follow-up question for fluffy (and any other Jews on the board): Do you allow yourself corn, rice, or other grains during Passover? It's always struck me as a little weird that we're supposedly not allowed to eat corn, which, during the events of the Book of Exodus, didn't even exist in the form we know it today.

Exodus= 2nd Millennium BC. Rice and corn were being cultivated 3 millenia prior. By the 2nd Millennium, rice was already domesticated. I'm not sure about corn if was already domesticated by that time period or was about to be. That the funny thing about history, the dates are sketchy the further back you go. So the form would not have been that different.

[JonPorobil]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Exodus ... the_Exodus

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maize#Origin

Corn didn't develop into that vegetable with big yellow kernels until the the 2000-3000 B.C.E.

Sure enough, traditional scholarship dates Exodus circa 1500 B.C.E.

Still, corn is a New World vegetable. Whoever wrote the rules of Passover was still a good two or three millenia from their descendants ever learning what corn is. So I don't get it. So I eat corn during Passover.

[jast]

QotD: no. Well, actually, since I tend to undereat I try to include high-calorie foods whenever possible.
PS. what, "healthy"? Never heard of that guy.

[HeuristicsInc]

I've got lactose intolerance since a couple of years ago, so I have to avoid milk and that's a pain in the butt. Literally sometimes haha.
-bill

[Märk]

I eat what I want, regardless of what some spooky old men said 4000 years ago. Do you make your lovely wife sleep in the other room when she's menstruating?

[Billy's Little Trip]

QOTD: No special dietary foods. Other than my sweet tooth, I tend to prefer healthy foods. I mean, I love a big cheese burger, etc. But quite often my body tells me to eat lighter when I'm busy, or doing active things. Like, when I'm meeting the guys to go surfing, I generally just have a fruit smoothy with unprocessed honey (sounds gayer than it is) and some kind granola mix with nuts, etc. It gives me tons of energy, keeps me from feeling hungry and I don't feel sluggish in the least.

[Paco Del Stinko]

I restrict how much of what, and when I eat. Like, no starchy things late at night, eat fruits in the morning, veggies in the evening. I'll have a small scoop of half fat ice cream, baked chips with a sangwich, that type of thing. Those who met me at last year's SF! LIVE would notice a 40 to 50 pound lighter Paco. Still dumb, but thinner!

[irwin]

I started doing only fish or vegetarian on Fridays about a year ago. No particular reason, just thought it was a cool tradition. Typically I do tekamaki for lunch and fish sticks for dinner. Mmm!

Sometimes I give up something for Lent (last year I gave up booze, yikes!), but this year's Lenten self-torture was non-food related.

[Caravan Ray]

I eat what I want, regardless of what some spooky old men said 4000 years ago

Careful - Jon will come up and buy you.

Lev. 25:44 states that I may indeed possess slaves, both male and female, provided they are purchased from neighboring nations. A friend of mine claims that this applies to Mexicans, but not Canadians. Can you clarify? Why can't I own Canadians?
http://www.humanistsofutah.org/2002/Why ... 10-02.html


Thankfully, I don't have that problem. I can buy as many New Zealanders I want to use as slaves. The problem is though they make bloody terrible slaves. All the miserable bastards do is sit around complaining about the 1995 World Cup final.

[fluffy]

What part of "I had a bacon cheeseburger on Passover for the maximum sacrilegious bang for the buck" did you miss, Jon?

(And of course it was on a leavened bun.)

I don't get why in the last hundred years or so, orthodox Jews have decided that the dietary restriction on dairy + meat extended to chicken. Last I was aware, it was highly unlikely that you would be boiling the meat of a chicken in its mother's milk (unless GM food has gotten entirely out of hand). Strictly-speaking the law as it was originally written no longer applies, anyway, seeing as how beef and dairy come from entirely different breeds of cow.

Today at lunch I was discussing kashrut with some of my coworkers (one being Jewish, one being a Catholic who is vaguely aware of some of kashrut, and one being Japanese and completely amused/mystified by the vagaries of Western religion) and trying to figure out what laws applied to various animals not even vaguely known about in the times of the Torah. For example, platypi are venomous, and they're also amphibious but non-scaly, so they'd not be kosher. On the other hand, tilapia is a bottom-feeder (which was the original basis behind which fish were allowed) but since it has scales it's perfectly fine. Go figure.

The restriction on birds is particularly odd. Herbivorous birds are fine, but carnivorous birds are only fine if they hunt for themselves (i.e. no scavengers) and - here's the odd bit - aren't venomous. I have never heard of any birds which are actually venomous. There are a few species in Papa New Guinea which are poisonous, but they're herbivores and don't hunt with venom (of course you wouldn't want to eat them anyway).

[fluffy]

Follow-up question for fluffy (and any other Jews on the board): Do you allow yourself corn, rice, or other grains during Passover? It's always struck me as a little weird that we're supposedly not allowed to eat corn, which, during the events of the Book of Exodus, didn't even exist in the form we know it today.

Exodus= 2nd Millennium BC. Rice and corn were being cultivated 3 millenia prior. By the 2nd Millennium, rice was already domesticated. I'm not sure about corn if was already domesticated by that time period or was about to be. That the funny thing about history, the dates are sketchy the further back you go. So the form would not have been that different.

Whether corn was cultivated at the time or not is somewhat immaterial as it's not native to the part of the world that the exodus took place in.

[Caravan Ray]

The restriction on birds is particularly odd. Herbivorous birds are fine, but carnivorous birds are only fine if they hunt for themselves (i.e. no scavengers) and - here's the odd bit - aren't venomous. I have never heard of any birds which are actually venomous. There are a few species in Papa New Guinea which are poisonous, but they're herbivores and don't hunt with venom (of course you wouldn't want to eat them anyway).

Platypus are venomous. OK - they are not birds, but they almost are. And they are delicious. Are monotremes kosher?

[fluffy]

The Torah has absolutely no knowledge of monotremes, what with it not happening with even the vaguest notion that Australia existed. (Also, monotremes aren't "almost birds," although they are somewhat bird-like in a freaky parallel-evolution sort of way.)

[Caravan Ray]

The Torah has absolutely no knowledge of monotremes, what with it not happening with even the vaguest notion that Australia existed.

I'm sorry - but that is completely wrong. The ancient Hebrews were VERY familiar with Australian fauna.

From the excellent scientific resource Conservapedia's discussion of macropods:

modern kangaroos are the descendants of the two founding members of the modern kangaroo baramin that were taken aboard Noah's Ark prior to the Great Flood. It has not yet been determined by baraminologists whether kangaroos form a holobaramin with the wallaby, tree-kangaroo, wallaroo, pademelon and quokka, or if all these species are in fact apobaraminic or polybaraminic.

After the Flood, these kangaroos, bred from the Ark passengers, migrated to Australia...

(Also, monotremes aren't "almost birds," although they are somewhat bird-like in a freaky parallel-evolution sort of way.)

Actually that's not quite right either. Monotremes are "bird-like" in that they share characteristics with birds that have come from a common ancestor. Characteristics that placental mammals don't exhibit (though "reptile-like" my be closer). They didn't really get that way "in a freaky parallel-evolution sort of way" - they are just a very primitive type of mammal that died out everywhere else, but 2 of them got lucky in Aus. and are still here.

"Freaky parallel-evolution stuff" is like the New Zealand kakapo and the Madagascan aye-aye (thank you Douglas Adams).

[PlainSongs]

Yeah, reptile-like...


From an interesting blogpost on monotremes, cleavage, bird lactation (no chickens), and venom, tooth enamel genes and convergent evolution.

(There's actually some debate on whether the monotremes split off together with the marsupials or before that, but it was long after they failed to go with the cool birds - and other sauropsids - in any case.)

But we may have to forget all that if we wanna be baraminologists when we grow up.

[fluffy]

(Also, monotremes aren't "almost birds," although they are somewhat bird-like in a freaky parallel-evolution sort of way.)

Actually that's not quite right either. Monotremes are "bird-like" in that they share characteristics with birds that have come from a common ancestor. Characteristics that placental mammals don't exhibit (though "reptile-like" my be closer). They didn't really get that way "in a freaky parallel-evolution sort of way" - they are just a very primitive type of mammal that died out everywhere else, but 2 of them got lucky in Aus. and are still here.

I thought birds and reptiles had split off from mammals long before monotremes - birds' ancestors in particular were dinosaurs. I guess the "common ancestor" thing is more accurate though.

Anyway, the parallel-evolution thing would be the platypus' bill and feet, which are only superficially similar to a duck's and certainly not due to common ancestry. (The same goes for the beaver tail.)

[EDIT] Yeah, what PlainSongs said.

[roymond]

I don't want to interrupt anything actually interesting or informative, but I don't eat red meat stuff. I was vegan for a while in high school, then missed milk and cheese in college, and soon fish. Then my roommate was Mexican so chicken was re-introduced. But red meat and pork...yuk. We only buy free range organic meats at home (my Jewish wife and kids eat, like, whatever. And they love pork, but I don't consider it the other white meat.) I do like to try regional specialties when I travel and have no moral issues with the stuff.

I think if I couldn't eat ice cream I'd die.

[JonPorobil]

Oooh, do I hear that. If I couldn't eat cheese, I'd shrivel up and cease to exist as you know me. Mmm.

[fluffy]

I could live without dairy, although I do enjoy it (even though it makes me all farty, because I am also lactose intolerant).

[Caravan Ray]

From an interesting blogpost on monotremes, cleavage, bird lactation (no chickens), and venom, tooth enamel genes and convergent evolution.

Cool links! Wow - platypus have eggs like chickens!

Few people know this - but they can also talk like parrots. Probably.

I could live without dairy, although I do enjoy it (even though it makes me all farty, because I am also lactose intolerant).

Platypus milk is delicious. But they are very hard to milk - with the whole not-having-any-nipples thing.

[Billy's Little Trip]

The Torah has absolutely no knowledge of monotremes, what with it not happening with even the vaguest notion that Australia existed. (Also, monotremes aren't "almost birds," although they are somewhat bird-like in a freaky parallel-evolution sort of way.)

I don't care what anyone says. As far as I'm concerned, a beaver fucked a duck.

...next caller, your on the air with BLT on the "how it happened" show.