[Peace-discuss] Foodstuff biofuels: going against the grain of humanity and common sense.

[C. G. Estabrook]

Linda's serious point reminds me of a couple of related matters, with perhaps 
serious implications:

[1] Words for "money" is almost all Indo-European languages are derived from 
words for cattle.
	(E.g., Latin "pecunia," from "pecus" = cow.)  That's presumably a result of the 
Neolithic social formations of these people, among whom wealth was measured by 
possession of these recently-domesticated animals.  (Old habits die hard: when 
European colonialists arrived in East Africa in the 19th century, they called 
Africans with more cattle "Tutsis" and those with fewer cattle "Hutus" -- and 
claimed the difference was racial!  Worse, they said the Tutsis came from the 
north -- nearer Europe -- and the Hutus, from the south: it was apparently all 
racist imperialist fantasy -- tragically adopted by the Africans who were taught 
it.)

[2] Europeans' drinking (cows') milk beyond infancy is an example of “neoteny.”
	(OED = "The retention of juvenile characteristics in a [sexually] mature 
organism; esp. the appearance of ancestral juvenile characteristics in the adult 
stage of a descendant, spec. as an evolutionary process in which somatic 
development is retarded.") Normal human beings lose the ability to digest milk 
beyond infancy.  But Indo-Europeans relied on cattle for food from ca. 8000 BCE, 
so children who couldn't digest milk beyond infancy died, which cut down on 
their progeny (i.e., a Darwinist would say that the neoteny was "selected for.") 
  Again, in imperialist and racist fashion, the Europeans turned their bug into 
a feature, and regarded all other human beings as having a deficiency -- 
“lactose-intolerance”!

I've cut out dairy, as a protest against the Neolithic scarcity economy.  --CGE


Linda Evans wrote:
> It is very debatable if cow's milk is less toxic than gold or oil.  It
> depends on if you care about beings other than human animals and if you
> believe that cow's milk makes sense for mammals to drink who are neither cows
> nor infants (we are the only animals on the planet who continue to drink milk
> after weaning...the milk of another animal no less).  As we are debating food
> issues which equals issues which effect peace on this planet, let us not
> forget the blood on our own hands as we consume factory farmed and/or
> non-sustainable for the population of the planet (even grass fed, "organic"
> etc.) meat, milk, eggs.
> 
> We are sold the cow's milk = healthy humans which is really a bunch of bull.
> 
> :-)
> 
> Linda A Marketplace for a Better World (Cruelty-free,
> Environmentally-Conscious, and Fair Labor Products) http://triballife.net/ 
> http://triballifeinc.blogspot.com/ My personal blog: 
> http://veganlinda.blogspot.com/
> 
> 
> ----- Original Message ---- From: C. G. Estabrook <galliher at uiuc.edu> To: E.
> Wayne Johnson <ewj at pigs.ag> Cc: Peace-discuss List
> <peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net>; Stuart Levy <slevy at ncsa.uiuc.edu> Sent:
> Wednesday, July 2, 2008 6:49:39 PM Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] Foodstuff
> biofuels: going against the grain of humanity and common sense.
> 
> I think that's the second, ah, udder we've uttered on this list recently.
> 
> E. Wayne Johnson wrote:
>> Its udderly incredible how you  keep churning out the puns.
>> 
>> C. G. Estabrook wrote:
>>> Then, when the public was being milked, we'd simply be concretizing a 
>>> metaphor...
>>> 
>>> 
>>> Stuart Levy wrote:
>>>> On Wed, Jul 02, 2008 at 05:31:29PM -0500, E. Wayne Johnson wrote:
>>>>> its a "normal" sound for this sort of machinery...
>>>>> 
>>>>> Milk was $3.69/gallon at county market yesterday.  A dollar more than
>>>>> a few months ago as I recall. But the dollar is not worth as much
>>>>> either.
>>>> Maybe we should convert our currency to a milk standard. Back to
>>>> basics.  Less toxic than either gold or oil.