A 40k fan dissing LotR fans, who could have predicted?

I agree with you in general but cannibalism is actually bad because prion disease. Not eating other people makes sense for simply health reasons.

I mean I still think if everyone involved consents it should be allowed, but there's a good reason we don't like it as a society.

That sure is the conventional wisdom, isn't it?

In truth there's only ever been one example of Prion disease transmission through cannibalism in humans - Kuru - a disease present in one incredibly tiny population (the Fore) in Paupa New Guinea, once. Incidentally, it was essentially only transmissible if you consumed the brain (or spine) of an infected person, which was the part reserved for young children / pregnant women. Stopping the practice of eating the brain would have effectively eliminated the disease, and conveniently the australian colonial government and local christian missionaries had recently outlawed funerary cannibalism. I'm sure that, by their reputation for extreme tolerance and cultural sensitivity, they would never exaggerate the dangers of cannibalism to back up their claims.

Anyways, no new cases of Kuru have occurred since the Fore stopped practicing funerary cannibalism (voluntarily, once someone stopped just beating them and took the time to explain what was happening) and the disease has essentially been eradicated. So, though it's probably best not to eat another member of your species without checking to make sure they don't have parasites (and hypothetically Creutzfeldt–Jakob's disease. Although there's never been a case of it being transmitted via cannibalism, that's simply because it's vanishingly extreme rarity means it's likely never had a chance to happen), there's no particular harm that's going to happen because of it.

It's almost like prion disease is rare. If you can get vCJD from eating meat of a cow that had BSE, you can very likely also get it from eating a human that had vCJD. Particularly given that it is proven to be transmissable via blood transfusion. And that cows can get BSE from eating other cows. BSE outbreaks are also pretty much the only instance in which we actually have enough data on cannibalism and the potential of disease spread.

The reason we don't have many cases is that we don't eat people and that the diseases that you're likely to contract from doing so that don't die from cooking are very rare. Add to that that even cultures that do consume human meat generally only do so to a very limited degree (and often from people that died violently rather than disease or old age), and of course not much has been recorded.

Since prions can occur spontaneously, it is very possible that a culture of frequently consuming human meat indiscriminately could even eventually lead to some new prion disease spreading which happens to transmit via meat consumption at an above average rate.

Nnnno, you can hold that position independent of your feelings towards death. I am curious why you think it's unnecessary to do that, though. It's (relatively) common to use human remains for destructive testing in all manner of experiments. Is the problem that they're filming it instead of publishing the skull fracture patterns of knapped stone clubs in the journal of archeology? This really isn't any worse than, say, seeing how long it takes for human remains to fully liquefy when sealed in plastic and subjected to various conditions (more importantly, the rate at which organs decay while submerged in that soup). Is it worse than melting regions of a body with acid to test a theoretical new skin-grafting technique? Flaying their skin and muscles from the bone then macerating it to a homogeneous mixture to test for microplastic distribution rates in the 35-40 Indonesian Female demographic? Anything that happens to remains on a body farm? Those are all real examples. Thinking what they did is somehow worse than what bodies normally go through, that's the romantic view of death I was referring to.

Omg the Incredible Machine!!!! Where can I play it, its been so long!

Is the problem that they're filming it instead of publishing the skull fracture patterns of knapped stone clubs in the journal of archeology?

The problem is that "what happens when a superhuman being with a ring on punches you in the forehead" isn't exactly an important question to answer.

This really isn't any worse than, say, seeing how long it takes for human remains to fully liquefy when sealed in plastic and subjected to various conditions (more importantly, the rate at which organs decay while submerged in that soup). Is it worse than melting regions of a body with acid to test a theoretical new skin-grafting technique? Flaying their skin and muscles from the bone then macerating it to a homogeneous mixture to test for microplastic distribution rates in the 35-40 Indonesian Female demographic?

Again, yes. As it is not for science, it is for entertainment. Adam and Jamie are not scientists, they are special effects artists. And they are not conducting experiments, they are staging entertainment. They are not in a lab, they are in a special effects warehouse. They are not publishing their findings to Nature, they are editing them for a television audience. Mythbusters is not hard science, it is science themed entertainment. Which is fine. But these skulls belonged to real people and there is a power dynamic involved in where they come from, and who buys them, and what they're used for.

Lotr is overrated, there i said it

Yeah me too. I'm just thinking it over when I can introduce it to my boy. He's still too young, but probably a couple of years. I think I was like 11

My son wants to "game" like most other kids at his class. So I got an old laptop, installed linux mint on it with dosbox. He loves lemmings, the incredible machine 2 and rollercoaster tycoon

I rewatched Mythbusters recently. It's pretty disturbing, especially in the early seasons, how often they use actual human remains for what is essentially light entertainment. Like, they'll destroy an actual human skull for shits and giggles. They had disproved the myth on setting off an airbag with a slim jim and firing it into the head of a would be car jacker, but still had to replicate the results, so just shot a slim jim into an actual human skull, cheering and laughing as it's decimated. That was an actual person's skull. How they sourced it, and where the source acquired it, who knows. I'm fairly certain there is a family somewhere though that would be mortified.

Lotr is overrated, there i said it

God lotr fans are insufferable.

I fear that he won’t get many friends this way

Mainstream might be boring but it’s an easy way to connect with people

Cosmos (the original)

Connections with James Burke

Secret Life of Machines

All of David MacAulay’s books

My son wants to "game" like most other kids at his class. So I got an old laptop, installed linux mint on it with dosbox. He loves lemmings, the incredible machine 2 and rollercoaster tycoon