# (no subject) *The Urth list — 2 messages, 2 voices, 21 Dec 2011* > Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright > in each message remains with the person who wrote it. > Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original > archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than > retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact. --- ### Lee Berman *21 Dec 2011, 18:08* > Gerry Quinn: It’s not magic — it’s bad science > Dan'l Danehy-Oakes: It seems to me that what the sorcerers in the woods do is "real" magic. > .."psi" is a fancy word for magic. I think the text duplicates this discussion: > The Cumaean looked up at Dorcas with eyes that seemed as bright as the stars. “Words are symbols. > Merryn chooses to delimit magic as that which does not exist” and so it does not exist. If you > choose to call what we are about to do here magic then magic lives while we do it. > Gerry Quinn: In a few cases in insular Melanesia, indigenous flesh-markets existed. And of course > we know of cases when shipwrecked sailors or other groups of isolated survivors ate human flesh to > survive. My statement about cultural prescribed cannibalism not being for the purpose of nutrition stands. Famine and starvation cannibalism occurs despite cultural proscriptions against it. And Melanesia includes the Papua-New Guinea tribes I gave as examples. Human flesh-markets there were selling courage not protein, just as Chinese rhino horn dealers are selling sexual potency, not keratin for nourishment. fwiw- Starvation really wasn't a problem for tribal Melanisians. They had so many pigs they occasionally had to engage in ritual pig slaughter and engorgement, vomiting up one pork meal to make room for the next one. --- ### Gerry Quinn *21 Dec 2011, 19:27 · in reply to Lee Berman* From: Lee Berman > Gerry Quinn: >> In a few cases in insular Melanesia, indigenous flesh-markets existed. And of course >> we know of cases when shipwrecked sailors or other groups of isolated survivors ate human flesh to >> survive. > My statement about cultural prescribed cannibalism not being for the purpose of nutrition stands. > Famine and starvation cannibalism occurs despite cultural proscriptions against it. And Melanesia > includes the Papua-New Guinea tribes I gave as examples. Human flesh-markets there were selling > courage not protein, just as Chinese rhino horn dealers are selling sexual potency, not keratin > for nourishment. ?The esteem attached to despoiling enemies and a real fondness for the unusual food seem to have been the motives. http://bits-n-pieces.hubpages.com/hub/cannibal - Gerry Quinn ---