Near Death Experiences?

Good story, thanks. It is always good to remember the force of the ocean.
in east frisia, we have some special conditions. at low tide, you can actually walk on solid ground, to some islands approximately 2-5 miles away from the shore.
when the tides change, the current can get very strong. I have seen tourist standing on a sandbank abiut 20 meters away from the island, with the water being around 3 feet deep, and they could not get back. they had to be resuced with boats, for the water was rising more and more every minute. 20 meters distance, 3ft deep. it's unbelieveable. having seen this stuff happen leaves me with big respect.

thanks for sharing your story.

later, Keno
 
Someone popped a balloon near my ear once. I think that's been the closest I've been to being deaf. Otherwise I've lived a pretty boring life.

:rolleyes:
 
Intensive agriculture (farming) started somewhere around 15,000 years ago in the Fertile Crescent. (Middle East)
Before that, people did eat some grains, but they didnt grow them on purpose. It was called "incipient agriculture." They just sort of ate it when they found it.

I agree 100% with the Atkins diet, but I don't know if it is a good idea to try and formulate a diet based upon Anthopological theories of human diets from the past. (And remember, I AM an Anthropologist.)

For most of human history, we were scavengers. That means we ate anything we could in order to stay alive. There always has been and probably always will be a trade-off between long-term health and short term starvation. You gotta eat today, right?
Who is willing to starve until they get the perfect food just so they wont get diabetes in their 60's?

That's a little simplified, but basically, that's the choice. True hunger is a great teacher.
 
a diet along paleo principles seems to make sense but it isn't something easily achievable today. I think the idea is a diet that is analogous to the pre-Neolithic diet. I don't eat bugs (often or knowingly), I don't eat the variety of hunter-gatherers.

Also, I think that Atkins is a bit low on veggies and fruit. Although low carb is very good for many people, paleo diets aren't necessarily low carb.
 
DannyinJapan said:
(And remember, I AM an Anthropologist.)
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Where's your ndn Mom, Dad, 2-1/2 Kids, and Two Dogs then? :rolleyes: :p :D ;)

The above and an Antropologist is what makes up an ndn family or so the story goes.:D ;)

Seriously DIJ, I didn't know you were an Anthropologist! Hell since you're teaching school I thought you were a teacher.:rolleyes:
 
I'd shovel sh!t in Missouri to get to train with Hatsumi Sensei.
Any job is good enough for me here.
Besides, Anthropology is probably the most moneyless occupation you can find.
You'll find us doing all sorts of jobs to stay alive.
We're scavengers.
 
cognitivefun said:
Also, I think that Atkins is a bit low on veggies and fruit. Although low carb is very good for many people, paleo diets aren't necessarily low carb.
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Being an old ndn who recognizes the truth of the matter I have long said that if it wasn't for mama and her digging stick we men would have often been hungry.
Meat wasn't always easy to get and when we did get it there was little or nothing wasted.
I'm of the opinion that after the invention of the atlatl that everyone ate better and more often.
The atlatl and spear, lance, javelin, or whatever you want to call it combination was in many ways superior to the bow and arrow and just as accurate, in its own range.
The advent of the bow brought greater accuracy at longer distances.
Being of mixed blood I can eat anything. The European diet was pretty damned boring until the Americas, and consequently the foods found here, were found.
The best I can recall it seems that somewhere around 86 new foods were brought into the food chain.

There was a small village just below Jerome Arizona along the river and in the valley there that had a better and more varied diet than the Europeans of the same time had.
I'll probably be awake half the night trying to recall the name of the village now.:rolleyes: :grumpy:
I had to go look it up... Tuzigoot is the name of the old village.;) :D Beautiful spot along the river it is!:cool:
 
Somehow this discussion has left off the fact that more live longer and are better fed than at any time in history.

I wouldn't want to return.

Danny, are you a BS or BA degree in Anthropology or further along the academic ladder? Just curious. A college roomate did his senior thesis for Anthro on the Grateful Dead....



munk
 
munk said:
Somehow this discussion has left off the fact that more live longer and are better fed than at any time in history.
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I do stuff like try to eat grass fed cows raised by small farmers, and eat free range chickens and organic fruits and veggies. I am grateful that these are so available to me. I think the potential is there for us to be better fed, but also for people to eat a lot of industrial foods (e.g. sodas) that are very unhealthy. That's the reason so many people have heart problems, obesity etc., IMHO.
 
My degree is a BA, but I dont remember any focus on art, I had to study science.
(Our whole department was angry at the college for that)

My graduate studies were general as well, but my specialization was ethnography and linguistic salvage.

Linguistic salvage (my term) means you go into the wild places where isolated, ancient groups of people live. Then you learn their language and write a dictionary and grammar for it. When that's done, you record as much of their oral traditions (myths and history) as you can get.

There are more than 4,000 languages on the planet Earth and they are all dying like animal species die.

I had picked out a nice cozy spot in the slums of Hong Kong to study Macanese, a creole language made from Chinese, Portugese and English.

20,000 $ a year tutition and 1,000 pages a week of xerox costs for the readings just wore me out.

I burned out in my second year of grad school. I want to finish the PhD someday, but I know Im still not ready.
 
It's a shame that most of us have to look death in the eye before we can appreciate life.
 
kamkazmoto said:
It's a shame that most of us have to look death in the eye before we can appreciate life.
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It's hard to look Death in the eye because he usually doesn't come at you straight on. He gets you with a sneak attack.
 
It seems that my self-preservation "drone" mode always engages when i do something (or am in situation) stupid enough to potentially get me killed. I held live wire (230 V) a couple of times, i once got left out relatively far from the shore and wasn't quite sure whether i'd be able to swim back (because of the tidal currents and the fact that i never swam even 1/4th that distance without resting were my main reasons for concern) and i was driving with a friend of mine from uni lectures back home one snowy day, the road was mirror-polished ice with "tracks" made by traffic before snow turned into ice and we were driving just fine (if a tad too fast) when she lost control of the car in a curve and overcompensated with the steering wheel to make matters considerably worse (and have the car spin the other way around) until we bumped into a roadside pile of snow while this big truck that was driving behind us missed us by a miniscule distance and just wooshed past.

It's as if nothing "human" really mattered when i'm in one of those situations, it's just instincts, brain only kicks back in after it's all over ... quite some time after it's all over.
 
well you know, this thread reminds me of what is called "survivorship bias".

The best way to explain it: you only see or hear from the ones who survived. So we would expect to have threads with a lot of near-death experiences because the past-death experience folks don't often post!
 
I've had more than I'd care to remember, a few that stand out:

I was work on top of a 100 foot still at a chemical factory, while walking around the platform on top I stood on the safety rail to get better leverage on a pipewrench in order to remove a 3 inch gate valve, needless to say the valve spun loose with no effort, I fell off the tower and about 15 feet down my ankle got wedged in between the towers support trusses/crossbrace, hanging upside down by my now broken ankle all I could do was wait for help, which arrived 15 minutes later in the form of a crane.

Oddly enough I didn't develope a fear of heights after that.

Another time I was working in the same chemical plant on the midnight shift when I walked by one of the many small shacks that housed an ammonia compressor for the brine refrigeration system.

I got a faint whiff of ammonia so I opened the door to investigate, I noticed that the site glass on the anhydrous ammonia tank was broke and ammonia was leaking into the shack. I figured I could take a deep breath and run in close the valves to site glass and run back out this would take all of 45 seconds,...not.

Once I went in the ammonia burned my eyes so bad I closed them and couldn't see, I then became disoriented and could find the door or the valve, eventually I had to take a breath, bad mistake, the shed had filled with ammonia and when I took my breath my lungs felt like they were on fire, I couldn't breath, I couldn't take even a small breath.

Opening my eyes and suffering with the burning in my eyes I found my way to the door and finally got out, figuring I could breath now I tried to take another breath, stupid me ammonia gas is heavier than air and I couldn't get the ammonia out of my lungs, panic set in and I knew I was gonna die, I started making my peace with the big guy upstairs when everything started to go white and I passed out...............................................

Luckily for me when I passed out and fell, the ammonia in my lungs was able to be expelled and fresh air slowly replaced the heavier ammonia, it took an hour before I could take a reasonable breath. Lesson learned: always wear a Scott Pack.

I got a lot more but 1 more for now:

I was flying with a friend of the family to a camp in upstate NY in a 6 passenger Twin engine Piper Atec E airplane,

aztec.JPG


I was 15 at the time and in the Co-Pilots seat :D , we were flying at cruising altitude,(not sure what cruising altitude is on this plane) when all of a sudden the door popped open, the plane went into an immediate dive and just like in the movies everything was getting sucked out the open door, anyway I reached over and with every last ounce of strength I pulled the door closed and locked it.

The plane began to climb again and we once again reached cruising altitude and started to laugh at what just happened, mostly a scared nervous laughter, not 20 minutes later it happened again, this time I grabed the door and when I closed and locked it again I held white knuckled onto that door until we made an emergency landing a half an hour later on a private runway in Utica NY.

The plane was worked on that night and the following morning we finished our trip.

Doc,(the guy who owned the plane) had several other problems with this plane after that so it went back to Piper for repair, the plane was supposed to be checked out and in perfect condition when 3 weeks later my old man and 4 other good friends went upstate for a hunting trip, they never returned, the plane slammed into the ground 20 minutes after takeoff from Teterboro airport in NJ, I lost my Dad and 5 good friends that rainy October Day in 1975, BTW I was supposed to be going on the trip but had to stay home as punishment for a bad math grade.

Ihave more stories, remind me to tell you about the jeep and the cliff incident.
 
The best way to explain it: you only see or hear from the ones who survived. So we would expect to have threads with a lot of near-death experiences because the past-death experience folks don't often post!>>>>>>>cogfun

This reminds me of some very serious but absolutely insane theorizing by scientists that near death and out of body experiences reported with the feelings of peace and joy are actually a biological adaptation so we will not fear death. The biological process does not give a damn if we die or not. What possible advantage would the organism have by providing a peaceful death? Talk about wasted energy or blind alley evolution. Not enough people could come back to reassure us how fun it was, anyway!!

I like the stories told by children who have died and come back- those clinically dead but ressurected by miracle or medicine. They talk about the warmth and peace. They often chat away with 'the nice man' on a park bench. When they draw pictures of the event the stories and drawings are very very similar to one another.
I'd like to meet the 'nice man' I kinda think I already have.


munk
 
Yvsa said:
I have been in remission for a while now but there are a few symptoms showing up again here lately and it looks like I might have to go back on the damned medicine, Methotrexate, that makes me so damnable Sick the day after I take it.:(
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my mother is currently taking a combination of methitrexate and a drug called remicade wich is (i beleive) still in the study phaze. there was a time in her life when she couldnt lift her arms past about the 30 degree mark, and has had a lot of problems with the various ra drugs, from constatnt nightmares to constant nauesia.

so far, remicade has been like a godsend. it essentially allows her to lead a normal life. i'll ask her for more info on it when she gets home. i beleive she goes in for treatments once every 6 weeks.

i'll definitely get more info though. my stepfather said that its highly effective, but also dangerous, so i'll definitely see about getting better info on it for you.
 
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