What caused the Black Plague? Unsolved Mystery until now

Discussion in 'Free Thoughts' started by markl323, Jun 23, 2011.

  1. markl323 Registered Senior Member

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    I sloved it

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    Man eats live rat in Facebook video, PETA rolls in

    via Facebook
    By Helen A.S. Popkin
    "Facebook helps you connect and share with the people in your life," and get busted by the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals when that video of you eating a live rat shows up on the social network.

    Wannabe "Jackass" Andy Ray Harris, 31, pleaded not guilty to aggravated cruelty yesterday in a Tooele, Utah court. He was charged with the "class A" misdemeanor after PETA forwarded a link to a video on Facebook which appears to show Harris eating a live rat to the City Attorney’s Office.

    "Seen jackass the movie we’ve got it at Spencers Arts," reads the grammatically creative caption accompanying the video. Spencer Arts is a tattoo and piercing parlor in Tooele. Harris, reportedly recognized by police from their previous interactions, himself has tattoos aplenty.

    Tattoos, of course, no way indicate a predisposition for animal cruelty, as evidenced by the fine people of Rescue Ink. The graphic video, which shows Harris dropping a live 2- to 3-inch hairless baby rat in his mouth and chewing dramatically while he's cheered on by others, is pretty much all the indication you — or the court — needs.

    The attorney for Harris "asked for more time to explore a couple of motions he was considering," the Deseret News reports, and a pretrial conference was scheduled for July 19.

    Outside the court, neither Harris or his mother had comment for the media, though the newspaper story indicates that the baby rat was allegedly set to be fed to a pet snake. Snakes are not known masticators, and it remains unclear whether the reptile would've videotaped the meal and posted it on Facebook.



    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Death
    The Black Death was one of the most devastating pandemics in human history, peaking in Europe between 1348 and 1350. It is widely thought to have been an outbreak of plague caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis, an argument supported by recent forensic research, although this view has been challenged by a number of scholars. Thought to have started in China, it travelled along the Silk Road and had reached the Crimea by 1346. From there, probably carried by Oriental rat fleas residing on the black rats that were regular passengers on merchant ships, it spread throughout the Mediterranean and Europe.

    The Black Death is estimated to have killed 30% – 60% of Europe's population,[1] reducing the world's population from an estimated 450 million to between 350 and 375 million in 1400. This has been seen as having created a series of religious, social and economic upheavals, which had profound effects on the course of European history. It took 150 years for Europe's population to recover. The plague returned at various times, killing more people, until it left Europe in the 19th century.
     
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  3. SomethingClever Registered Senior Member

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    boy, getting eaten alive sounds awful. what a jackass.
     
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  5. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    I've never seen such a high estimate but 30% is commonly cited. This actually had a salutary effect on the European economy because everyone who survived was 50% wealthier.

    The Romans were great civil engineers and had built sewers, but after the collapse of their empire Europe basically became one gigantic puddle of shit. Their idea of street cleaning was to run a herd of pigs through a town once a year and let them eat all the refuse--and turn it into fresh pig shit. They weren't big on cleanliness at all so their cities were gigantic rat nests. It's no wonder the Plague took such a toll.

    The Jews had always considered cleanliness a virtue, so their shetls were much cleaner than the Gentile towns, and as a result they weren't as hard hit by the plague. Naturally the Christians could only find one explanation for this: the Jews were in league with the Devil.

    Medieval European Christianity had some absolutely bizarre doctrines. They believed that immersion in water was a sin, so nobody bathed. Their water was so polluted that it was undrinkable, so they drank beer and were constantly buzzed. This helps explain why the Dark Ages were so dark. When coffee was imported from Ethiopia and they were suddenly buzzed on caffeine instead of alcohol, the average IQ of the continent must have increased by about 50%. That's when they had the Renaissance, Reformation and Enlightenment.
     
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  7. John99 Banned Banned

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    An intelligent civilization would eliminate rats.

    and cockroaches.
     
  8. John99 Banned Banned

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    I would never eat a live rat and think it is a special kind of stupid that peole would do that. My feeling is that i care more about people than those.

    Well lets put it this way: They are dangerous, they compete for food, they shit all over etc...etc.
     
  9. nietzschefan Thread Killer Valued Senior Member

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    Hmmm...like Alberta.
     
  10. Me-Ki-Gal Banned Banned

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    I think it is Brazil ? Were they eat rats ? I think so ? Or back in the 80s the poor people in the slums of Brazil ate rats and felt lucky to be able to hunt rats for food . They came up with ingenious ways of cooking em . The picture I saw was rats on a stick after cooking on an open fire . The young lad had several he was going to sell on the open market. National Geographic is responsible for that bit of knowledge. I suppose it is no different than the cultures that eat dog .
    O.K. Mad Dog Murphy a guy from my High School ( I think his name was Murphy , might have been Morgan ) He bit the head off a rat just as they were taking the yearbook picture of the science club . Yeah little Buddies , The school was not at all happy about it , Mad Dog got a reputation . I think it was inspired by , by , by , Ozzie Osborn . Might of been Frank Zappa , Maybe Fraggle remembers ? On stage he would stomp little animals and I do believe he would bit heads off too
     
  11. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    Frank Zappa (an American from right around the corner in Baltimore, where they have "Frank Zappa Day" every August) was an iconoclast but he was professional and civilized. He never hurt animals. You're thinking of Ozzy Osbourne, who is from ultra-civilized England.

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    He bit the head off of a pigeon(?) a few times, just to be outrageous. It was a reminder that carnivals used to employ people called "geeks" (if you've ever wondered where that word came from and couldn't decide if you appreciated being called that), who would bite the head off of a live chicken... and people would pay to see it. This was going on up into the early 20th century. Some of you have grandparents who are old enough to remember it but I guarantee that they won't want to talk about it.

    Of course Ozzy has tamed down like most people do when they get older. One night in a show a fan tossed something black up onto the stage and it happened to land right at his feet. He picked it up and thought, "Oh how cute. Somebody threw me a rubber toy bat for nostalgia." He bit the head off, and only then did he find out that it was not rubber, it was a real dead bat.

    He had to go to the hospital for rabies treatment--which is much more rigorous than a simple shot in the arm if there's a chance you may be already infected.
     
  12. Mr MacGillivray Banned Banned

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    This is probably the most uninformed piece of misinformation I read lately.

    Wages increased due to the black death. There were less workers after all. But inflation grew just as fast, or even faster.

    for farmers

    Servants did better,but then their masters got fucked.

    The only reason why peasants seem to be doing better is because of a side effect of the black plague. Bad farming land could be abandoned. Whole villages were emptied and abandoned.

    changes had to be made to adjust to a shrinking economy.

    The European economy at the close of the Middle Ages (c. 1500) differed fundamentally from the pre—plague economy. In the countryside, a freer peasant derived greater material benefit from his toil. Fixed rents if not outright ownership of land had largely displaced customary dues and services and, despite low grain prices, the peasant more readily fed himself and his family from his own land and produced a surplus for the market. Yields improved as reduced population permitted a greater focus on fertile lands and more frequent fallowing, a beneficial phenomenon for the peasant. More pronounced socioeconomic gradations developed among peasants as some, especially more prosperous ones, exploited the changed circumstances, especially the availability of land. The peasant's gain was the lord's loss. As the Middle Ages waned, the lord was commonly a pure rentier whose income was subject to the depredations of inflation.

    One group lost, the other improved their situation. The rest was dead.

    Maybe we need another black plague again. It actually stimulated the restructuring of the economy. Exactly what we need right now.

    Maybe a nice nuclear war will do.

    http://eh.net/encyclopedia/article/Routt.Black.Death
     
  13. GeoffP Caput gerat lupinum Valued Senior Member

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    Yeah, the peasants could push for wages. Strangled a lot of lords; which is probably the main reason sheepfold culture started up. Which was good and bad for lots of people.
     
  14. nietzschefan Thread Killer Valued Senior Member

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    Yes enough of these shitty little wars...let's have a BIG ONE.
     
  15. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    Uh, baby rats are often eaten by their mothers.
     
  16. GeoffP Caput gerat lupinum Valued Senior Member

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    And yet one can never say the same of lawyers.
     
  17. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    Well then just be patient. The second derivative of population has been negative for thirty years, and will cause the first derivative to drop below zero within 60-100 years. At that point you'll have your scenario of a shrinking population.

    This should be quite an adventure for the human race, because every modern economic model relies on a steadily increasing supply of producers and consumers.

    Meanwhile, we're going to run out of fresh water and that's what the next wars will be fought over. Unless we can accelerate global warming. There's more water in the atmosphere between ice ages so rainfall is greater.
     
  18. Cifo Day destroys the night, Registered Senior Member

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    Also, from 14th-century chronicler Henry Knighton on the Black Plague:
    Everything was low in price because of the fear of death, for very few people took care of riches or property of any kind. A man could have a horse that had been worth 40s for half a mark [6s 8d] ... the King sent proclamation into all the counties that reapers and other labourers should not take more than they had been accustomed to take, under penalty appointed by statute. But labourers were so lifted up and obstinate that they would not listen to the King's command, but if anyone wished to have them he had to give them what they wanted, and either lose his fruit and crops, or satisfy the lofty and covetous wishes of the workmen. ... And afterwards the King had many labourers arrested, and sent them to prison; many withdrew themselves and went into the forests and woods; and those who were taken were heavily fined. Their ringleaders were made to swear that they would not take daily wages beyond the ancient custom, and then they were freed from prison. And in like manner was done with the other craftsmen in the boroughs and villages.

    Apparently, some items were cheap, but labor was expensive (due to shortage of laborers?).

    Ancient Italians enjoyed eating [cooked] dormice that they kept in pots called ghirariums. Throw in your table scraps as if it were a garbage pail (but food for them), and when you feel like having dormouse for dinner, simply lift the lid and pull a few of them out.

    From Wikipedia on Roman cuisine:
    Hares and rabbits were bred, the former with little success, making them as much as four times more expensive than rabbits. Hares therefore were regarded as a luxury; shoulder of hare was especially favoured. Newborn rabbits or rabbit fetuses, known as laurices prepared and consumed without evisceration [:bugeye:], were considered a delicacy.

    And let's not forget Philippino baluts.
     
  19. Light Travelling It's a girl O lord in a flatbed Ford Registered Senior Member

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    Why ultra civilised England... the country that has highest drug abuse statistics in Europe, the highest teenage pregnancy rate in europe, the country that brought you footbal hoolaganism, punk rock and concentration camps???
     
  20. Light Travelling It's a girl O lord in a flatbed Ford Registered Senior Member

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