By The Way...

Compounding my morbid streak from the other day with that link I warned you not to click on, an interesting story about how, when it comes right down to it, we're all descended from cannibals. What's really interesting is the suggestion that cannibalism stopped not because people thought it was immoral, but because they were flaunting their wealth:

The question is why has cannibalism, by and large, stopped? The answer has less to do with innate decency or moral progress than with status. For most of the hunter-gatherer period a community could not afford not to eat its dead or its dead enemies. With farming came a certain pride in displaying a life of plenty. Human burials and cremations were (and are) acts of conspicuous consumption.

Burial: The 5000 BC version of the vacation home and cellular phone. I think I like our version of conspicious consumption better -- especially because it conspicuously does not involve consumption.

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