Friday, May 29, 2009

Bull Figher gets the point



Isreal Lancho is gored by a bull. "Spanish bullfighting fans witnessed the ultimate ring horror on Wednesday when matador Israel Lancho was gored." Is this really the ultimate ring horror? Have you asked the bulls killed regularly in the ring? Ask this bull how he felt about the event? Who is talking to the bull on this one?

For the fighter, things are serious: "According to press reports, Lancho had a 25 centimeter-deep stomach wound that surgeons operated on."

Sunday, May 17, 2009

Humans kill & eat Neanderthals

This from the Observer confirming human animality at a brutal scale and with ecological results that echo present concerns:
One of science's most puzzling mysteries - the disappearance of the Neanderthals - may have been solved. Modern humans ate them, says a leading fossil expert.

The controversial suggestion follows publication of a study in the Journal of Anthropological Sciences about a Neanderthal jawbone apparently butchered by modern humans. Now the leader of the research team says he believes the flesh had been eaten by humans, while its teeth may have been used to make a necklace.

Fernando Rozzi, of Paris's Centre National de la Récherche Scientifique, said the jawbone had probably been cut into to remove flesh, including the tongue. Crucially, the butchery was similar to that used by humans to cut up deer carcass in the early Stone Age. "Neanderthals met a violent end at our hands and in some cases we ate them," Rozzi said.

The idea will provoke considerable opposition from scientists who believe Neanderthals disappeared for reasons that did not involve violence. Neanderthals were a sturdy species who evolved in Europe 300,000 years ago, made complex stone tools and survived several ice ages before they disappeared 30,000 years ago - just as modern human beings arrived in Europe from Africa.