Raw foodists don't eat anything that's been heated over 110F [oops, 116, looks like]. (And it's mostly a subset of veganism, though I gather there are some raw foodists who include tartare/carpaccio/gravlax in their diet as well.)

Oh, the internets. The things you can learn. So apparently the raw foodists do only eat raw foods. Huh. And I thought that scene in Love Actually about the Fruitarians was just there for comic relief. Raw Foods

I have to say that this FAQ is wholly unconvincing to me:

Is this a "new" fad diet or something?

Not at all! Consider the following: during the vast majority of our existence on this planet, what choices did we have for food? What COULD we have eaten during the first 10-50,000 years (or more) before we discovered fire, tools and implements to kill animals? The original diet of homo-sapiens MUST have consisted primarily of vegetables, fruits, and nuts! What other choices did we have? Clearly, a raw, plant based diet is the main food staple throughout the vast majority of the history of Humankind! Before Humans started killing and eating dead animal carcass, we ate fruits, leaves, nuts, berries, etc...

Thousands of years ago people did a ton of nasty and stank things. Doesn't mean I would like to do them today. Hmmmph.

This is making me think of the whole raw food thing. Is it just that raw food devotees can never eat anything cooked, ever? Because that would severely suck. Or at least it would for me.

Yup, I know a couple who are raw foodies. Hmm, they had a child last year - I wonder how they handle that?

So its a very old old old fad. Like bell bottoms.

The original diet of homo-sapiens MUST have consisted primarily of vegetables, fruits, and nuts! What other choices did we have?

Other than all the raw meat we obviously evolved teeth for?

Oh, and all the stuff we cooked using the fire we discovered/invented.

Junk science pisses me off so very, very much.

Just to clarify, I am not saying that being a raw foodist is nasty and stank. Just that I'm not quite swept away by that argument.

I'm cranky, so that must mean I need some hot, fried, over 110 degree food in my belly.

I tried a cleanse a few years ago that involved three to five days of raw foods, and both times the headaches by day 2 were so intense that I caved. I was told that was normal, but why volunteer for head pain?

There is a Fruitarian joke in another movie, but I can't quite remember it. Maybe Peter's Friends, as I rather imagine Rita Rudner saying it in my head? I've never seen Love, Actually, but I learned about Fruitarians in a movie. I think.

ETA:

Apparantly it was Notting Hill, and it was Hugh Grant saying it. Somehow in my brain I mixed up Hugh Grant and Rita Rudner.

Julianne Moore's character in Safe goes on an all-fruit diet, but I don't think the word "frutarian" is used. It was definitely a running gag in The Kiki & Herb Show (it's why Kiki only drinks Alizé), but I don't know if anyone else on the board would have seen that.

This is too fucking cool:

There is an important sequence of numbers called "the moments of the Riemann zeta function." Although we know abstractly how to define it, mathematicians have had great difficulty explicitly calculating the numbers in the sequence. We have known since the 1920s that the first two numbers are 1 and 2, but it wasn't until a few years ago that mathematicians conjectured that the third number in the sequence may be 42.

My dumb question of the day:

This was linked on LJ

[link]

What do I click on to take the test? Is there something wrong with my browser? Or my brain? I can only find 2 potentially correct links on the page the "take the test" which refreshes the page, and the logo in the upper left, which takes me to the home page.