[MUD-Dev] Re: Nutirtion and a Resource Question

[coder at ibm.net]

On 23/05/97 at 10:44 PM, Jeff Kesselman <jeffk at tenetwork.com> said:
>Right now I'm workign on a political/economic overgame that drives
>the dynamics of this comemrical MUD Im workign on.

>I have run into two questions that maybe you nutritionists and
>historians can hel pme with, if you don't mind...

>(1) I have a VERY simple set of nutritional catagories... basicly
>grains, meats, fruits, nuts. What proportions of these must a person 
>eat per time period tostay helthy?

You've just placed yourself at the centre of the vegetarian vs
omnivore wars, and at the centre of the man is a opportunist omnivore
vs cursoial hunter war.  Have fun.

I suggest getting a basic nutrition book.  A couple fairly simple ones
that would probably do:

  Anything by Adele Davis.

  "Feel like a Million" (forget author)

<<Note: I'm in the "cursorial hunter" camp based on anatomical
structure>>

>    What symptoms do a difficiency of each one create?

Unfortunately there are no good single references here that I know of. 
H C A Vogel's "The Nature Doctor" is not a bad one if you read between
the lines for this specific data (you'll 4nd up doing a lot of
cross-referencing to Adele Davis etc to find the nutritive contents of
the food he recommends).  

>    How long til symptoms first onset?

Always a tough call.  A lot of this is based on prior nutritional and
physical abuse history going back all the way to conception, let alone
genetic, hereditary, or personal tendancies in various directions.  

>(2) There are basicly 5 kinds of tool construction materails
>available in this
>
>    world: wood, iron, obsidian, glass, ceramic
>    I knwo the properties of all but ceramic, which I am not clear
>on.  What can be made from ceramic?  Can you get an edge on a ceramic
>object?  What about tensile strength and weight?

Without high technology (which enables extremely high firing
temperatures), ceramics tend to be incredibly strong under
compression, but have close to zero tensile strength and are generall
fragile and prone to shattering.

To a large extent ceramic can be accurately treated as synonymous with
glass.

Yup, you can get an edge.  If you have sufficient firing temperatures
and control over the exact formulation (we're talking pretty advance
chemistry here) of the cermaic you can even prduce an edge finer and
more durable that you'd ever get on carbon steel.  

--
J C Lawrence                               Internet: claw at null.net
----------(*)                              Internet: coder at ibm.net
...Honourary Member of Clan McFud -- Teamer's Avenging Monolith...