World gender gap report.

…is not sexy.

Jamestown was a very unhealthy place to live in the early 1600s because it was essentially in a malarial swamp. People would go through a “weathering period” in which they contracted malaria and either died or recovered–the recovery rates for women, for unknown reasons, were much higher than that of men, and that combined with how many fewer women than men came over in the first place contributed to the prevalence of women marrying two, three, and more times–there was a high demand for widows, and women married VERY young, as young as 12 or so, when the average age of marriage in England among all classes was in the early 20s for women and the average age among the upper classes was fairly lower but not extremely so.

I had a thought today: It was a MALARIAL swamp. Malaria can only be endemic to regions that have an average year-round temp below 19C (60.4F). Washington, DC, had similar problems in the early 1800s, with malarial summers that would kill hundreds of people.

Today, there are still localized outbreaks at just about any major port when an infected mosquito hitches a ride in a shipping container or on an airplane and infects a local body of water. However, malarial infestation can’t continue from year to year or become truly endemic without a warm average annual temperature–winter otherwise does it in.

Interesting fact: Today, the year-round average temp for Washington, D.C. is 57.5 degrees, below the “malaria-free” cutoff temperature. While it is quite possible to get summer outbreaks of malaria carried by an infected person from a place where malaria is endemic, it is NOT possible for malaria to be endemic at such a temperature today. Either malaria has become less harder over the last 400-150 years (which I find very unconvincing), or places like Jamestown and early Washington, DC, were warmer, on average, than they are today.

This makes reconstructions of historic temperature that look like this one rather suspicious.

I’d really like to see other historical data. For example, we know that winters in England got a lot colder than they do now because of the records of the Thames freezing over in the 1500s through 1700s and the snowfalls from the 1600s through the 1800s. (The high middle ages was quite a balmy and delightful period, as was the Bronze Age. The early middle ages pretty much sucked when it came to weather–horribly cold and miserable in Europe. Lots of rain and rotting crops. If you ever get sent back in time, try to avoid it, then.)

BTW, this in no way implies that the reason that DC and VA are now malaria-free (or close to it) is because it’s cooler. Warm temps are necessary but not sufficient for malaria. New Orleans is essentially free of endemic malaria, as well, even though it’s in the right temperature zone for malaria. Air conditioning, modern sanitation, and mosquito control have made malaria a thing of the past in developed countries. It does explain, however, why relatively richer areas of southern China have endemic malaria and more northern coastal regions do not. In this case, all conditions except for temperature exist in those malaria-free northern areas, so there is still no malaria. Another scrap of evidence for historically warmer temps in VA and DC exists in the fact that malaria continued to plague New Orleans for decades after it last gave DC or VA any real trouble. There is, however, the possibility that these marginal areas were more greatly affected by small changes in society. However, the sheer level of historical infections in the region makes this a bit shaky.

It’s often noted that European queens were, on average, much better rulers than kings. I don’t subscribe to the theory that women are better/smarter/wiser than men–I believe that ability is more or less evenly distributed in both, though men tend to have certain strengths (geometrical thinking) and women others (algebraic thinking), and men tend to suffer from more conditions leading to mental retardation and also have, on average, greater potential for developing physical strength. (No, I don’t at all believe that more men than women are extremely gifted, either. More men than women are tested, just like more whites than blacks are tested, for very high IQ. “Cosmic balance” thinking is all that supports the idea that there are more men than women on the high end of the spectrum, which is complete nonsense.)

Part of this has to do with what it took to remain in power as a queen. A king could be a blubbering moron, but he’d often remain on the throne due to the coincidence of his birth, even if he really had no power whatsoever in his own country. There was almost always someone in the wings waiting to take away a possible queen’s power, however. So a woman who made it, as a ruler, could only be so bad or her rule would be extremely short.

But there are also some interesting stereotypes that helped queens strengthen their countries. Queens took the role for propaganda as a mother or wife to their country. They portrayed themselves as nurturing and guiding it. They tended to concentrate on domestic programs that led to stronger trade, greater border security, increased productions, improved farming and the like. They were rarely extravagant spenders because, among other things, the greatest possible expense for a nation was usually war and the maintenance of an army, and they stayed away from those things because they did not work with the image campaign that seemed most befitting to an female ruler.

So while a mediocre but excessive king, wanting to fulfill the image of a virile male warrior, might go off half-cocked and start a disastrous war that leaves the country with less land and more debt, a mediocre queen feeling pressure to be the Best Queen Ever would be doubly chary of war and would instead indulge in fits of piety or motherliness instead–which is quite a bit better for the country.

My parents came to MD for Christmas because DH has no holiday. It’s gone pretty darned well so far.

On Sunday, they arrived and we ate together at Panera. Oh, and DH broke my chainsaw. GRRRR!!!!!

On Christmas Eve, Dad wired the kitchen so that I could bring in my Maytag Gemini from the garage–something everyone really appreciated because it meant I could actually bake without things ending up half charred, half underdone. The rest of the day, Mom, Dad, and I spent outside assembling the Bear’s monstrous playset–at least partially. The parts were not numbered, so the first thing I suggest was to number them all, which helped tremendously in the following days of construction. (Yes, dayS.) DH, my brother, and the Bear played Guitar Hero in the living room. DH also got his hair cut. That evening, after light failed, I pulled out the dinner I’d premade for that day and then spent the rest of the evening making chocolate chip cookies and banana bread in my oven.

On Christmas, I threw in the citrus-bay-onion turkey and we opened presents. The Bear got some cool books from DH’s parents, the swing set from my parents, a plasma car (combo b-day/Christmas) from an aunt/uncle, a small John Deere model from another, and a bike from us, along with a small set of used plastic SCUBA divers and soldiers from my cousins and games in his stocking. (He’d already gotten the movie Dragonslayer from the neighbors. No, he was not scared. And, of course, he was rooting for the dragon.) The other aunt/uncle set will be sending VeggieTales movies for b-day/X-mas.

My parents spent the day working on the playset. I spent the day in the kitchen. DH, my brother, and the Bear watched Dragonslayer and then spent the remainder playing games, except that DH helped carry some stuff from my parents’ truck and then helped clean the kitchen three times. I was WAY behind on cooking since I didn’t have Christmas Eve to put together all the dishes since I was still baking then, so it was a rush and I even made stuffing from a box and only made drop biscuits and no yeast rolls. After dinner, I got all the meat off the turkey that I could. The white meat and the best of the dark meat went into be eaten with gravy, stuffing, and potatoes and in sandwiches while most of the dark meat went into the Crock pot for a Catalina/cranberry recipe. The remainder of the meat was boiled off the bones. I’ve gotten the biggest bones thrown away, but I haven’t yet gone through everything to get every scrap of meat. (I also had my neighbors’ turkey breast carcass–the Demonspawn–that Mrs. Demonspawn did not want to bother with. They are, BTW, nicknamed Demonspawn not because I don’t like them–I do–but because the previous owner’s daughter of our house acted as if the fact that they do not mulch trees signified that they were from the netherworld. Therefore, Demonspawn.) I also made apple crisp and Chex Mix. I’m not even keeping up a pretense of a good diet over these two weeks.

Today, my parents worked on the playset all morning. It’s now nearly finished. In the afternoon, my parents, my brother, the Bear, and I went into DC (DH was at work, poor thing. He got sick and lost his Personal Time Off hours. Since he hasn’t been working there long–did I mention that he got laid off AGAIN?–he didn’t have many in the first place.) I thought it would be hairy, but it was pretty calm. We went to the National Academies of Science museum (where the Bear got a free DVD about DNA replication–cool stuff!), then to the National Portrait Gallery (which the Bear thought was a drag until he saw the portraits of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and John Quincy Adams, about whom we have been reading feverishly in preparation to going to Philadelphia), and then to the Spy Museum (the Bear loved the duct again–of course–and thought the cars were cool, but that’s about it).

Turkeys went down to $.76/lb for the nicer brand, so after dinner (chicken in an apricot-raisin sauce over almond couscous–prepped ahead again), I tossed in the extra turkey I bought. Now I’m waiting for it to finish cooking so I can cut it up and do another crock pot recipe with the dark meat and throw the carcass into the stew pot for the final go round. (I also need to do the pumpkin pasta–a modification of a Rachel Ray recipe–tonight so it’s ready for dinnertime tomorrow.)

Tomorrow, we’ll likely go to Philadelphia. I was an idiot and locked my keys in the car, so I had to borrow a car seat from the Demonspawns’ house (I have keys because I’m feeding the fish and the cats that adopted them) and we took my dad’s truck, but tomorrow, we can take the van and be much more comfortable. If the weather goes well, Dad will be out on the Chesapeake fishing on Friday, and Mom and I will finish up the playset.

I also want to note that the Bear was the only child at church to color the angel ornament they were making all black. Why black? Because black is the color of bad guys, of course. So apparently, I currently have a fallen angel hanging from my tree. Nice.

Are you a historical writer? Do you just like old stuff? Take a look.

When looking at historical kids’ books, it’s important to realize why adults liked them AND why kids liked them.

Adults looked for positive moral messages.

Children–especially boys–looked for gruesomeness and funny pictures.

These two converged quite well in a kind of admonishing genre. Some of the messages really were incredibly important for the times–like a vivid warning not to play with matches! Others conveyed timeless messages in a way that is a lot less sweet and gentle than what we’re used to. Even though the book uses language that would now be considered racist (”blackamoor”), the admonition to not mock people for the way they are made–skin color, etc–is one that plenty of modern picture books make, too. The delivery of this lesson is just a good deal more abrupt than anything that we’d have seen in the last 75 years.

Event he initial story–Caw Caw–has a comprehensible place in children’s literature. There is a long tradition of “dead bird” nursery rhymes, and in a time where Daddy would very probably go out with a gun in the morning and come back with a sack full of birds or a brace of rabbits in the evening, animals dying in talking-animal stories wasn’t at all shocking, as it would be now. Talking animals weren’t equated with people as they are now–they were still, simply, animals that talked.

I am trying to eat very few refined carbs. Well, I made banana bread for my dad for Christmas, and I caved and had some for breakfast. Oooooh, it was soooo good! But now I am so queasy that I’m about to barf because I haven’t hit my system with something like this in a couple of weeks. *sniff, sniff*

A blog entry about declining childbirth class numbers.

The idea that breathing can relieve pain in childbirth–much less fulfill all the nonsense promised by Lamaze and Bradley books–is beyond silly. And exactly the kind of thing a male doctor would dream up.

Instead, women are going to midwives and doulas for advice–AKA, those who have a clue–and skipping the puffing and blowing.

“Conductorcise“

Who would have ever imagined?

I hope that ICUs take this to heart. Letting patients SLEEP would be a very cheap way of improving medical outcomes.