Latest News on an old killer...

As many of you may or may not know, I have a keen interest in History, especially the time period of the 14th Century. You cannot study the 14th Century without at some point encountering the Black Death. Even today, the epidemic that killed close to a third of the population of Europe is interesting to many who study history, medicine, and diseases. In a recent news story from Yahoo News I found this. (below) Now I have more info that I can bore people with when giving historical demos! (not that I bore people, because if I did, no one would ask me back again!) Here is the full story...

Later!

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Black Death that decimated populations in Europe and elsewhere during the middle of the 14th century may not have been a blindly indiscriminate killer, as some experts have believed. An analysis of 490 skeletons from a London cemetery for Black Death victims demonstrated that the infection did not affect everyone equally, two U.S. scientists said on Monday.
While many perfectly healthy people certainly were cut down, those already in poor health prior to the arrival of the plague were more likely to have perished, they found.
"A lot of people have assumed that the Black Death killed indiscriminately, just because it had such massive mortality," anthropologist Sharon DeWitte of the University at Albany in New York, said in a telephone interview.
People already in poor health often are more vulnerable in epidemics. "But there's been a tradition of thinking that the Black Death was this unique case where no one was safe and if you were exposed to the disease that was it. You had three to five days, and then you were dead," DeWitte said.
The plague epidemic of 1347 to 1351 was one of the deadliest recorded in human history, killing about 75 million people, according to some estimates, including more than a third of Europe's population.
DeWitte analyzed skeletons unearthed from the East Smithfield cemetery in London, dug especially for plague victims and excavated in the 1980s, for bone and teeth abnormalities that would show that people had health problems before they died of plague.
She found such abnormalities in many skeletons, suggesting these people had experienced malnutrition, iron deficiencies and infections well before succumbing to the Black Death.
The proportion of people with such signs of frailty in the cemetery, compared to those who appeared to have been of robust health before the epidemic, indicated that the infection was somewhat selective in who it killed, DeWitte and Pennsylvania State University anthropologist James Wood reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Some experts have thought the Black Death -- named after the black spots the bubonic form of the plague caused on the skin -- killed indiscriminately regardless of age, sex or level of health because it was so virulent and the European population so immunologically unprepared, DeWitte and Wood wrote.
"The Black Death was highly virulent and undoubtedly killed many otherwise healthy people who would have been unlikely to die under normal-mortality conditions," they wrote. But people already in poor health were more likely to die, they wrote.
Many scientists think the plague was caused by Yersinia pestis, a bacterial disease spread by fleas from rats. It still kills between 100 and 200 people a year.
The Black Death pandemic thought to have begun in Asia, then spread into the Middle East, Africa and Europe.
"On average, it killed between 30 to 50 percent of affected populations. But we know that there were some areas where mortality was even higher. So there would have been villages that were completely wiped out," DeWitte said.
Other experts now think the Black Death may have been caused not by bubonic plague but by a viral hemorrhagic fever, similar to the disease caused by the Ebola or dengue viruses.
(Editing by Maggie Fox and Cynthia Osterman)

Exploring the Spirit...

Recently the Pastor of my church and I have embarked upon a new adventure... one that involved deliberate and intensive research in to the spirit... spirit of alcohol that is. Yes, we have begun to brew/vint/ferment wine! It was something that I was interested back in my college days when I was involved in the Society for Creative Anachronism and was involved in the brewing of beer, wine and mead. It was not for the purpose of having a cheap source of alcohol, as I do not drink much, but rather for the love of learning and experimenting with something could be made and then shared. I mentioned this to him in passing and it just so happened that we were both interested in doing this so we have invested a bit in the equipment and supplies and currently have a Merlot and Liebfraumilch in the primary and secondary fermenters. We are very close to delivering our first "children" and finding them good homes. (Bottling and sharing them) It will be at least a month before they are truly ready to drink, but we will have to do a taste test to see if we have succeeded in our efforts. I will let you know how things are progressing. The working name for our winery is "Red Shirt Winery. Home of the Live Long and Prosper Wines." (Yeah, both he and I are Star Trek fans...)

I have always liked wine and am endeavoring to increase my knowledge of not just wine making but understanding the different wines and what is a good or a not so good wine. I can highly recommend the book by Kevin Zraly, Windows on the World: Complete Wine Course, 2008 edition. It is fun book to read, packed with information, and probably the best handbook on learning how to read wine, pick wine and taste or enjoy wine. If you like wine, then get this book.

Remember this one thing though about wine. A good wine is any wine that you like or fits your needs. What might be trash to someone else, might be just what you are looking for.

Prost!

What I wished I had said...

When a member of our Boy Scout troop died in a drowning accident, I talked to the boys in our troop about life and what to do with it. I tried to give them my thoughts, but it did not come out very well. Here is what I wished I had said.

When you wake up in the morning, you do not expect that you will be dead before the afternoon arrives, but yet sometimes, bad things happen, and death does come. So live your life like there may be no tomorrow. Life should be treated like money; it should be spent and not saved. Spend your life well and not frivolously or on waste full things. Use it to its fullest amount. Don't save it hoping to wait for something great to come along. Go out and try new things that excite you. Do things that scare you! Ask the prettiest girl in the room to dance with you... you never know what might happen. Eat dessert first! Get out of your comfort zone and risk a little. Don't be unwise with your life, because like money, spending your life unwisely or in stupid, or dangerous ways, only wastes it. As a young person, you are given this feeling of immortality. Let that feeling enbolden you to try new and exciting things, but don't forget that you are NOT immortal. But not living life to its fullest and best is just as good as being dead.



Later!

Whew! It has been a rough start to 2008!

Yep, the title pretty much sums it up! 2008 has been a very rough one so far for me and members of my family. It actually began before Christmas, with my dad getting ill and going to the hospital for weakness and internal bleeding. Just before that he fell while getting a dialysis treatment and although he got lucky and didn't break anything, he was quite sore and bed ridden for a number of days. Then right around New Years, he goes back and ends up in the hospital over the New Years Holiday. Again, nothing was found to be wrong, even though we family members knew it was more possible bleeding in his gut. No real action was taken by the doctors at this time, so he went home with nothing new for treatment for his ailments. Then, on the 8th of Jan, our area was socked with a huge amount of rainfall, flooding many areas that normally do not flood. We did get some water in our basement, but it was nothing compared to what others had. The towns of Watseka and Pontiac looked much like scenes from Hurricane Katrina. Check out this link for an aireal view of the flooding in Watseka. http://www.timesrepublic.info/articles/2008/01/16/local_video/video999.txt Worst of all, one of the Boy Scout Leaders in my troop was driving to work in the early morning and was taken off the road by the storm waters, and due to a number of reasons, one of which was an irrational fear of water, he was drowned in his truck. He was only 24 years old, and a great guy. It was a huge shock to our little community. Our troop paid him honor with parade guards during his funeral and we hope to put up a memorial for him at out Scout hut. He was way too young to be lost like that. And to think that he died from the one thing that scared him the most...

And then on the 13th, after visiting my father to see how he was, it was discovered that he was actually worse off that we all thought. Many of us felt that he was on his last legs. Around midnight that day, he complained of all over pain and was rushed to the hospital. After what was truly touch and go for about two days, we discovered that he had lost large amounts of blood due to internal bleeding and that caused a heart attack. (first one I can recall in my family) Again,we all thought these were his last days on earth. It was really a tough time for all of us. My sister and I have not talked so much on the phone to one another ever! We were constantly getting updates on what was happening. Many people were hoping for the best and saying their prayers and it must have worked, because, to our disbelief, our dad was released from the hospital a mere 4 days after all this. My dad says he was half dead. I disagree. I think he was 3/4 dead. To think that he would be home so soon was incredible! It is a good and happy ending to a long story, and I hope that the rest of the year will not be so dramatic!

Later!

a short for what it's worth...

Heard on a recent documentary about the history of video games:

Girls play with dolls. Boys don't play with dolls, they play with Action Figures. Adults don't play with action figures or dolls, they play with Avatars.

Whether you play massive online multiplayer games like World or Warcraft, or Second Life, I guess that we never stopped playing with our toys. It is only a progression of time and maturity that changes the kind of doll or action figure we play with.


and did you know, that in Second Life, there is a virtual $2.7 million dollars used in transactions per month? It is only a short time before this becomes real money.