Just in case you are living in a place where there are ticks, or are planning to visiting one: tick season, at least in Germany, has started early this year, due to the very mild winter, and we've had several days now when we picked off three or even four ticks from our cat. (They were still wandering through her fur, looking for a good spot - our luck.)

Ticks and moths are the two pests that really get me riled, and itching to kill. them. all. Moths because they eat wool and silk (yes, thank you Captain Obvious, I'm sure no one of the blog readers here would ever have guessed), and ticks because they can transmit both an meningoencephalitis and Lyme disease, and I just find them freaky.

Here's the thing about ticks that the wikipedia article does not tell you: They are hardy. Really hardy. They will survive immersion in water (even water that has a drop of dishwashing detergent added) almost indefinitely. If you flush them down your toilet? They don't care. They might come back out of the drain, even. I know of three sure ways to kill a tick, and that is pouring boiling water over them, burning them, or smashing them to a pulp. In our household, the preferred method is an old pair of tweezers (the good ones don't take kindly to being flambé-d) and a lighter. Once that thing has shriveled to a black thing with glowing legs, it won't drink any more blood. (Sometimes they pop. Be wary of exploding tick in case you burn one that has already engorged itself.)

Another thing the Wiki article does not mention directly, unless you follow links: You cannot prevent getting Lyme's if an infected tick bites you; there's no vaccine against it. It is a weird sickness that may or may not cure itself spontaneously or linger on for ages, and it can have all kinds of weird effects. The best way to be safe against it is to try and prevent getting tick-bitten; if you have one, remove it safely as soon as possible (safe removal is pulling it out; a twisting motion might or might not help), put some disinfectant on the spot, keep in mind you had a tick and survey the bitten bit for infection - characteristic symptom is a red spot that grows outward, developing into a red ring. There's no guarantee that you get that ring if you got infected, though. (Yes, Lyme's is weird in a tricky kind of way. Didn't I mention it?) So if you develop symptoms from out of nowhere... you might want to ask your physician to test for Lyme's.

That said, Lyme's can be cured - antibiotics usually do the trick, the better the earlier you catch it. The meningoencephalitis is incurable once it has set on, so go get your vaccination shot if you are going to be in an area where you can get a tick. That's about all of Europe, folks. Don't risk your brains.

I stumbled across a blogpost yesterday that really, really touched me... written by Pat Rothfuss, and concerning charity, and why he does so much for charity.

Personally, I try to be a positive human being, and I try to believe in the good of others. I am generally very, very content about the many good things in my life; and I can sleep comfortably at night in a proper warm bed, unafraid of getting up tomorrow with no money, no home, no friends and no chances. That is a big thing, and more than enough to get a warm fuzzy feeling inside.
I also believe that if life were fair, there would be no hunger in the world and no utter poorness, my friends and family would never fall nastily ill (nobody cares for a cold or a small nuisance now and then), and everyone who was working honestly for a living should be able to lead a reasonably comfortable life off their income.

Unfortunately, life is not fair. There were illnesses and diagnoses of illnesses and deaths aplenty last year in the circles I move in, and there's nothing one can do against it but try to encourage and support those that live and remember, fondly, those that have stopped living. There's also war, and poverty, and misery, and lots more stuff going on in the world that I don't even really want to know about in detail, because it will mean I get a bellyache and become frustrated with how unfair the world is and lose sleep for a week. (It's a good thing there are petitions against a lot of political things in this flavour, and that these actually turn out to do some good. Much relieves my frustration and accompanying symptoms.)

I also know that I am not enough to change these big things. I can't make everyone become healthy, wealthy, and friendly to their fellow human beings. I am not the person who will develop a cure for cancer, or ring in world peace, or end all misery on the planet.

However, I've long tried to lead my life so that I can leave the world a little better. I try to be friendly to my fellow human beings, try to pay fair prices for crafts (and make others pay them, too!), spread the word about good things, and I believe that sometimes small acts can make a big difference - especially when there are more people involved.

So what Pat writes in his blog... really touched me. There you have someone trying to make the world a better place, and using his fanbase to help him do so. Thanks, Pat.

Professor John Munro, who has written an immense amount of publications about economy, with lots and lots about the importance of textiles in economy, has passed away on December 23, 2013.

Here is his obituary from the University of Toronto; here is his life story. He was a very interesting man for sure, and I'm sad that I never got to meet him.

I hope that the university will keep his homepage accessible; there are links and downloads to many of his papers, working papers, and course notes available on the page, and I've found a lot of things of interest there.

I have managed to empty out my distaff yesterday, so I was actually planning to go and take photographs of the dressing this morning. Then, however, I read some blogs. And was stunned.

Imagine you have a bridge that was built in the 13th century. There were repairs, sure, and major restauration after the war, and one of the three arches was then re-built with a larger opening for better passing of ships. Still... it's a piece of history.

There's such a bridge in Tournai, and it's in danger of being torn down to make way for a new bridge with even larger openings, in preparation of a channel whose realisation is not even a sure thing yet.

Luckily, we live in the Age of the Internet, and there's a petition against the demolition. (For those of you not reading French, "je signe" means "I sign", so that's the button you want.) The person who started the petition has also written up some info about the bridge and the project, and that's in English.

The usual remains to say - please sign, share, and nag your friends with it...

Yesterday I read about flour - especially bleached flour. Which was sorta new to me, bleached flour, erm - that stuff is almost white anyways?

Turns out that flour is actually getting bleached at least in the US, with stuff that I would not necessarily want close to my food thankyouverymuch. (In Germany, bleaching flour was banned in the 1950s. Thank you, Germany. Sometimes your rules are nice.)

With that still freshly in the back of my mind, I was not happy about hearing of TTIP this morning, brought to me by an email about a petition against it. Similarly to the ACTA thing of a while ago, now corporations and politicians want to make a secret trade agreement thingie that will allow them to do wild things to "non-tariff barriers to trade". Which is, basically, the rules about things like which food is ok to sell and which is not, thankyouverymuch. Or data security stuff.

The US folks, it seems, are afraid that such an agreement will make them have stricter rules for their markets. Others are more forthrightly declaring it's a bad idea - a betrayal of the public. It would also give companies the possibility to sue against laws that cut their profit due to some insignificant things such as, for example, banning the bleaching of flour. (Lawsuits like that have actually already happened. This is... wow.) Democracy, who needs that?

So, I don't care on which side you are standing - US or EU, I think it's not a good thing for those who don't happen to be in the saddle of one of the huge companies. If you agree (which I hope you do), please sign one of the petitions against it:
this one at Sum of Us or this one from Campact (German-Language, but you will manage, I'm sure).
Or both, for good measure.

Since it looks like there will be a meeting concerning the agreement on Monday, there's not so much time left - so if you can, please spread the word about it, too!

The links have been piling up again, so here you go - a whole stack of them:

An article about the education of upper-class women in the Middle Ages - I found that very interesting.

Diachronic Design is a blog and webpage concentrating on computers in archaeology - there's not too much content yet, but it could be worthwhile to watch.

Pompeii is crumbling (German blog Archaeologik posts links to Italian articles about collapses).

Doug has done the roundup and synopsis of the (many!) answers to his first Blogging Archaeology Carnival, "Why do you blog".

In case you haven't seen the box-turns-something-else yet, here is the link. (I think this is way, way cool. The only question I have in regards to similar folding thingies is - where in hell do you put the mattress? You still have to store that somewhere, right? And it will be... bed-sized. So no actual space-saving takes place.)

The British Library has a medieval manuscripts blog, covering for example the marginalia of the Gorleston Psalter.

A very interesting post on sharing data: Archaeology and Github (over on Powered by Osteons).

And finally, a (German-language) repository and database of old cooking recipes, dated 1646 until the 20th century.

Enjoy!

 First of all, if you've waited for your blog post much longer than usual yesterday, I'm sorry - seems that the blog did its glitchy thing again. That's the thing when I click "Publish" and it looks like it does, and everything is fine and dandy, but the post is in fact happily hanging out with the other drafts, unseen by the world.

And now: Time for some unrestrained linking around again!

Over at Archaeologik, there's a (German-language) post about a new-ish book called "Europe invents the Gypsies". The book came out in 2011, and this year it won a price. There are a few English links under that post, too, shedding light on the still rampant prejudice and stereotype about Roma.

If you are interested in reenactment as the re-enacting of conflicts, there's a blog called "Historically Speaking" that might be of interest to you. Myself, I'm more a living history person, but still find it quite interesting to hear some more about reenactment now and then.

Notorious Ph.D. writes about the "History Girls" piece that was published in the Daily Mail. It's Ye Olde Gender Issues, but Notorious has a really nice way of adressing that stuff. I enjoyed her article, anyway.

Have you ever thought about learning Finnish? If you have, you might want to laugh at this. Here, on the same blog, is an explanation why it looks like it looks. And if you'd like to try some Finnish humour without learning the language first, take a look at depressing finland.

As the Finale of the Linking Aimlessly Installation of today: beautiful double-face weaving, by Ellen Harlizius-Klück (text in German).