For folks who haven't been paying attention to the news lately:

There's a reasonable chance that the swine flu is going to turn into a global pandemic. For most people, it just results in mild flu symptoms. In Mexico, however, there has been so far a 6% fatality rate, entirely among young, healthy adults (which is not normal for the flu). If you're having flu symptoms and having any respiratory distress, going to the hospital and getting things checked out is not the world's worst idea.

We are planning on picking up a few emergency supplies and, if we can find them, some surgical masks later today, in case there's a "no congregating in public places" warning that goes out. I don't think this is time to push the panic button, but it may be time to press the caution button.

CP and I, fyi, have had 2nd-degree contact with a flu victim (the same archaeologist that President Obama met directly, oddly enough), but the point of contact was long enough ago that we would have already come down with symptoms were there any danger. (There's a 2-5 day incubation period; the disease appears to be airborne and highly infectious. We had lunch with my cousin 6 days ago, who 8 days before that had been at a conference with that archaeologist.)

From yesterday's hearing in Safford v. Redding, on whether a school had the right to strip-search a 13-year-old girl on suspicion that she might have prescription-strength Ibuprofen on her person:

Justice Breyer: "In my experience when I was 8 or 10 or 12 years old, you know, we did take our clothes off once a day. We changed for gym, O.K.? And in my experience, too, people did sometimes stick things in my underwear.”

Justice Scalia: “You’ve searched everywhere else. By God, the drugs must be in her underpants.”

Sadly, it seems like the plaintiff may lose this case, because most of the justices appear to be taking the position, as Justice Souter put it, "that they'd rather have one kid embarassed than another kid dead."

It's not that I think drug abuse in schools isn't a problem. But I really do wonder if these (older, male) Justices have any real idea of how far beyond "embarrassing" it would be for a sensitive 13-year-old girl to have to pull open her underwear and bra in front of multiple strange adults, _especially_ when the evidence that she might be hiding non-illegal, minor drugs is extremely minimal and based on the accusation from an untrustworthy student. This is _not_ like changing in the gym - and I don't know about boys' locker rooms, but in the girls' locker room in my middle school, many girls either changed behind a bathroom stall or perfected the art of rapidly switching tops and shorts such that no substantial portion of skin was ever humiliatingly exposed, much less touched by a teacher.

Thanks to Dahlia Lithwick, I think that Justice Ginsburg (who turns out to be both brilliant _and_ funny) summed it up best in another recent school case on drug testing for students in all school activities, Pottawatomie School District vs. Earls, when ( wrote: )

OTOH, from yesterday's hearing, ( this is why Justice Alito terrifies me: )

An interesting discussion about what what UK YA and children's book editors want right now.

I'm not even sure what a "modern Anne of Green Gables" would mean, though. Part of the whole appeal of that story is the relative simplicity and limited scope of the characters' lives. I find it harder to imagine the life of a modern Anne who never travels more than 100 miles from her home, though maybe that's just my experience.

I really do think there must be a huge untapped market for YA classical-era novels, though. In my "copious free time," I may see if I can rework my novel idea this fall into something specifically YA.

This new close relationship between Eowyn and Mac is getting way out of hand. We were finishing off the homemade strawberry and blackberry pie from yesterday this evening. Mac had finished his slice, and asked me, very sweetly and pathetically, if he could have some of Mommy's pie. I decided to be generous and gave him about 1/3rd of my remaining piece.

The next thing we know, Mac has called Eowyn to his side and is happily feeding her _my pie_ off his fork. Adam manages to rescue the last strawberry before it gets to her mouth and return it to me.

This was _not_ what I thought the plan was.

He's also started trying to reverse-train us. Yesterday, he woke up from his nap and came out to the living room to find we had cleaned it, in prep for my dad arriving. "Mommy and Daddy have cleaned up the mess," he shouted. "You need to get stamps!" (The standard reward at daycare.) Once my dad had arrived, he kept telling him how Mommy and Daddy needed stamps and what a good job we had done. (My dad, I think, was less impressed; no, we _didn't_ mop the floors for him.)

Who knew that the political right had it in for late antique and medievalist manuscript commentators?

I mean, okay, scholiasts get really pedantic, and they write all over the margins, but I hadn't realized they were such a major political force. The one on the right is similarly difficult to comprehend.

So, I was looking at info for the lecture I'm giving on the fall of the Roman Republic next week, where the lecturer wanted to emphasize that the top ten political families in the last 100 years or so of the Roman Republic held more than half the consulships (the top office).

I was curious and decided to check modern American figures.

http://www.allacademic.com//meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/3/1/7/1/2/pages317122/p317122-12.php

From the 2006 election:
Modern U.S. Comparison:
2006 election: 12% of major candidates and 18% of winners came from “political families,” where political families are defined as those that have 2 or more members related by blood or marriage within 2 generations who have been candidates for congressional, gubernatorial, or large-city mayoral offices.

Breaking down by office,
32% of Senators, 17% of Reps, 19% of Governors who won in 2006 came from political families.

Makes Obama look like even more of an outlier...

For this Monday, two actual toddler-dog interactions worth sharing. At dinner, Mac got bored with his spaghetti, and Eowyn had wandered over to his high chair. He took his fork and started carefully unspinning the pasta wound around it into Eowyn's mouth, which she opened quite readily. It was tremendously hard to stop laughing and discourage this behavior, a horrible idea though it was. But it looked so cute. We took away the fork, and then Eowyn carefully licked every one of Mac's fingers clean of tomato sauce while I was clearing his plate.

A little while later, Mac had asked us to cuddle in bed with him. We had just collapsed into bed when Eowyn came in, wanting attention, and grabbed a sock of CP's (an old bad habit she's revived at the D-Ws) and ran off with it. We called after her to no avail. Mac stands up, "Eowyn shouldn't have a sock! I will go chase her!"
"No," I say, "it's okay, Mac, Mommy will get it in a minute," since I really didn't want to move. CP and I look at each other, each reluctant to get up.
Before we can stop him, Mac jumps off the bed and runs off into the living room. We look at each other and think about our old hard-wired rule that the dog and baby can never be alone together, and all the ways this situation could go badly. I start to pull myself up, just as Mac comes running back into the bedroom, triumphantly waving the sock. "I got Daddy's sock! Eowyn was eating it!"

I guess it's good they've developed such a trusting relationship?

And in another instance of Mac's refusal to accept others' reality:
As we're driving past a P.F. Chang's, Mac points and says, "Look at the dinosaur statue, Mommy!"
I look at the stone horse and say, "That's a horsie statue, Mac!"
"No, it's a dinosaur!"
CP chimes in, "Mommy is right; it's a horse. Look at the head, Mac."
(After a few more iterations of dinosaur/horse)
Mac: "I'm not sure it's a horsie. I think maybe it's a dinosaur," with a tone of great sufferance.
"I think we'll agree to disagree, Mac," CP offers.

One of the people who was attending Seder for one of the first times was commenting on the oddness of the question about reclining/sitting at table. "For a more modern version," he suggested, "you should ask, 'why do we eat so much more on this night than on other nights?'"
I responded, "It's a Jewish holiday. That really wouldn't narrow it down."

I think I need to fast now...or, at least, since we've got a busy couple of weeks coming up, eat reasonable amounts of very simple food. CP, looking at the kitchen Friday night, asked plaintively, "You aren't planning on doing any more big cooking for a few weeks now, right?" After dinner with my dad next week, I think we're probably good. And the next holiday is Mother's Day, which is Not My Problem, definitionally, in terms of food.

So, I attended a particularly delicious Seder this year, which was made even better for me than usual Seders by deemphasizing the Meat and Starch traditional parts of the main course in favor of eilonwey's arctic char baked in parchment with goat cheese and leeks, which I want the recipe for, and a dish called ( Jansen's Temptation ), which is essentially a version of scalloped potatoes with Swedish anchovies, which give the creamy potatoes a lovely sharp zing.

I made my family's traditional ( Passover flourless chocolate cake (with accessories from a Godiva recipe) )

I also made two kinds of charoset, ( Sephardic charoset balls ) and a more traditional Ashkenazi apple, honey, and walnut charoset. The apple charoset was good although undistinguished; I think it was hurt by chopping the apples in the food processor rather than by hand (which saves a lot of time, although ladybird97 notes the potentially therapeutic value of attacking fruit with a knife) and also by too much caution with spices; next time I'll add some nutmeg and more allspice, I think.

Now I have a new "problem." I was just at the grocery store and faced with the choice of buying either 1 lb of strawberries for $3 or 4 lbs for $4.50. So, of course, I bought 4 lbs of strawberries. I will use some to make the strawberry-orange variation on charoset and others for a strawberry butter of some sort, but I invite you to share your strawberry recipes (ones with flour are fine), as we've got quite a lot of them!

Because meepodeekin asked, and because, unlike _every other Roman history professor_ I've met or worked with, I would like to figure out a way to explain this coherently and concisely, here's my working explanation of how Roman elections worked. Suggestions for improvement in clarity are welcome; I have yet to find a good diagram.

( Roman elections and silly math: )