Statistics are underway

I did the necessary additional calculations and now just have to run the test.

I hope this is enough to keep my 'provisional' acceptance status; it does seem a bit much for someone to ask for a total re-analysis of data when the time-frame for the revision is two weeks. (Of course, probably not all academic scientists teach 14 hours and do volunteer work outside of school. And probably many of them have less-heavily-employed spouses or partners who can pick up the slack on laundry and cooking).

I'll be glad when this is done.

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I did take some time last night to knit; I worked a bit more on the Cranford mitts.

I also started reading a novel again: I had been reading two non-fiction books: "1066" and "The Ghost Map." "The Ghost Map" is fascinating (the story of early epidemiological research in London during one of the mid-1800s cholera outbreaks) but it's hard to read because I keep thinking of the human suffering of the people crammed in those small apartments...even if they didn't get cholera.

"1066" is about the topic you would expect it to be about. I'm up to the point where William is planning his invasion. Two interesting things about the book: first, the writer notes how often it's hard to know what "really truly" happened that far back - he reports some of what the Norman chroniclers said, and some of what the Brits were saying, and there are (understandably) discrepancies.

But even beyond jingoism or propaganda, there also seem to be cases of times being collapsed, or people meeting at a time when they could not have met, or references to marriages that might not even have happened. And it makes a person wonder: some thousand years in the future (if the human race hasn't fought itself into oblivion), what would be "accurately" remembered of our history? I mean, yes, we have the Internet and all - but how much of what's reported on it is accurate? (I mean: I'm pretty truthful in terms of what I SAY, but there are also a lot of things that I DON'T say, or things I obfuscate about a bit to "protect the innocent"). And even at that - I could see future historians be overwhelmed by the sheer weight of trivia. (Will they think we worshiped the Great LOLCat? Will they, based on the spam and "enhancement" sites that survive, think we were even more obsessed with the, uh, male member, than we actually are as a society? There's a picture book called Motel of the Mysteries, and an older essay called something like Lives of the Nacirema, that play with the idea of "what would anthropologists make of our culture, and considering how 'wrong' they get it, how 'wrong' are our interpretations of older cultures?)

The second thing is the author's assertion that most peasants (not slaves, not serfs - people living under more of a true-communism system, where land is communally held and everyone has an acreage to work) really did not have all that bad of a life: there was useful work, there was worship, there was some rest time in the winter, there were feast days. And that, in that time before consumer society, the nobles might have had slightly MORE or BETTER food or clothes, but they would have had little that the peasants did not have. (I am not so sure about that one.)

Anyway, I also re-started reading (maybe third time will be the charm) Bleak House. Right now, I'm enjoying it - the density of the prose is a good escape. And I've been going to bed around 8 or 8:30 these past few days and reading until I feel tired, because my allergies are just getting me down and wearing me out.