Re: big bugs; contraception; vile Telmori

From: David Dunham <dunham_at_pensee.com>
Date: Mon, 13 Apr 1998 17:50:37 -0800


Alex Ferguson wrote

> Has anyone seen any 12' tall centipedes around Sandy's house?

While I've never been to Sandy's house, he does live in Texas. I will never forget the night we were gaming, and heard a noise from the next room. It was a cockroach gnawing on a piece of bread left over from dinner. And another time I woke up to hear a noise from the kitchen. I'd left a paper grocery bag on the floor, and a cockroach was rattling it. There are *big* insects in Texas.

Philip Hibbs replied

> >By allowing births only when mother and child can survive, more
> >babies survive. And isn't that what fertility is all about?

> This is a very sophisticated and well-informed opinion that many primitive
> societies would not be aware of. Some may not even have made the link
> between sex and pregnancy.

It's not an opinion, it's a documented fact (not that I have the documents handy, alas). A quick Web search did find the following: "... short interbirth interval and young maternal age at birth are strongly associated with high death rates in childhood. Short birth interval is especially detrimental to a child's survival chances: if a child is born less than 24 months after a previous birth, the risk of death in the neonatal period (<1 month) is nearly three times higher than for children born after an interval of 4 or more years." This says pretty clearly that if you can delay your first pregnancy and space out your births (and contraception is one of the most reliable ways to do so), you have fewer childhood deaths. I hope you'll agree that fewer childhood deaths does indeed lead to more adults.

Contraception is a tool. If you want more kids, it can help. If you want fewer kids, it can help as well.

Whether or not there are indeed such ignorant societies, it really doesn't matter. "Use this magic and you won't have babies" has nothing to do with sex.

Thomas Gottschall wondered

> Are the Telmori so hated that everyone wants them dead regardless how and
>by whom ?

Quite possibly. After all, they're not human*, and they're not civilized, and they steal our cows and sheep.

> > An obvious answer is that [Argrath's legitimacy is not quite so clear as it
> > seems once he's won

> Then again, why doesn't anyone else care ? It can't be that they don't
> care who is sitting on their throne.

Surely it's more important that he can kick out the Lunar occupation, than his claim to Sartar's bloodline. We can argue about that after there's a kingdom that needs a king.

David Dunham <mailto:dunham_at_pensee.com> Glorantha/RQ page: <http://www.pensee.com/dunham/glorantha.html> Imagination is more important than knowledge. -- Albert Einstein


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