Book 227: Under the Black Flag

So, before I read this book, I have to apologize. I’m pretty sure that someone (Haddock, perhaps?) recommended this book to me, and I forgot about it, and then I read a review and said “that book sounds sweet,” so I ordered it. But when it arrived, it seemed really familiar, which made me think that someone had told me about it at some point. So if you recommended this book to me, let me know, so I can give you at least partial credit.

This is a book about pirates. It’s also a book about the mythology and legends which surround pirates and piracy. In addition to laying out a bunch of great stuff from the golden age of piracy, ranging from the types of ships used by pirates to the punishments meted out, it also attempts to analyze why we find pirates so captivating and romantic.

Because the pirate mythos is definitely enduring. Even in the golden age of piracy, when pirates were a serious menace to shipping, pirates were romanticized in story and song. Today, with over 90 reported incidents of piracy a year around Southeast Asia (and growing), we are still fascinated by pirates, even though, as Cordingly points out, they are little more than water-borne robbers.

If you are at all interested in the historical reality of pirates, especially New World pirates, you need to check this book out. It’s a really exhaustive survey, backed up with a bunch of solid research. I loved the chapter on female pirates especially, but the discussion of pirate discipline and the pirate lifestyle was also really interesting.

The book profiled a lot of colorful characters without succumbing to the temptation to glorify them (or exaggerate), and it provided all sorts of neat historical context. One might even say (if you can forgive me) that there’s some buried treasure in here.

Demographics:

Under the Black Flag, by David Cordingly. Published 1995, 296 pages. History.

5 August, 2008 – 4:55 pm | By s.e. smith | Posted in book project, Everything |

The Cold Truth

A study released last week indicated that the AIDS infection rate was 40% higher than previously estimated. In other words, the United States has been saying for years that roughly 40,000 new AIDS cases emerge every year, and the truth is closer to 56,300 new infections annually. If you don’t mind me saying so, that is a pretty significant difference, especially with the CDC saying that the rate has probably never been as low as 40,000 people a year.

There are a couple of reasons why the new infection rate has been so profoundly underestimated, and I don’t really want to go into those reasons right now, because it’s the truth of the new infection rate that’s so much more interesting. (Although some of the reasons why the rate is underreported have to do with things like race, class, and access to health care, but that’s another post for another day.)

I think a lot of people are under the mistaken impression that AIDS really isn’t a big deal in the developed world these days. Most people don’t get it, and even if you get it, you can basically take drugs to manage it, right? So it’s pretty much a nonissue. More annoying than, say, syphilis, but not as serious as, say cancer.

That impression is wrong, and the fact that the AIDS infection rate continues to remain steady shows that American AIDS education and prevention is woefully inadequate. AIDS is not a nonissue, especially among blacks, who have been especially hard-hit by the epidemic. In fact, the color line of the AIDS epidemic is so stark that I hope public health officials have taken note and considered the fact that a large chunk of the population is obviously being poorly served.

Among white, middle class Americans, the assumption seems to be that AIDS is rare, and if you get it, you can take drugs to control it. This ignores the stark fact that many Americans cannot afford those medications, because they are astonishingly expensive. It also ignores the fact that AIDS drugs don’t work for everyone, because AIDS is a changeable and rapidly mutating virus.

Thanks to the woeful state of sex education in this country, a lot of students are missing the message on STIs, as proved by the astounding study last year which revealed that one in four teen girls has an STI. And the lack of sex ed is obviously playing into the AIDS rate as well, because when educators are hamstringed by regulations which dictate what they can talk about, they cannot offer balanced, reasoned information which would allow young men and women to make informed choices.

Community outreach programs designed to educate people about AIDS and safer sex issues are also apparently failing, if the AIDS rate is remaining constant. I’m actually kind of surprised that the rate isn’t on the rise (and maybe a later study will reveal that it is), because people have become so flippant and careless about the risk of AIDS. I remember when the AIDS epidemic exploded onto the public consciousness, and people went to elaborate lengths to protect themselves. Today? Not so much.

The public health community in the United States has clearly not risen to the challenge of AIDS, and some people say that it failed from the beginning, when AIDS was dismissed as a gay men’s disease. Even now, the opinion seems to be that AIDS only afflicts gay men and junkies. This willful blind spot might explain why we still haven’t come to grips with AIDS, as a society, and why this scourge continues to be a problem.

5 August, 2008 – 10:50 am | By s.e. smith | Posted in Everything, health |

Checkered Lobsters

Olympic athletes come in all shapes and sizes, as this slide show attests. Some very cool pictures, along with statistics and snippets of interviews.

Mexico City is hosting a global AIDS conference, but I bet it will just be more of the same.

CSH units are reshaping the face of battlefield medicine; here’s a neat documentary about them. More on battlefield medicine here. (And here, for anyone who feels like sending me a delicious present.)

Iraqi interpreters who risked their lives in Iraq to support coalition troops say that they have been largely neglected after being resettled in Australia.

Yet another creative solution to the “obesity epidemic” has emerged in Britain, where parents of overweight children will receive mean letters. I’m sure that’s going to be productive, because obviously since fat people can’t recognize the fact that they are fat, neither can their parents.

A roundup of news about the K2 disaster is being consistently updated by the helpful folks at mounteverest.net.

Street View hits Australia.

Oysters are too sexy to live in France, apparently.

5 August, 2008 – 10:15 am | By s.e. smith | Posted in Everything, interesting |