SO THAT'S WHY

On a pipesmokers FB page someone commented "those of you who have posted pictures of your pipe with a book in the background - wow some great books there. I have expanded my reading significantly. Do pipe smokers just have better taste in books?"
I too have posted pictures there with books in the frame.
But he cannot be talking about me.


His comment led me to recall that I have two hardback copies oh "Headhunting In The Solomon Islands" by Caroline Mytinger. Sadly, it is not instructional, and did not advance my career in Credit and Collections. I bought the second one because I couldn't find the first (it was under my bed). Also a really fun book about kuru (human spongiform encephalitis) in upland New Guinea, caused (in a manner of speaking) by dietary protein deficiencies among the women and elderly in a particular tribal society. Also of considerably less relevance than you would think in the Accounts Receivable field.


A few moments later I was happily eating cake with icecream while reading about Kuru (Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease) among the Fore People in the Eastern Highlands. Turns out that my memory of the book was slightly off; not women and elderly, but women and children.

At first the Fore believed kuru to be caused by sorcery or witchcraft. Their medicine to cure it was pork and casuarina bark -- most probably, that's casuarina equisetifolia, which has many uses -- but other than gustatory pleasure, this had no effect. Kuru was, invariably, fatal.


The chocolate cake with icecream was delicious, by the way.


Kuru was a theme in the Arkansas Chicken Ranch episode of the X-files.
Which was supposedly based on real events.
Arkansas.



Kuru is no longer an issue.
Except among republicans.



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