She's picking up the slack here

OK, well I'm having serious issues trying to link you to my "wife's" blog. She talks about the Yukon Quest and how it's still cold, and she does it with more color and vivacity than I've been able to muster. I'm currently reading and loving Wendell Berry's "Jayber Crow" and reading "Rethinking Columbus: the next 500 years" for my school district book group. The latter has sent me back into paroxysms of thought on environmental determinism in cultures. How much of it is environment, then overlay religiosity, and then . . . The reality is that in 1492 Europe was a vicious place--Italy, Portugal, Spain, Britian, Denmark--is there any other culture (a very BROAD stroke of the brush is calling all of 'whitey' a culture) that had refined their tortures so heartily? Other cultures have been harsh for certain, have owned slaves etc., but you have to ask why Europe plundered the rest of the world and not the other way around. Can we be surprised that Colmbus didn't "trade" the Indians(*ahem* Native Americans) for gold when he got here but cut the hands off those who didn't bring him gold so they'd bleed to death? It was 1492 for Chris'ake! That part of the "cultured" world didn't START to get its head out of its tush until Elizabeth showed up (don't get me started about testosterone).

Back to environmental determinism, I've even heard that a protein-based diet links back to the pituitary and makes more testosterone and makes a more warlike culture. WHA?? So how come the Native Alaskans didn't go over to New Zealand and claim sheep herds "by right of discovery" and force the people to farm freshies for them?

Good luck with this one, everybody. I wouldn't have written anything if I could've linked to Tania . . .