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User: Kidipede

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  1. Re:2012 strikes again on Black Death Discovered In Oregon · · Score: 5, Interesting

    One big cause of plagues in the Middle Ages was therefore situations that caused huge increases in the rodent population. This happened whenever there were food shortages, because people would stop being able to spare food to feed dogs and cats. When you stop feeding your dog, pretty soon you have to kill it (and then you may as well eat it). Without dogs and cats around, the rat population would take off. That's why in famines, as soon as people get done eating dogs and cats they start to eat rats. But of course the combination of lots of rats with underfed, weakened people means that plague can kill a lot of people. Indeed, the worse food security you had in your town, the more people tended to die of plague.

  2. Re:Oh come on... on The Shortage of Women In IT · · Score: 1

    There is a shortage of women in IT, and it is hurting for women. Half the people in the world are women. Some of them are pretty smart. By creating an atmosphere that seems hostile to women, IT companies are depriving themselves of a large pool of smart people who would, if they were in IT, be inventing things, fixing things, and generally moving the field along. Would you just randomly decide not to hire anyone with brown eyes, no matter how smart they were, or how easy to work with? Not hiring women has the same effect on your company. I was the only woman in my first college programming class. I was so nervous about it that my mother came and sat in on all the classes with me.