The tales of the Middle Ages are full of people in their 60s or older, mostly men, given the hazards of childbirth. They also weren't that short, because the heights were being measured from surviving armor, which was mostly fancy presentation stuff given to a nobleman in his youth. He grew out of it, and it was put on display. The armor from his adulthood generally wore out or was reworked into new suits. Most of what survived from general utility armor was melted down for later wars. The fancy stuff survived.

Related to discussion of diets, a category on the $25,000 Pyramid I'm watching was "fattening foods," and the list was: jam, potato, soda, sausage, hollandaise, eclair, caramel. Potato?? We must have been a few years out from the baked-potato-with-yogurt diet craze.

(I'm sure I'll stop posting incessantly about old game shows pretty soon.)

I love $25,000 Pyramid.

I'm really incredibly excited that it's on GSN -- it didn't used to be.

Man, I'm watching the end of the Tony ceremony, which I had to tape last night, and Hugh Jackman is so ridiculously adorable with his wife that I could plotz.

Oh! I finally got my eShakti dress ala Steph, and it doesn't work on me! I'd need more boob and/or a longer torso or something -- the top is just wrong. So sad.

Potatoes are a source of concentrated calories and are not high in fiber. So while they don't have to be fattening, it is comparatively easy to eat a large enough quantity to be fattening. And there are various ways of frying them, at which point they become really fattening.

Heck almost nothing has to be fattening. I mean ever rich gooey dessert are OK if eaten seldom in small quantities. And if you absolutely have to have them every day, there are ways to work that in, again in small quantities.

So my school was evacuated today. Which was not awesome, but did take up an afternoon on the last week of school. They shut down the three main streets near the campus. It was a Big Deal. Article in LA Times here: [link]

Wow, sounds frightening.