Learning to write in the tropics

 We are used to winter colds, they seem almost inevitable because of the cold, rain, and sometimes snow that surrounds us, and yet, summer colds can happen. I am often surprised by people's baffled looks when I mention having a cold in summer as I do now. On Monday I was at a party and I walked home with my housemates at about 3am and now I have a mild summer cold, I don't deal well with drastic temperature changes and the day had been warm so the early morning cold did not sit well. As I nurse my sore throat I randomly listen to radio 4, a bit absent-mindedly going through emails I have forgotten to check or respond to, clicking on links for events, etc. As with so many websites, ads pop up and one of them reads fertility treatment for single women. A sad fact comes up in the ad: a quarter of families in the UK are single parents and 90% of these are composed of single mothers. 90% really?! That is shockingly high. When did being an absentee father become a trend? The ad is us

 As if I didn't have a whole stack of books to read on my ever-growing non-work-related pile, I keep finding new books to add. On my recent visit to Casa Dominicana in Oxford, I inherited a whole stack of books (just the ones on the stool!). In good Dominican tradition, more subjects keep adding to the pile. Some of you may have heard of two I hope to read over the summer: Abigail Favale's  Genesis of Gender  and Louise Perry's  The case against the Sexual Revolution  (she does not argue for going back to pre-60 sexual mores). My interest in Favale is inevitable, after all the evolution of the concept of generation and gender from its 18th-century conceptualization to this day (assume the 18th c definition was the one used over many centuries) appears in my doctoral thesis. It is clearly an issue that needs to be more known because it would clarify the current confusing uses of these concepts. I suspect Louise Perry is coming from a different angle, the more secular recogni