Separate areas with sofas, vanities, and even writing tables used to put the “rest” in women’s restrooms. Why were these spaces built, and why did they vanish? Read City Lab’s story titled The Glamorous, Sexist History of the Women’s Restroom Lounge
Use the Foreign to Serve the Domestic
Chairman Mao Zedong once said, 古为今用 洋为中用, “use the past to serve the present, the foreign to serve China.” I wonder if the same is true for my relationship with Google.Continue Reading
On Securing Liberty
He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty, he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.Thomas Paine (1795)
Alan Turing
Second Amendment Restrictions
Americans might be more willing to accept goon/anno restrictions if it were applied equally to the militarization-thirsty (and qualifiedly-immune) police. The second amendment is substantively a repudiation and protection from the one law for me, another law for thee conduct of state actors. Let them lead by example by demilitarizing themselves before they ask citizens to demilitarize. Then there would truly be no need for such gear.
Naked In Nature
As I lay there naked in the heavy dampness and slight chill with only the drizzle and the creek accompanying me in the blackness, I contemplated the existence of my earlier hominid ancestors sheltering such nights in caves. Continue Reading
Adam and Eve
According to the Genesis (chapter 2) account in which Eve was “extracted” from Adam, that means Adam was the biological sum of man and woman. So Adam became man simultaneously with Eve becoming woman. Man and woman were thus created simultaneously, not sequentially. Man is not preeminent over woman.
More Reporting on Sex-Segregated Toilets
Though it offers nothing not already contained in the research and publications of Univ. of Utah law professor Terry Kogan, Time magazine’s Why Do We Have Men’s and Women’s Bathrooms? is still a good, medium-length read.
The Practice and Exercise of Faith Vis-À-Vis Coronavirus
I just had to take a blogger to task for condemning religious leaders who declined to suspend services. It went like this:Continue Reading
Les dangers du jour
It occurs to me that America enjoys obsessing over pathogenic dangers and maladies. Following the Al-Qaeda attack of 9/11, Americans went insane in the membrane over Anthrax. By 2003 America wrung its hands about West Nile virus. In 2009 America deployed millions of gallons of hand sanitizer in response to grave prognostications of H1N1 swine flu. In 2014 America went bonkers over Ebola. In 2016 America obsessed over Zika. In 2020, America conked its skull on Coronavirus. America, it seems, needs new obsessions to forget its former preoccupations.
The History of Skirted Men
In the not all to distant past, men wore unbifurcated garments and while few would want to dress like Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales, it is not a novel concept that men should not be confined to trousers. Little by little, journalists, sociologists, and artists are looking into the history of skirted men and sharing their findings:
- Bustle: The History of Men & Skirts
- 1883 Magazine: Men in Skirts
- NY Metropolitan Museum of Art: Bravehearts: Men in Skirts
- Victoria and Albert Museum: Men in skirts
Why Women Can Dress Like Men But Not Vice Versa
What To Call Skirts Marketed For Men?
Part of the women’s liberation movement was inventing new vocabulary which enabled women to differentiate their agenda as the pursuit of equality and not emulation. Women sought to be treated equally as men (particularly in employment) but it was also clear that they were not to be regarded as men. Employment law shifted accordingly such that if trousers were acceptable attire for men, they must also be acceptable attire for women. And since men were not required to wear stockings or heels, neither could women. As I have pointed out in other posts, these cultural strides were not reciprocated for men. While it remained acceptable for women to wear sandals to the office, I have yet to read a single employee dress code that specifically extends such option to men. (Granted, no one wants to see most men’s feet, and most men lack fashion sensibility to select dignified sandals, but the same can be said for a number of women as well.)Continue Reading
On Understanding Truth
All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them. Galileo Galilei
Why do women wear high heels?
Cristen Conger explains everything.
On Doing the Impossible
Inside the Earth
Edmund Burke on Moral Duty
Two intrinsically-linked quotes from Sir Edmund Burke:
1) The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.
2) Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little.
Why do women wear skirts?
Cristen Conger explains everything.
European Men, the Historical Initiators of High Heels
Very few people know it, but high-heeled footwear actually began among European men. Women then emulated the style, daintifying it in the process. in time, the fashion fell out of favor (perhaps for practicality) among men which leaves society with the mistaken belief that high-heeled shoes are uniquely feminine. Cowboy boots are “high-heels,” as Jill Maurer points out. Continue Reading
On Perception
The further back you can look, the further forward you can see. unknown
N.B. Often attributed to Winston Churchill, but never confirmed.Oldest-Surviving Trousers in Archeological Record
I don’t have a basis to evaluate the academic credibility of Science News, but the takeaway is that Trousers seem to have originated with asian horsemen.
On Appeasing Aggressors
Appeasement only makes the aggressor more aggressive. Henry Strozier as Dean Rusk, Thirteen Days
The History of Men’s Nightshirts
The Wall Street Journal has this interesting piece on the historical legacy of men’s nightshirts, and their suppression due to evolved Western gender constructs.: Why Some Men Favor Nightshirts Over Pajamas.
On Discovering Truth
[T]ruth is best discovered by powerful statements on both sides of the question. Sir Francis Bacon (1561-1626)
N.B. Though often attributed to Lord John Scott Eldon (1751-1838), Eldon was, in fact, quoting Bacon.First Amendment Right to Be “Weird”
It occurs to me today that Americans do have a Constitutional right to be “weird” by virtue of the First Amendment’s freedom of expression.Continue Reading
Well-Regulated Militia & Right to Bear Arms
I have heard opponents argue that the second-amendment’s “well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state” is subsumed by the National Guard such that there is no right for citizens to organize lay-militia. Without expressing an opinion on lay-militia and para-militia groups, I’m not convinced that the subsuming approach is correct.Continue Reading
Why Men Still Don’t Casually Wear . . .
In the not too distant past, European aristocratic males wore both skirt-like garments as well as high heels. (In fact, women adopted high heels from European men and made them daintily and femininely narrower.) Over time, though, the European and American industrial revolutions made bifurcated pants and flat shoes more utilitarian for daily life. Women, however, who were relegated to lives of domesticity continued with the less practical fashion. But there has always been a double standardContinue Reading