Jack’s Walk

 

©voyager, all rights reserved

It’s raining today and rather than get muddy on one of our trails Jack and I decided to stay close to home and walk on the nice, clean concrete sidewalks in our own neighbourhood. We haven’t done that in a while and it was fun to check out everyone’s gardens and see what’s come up and what’s been newly planted. Yesterday we celebrated Victoria Day, and traditionally this holiday weekend is considered the safe date to plant outdoors with no risk of frost. That means that gardeners all around get busy and get their hands dirty. It also means the end of spring bulbs and I do hate to lose the tulips. They’re one of my favourite flowers and they come in so many colours, all of them bright and cheerful. To mark their ending I’m posting these beautiful tulips belonging to one of my neighbours. I think they’re a double tulip, but I don’t know the variety.

Anatomy Atlas Part 7 – Rib Cage

I thought that I am done with skeleton, I really did. I was wrong and I admit it. There is one more. The rib cage.

Rib Cage

©Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

However I cannot remember any interesting story about ribcage from my education. I have a personal story instead regarding deformities of the rib cage.

I had so-called Pectus carinatum, aka pigeon chest, as a child. The worst thing about it is not the physical deformity itself, which is now nearly invisible, but the way it fucked up my head. In addition to my other medical problems I had also suffered from shortness of breath due to constrained lungs. That meant that no matter how much I tried, I never had much stamina for running or swimming or any sport really.

This is where gym teachers come into picture. I find it astounding how all the athletic people I have ever met are convinced that accidents of birth played no role whatsoever and that they are the sole instigators of their strength and beauty and they take all the credit. So children who were not born physically beautiful and strong get ridiculed, body shamed and blamed – sometimes even by teachers whose should know better.

To this day I dislike being seen topless, the subconscious fear of ridicule is still there. And I hate PE teachers.

Are You Ready For Alt*Hero Crackdown?

Do you all remember Vox Day’s quest to “rescue” comics from the horrible, evil machinations of SJW thinking? If you don’t, it’s all here. Well, the comic is out:

Goodness me, lookit that stew of crackpot sciency stuff! I’ll just bet you’re all riveted now, right? Right?

Here’s the amazon link to the comic, if your tastes run to idiot. I do believe I’ll pass. Fascists are bad enough in reality, I don’t need them pretending to be entertainment, too.

ETA: Looking at that cover, it’s not awful, but those breasts! I’ll assume Vox Day is at least familiar with them, and they don’t work like that. They aren’t actual balloons.

The Healing Arts: The Gin Shop.

George Cruikshank, click for full size.

The Gin Shop, George Cruikshank, Etching coloured, 1829. Subject: Alcohol, Gin, Drunkenness, Mother's Ruin, Children, Child Care.

The Gin Shop, George Cruikshank, Etching coloured, 1829. Subject: Alcohol, Gin, Drunkenness, Mother’s Ruin, Children, Child Care.

The GIN Shop –

—”Now oh dear, how shocking the thought is They makes the gin from aquafortis:

They do it on purpose folks lives to shorten And tickets it up at two-pence a quartern.”

New Ballad.

You can read more about the Gin Craze here.

Fairy Tale Art.

A wonderful site, full of enough fairy tale art to keep a person quite busy, sent along by rq: Art Passions. Fairy Tale art and artists encompass so very many styles, and the illustrations are crucial to the stories, they inflame the imagination, and illuminate the stories from within. In this particular case, serendipity strikes, as I brought home a book of short tales by Leigh Bardugo yesterday:

The first story, Ayama and the Thorn Wood, is a grand story which I enjoyed very much. I do have one noisy complaint however, and it has to do with the fairy tale art. In the story, Ayama is described thusly:

“Ayama was clumsy and apt to drop things. Her body was solid and flat-footed, short and round as a beer jug.”

Given this description, why in the fuckety fuck is Ayama drawn like this?:

This never should have gotten a pass from anyone, let alone the author. It is not a crime to depict characters correctly, and all girls do not need to be tall and thin with a teeny waist. FFS, seeing this sort of thing is infuriating, and it went a long way to souring a very good story. In the story, Ayama is strong, courageous, imaginative, and thoughtful. In the drawing, she’s just another generic pretty, skinny girl. That’s not doing anyone any favours. We all come in different shapes and sizes, and that’s a message all kids need. What they don’t need is yet another cookie cutter shape to try and stuff themselves into, regardless of fit.

Hey, Better Than Pharaoh!

Screengrab. Man looks like he was unwrapped after a a few decades of mummification. Yeah, I know, but still…

Here’s a somewhat novel defense of the Tiny Tyrant – he’s better than Pharaoh. Yep. Naturally, the first question springs to mind: um, which Pharaoh would we be talking about? There were a bunch of them.

“Throughout biblical history, God continually raises up imperfect leaders,” he said. “In the days of the Pharaoh of Egypt—let’s not be Pollyannish here—anything that is inappropriate for young children, it was far worse in the king of Babylon’s time and the Pharaoh. When they partied, they partied and they didn’t even have an X-rated label because anything went.”

Uhhh, X-rated kinda means anything goes, and that’s not even touching on the absolute idiocy of trying to paste that over various Egyptian dynasties. I don’t think it a terribly wise focus either, given the Tiny Tyrant’s penchant for nasty partying. All throughout history, pretty much  everything was worse for children, so I’m afraid that’s not much of a winner either. This is also a display of complete ignorance about Egyptian history, which in many aspects, was highly civilised, with a whole lot of very smart people running things.

“Donald Trump, like so many other leaders in the Old Testament, was raised up by God not because he was perfect,” McGuire added. “Other men in the Bible were pagan kings, in fact, they made the people worship them as gods. God has a historical record from Genesis to Revelation, over and over again, God says in his word, ‘Thus saith the Lord.’ He chooses who he will raise up and put down.”

Monarchy, regardless of where it’s taken place, has always been considered to be of divine origin and choice. Nothing new there. The ancient Egyptians had gods, you know, and they took them pretty damn seriously. Just like you do. That means god[s] first, monarch second. Most monarchs were quite smart enough to play up their various god[s], and simply relied on their authority as ruler to keep people in obeisance, and being fodder for wars often fought over…god[s]. “Thus saith the lord”. Yeah, there was a lot of that, and a lot of what Jehovah said was hideous, psychopathic bullshit. So fucking what? I could walk around every day saying “Thus saith Caine”, and writing “Thus saith Caine”. Wouldn’t mean a thing, except perhaps as an announcement I had decided to be an obnoxious ass.

“He put Trump into office for a reprieve,” he continued, “because our Founding Fathers, the pilgrims and Puritans, entered into a holy covenant with Almighty God, based on Deuteronomy 28. It’s an everlasting covenant. That’s why America is great. So here we have a man, a billionaire, and they don’t like him because they can’t control him. He isn’t a lapdog for Pharaoh’s new world order.”

Oh FFS, what a stew of crap. Yeah, Deuteronomy 28 is interesting. 28:14 begins:

And thou shalt not go aside from any of the words which I command thee this day, to the right hand, or to the left, to go after other gods to serve them. (Emphasis mine. Heh.)

That’s followed by an astonishing amount of curses, truly horrible shit, from petty infliction of hemorrhoids to family doing the worst things to you. Oh, and I guess you fellows haven’t heard, but all the pharaohs are dead. Long dead. As for the Tiny Tyrant, he cant control himself, in any sense of the word. That’s why he can’t run any business successfully, and resorts to cons and grifting.

RWW has the full story.

The Healing Arts: A Man Mid-Wife.

An interesting piece, addressing what was a great controversy, with people hotly on one side or another, as male physicians encroached on the world of childbirth. Additional information and sources under the image. Click for full size.

A Man Mid-Wife, Isaac Cruikshank, Etching coloured, 1793. Subject: John Blunt (pseud. S.W. Fores), Midwives, Surgical Instruments, Forceps.

A Man Mid-Wife, Isaac Cruikshank, Etching coloured, 1793. Subject: John Blunt (pseud. S.W. Fores), Midwives, Surgical Instruments, Forceps.

The text reads:

“A Man-Mid-Wife, or a newly discover’d animal, not Known in Buffon’s time; for a more full description or this monster, see, an ingenious book, lately published, price 3/6 entitled Man-Midwifery dissected, containing a variety of well-authenticated cases elucidating this animals Propensities to cruelty & indecency sold by the publisher of this Print who has presented the author with the above [illustration] for the Frontispiece to his Book.”

From the same source:

Summary

This etching illustrated a book criticizing (male) physician birth attendants–“man midwives”–today’s obstetricians. The etching shows a figure that is male on one side, female on the other. The male half stands on a plain wood floor next to a large mortar and pestle, holding an instrument labeled a “lever” in his hand, which is pressed against his thigh. The background seems to be a shop, with shelves lined with vials, bottles, and frightening looking instruments labeled “forceps,” “boring scissors,” and “blunt book.”

In contrast, the female half of the figure stands in a homey room on a decoratively carpeted floor; in her outstretched hand she holds a small cup. Behind her, a fire burns in a grate.

Commentary

This etching was made in 1793, at a time when middle-and upper-middle class English women were being attended by physicians rather than midwives at the births of their children. Midwives were left to attend the beds of birthing women too poor to afford the services of physicians.

At the time, however, criticism was leveled at physicians who chose to demean themselves by doing “women’s work,” with some suggestion that their only motivations must be prurient ones. (This latter accusation is hinted at by one of the bottles on the shelves of the man half of the man-midwife; it is labeled “love water.”).

Today, while few would accuse male ob-gyns of perversion (although male medical students who choose this specialty probably still raise eyebrows in some corners), questions about the proper place, methods, and attendants at childbirth still are debated. Only in the past three decades, for example, has the presence of fathers at childbirth been considered proper, and we still argue about home vs. hospital births, the use of midwives, training for midwives, and the place of technology and medication in normal births.

You can read a fair amount of what was written in the 18th century by people on both the pro- and anti- sides here.

Historian Ruby has an excellent rundown of the great controversy, where once again we encounter the scandal of Mary Toft in this excerpt:

Hugh Chamberlen, as well as being a physician, was also a speculative businessman, and when his proposed business dealings failed, his creditors forced him to flee abroad.  With his credibility damaged, he was lampooned in verse in 1699 in Hue and Cry After a Man-Midwife, Who has Lately Deliver’d the Land-Bank of their Money.  It was noted that ‘great belly’d ladies have mighty respect for’ the man-midwife, demonstrating that the fashion for men-midwives commenced in the seventeenth century and was not just an eighteenth century phenomenon.  The verse also alluded to the outrage that was displayed in some quarters by opponents of men-midwives, ‘Among his profession he’s fam’d as a topper, By some call’d a midwife, by others a groper,’ hinting at sexual improprieties that the man-midwife could commit once alone with vulnerable females.

Public suspicion of the medical profession ran deep in the eighteenth century, in part due to the non-secular society believing that decaying bodies tainted the men who practiced medicine, but also, medicine was considered the least prestigious of the professions and the physicians’ failure to cure illness and stave off death impacted the public’s perception of them.  The man-midwifery profession was further disparaged after several eminent London men-midwives supported Mary Tofts, who in the 1720s claimed to have given birth to a litter of rabbits.  The absurdity of their support of Tofts in her fraudulent claim led to professional ridicule.  Not only were the men of the medical profession considered asinine for agreeing with Tofts’ wild claims, there was a growing suspicion of the practitioner as a ‘corrupter of morals, a threat to female modesty and even as a libertine.’

Blunt’s book, Man-midwifery dissected ; or, the obstetric family-instructor : In fourteen letters, is available to read at the Internet Archive. You can also see the above image properly coloured as the frontispiece of the book.

A Sad History of Monopoly.

Elizabeth Magie's 1904 board design.

Elizabeth Magie’s 1904 board design. Source and Credit. Click for full size.

 

Source.

It’s a right pity that Monopoly didn’t turn out the way Elizabeth Magie envisioned. Just goes to show that greed always wins. (I couldn’t get the twitter video to play; if you also have such problems, head to Required Reading, and scroll down to the bottom. That one works fine for me.