In today’s episode of cate cuteness from our furry tribe, Tilly has discovered the trough on the study windowsill in which I grow chillies. (The plants were cut back a few days ago and the trough hasn’t yet been moved!)
Yesterday, in between doing lots of other interesting things (which I’m not allowed to write about, at least yet) and having a day off, I came across a thoughtful piece of journalism on nudity.
In The Scientific Reasons Why You Should Just Always Be Naked Lauren Martin looks at some of the evidence in favour of accepting nudity. OK, it’s American — although that doesn’t make it any less valid elsewhere — not greatly detailed and is written with many questions in order to challenge our prejudices and taboos.
It is well worth reading the whole article, but here is the essence:
Things are only taboo because we make them that way.
… … …
Nudity is a taboo … because we primarily equate nudity or nakedness with sexuality and we have taboos about sexuality.
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What would happen if we accepted our bodies the same way we accepted everything else? What would happen if we stopped covering up and started stripping down? What would happen if we all just let our bodies hang out in the open and didn’t hide them …?
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There’s … no denying … that if we could get past our childish perversions and accept nudity as a basic and natural human form, there would be a lot less “deviousness” and fewer obsessions with the human body — and we could all just stop caring so much about it.
… … …
If men … were exposed to nudity on a normal, everyday basis, they wouldn’t fantasize and obsess over it the way 14-year-olds do at the sight of their first breast … By making nakedness an ordinary, matter-of-fact, common experience, unassociated with sexuality, the unhealthy prurient interest in pornography would be considerably lessened.
Imagine if men were desensitized to the female body … Imagine if men stopped putting all their time and energy into seeing women naked and just learned to live side-by-side with them?
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Imagine if we all just looked at each other the way God made us without any implications or idealized notions of the perfect body? … it’s our clothing that creates our insecurities and inability to accept and love each other the way we should.
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What if we’d grown up in a nude household? What if we’d been taught from a young age nudity is natural [and] beautiful?
… children exposed to nudity from a young age became … unfazed by the human body later in life and sometimes, psychologically stronger because of it … children raised around nudity [grow] up with a higher body self-concept … coming from a nudist family [plays] a more significant role in the children’s positive self body-image than their race, gender, or area of the country in which they lived.
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Humans donned clothing to keep away parasites and filth, yet only created breeding grounds for different types of infections and disease … Along with infertility rates and Lyme disease, clothes also contribute to yeast infections and UTIs.
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It seems arbitrary, but walking around barefoot increases brain flexibility. It doesn’t just make you feel young again, it makes your brain feel young again.
Kakistocracy
Government by the least qualified or worst persons.
Ducat
1. A gold coin of varying value, formerly in use in most European countries; said to be worth about 9s. 4d.
2. A money of account in the Venetian republic.
3. (loosely) A piece of money.
The etymological origin of the name is from Medieval Latin ducatus, 12th century Italian ducato, initially meaning “duke’s coin” or a “duchy’s coin”. According to the OED, the first recorded use in English was around 1384 by Chaucer.
Thanks to Emily Nagoski over on Facebook, I bring you a slightly different meme — well at least one I’ve not seen before. The original is somewhat too American for my liking so I’ve Anglicised both the language and some of the questions. So here goes …
Piercings : 1
Children : None
Surgeries : At least 5
Fired a gun : No
Quit a job : Twice
Flown in a plane : Quite a few times
Been 100+ miles by car : Only twice (there and back) so far this year
Been 100+ miles by train : Oh so many times
Been zip lining or bungee jumping : No way!
Cried over someone : No
Fallen in love : A few times
Skipped school : Once, when aged 8, my parents took me to the Chelsea Flower Show
Watched someone give birth : No
Watched someone die : No
Been to Canada : No
Been in an ambulance : Yes, once
Bid at an auction (eBay doesn’t count) : Yes, and I won
Been to Egypt : No
Been to Scotland : Yes
Visited Disneyland (US or Europe) : No, and I have no desire to
Visited Poland : No
Visited Las Vegas : No, and again I have no desire to
Sung karaoke : Not on your life!
Had a pet (or pets) : Yes, many
Been sledding on big hill : No
Been downhill skiing : No, I have no wish for a broken leg
Ridden on a motorcycle : Scooter yes, motorbike no
Ridden a horse : Yes, once and never again
Been in hospital overnight : Yes on at least 6 occasions
Donated blood : No, to my shame
Driven a Transit van or bigger : No, I’ve never driven anything
Been in the back of a police car : No
If you’re daft enough to want to play this very silly game — well at least it will provide 5 minutes distraction from these trying times — then copy the list, past it to your blog or Facebook, oh and don’t forget to update your answers!
Toodle pip!
Sarcophagus
1. A kind of stone which the Greeks supposed had the property of consuming the flesh of dead bodies deposited in it, and which was consequently used for coffins.
2. A stone coffin, especially one embellished with sculptures or bearing inscriptions, etc.
3. A wine-cooler.
The word comes into English, via Latin, from the Greek σαρκοϕάγος (sarkophagos) = σαρκο- (sarko-), σάρξ (sarx) flesh + -ϕάγος (-phagos) eating.
The OED records the first use with meaning 1 in 1601 and with meaning 2 in 1705. Perhaps the most famous Sarcophagus is that of the Egyptian Pharaoh Tutankhamun, although the highly decorated coffin we think of is actually the second of a layer of three which were then placed in the stone sarcophagus.
There are no words. Just really there are no words for the mess we’re getting ourselves in.
And really what is this year doing to us?
First, the Great British people vote, in a non-binding referendum, to take the UK out of the EU, and the government treats the result as binding. As someone near me observed the other day, never overestimate the intelligence of the great British public.
Then earlier this week the American people elect Trump — a self-confessed misogynist, racist, bankrupt, megalomaniac bully — to be their next President.
What is it about people that has caused such apparently idiotic choices?
Well it seems to me that it is partly down to the fact that too many people these days feel deeply pissed off, abused and disenfranchised.
Add to that the fact we are tribal — however much we like to think we aren’t. (I wrote briefly about racism and tribalism a while back in my Five Questions series.)
This means that when people’s backs are against the wall they will default to following their tribal instincts: xenophobia, racism, aggression, bullying. And, as a gross generalisation, the less intelligent people are the easier they find it to slip into tribal mode; those who can (and do) think are more able to rationalise and counteract such tendencies (although, of course, not all do as they may give a higher weighting to protecting their vested interests).
Thus, it seems to me, when people are so deeply pissed off, they will tend to vote for the more right-wing (Fascist) choice. This, they think, will satisfy their emotional and tribal needs. Hence another UK Conservative government, hence Brexit and hence Trump. And that’s despite the fact that such situations are so often the ones which will disenfranchise people further.
There is another factor at play here too. It’s “we don’t like what we’ve got so we’ll vote for something different”. We’ll have a change — that’s any change! — as it must be better. In an essentially bipartite democracy (UK, USA) that just means whoever isn’t in power. [Although this doesn’t explain the current UK Conservative government.]
So maybe we shouldn’t find the current mess quite so surprising.
So what next?
Well if, as the old wives tale has it, “things come in threes” and the year isn’t over “until the fat lady sings” we have about 7 weeks to survive. We’ve had Brexit (with its fallout), now Trump. What’s going to be the third almighty cock-up we can inflict on ourselves?
Keeley on Facebook has suggested the third cock-up is the Columbians voting down the proposed deal with FARC. I don’t know — I don’t know enough about this to be able to judge — but it could well be a good contender. We shall see.
Meanwhile just hang on in there and push back against racism, abuse, bullying wherever you can; ‘cos 2017 just has to be a better year.
And 2016: May a thousand monkeys dance sideways on your grave!
Something much more mundane for this month’s Ten Things, if only because I have numbness of the brain!
And then of course there is the plethora of computer stuff. But no, no cat — the current set don’t seem to like my desk, but then I don’t have a hot desk lamp these days.