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How the Bicycle Emancipated Women
womanlicious!
a good quick snippet back in time with women and bikes, and horses and the bra.
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I love history.
--small excerpt /from the mentalfloss blog--
Before bicycles came along, the horse was the best means of individual travel. Of course, women’s access to horses was limited. Horses were dangerous and difficult to control; conventional medical wisdom suggested that riding them could damage a woman’s genitals. Women were supposed to ride sidesaddle, with both legs hanging off one side. In that unnatural position, women were unable to ride for long distances, reinforcing the idea that they shouldn’t be riding at all.
Bicycles, by comparison, were easy to manipulate. There was no reason a woman couldn’t get on a bike and sedately pedal farther from her home than she’d ever been before. No reason, that is, other than her cumbersome attire and the convention that if she did so, she’d either have her virtue corrupted or die of exhaustion.
As the bicycle continues to lend itself to causes of all kinds, it is important to remember its first battle. Liberating is a word easily associated with cycling. Flying down a tree-lined road with the wind in your face is certainly a liberating experience, but for early female cyclists, a simple bike ride was liberating in a much more significant way. womanlicious! a good quick snippet back in time with women and bikes, and horses and the bra. - I love history. ... more -
The Difference Engine
The Difference Engine explores a world in which Charles Babbage built a practical mechanical computer in the mid-19th century. Britain is going through both the Industrial and Information Revolutions simultaneously. The book combines Sterling's wildman inventiveness with Gibson's brooding, streetwise characters, both shoved back one and a half centuries into an obsessively-detailed and weirdly-transmogrified London of 1855. The Difference Engine explores a world in which Charles Babbage built a practical mechanical computer in the mid-19th century. Britain... more
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I see dead people
Postmortem photographs were taken more than any other kind of photograph in the Victorian era — especially in the U.S. — and in many cases these carefully-arranged, meticulously staged pictures were the only ones ever taken of their subjects
A common theme in Victorian-era postmortem photography was the staged scene of mourning, which was often highly melodramatic. Another style was the photograph in which the dead were posed to look alive - eyes-open, for example.
These photographs were a common aspect of American culture, a part of the mourning and memorialization process. Surviving families were proud of these images and hung them in their homes, sent copies to friends and relatives, wore them as lockets or carried them as pocket mirrors. Nineteenth-century Americans knew how to respond to these images. Today there is no culturally normative response to postmortem photographs.
Postmortem photographs were taken more than any other kind of photograph in the Victorian era — especially in the U.S. — and in many c... more -
Never Was - Steampunk!
Steampunk automobile-- only @ Maker Faire!
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Spitzer's Trysts: Stop Over-Thinking This
copied and pasted in its savory entirety =) ...for all you judgemental hypocrits out there, and even those of you that aren't =D ...
"I'm going to throw the remote through the TV if one more news twink says something on the order of "When we come back, we'll look into what drives a successful man like Eliot Spitzer to risk it all..."
Oh yes, let's convene a panel of experts for that. Let me help you: because he wants to get his nut off! Stop with all the analysis! It never ends, I hear all these people talking about how powerful people think they can get away with anything, so it's a thrill, or that it's for this psychological reason or this one -- please, he wanted to CUM WITH SOMEONE! Stop overthinking this: people need sex, and married people generally aren't getting it. Studies show (OK, I'm making that up, but it's true nonetheless) that people married 20 years only have sex on Valentine's Day, their anniversary, and their birthdays. You can hate me as the messenger, but it's true -- how can anyone be expected to still want to score with someone you've been having sex with for a score? Mr. Spitzer simply wanted what humans desire, to feel that sensational sensation when you're hot for someone, to touch and hug and bump and grind -- this is really not that complicated! If you're ascribing more to it than that, it's probably really more about your own fear that your spouse wants to do the same thing.
Or is doing it. Married people are often starved for sex, touch, affection, not to mention the kinky stuff that wifey definitely won't do. So if you find yourself at such a place in life -- and this is most certainly wives as well -- where you're dieing like this, you can do one of three things: get divorced, cheat, or continue to live a life with little or no passion, sex, etc. It's easy to point fingers, but how about some recognition that society's rules are so at odds with human nature that there are actually no good options for an Eliot Spitzer, and the ZILLIONS OF PEOPLE JUST LIKE HIM, many of who are tut-tut-ing today. I guess a guy is a hero who sticks it out and leads a life of quiet desperation. I'm not so sure it's heroic to make him." copied and pasted in its savory entirety =) ...for all you judgemental hypocrits out there, and even those of you that aren't =D ..... more -
Child's body found at former Jersey care home
Parts of a child's body have been discovered at a former care home at the centre of a child abuse investigation, amid fears that further remains could be found. (Even though this wold've happened in it's old Victorian days, the remains are too new. Suspected from the late 1980s.)
Parts of a child's body have been discovered at a former care home at the centre of a child abuse investigation, amid fears that furth... more
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Victorian
