AdamSmith

I did know an old lady who actually went through one KitchenAid mixer and needed to buy another one. She used it to knead bread dough 5 or 6 days every week, and after some 35 years of that, it gave up the ghost. What a performer.

Yeah, agree with much. My mama has the Dormeyer cake mixer she bought in, I think, 1959. Still fully functional; only work ever needed was a new cord 20 years ago. This exact model in fact: Although I confess I corrupted her by buying her a KitchenAid mixer a few years ago, which she loves -- no more laborious scraping down of the sides of the bowl, etc., which at her age was getting to be a painful nuisance. Come to think, my own KitchenAid is nearing 30 years old. Will likely outlast me and end up a coveted item in my estate, unless some wag thinks to mount it on my headstone.

1. Hurrah another domino falls! 2. Cue hitoall...

Virgins? What virgins?It is widely believed that Muslim 'martyrs' enjoy rich sensual rewards on reaching paradise. A new study suggests they may be disappointed. Ibn Warraq reports Ibn Warraq The Guardian, Friday 11 January 2002 In August, 2001, the American television channel CBS aired an interview with a Hamas activist Muhammad Abu Wardeh, who recruited terrorists for suicide bombings in Israel. Abu Wardeh was quoted as saying: "I described to him how God would compensate the martyr for sacrificing his life for his land. If you become a martyr, God will give you 70 virgins, 70 wives and everlasting happiness." Wardeh was in fact shortchanging his recruits since the rewards in Paradise for martyrs was 72 virgins. But I am running ahead of things . Since September 11, news stories have repeated the story of suicide bombers and their heavenly rewards, and equally Muslim scholars and Western apologists of Islam have repeated that suicide is forbidden in Islam. Suicide (qatlu nafsi-hi) is not referred to in the Koran but is indeed forbidden in the Traditions (Hadith in Arabic), which are the collected sayings and doings attributed to the Prophet and traced back to him through a series of putatively trustworthy witnesses. They include what was done in his presence that he did not forbid, and even the authoritative sayings and doings of his companions. But the Hamas spokesman correctly uses the word martyr (shahid) and not suicide bomber, since those who blow themselves up almost daily in Israel and those who died on September 11 were dying in the noblest of all causes, Jihad, which is an incumbent religious duty, established in the Koran and in the Traditions as a divine institution, and enjoined for the purpose of advancing Islam. While suicide is forbidden, martyrdom is everywhere praised, welcomed, and urged: "By the Being in Whose Hand is my life, I love that I should be killed in the way of Allah; then I should be brought back to life and be killed again in His way..."; "The Prophet said, 'Nobody who enters Paradise will ever like to return to this world even if he were offered everything, except the martyr who will desire to return to this world and be killed 10 times for the sake of the great honour that has been bestowed upon him'." [sahih Muslim, chapters 781, 782, The Merit of Jihad and the Merit of Martyrdom.] What of the rewards in paradise? The Islamic paradise is described in great sensual detail in the Koran and the Traditions; for instance, Koran sura 56 verses 12 -40 ; sura 55 verses 54-56 ; sura 76 verses 12-22. I shall quote the celebrated Penguin translation by NJ Dawood of sura 56 verses 12- 39: "They shall recline on jewelled couches face to face, and there shall wait on them immortal youths with bowls and ewers and a cup of purest wine (that will neither pain their heads nor take away their reason); with fruits of their own choice and flesh of fowls that they relish. And theirs shall be the dark-eyed houris, chaste as hidden pearls: a guerdon for their deeds... We created the houris and made them virgins, loving companions for those on the right hand..." One should note that most translations, even those by Muslims themselves such as A Yusuf Ali, and the British Muslim Marmaduke Pickthall, translate the Arabic (plural) word Abkarun as virgins, as do well-known lexicons such the one by John Penrice. I emphasise this fact since many pudic and embarrassed Muslims claim there has been a mistranslation, that "virgins" should be replaced by "angels". In sura 55 verses 72-74, Dawood translates the Arabic word " hur " as "virgins", and the context makes clear that virgin is the appropriate translation: "Dark-eyed virgins sheltered in their tents (which of your Lord's blessings would you deny?) whom neither man nor jinnee will have touched before." The word hur occurs four times in the Koran and is usually translated as a "maiden with dark eyes". Two points need to be noted. First, there is no mention anywhere in the Koran of the actual number of virgins available in paradise, and second, the dark-eyed damsels are available for all Muslims, not just martyrs. It is in the Islamic Traditions that we find the 72 virgins in heaven specified: in a Hadith (Islamic Tradition) collected by Al-Tirmidhi (died 892 CE [common era*]) in the Book of Sunan (volume IV, chapters on The Features of Paradise as described by the Messenger of Allah [Prophet Muhammad], chapter 21, About the Smallest Reward for the People of Paradise, (Hadith 2687). The same hadith is also quoted by Ibn Kathir (died 1373 CE ) in his Koranic commentary (Tafsir) of Surah Al-Rahman (55), verse 72: "The Prophet Muhammad was heard saying: 'The smallest reward for the people of paradise is an abode where there are 80,000 servants and 72 wives, over which stands a dome decorated with pearls, aquamarine, and ruby, as wide as the distance from Al-Jabiyyah [a Damascus suburb] to Sana'a [Yemen]'." Modern apologists of Islam try to downplay the evident materialism and sexual implications of such descriptions, but, as the Encyclopaedia of Islam says, even orthodox Muslim theologians such as al Ghazali (died 1111 CE) and Al-Ash'ari (died 935 CE) have "admitted sensual pleasures into paradise". The sensual pleasures are graphically elaborated by Al-Suyuti (died 1505 ), Koranic commentator and polymath. He wrote: "Each time we sleep with a houri we find her virgin. Besides, the penis of the Elected never softens. The erection is eternal; the sensation that you feel each time you make love is utterly delicious and out of this world and were you to experience it in this world you would faint. Each chosen one [ie Muslim] will marry seventy [sic] houris, besides the women he married on earth, and all will have appetising vaginas." One of the reasons Nietzsche hated Christianity was that it "made something unclean out of sexuality", whereas Islam, many would argue, was sex-positive. One cannot imagine any of the Church fathers writing ecstatically of heavenly sex as al-Suyuti did, with the possible exception of St Augustine before his conversion. But surely to call Islam sex-positive is to insult all Muslim women, for sex is seen entirely from the male point of view; women's sexuality is admitted but seen as something to be feared, repressed, and a work of the devil. Scholars have long pointed out that these images are clearly drawn pictures and must have been inspired by the art of painting. Muhammad, or whoever is responsible for the descriptions, may well have seen Christian miniatures or mosaics representing the gardens of paradise and has interpreted the figures of angels rather literally as those of young men and young women. A further textual influence on the imagery found in the Koran is the work of Ephrem the Syrian [306-373 CE], Hymns on Paradise, written in Syriac, an Aramaic dialect and the language of Eastern Christianity, and a Semitic language closely related to Hebrew and Arabic. This naturally leads to the most fascinating book ever written on the language of the Koran, and if proved to be correct in its main thesis, probably the most important book ever written on the Koran. Christoph Luxenberg's book, Die Syro-Aramaische Lesart des Koran, available only in German, came out just over a year ago, but has already had an enthusiastic reception, particularly among those scholars with a knowledge of several Semitic languages at Princeton, Yale, Berlin, Potsdam, Erlangen, Aix-en-Provence, and the Oriental Institute in Beirut. Luxenberg tries to show that many obscurities of the Koran disappear if we read certain words as being Syriac and not Arabic. We cannot go into the technical details of his methodology but it allows Luxenberg, to the probable horror of all Muslim males dreaming of sexual bliss in the Muslim hereafter, to conjure away the wide-eyed houris promised to the faithful in suras XLIV.54; LII.20, LV.72, and LVI.22. Luxenberg 's new analysis, leaning on the Hymns of Ephrem the Syrian, yields "white raisins" of "crystal clarity" rather than doe-eyed, and ever willing virgins - the houris. Luxenberg claims that the context makes it clear that it is food and drink that is being offerred, and not unsullied maidens or houris. In Syriac, the word hur is a feminine plural adjective meaning white, with the word "raisin" understood implicitly. Similarly, the immortal, pearl-like ephebes or youths of suras such as LXXVI.19 are really a misreading of a Syriac expression meaning chilled raisins (or drinks) that the just will have the pleasure of tasting in contrast to the boiling drinks promised the unfaithful and damned. As Luxenberg's work has only recently been published we must await its scholarly assessment before we can pass any judgements. But if his analysis is correct then suicide bombers, or rather prospective martyrs, would do well to abandon their culture of death, and instead concentrate on getting laid 72 times in this world, unless of course they would really prefer chilled or white raisins, according to their taste, in the next. · Common era is an alternative to Christian era as a method of historical dating http://www.theguardian.com/books/2002/jan/12/books.guardianreview5

I myself used one of those washers while staying with family friends out in the country on their farm. Also used their (2-seater -- fancy!) outhouse. I would argue that many things today are rather vastly better than in those days. Cost be damned. I suspect my dear departed grandma, who when young nearly had her jaw broken when the crank-start handle on their first car kicked back, might agree.

Oldie but goodie.Martyrs, Virgins and Grapes By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF Published: August 4, 2004 The New York Times ''The virgins are calling you,'' Mohamed Atta wrote reassuringly to his fellow hijackers just before 9/11. It has long been a staple of Islam that Muslim martyrs will go to paradise and marry 72 black-eyed virgins. But a growing body of rigorous scholarship on the Koran points to a less sensual paradise -- and, more important, may offer a step away from fundamentalism and toward a reawakening of the Islamic world. Some Islamic theologians protest that the point was companionship, never heavenly sex. Others have interpreted the pleasures quite explicitly; one, al-Suyuti, wrote that sex in paradise is pretty much continual and so glorious that ''were you to experience it in this world you would faint.'' But now the same tools that historians, linguists and archaeologists have applied to the Bible for about 150 years are beginning to be applied to the Koran. The results are explosive. The Koran is beautifully written, but often obscure. One reason is that the Arabic language was born as a written language with the Koran, and there's growing evidence that many of the words were Syriac or Aramaic. For example, the Koran says martyrs going to heaven will get ''hur,'' and the word was taken by early commentators to mean ''virgins,'' hence those 72 consorts. But in Aramaic, hur meant ''white'' and was commonly used to mean ''white grapes.'' Some martyrs arriving in paradise may regard a bunch of grapes as a letdown. But the scholar who pioneered this pathbreaking research, using the pseudonym Christoph Luxenberg for security reasons, noted in an e-mail interview that grapes made more sense in context because the Koran compares them to crystal and pearls, and because contemporary accounts have paradise abounding with fruit, especially white grapes. Dr. Luxenberg's analysis, which has drawn raves from many scholars, also transforms the meaning of the verse that is sometimes cited to require women to wear veils. Instead of instructing pious women ''to draw their veils over their bosoms,'' he says, it advises them to ''buckle their belts around their hips.'' Likewise, a reference to Muhammad as ''ummi'' has been interpreted to mean he was illiterate, making his Koranic revelations all the more astonishing. But some scholars argue that this simply means he was not ''of the book,'' in the sense that he was neither Christian nor Jewish. Islam has a tradition of vigorous interpretation and adjustment, called ijtihad, but Koranic interpretation remains frozen in the model of classical commentaries written nearly two centuries after the prophet's death. The history of the rise and fall of great powers over the last 3,000 years underscores that only when people are able to debate issues freely -- when religious taboos fade -- can intellectual inquiry lead to scientific discovery, economic revolution and powerful new civilizations. ''The taboos are still great'' on such Koranic scholarship, notes Gabriel Said Reynolds, an Islam expert at the University of Notre Dame. He called the new scholarship on early Islam ''a first step'' to an intellectual awakening. But Muslim fundamentalists regard the Koran -- every word of it -- as God's own language, and they have violently attacked freethinking scholars as heretics. So Muslim intellectuals have been intimidated, and Islam has often been transmitted by narrow-minded extremists. (This problem is not confined to Islam. On my blog, www.nytimes.com/kristofresponds, I've been battling with fans of the Christian fundamentalist ''Left Behind'' series. Some are eager to see me left behind.) Still, there are encouraging signs. Islamic feminists are emerging to argue for religious interpretations leading to greater gender equality. An Iranian theologian has called for more study of the Koran's Syriac roots. Tunisian and German scholars are collaborating on a new critical edition of the Koran based on the earliest manuscripts. And just last week, Iran freed Hashem Aghajari, who had been sentenced to death for questioning harsh interpretations of Islam. ''The breaking of the sometimes erroneous bonds in the religious tradition will be the condition for a positive evolution in other scientific and intellectual domains,'' Dr. Luxenberg says. The world has a huge stake in seeing the Islamic world get on its feet again. The obstacle is not the Koran or Islam, but fundamentalism, and I hope that this scholarship is a sign of an incipient Islamic Reformation -- and that future terrorist recruits will be promised not 72 black-eyed virgins, but just a plateful of grapes. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/04/opinion/martyrs-virgins-and-grapes.html

Whence the expression Don't get your tit caught in a wringer.

P.S. One recalls, belatedly, there is not that much distance between lookin's image of the grand dame and mine. "It's not nice to fool Mother Nature."

Meant to say: Yah, but the limits of reality. At this point we would need to start breeding alchemists and sorcerers.

Police Department Reduces Costs By Using Same Evidence For Every Investigation NEWS IN BRIEF Local Police Crime & Justice News ISSUE 5028 Jul 16, 2014 JACKSONVILLE, FL Noting that the new procedure is far more efficient and has completely streamlined the investigative process, representatives from the Jacksonville Police Department confirmed Wednesday they have been able to sharply reduce costs by reusing the same evidence in every case they handle. "Our department used to spend considerable time and manpower scouring crime scenes for clues, obtaining search warrants, interrogating suspects, and interviewing witnesses, but since we started using the same gun and DNA swab for every crime, weve been able to breeze through investigations in no time," said police chief Alec McCarthy, who stated that the Jacksonville police have been able to close every case that has come up since the new protocol was enacted as well as make a significant dent in the departments accumulated backlog of unsolved crimes. "Homicide investigations would often drag on for weeks, but now we're in and out in two hours. We knocked out a triple murder, four breaking and enterings, and two aggravated assaults with a deadly weapon just this morning, and were on track to wrap up a couple of old child abduction cold cases by the end of the day." Citing the success of the new program, the department said it is considering reusing the same signed confession for each case as well. http://www.theonion.com/articles/police-department-reduces-costs-by-using-same-evid,36476/?utm_source=Twitter&utm_medium=SocialMarketing&utm_campaign=Default%3A2%3ADefault

A visit to a hammam is definitely one of the things on my bucket list. Toilets and bathrooms of past, present and future – in pictures From communal Roman bathrooms to a Russian space station toilet, view a history of human ablutions P Mulligan, Kimberly Hoang, Bibi van der Zee theguardian.com, Tuesday 15 July 2014 04.48 This ancient Egyptian toilet bowl has been dated to the New Kingdom, between 1600-1100 BC and would have been used like a latter-day chamber pot. But archaeologists have also found toilet systems which were flushed by hand with water in the Egyptian palaces. Photograph: Science Photo Library The Cloaca Maxima, the large sewage system that the Romans built through the heart of their capital, was the first of its kind, and in an odd tribute to that extraordinary people, is still functioning today (as is its equivalent in York). The Romans built collective toilets, similar to the one above. Photograph: Roger Wood/Corbis Islamic hammams evolved from Roman roots. The idea of Turkish baths was brought to Victorian Britain and rapidly caught on. Photograph: Getty Images Few countries were as advanced as the Romans, however. In Britain, chamber pots were emptied on to muck heaps, streets or into rivers for centuries. But the toilet – like the one above – could be a means to power – the 'groom of the stool' had unparalled access to the King. Photograph: Royal Collection Trust/Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2014 Friedrich Engels described a 19th-century slum: "There stands directly at the entrance ... a privy without a door, so dirty that the inhabitants can pass in and out of the court only by passing through foul pools of stagnant urine and excrement." The picture above shows a New York tenement. Photograph: Lewis Wickes Hine/Everett Collection/Rex Meanwhile the rich were discovering the joys of spending exorbitant amounts on decorating their bathrooms. At Upton House, created in the late 1920s by Morley Horder for the wife of the second Lord Bearstead, the bathroom had a vaulted ceiling covered in aluminium leaf, and red lacquer pillars. Photograph: Andreas von Einsiedel/Corbis In Japan, as in many countries around the world, few people had access to running water in their homes until well into the 20th century. Today, one in nine still lacks access to an improved water facility. Photograph: akg-images/Coll. B. Garrett In some countries toilet facilities were racially segregated. In this image, taken in 1943 in the US, two toilet huts are labelled 'white' and 'colored'. Photograph: akg-images Photographer and model Lee Miller entered Munich with the GIs, discovered the apartment of Adolf Hitler, and persuaded one of her companions to photograph her naked in Hitler's bath. Photograph: David E Scherman/Time and Life Picture/Getty Images Architects such as Le Corbusier also wanted to make their own statements. In the Villa Savoye (its bathroom seen here with its open end to the window), it is thought that the flat 'bed' beside the none-too-comfortable looking bath was inspired by Turkish baths that Le Corbusier had seen on his travels. Photograph: Collection Artedia/View There are more than 1,000 toilets in this free-of-charge public restroom in Chongqing, China. A return to the communal toilet? Photograph: AP The toilet of the future? This was built for the Russian Mir space station. Practical, but slightly unsettling. Photograph: Science Photo Library http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/gallery/2014/jul/15/toilets-and-bathrooms-of-past-present-and-future-in-pictures

Shh!

Agreed. Go not far beyond the penumbra cast by Bennington and you will discover that the designation 'Yankee' by no means conflicts with 'redneck.'

Why the modern bathroom is a wasteful, unhealthy design Piped water may be the greatest convenience ever known but our sewage systems and bathrooms are a disaster Lloyd Alter Tuesday 15 July 2014 04.53 EDT The Guardian For centuries, the people of London and other big cities got their cooking and washing water from rivers or wells, limiting their consumption to pretty much what they could carry. They dumped their waste into brick-lined cesspits that would be emptied by the night soil men, who sold it as fertilizer or dumped it off Dung Pier into the Thames. Liquid waste might be thrown into gutters in the middle of the road. In 1854, in the middle of a cholera epidemic in London, Dr John Snow mapped where victims died and found that the deaths seemed concentrated around one of those pumps, at 37 Broad Street. When he had the handle removed from the pump, the cholera epidemic stopped immediately. He had made the first verifiable connection between human waste and disease. After people realised that excrement plus drinking water equals death, parliament passed the Metropolitan Water Act to make provision for securing the supply to the metropolis of pure and wholesome water. Public pumps were replaced with pipes delivering water directly to homes. For centuries standing pumps were the main source of fresh water for cities. Photograph: Bridgeman Art This was perhaps the greatest, but now undervalued, convenience. Instead of carrying water, suddenly everyone had as much as they could use, all the time, with the turn of a tap. Not surprisingly, according to Abby Rockefeller in Civilization and Sludge, the average water use per person went quickly from three gallons of water per person to 30 and perhaps as much as 100 gallons per person. Advertisement The toilet was an almost trivial addition; it had been around for a while (John Harington, a member of Elizabeth Is privy council invented a flush toilet, but there is no evidence that she ever tried it) but was pretty useless without a water supply. But it became incredibly convenient to just to wash the poop away. Except now there was more faecal effluence than anyone knew what to do with, overflowing the cesspits and flowing into the gutters and sewers originally designed for rainwater that all led to the Thames. The result was even more cholera and disease. The environmentalists of the day tried to stop this; they promoted earth toilets that would keep human waste separate, that would treat it as a resource. Rockefeller writes: The engineers were divided again between those who believed in the value of human excreta to agriculture and those who did not. The believers argued in favour of 'sewage farming', the practice of irrigating neighbouring farms with municipal sewage. The second group, arguing that 'running water purifies itself' (the more current slogan among sanitary engineers: 'the solution to pollution is dilution'), argued for piping sewage into lakes, rivers, and oceans. But they never really had a chance to debate the issue; it was a done deal as people rushed to install convenient flush toilets. Soon every contaminated stream and gutter was being enlarged and covered over and turned into what remains todays urban sewer system. In the Guardian, Blake Morrison described it as being on a par, aesthetically, with the canal bridges and railway viaducts of the Victorian era". But it was really just going with the flow instead of thinking about the consequences. The author credited with inventing the flush toilet, John Harington; a popular member of Elizabeth I's court. Photograph: Elgar Collection Inside our houses, the architects and homeowners of the late 19th century were as confused as the engineers about what to do. People had washstands in their bedrooms, so at first they just stuck sinks and taps into them, and put the toilet into whatever closet in the hall or space under the stairs that they could find, hence the water closet. They quickly realised that it didnt make a lot of sense to run plumbing to every bedroom when it was cheaper to bring it all to one place, and the idea of the bathroom was born. Since the early adopters, then as now, were the rich with a few rooms to spare, they were often lavish, with all the fixtures encased in wood like the commodes they replaced. As germ theory became accepted at the end of the 19th century, the bathroom became a hospital room, with fixtures of porcelain and lined with tile or marble. These materials are expensive; as the bathroom became mainstream and accessible to all classes, it got smaller. The plumbers lined everything up in a row to use less pipe. By about 1910 the bathroom is pretty much indistinguishable from the ones built today. Nobody seriously paused to think about the different functions and their needs; they just took the position that if water comes in and water goes out, it is all pretty much the same and should be in the same room. Nobody thought about how the water from a shower or bathtub (greywater) is different from the water from a toilet (blackwater); it all just went down the same drain which connected to the same sewer pipe that gathered the rainwater from the streets, and carried it away to be dumped in the river or lake. It is hard to find something that we actually got right in the modern bathroom. The toilet is too high (our bodies were designed to squat), the sink is too low and almost useless; the shower is a deathtrap (an American dies every day from bath or shower accidents). We fill this tiny, inadequately ventilated room with toxic chemicals ranging from nail polish to tile cleaners. We flush the toilet and send bacteria into the air, with our toothbrush in a cup a few feet away. We take millions of gallons of fresh water and contaminate it with toxic chemicals, human waste, antibiotics and birth control hormones in quantities large enough to change the gender of fish. We mix up all our bodily functions in a machine designed by engineers on the basis of the plumbing system, not human needs. The result is a toxic output of contaminated water, questionable air quality and incredible waste. We just cant afford to do it this way any more. What could the bathroom of the future look like? Tamsin Oglesbys play The War Next Door opened to mixed reviews in 2007; one critic said the shoddy script and hammy acting left me so bored that I contemplated impaling myself on my biro". However, one prop got worldwide attention, as noted in the synopsis: Sophie and Max are a thoroughly modern British couple, cosmopolitan, open-minded. Theyve even constructed their own eco loo (well, it does save 30 litres of water a day). Thats seriously open-minded, having a composting toilet in a London home. It also does a lot more than just save 30 litres of water; it eliminates blackwater (contaminated with faeces) as distinct from greywater, what comes out of our sinks, laundries and showers, which can be reused in the garden. Lots of people are doing greywater diversion and using it to flush their toilets, but that just turns it black. A composting toilet is a much more grand gesture, that people will resist; I was once told that: No one will want this inside their house. I know this, because I still have a few teeth in my head and a few friends in town. Perhaps. However, if we are going to do something about the incredible waste of water that is the modern bathroom, radical changes may be required. A lot of Britons are proud of going net-zero or off-grid with their electricity and energy supply; its time to consider going off-pipe too. According to the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology (Post): Over 10bn litres of sewage are produced every day in England and Wales. It takes approximately 6.34 GW hours of energy to treat this volume of sewage, almost 1% of the average daily electricity consumption of England and Wales. Youre not net-zero if you are flushing your waste into the sewer. Composting toilets are not yet flush-and-forget like a conventional loo, but they are getting close. There are vacuum toilets that suck it all away to the composter using almost no water; there are foam flush toilets that are almost indistinguishable from conventional bowls. Companies such as Clivus Multrum supply not only the toilet and the composter, but also a service of emptying it, just like the night soil men did 200 years ago. Shower like the Japanese The other source of waste and inefficiency is the shower. They are designed so badly; the shower heads aim down, when really, like a bidet, they should probably aim up. The water runs constantly, even when you are applying soap or shampoo. You are usually standing in a slippery dangerous tub or in a tiny stall where you cannot move out of the water stream. People who care about water waste, either for cost or environmental reasons, take short showers or have miserable low flow shower heads. Its just not fun. In Japan, you sit on a stool and have a bucket, sponge, ladle and hand shower that you only turn on when you need it. You can sit comfortably for as long as you like, in no danger of slipping, use the ladle or the hand shower to rinse. Its really a lovely experience. It uses 10% of the water compared to a normal shower. If you do follow up with a hot bath, at least the water is shared among the whole family. When thinking about the bathroom of the future, we should look more closely at the Japanese bathrooms of the past. They kept their water supply and their waste management far apart, and rarely had epidemics of typhoid or cholera. They would never think of putting the toilet in the same room as the tub. Instead of treating bathing as a chore, they turned it into a truly enjoyable ritual. Women serving a man in a bathtub in Japan, c 1900. Photograph: akg-images/Coll. B. Garrett The Japanese used to sell their excrement; the rich got more money for theirs because they had better diets and made better quality fertilizer. They farmed more intensively and had fewer farm animals, (as we probably should) and needed a lot of it. In China, the proverb said: Treasure night soil as if it were gold. It was valuable stuff then and still is today. In a world where we are running out of fresh water, making artificial fertilizer from fossil fuels and approaching peak phosphorus, it is idiotic and almost criminal that we pay huge amounts in taxes to use drinking water to flush away our personal fertilizer and phosphorus and dump it in the ocean. In the future, they should be paying us. Bathrooms and toilets - a history in pictures Lloyd Alter is managing editor of TreeHugger. http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2014/jul/15/why-modern-bathroom-wasteful-unhealthy-design

"Things which seame incredible" Cannibalism in Early Jamestown by Mark Nicholls Sidebar: "Such a dish as powdered wife I never heard of" Download George Percy's A Trewe Relacyon Driven by desperate famine, a colonist in the Starving Time killed and ate his pregnant wife. Willy Balderson portrays the madman, Trish Balderson the unfortunate wife. Likely part of purification or martial rites, cannibalism was practiced by some Indian tribes, here in Theodore de Bry's 1592 scene. Boiled boot leather being eaten by Calvin Jenkins, left, and Patrick Strawderman when better sources of food had vanished. Sir George Percy in a nineteenth-century portrait by Herbert Luther Smith, who copied an earlier work. The English settlers who arrived in Chesapeake Bay aboard the Susan Constant during the spring of 1607 landed in a new world, mentally as well as physically. Expectations were high. Vast tracts of unexplored country beckoned with minerals, with rich land, and with the prospect of an easy trade route to the Indies. High hopes, however, were the while accompanied by profound fears. The Algonquian tribes of Virginia's Native Americans—the Powhatans—seemed friendly enough, to begin with, but there was already a "back catalogue" of incomprehension and mistrust in the relations between Indian and European, fueled by a belief that this state of affairs must necessarily endure. Englishmen sailing to North America anticipated savagery and barbarism in the peoples that they encountered; they found it hard to accept the humanity even of those who welcomed them and gave them succor. They expected none of their civilized norms, such as they were. These expectations, of course, proved self-fulfilling. The human consumption of human flesh is as old as mankind—evidence survives from prehistoric and more recent societies across the world—but there was, in 1607, novelty in the word "cannibal," and novelty added to the frisson for the thousands of readers of travelers' tales, sitting in comfort back home. Contemporary writers, who knew their market, applied the term broadly, vaguely, and quite often for effect. Although Columbus refers to Canibales, predatory tribes living on the islands of the West Indies, the word unequivocally takes on its modern meaning in the mid-sixteenth century. "Cannibal" derives from a Spanish version of a Carib term meaning strong men. In the earliest records it is applied to intractable peoples encountered throughout the New World, those who resist the overtures of European traders and settlers. Antagonism of this kind was naturally unwelcome to those Europeans, and it had to be dealt with, militarily but also in the mind. One way to denigrate the truculent was to focus on their least palatable habits, and given the stigma attached on the eastern side of the Atlantic to the eating of human flesh, any suggestion that Native Americans devoured their fellow men, women, and children helped convey the notion that they were altogether less than human: fearsome enemies, expensive to defeat, but also fair game for bloody acts of reprisal. The writings of George Percy, youngest son of the eighth Earl of Northumberland and a prominent member of the original band of Jamestown settlers, offer an insight into the mind-set of those early colonists. Like every other man in Jamestown, Percy had come across tales of cannibalism in the Americas. On the outward voyage, he repeated what he had heard about the natives of Dominica in the West Indies, that they would "eate their enemies when they kill them, or any stranger if they take them," would "lap up mans spittle, whilst one spits in their mouthes in a barbarious fashion like Dogges." "These people," Percy wrote, "and the rest of the Ilands in the West Indies, and Brasill, are called by the names of Canibals, that will eate mans flesh." Cannibalism was practiced in some contemporary Native American societies, particularly among tribes of the north and the west. Jesuits living with the Iroquois recorded it, like torture, among the victors over those defeated in battle, and there is evidence that these customs endured into the eighteenth century. But the Iroquois, Mohawk, and other peoples surrounded their cannibalism with strict and complex taboos; never simply gastronomic, it was usually confined to strengthening or purification rituals, or to the systematic humiliation of foes. Recorded instances are often tied up and confused with tales of human sacrifice, which may from time to time be seen as a sublimation of cannibalistic rites. There is no real evidence that such customs were found on the Virginian littoral, but a bad press is hard to shake off. Confronted with the Jamestown settlers and their suspicions, Indians of the Powhatan confederacy could not win. When they captured Captain John Smith, they fed him, by his account, very generously. In this there were perhaps courtesy and a demonstration that the tribe was strong enough to eat well, but Smith, writing years later and aware his readership would welcome a good yarn, said he saw through the charade. Surely he had been fattened for slaughter. Vague tales of Virginian cannibals—always among the remoter tribes, just beyond the western horizon—persisted to the 1680s, when the minister John Clayton recorded tales of revenge cannibalism on defeated enemies. Ironically, it is the English who demonstrably resorted to cannibalism in the early days of the Jamestown colony. When grisly reports reached England, carried by runaways on board the Swallow in the summer of 1610, they caused a stir. To allege cannibalism among one's erstwhile comrades was suspect in men guilty of deserting a beleaguered colony, but their tales won credence in London. If exaggerated, they were fundamentally accurate. When dearth and disease swept through Jamestown, reducing its population perhaps by 80 percent in the catastrophic Starving Time of 1609–10, some individuals had turned to cannibalism out of hunger. As Percy and other survivors told it, sporadic cannibalism was a manifestation of a partial breakdown in civilized society in the face of inescapable disaster: A worlde of miseries ensewed as the Sequell will expresse unto yow, in so mutche thatt some to satisfye their hunger have robbed the store for the which I Caused them to be executed. Then haveinge fedd upon our horses and other beastes as longe as they Lasted, we weare gladd to make shifte with vermin as doggs Catts, Ratts and myce all was fishe thatt Came to Nett to satisfye Crewell hunger, as to eate Bootes shoes or any other leather some Colde come by. And those beinge Spente and devoured some weare inforced to searche the woodes and to feede upon Serpentts and snakes and to digge the earthe for wylde and unknowne Rootes, where many of our men weare Cutt of and slayne by the Salvages. And now famin beginneinge to Looke gastely and pale in every face, thatt notheinge was Spared to mainteyne Lyfe and to doe those things which seame incredible, as to digge upp deade corpes outt of graves and to eate them. And some have Licked upp the Bloode which hathe fallen from their weake fellowes. Percy, aware of the causes and trying to put events at Jamestown in context, turned to his books, mitigating these actions by pointing to precedents in colonies and settlements planted by England's European rivals. Even there some standards had been maintained. Whenever cannibalism occurs in the history of exploration in the New World, he suggests, it comes about in extreme circumstances, as an unwilling, necessary act: If we Trewly Consider the diversety of miseries, mutenies, and famishmentts which have attended upon discoveries and plantacyons in theis our moderne Tymes, we shall nott fynde our plantacyon in Virginia to have Suffered aloane...The Spanyards plantacyon in the River of Plate and the streightes of Magelane Suffered also in so mutche thatt haveinge eaten upp all their horses to susteine themselves withal, Mutenies did aryse and growe amongste them, for the which the generall Diego Mendosa cawsed some of them to be executed, Extremety of hunger inforceinge others secrettly in the night to Cutt downe Their deade fellowes from of the gallowes and to bury them in their hungry Bowelles. Colonists searched the wife eater's home for pieces of her body. He was then seized, hanged by his thumbs until he confessed, and burned alive. From left, Lindsay Gray, Dennis Farmer, Calvin Jenkins, Willie Balderson, Patrick Strawderman, and Dennis Strawderman. There are earlier narratives that made the same point, including a few relating to the Newfoundland voyages. But Percy is saying something else here. Life in Jamestown, for all the conscious mimicry of English tradition, is fundamentally different from life back home. On the very edge of the known world, such security as there is in England does not apply. More than once in the course of their long ordeal the settlers must have given up hope, the ghosts of their dead comrades clustering about them in the emptying fort. These traumatized settlers clung to the distinctions that set them apart from their Algonquian neighbors while adopting fleeting new conventions and customs that were subsumed into a more stable, more English construct later in the century. Here, graphically de-monstrated, is an "emergency society." Abnormal stresses lead to actions intolerable under a more established and comfortable way of life. Look, for example, at how laws are modified, or set aside, to suit a new, extreme life. English common law had come to discount evidence gained by torture, but in Jamestown the infliction of pain in pursuit of incriminating testimony is routine. Percy, in his capacity as interim president of the colony, tells us how he dealt with a man accused of killing, salting, and eating his pregnant wife. When related by the Swallow refugees, the story had been indignantly rejected as a falsehood by the Virginia Company of London, the joint-stock enterprise led by Sir Thomas Smith that was responsible for the colony and its supply. But by the time that Percy wrote, about 1625, he no longer saw a reason to be coy. He conceded that he passed a sentence of death on the wretch—if for murder rather than cannibalism—having extracted an admission under torture, hanging his prisoner "by the Thumbes with weightes att his feete a quarter of an howere before he wolde Confesse the same." Though Percy did not say so, the man was burned alive, a punishment that follows no conventional penalty for murder under English law. That punishment paled in comparison to the ad-hoc torments inflicted by Sir Thomas Dale. Deputy governor in 1611, Dale showed no patience with those "idell" colonists who preferred sloth or desertion to hard work. That impatience was apparent when he set out upriver to found a settlement, eventually named Henrico after the king's eldest son, Prince Henry. Deep in Powhatan territory, Dale took a tough line with recaptured deserters. Percy records the consequences: Some he apointed to be hanged some burned some to be broken upon wheles others to be Staked and some to be shott to deathe, all theis extreme and crewell tortures he used and inflicted upon them To terrefy the reste for attempteinge the Lyke. And some which Robbed the store he cawsed them to be bownd faste unto Trees and so sterved them to deathe. Yielding to the pangs of cruel hunger, colonists, portrayed by Calvin Jenkins and Carol Farmer, dug up corpses for food. This is what the English did to their own. They were no more respectful of norms and guidelines in their relations with the Indians. The routine execution of spies may be familiar, but Percy also recounts the slaughter, in cold blood, of an Indian "queen" and her children, taken prisoner in a military operation. It is the fault of his followers, he writes, as the children are thrown into the water and shot while swimming, and the woman is led off and "putt to the sworde" in the woods. Reprisals against enemy captives were not unknown and had loomed large in the Elizabethan Englishman's experiences in Ireland, but the bloodlust shown by both sides in the early Indian wars, the absence of charity toward women and children, illustrates a mutual contempt and fear unusual in the wars between major European nations. Those at the mental frontier between "civilized moderation" and "unfettered savagery" engaged in a struggle for survival, finding that respect and self-esteem may vanish and that relentless siege and mounting hunger begin, step by step, to overwhelm nicer feelings. Percy is correct, up to a point. Incidents of the Jamestown kind of cannibalism must be seen in this context. Can we, however, accept Percy's argument that cannibalism such as Jamestown's is never universally countenanced, that it is regarded as a repulsive action of last resort? Curiosities in the accounts make us wonder whether the full tale is being told. Reports, composed almost exclusively by the gentlemen among the settlers, say that the "lower orders" were the first to indulge in such acts; social norms were thus preserved in the written record. But who were the individuals who dug up and consumed corpses? They are never named. It is curious in so small a society that any man, wellborn or poor, could have enjoyed the privacy necessary to slaughter his wife and eat her over time, piece by piece. Did he get away with this because so many people were dying—and morale was so low—that one face more or less was not worthy of remark? Or was there connivance of some kind? Observe how the bodies of men, including at least one Indian, are buried before being surreptitiously dug up and consumed. Note, too, how carefully human flesh is prepared: "boiled and stewed with roots and herbs," "powdered," "carbonadoed." This suggests concerted action, perhaps widely beneficial, and perhaps verging on ritual. Is the implication of method and planning a later elaboration, or does it accurately reflect a starving man's obsession with food? We touch on deeper fears: that human meat might prove addictive. One of the colonists, it is said, acquired the taste. He could not be restrained from cannibalism and had to be executed. True story, or a trope on where such bestial behavior can lead? From the Aztecs to the Fijians, history suggests that whole societies can develop a lust for human flesh, and that consumption ritualized keeps the craving within bounds. In this obsession, hunger, and pain, it is a relief to encounter a touch of bleak humor, directed not against Indians who had come up with a novel way of tormenting starving people, but rather against the influential men in England who had so signally failed to relieve the settlers' want: Soe miserable was our estate that the happyest day that ever some of them hoped to see, was when the Indyans had killed a mare they wishing whilst she was boylinge that Sir Thomas Smith was uppon her backe in the kettle. http://www.history.org/Foundation/journal/Winter07/jamestown.cfm

Pope's hints on married priests trouble Vatican By Olivier BAUBE 6 hours ago Vatican City (AFP) - Pope Francis's hints about a possible opening on the issue of married priests are sowing confusion in the Vatican and among Catholic reformists and conservatives alike. Related Stories Pope promises 'solutions' to priestly celibacy AFP Pope says about two percent of priests are pedophiles: paper Reuters Australia priest abuse rate double pope's estimate: church group AFP Pope to visit Philippines disaster victims AFP [$$] Pope Francis Asks Forgiveness of Sex Abuse Victims The Wall Street Journal Twice in three months, Francis has talked about changes to the tradition of celibate priests -- although he has never been precise about how exactly this could be reformed. On a flight back from his trip to the Middle East, Francis pointed out that there were already married priests in the Ukrainian Greek Catholic and Coptic Catholic churches. "The door is always open but we are not talking about it now as the order of the day," the Argentine pontiff said. It is a priority, however, for the dozens of campaign groups that have sprung up -- many formed by men who have been forced to leave the priesthood to get married. The European Federation of Married Catholic Priests estimated more than 100,000 former Catholic priests have got married over the years -- a figure which would make up around a quarter of the number of current priests. Earlier this year, 26 women who said they were in love with priests living in Italy, wrote an open letter to the pope asking for a Vatican audience and speaking of their "suffering" because of the secret lives they have to lead. Vatican expert Andrea Tornielli said at the time that Francis was particularly sensitive to the issue as, when he was the archbishop of Buenos Aires, he was close to an Argentine bishop who renounced the priesthood for love. The pope's comments over the weekend have had the effect of a new bombshell after La Repubblica daily in an interview quoted him as saying on priestly celibacy: "There are solutions and I will find them." The comments were immediately denied by Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi who said that the interviewer -- the newspaper's 90-year-old founder, Eugenio Scalfari -- had not written down the exact quotations. "This is not at all an interview in the normal sense of the word," Lombardi said of the one-to-one conversation between Francis and Scalfari, even accusing the newspaper of manipulating "naive readers" with inaccuracies. It was the second time that a papal interview with Scalfari has raised some hackles in the Vatican, leading to the question of whether the pope could be using these conservations as a way of bypassing traditional Vatican communications. Father Papas Jani Pecoraro, an Italy-based married priest from the Greek Byzantine church, which is under Vatican authority, welcomed the pope's reported comments. Speaking to La Repubblica, he said: "The issue could not only change the relationship between the Catholic Church and the lay world but also with other churches." "We have to read the times and there is no doubt that today's society raises questions that a married priest is definitely better able to cope with," he said. A Vatican expert, speaking to AFP on condition of anonymity, said that as a whole Francis was seen as "an open pope". "With his arrival, the progressives in the Church have regained hope," he said. But a Vatican source said that merely pointing out that priestly celibacy is not a dogma was "no great discovery" and called for greater caution on over-interpreting papal comments. The source said: "Some questions have been raised but this should not be seen as messages being passed on." In the Repubblica interview, Francis pointed out that the ban on married priests was only instituted in the 10th century -- nine centuries after the death of Jesus Christ. "The pope is sensitive to the issue," said the Vatican expert, although many observers are puzzled as to what kinds of "solutions" the pope could have in mind and few are expecting major changes any time soon. http://news.yahoo.com/popes-hints-married-priests-trouble-vatican-054617410.html

How about a compromise?

I will take 'crazy' as a term of approval and affection. Maybe the 2 Mamas are a Before and After view?

That's Mother Nature?! I had pictured her rather like this...

Pope Francis continues to be trailblazer by looking to nix celibacy requirement, allow priests to marry In translations of a recent interview, the Pope is quoted as saying he will find a 'solution' to the problem of celibacy — a major shift in the Vatican, which in the past has been intractable on the requirement for priests. BY Denis Hamill NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Monday, July 14, 2014, 9:17 PM It looks like Pope Francis is rethinking the idea of celibacy for clergy, and it’s about time. In a recent interview with the founder of the Italian newspaper La Repubblica, Pope Francis was asked about the church’s sex scandals and the requirement that priests be celibate. The La Repubblica story was picked up by major news outlets worldwide. “Report: Pope Francis Raises Idea of ‘Solutions’ to Clergy Celibacy,” was the headline on Time magazine’s website. The Vatican then sounded a cautionary note, saying La Repubblica’s article — which also claimed the pontiff said about 2% of Catholic priests are pedophiles — might not quote Pope Francis’ exact words, but reflected the “sense and spirit” of his feelings. Still, translations of the article said the Pope recalled that celibacy was adopted 900 years after the death of Jesus Christ and pointed out that the Eastern Catholic Church allows its priests to marry. “The problem certainly exists, but it is not on a large scale,” La Repubblica quotes Francis as saying. “It will need time, but the solutions are there and I will find them.” Even if these quotes are merely in the “sense and spirit” of the Pope’s beliefs, this is a major shift in the Vatican, which in the past has been intractable on celibacy for priests. As a parent with a kid in Catholic school for the past nine years, I’ve heard countless other parents say almost unanimously that one major step toward preventing future sex scandals in the church is ending celibacy. Privately, most priests I know agree. “Pope Francis is a breath of fresh air,” says one seasoned priest. “This is a fascinating time in church history because of him. He’s out there in the sunshine, tackling big issues, dragging the church into the 21st century, on the cover of Time, speaking to the young. Most older priests I know are open to optional celibacy. Look, we accept converted, married Anglican priests. The Eastern Catholic priests can marry. Why not all priests?” In Monday’s edition of Irish Central, a daily Irish-American blog, a story by Patrick Roberts headlined “Pope Hints Time is Coming for Married Priests,” reports, “It would not be before time with numbers of priests dropping dramatically all over the world and celibacy blamed as the major factor. In 2012, just 12 men applied for the priesthood in Ireland. By 2040, it is estimated ... there will only be 400 odd priests in Ireland compared to 2,300 now.” Just as he was right about professing tolerance for homosexuals, Pope Francis is on the right track in seeking a “solution” for celibacy. Celibacy is not dogma, or of “divine origin.” It’s a church rule. The first Pope, St. Peter the Apostle, was married. So were four other Popes. Eleven more Popes were the sons of other Popes or clergy. Celibacy was optional for priests until it was voted a Vatican rule at the First Lateran Council of 1123. Many church historians believe the celibacy rule was a business decision. The Vatican simply did not want priests to marry and have heirs because they wanted all the clergy’s property and wealth to be bequeathed to Rome. But Francis might be the most Christian Pope since St. Peter, a true vicar of Christ on Earth. His deep compassion for the poor, hungry, sick, afflicted, and persecuted earned him Time’s designation as Person of the Year. Tackling the sex scandals head-on instead of sweeping them under a velvet Vatican rug led many lapsed Catholics to a renewed respect for the papacy and their wounded church that Francis is trying to revitalize. In his 2012 book, the pontiff wrote, “For the moment, I’m in favor of maintaining celibacy, with its pros and cons, because there have been 10 centuries of good experiences rather than failures . ... But it is a question of discipline, not faith, and it could change.” On Sunday, Pope Francis’ interview in La Repubblica suggests that change is coming as he seeks a solution to problems caused by celibacy. “I’m not sure I’ll see it in my lifetime,” says the local priest I spoke with on Monday. “But Pope Francis will lay the groundwork for ending the celibacy rule in the not-so-distant future. And it’s a good and welcome thing for the church.” Most Catholics I know agree. http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/hamill-pope-francis-nix-celebacy-requirement-article-1.1866762

The Gaia hypothesis is that Earth herself is wired to bring the biosphere back into equilibrium, one way or another. Most of those ways may not be too convenient for higher mammals such as H. sapiens, of course. Arthur Clarke had a perhaps more straightforward notion. He observed (in Profiles of the Future, I think) that any intelligent species must almost by definition pass through a choke-point in its evolution -- the time when it achieves the capacity for self-annihilation as we plainly have now, by ever more methods. The test is whether the species has developed, or can develop, sufficient capacity for self-control and rational action in time to avoid doing itself in. In his own variant of Gaia, in effect, he observed that this is probably a Good Thing for preventing the universe at large being overrun by malevolent beings and their societies.