Boys in Pink

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Until quite recently in the 20th century blue was the color for dressing girls and pink for dressing boys.

This painting by Renoir is of a boy not a girl:

Coco eating his soup by Renoir, 1905.  Claude nicknamed 'Coco' was Renoir's son.

The Sunday Sentinel,  March 1914, noted:  "use pink for the boy and blue for the girl, if you are a follower of convention."

In June 1918, the US magazine Ladies' Home Journal wrote that despite some confusion "... the generally accepted rule is pink for the boys, and blue for the girls.  The reason is that pink, being a more decided and stronger color, is more suitable for the boy, while blue, which is more delicate and dainty, is prettier for the girl."

Even as late as 1927 there was ambivalence on the subject.  Time magazine reported that Princess Astrid of Belgium had decked out the cradle for her unborn child in pink, only to give birth to a
daughter.  The correspondent decided to run a straw poll among U.S. department stores but found they could not agree which way it should be either.

Note Gainsborough's 'Boy In Blue':

Either an exception, or tastes in children's color were the same in Gainsborough's time (mid-1700's) as today.

Source - BBC History magazine


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I remember a western movie in which Burt lancaster, or is it Robert Mitchum, is caught in flagrante delicto in a woman's bedroom and he escapes through the window in pink, whole body button-up underwear.

Bin Laden Pops

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A possible clue as to how bin Laden was able to function satisfactorily among his three wives was the Avena syrup - a sort of natural Viagra - that was found in the compound where he died.

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He regularly applied Just For Men dye to his hair and his beard to maintain a youthful appearance.

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While publicly calling for young men to join his holy war, bin Laden was privately advising that his son decamp for the tiny, prosperous Persian Gulf kingdom of Qatar.

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He complained that Faisal Shahzad - a U.S. citizen of Pakistani heritage, who had tried to blow up an SUV in Times square on May 1, 2010 - had broken the oath of allegiance he had sworn to the U.S.  He said, 'it is not permissible in Islam to betray trust and break a covenant."

Source - Time magazine

Cromwell and Jewish Immigration

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In 1290 England expelled its Jewish population entirely.  Under Oliver Cromwell Jews were readmitted to England, but not for reasons of banking or commerce as we might expect.  The reason might seem quite off the wall to our way of thinking.

Cromwell and his Puritan advisors were convinced that the 'Last Days' were about to happen, and the return of the Messiah was near.  They believed that the sign of the last days would be that all the Jews in the world would be converted. The problem was that there were no Jews in England, so a group of Jews from the Netherlands offered to come to England and fill the void.  Their offer was accepted.

From 'How God Made the English', a BBC TV production.

Nature's Totally Natural Facelift

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How can you get a facelift that's permanent and totally natural?  A facelift that needs no plastic surgery, no medicine, no creams, no massage.  A completely natural facelift that actually works, and that requires no effort - or to rephrase - that requires no physical effort.  What it does require is WILLPOWER, and the simple question is, "Do you have the willpower?"

All that you need to do is to exercise two muscles at the back of your head.

It's truly amazing that something so simple should be so little known, and indeed, such a big secret.  The media never mentions it.  You never see it discussed on the morning shows.  Plastic surgeons don't seem to have heard of it.  All those movie stars spending fortunes on surgical facelifts haven't heard of it.  Yet it's a completely natural facelift.  A gift from nature, requiring nothing more than a little self-discipline.

Just think how much money is spent by women (and men these days) on surgical face lifts.  How much is spent on beauty treatments.  Whole industries existing solely to make our faces look younger.  And yet nature has given us the secret to get all of this for free and with so little effort, and NO-ONE KNOWS ABOUT IT!  So what's the secret ?  

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THE SECRET

At the back of your head there's a pair of muscles; one on each side of the head just behind the ears.  They're called the occipitalis muscles - AND THEY NEED TO BE EXERCISED.  If you try to find them you probably won't be able to, because in most of us the muscles have become atrophied. 

You have to rediscover them.

So that's where the muscles are located.  But how do you go about finding them?

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The first step is to learn to "wiggle" your ears.  Sounds strange but read on -

When you tighten your occipitalis muscles, you also tighten your forehead, and you tighten the area around the top and sides of your eyes - (note: don't raise your eyebrows. In fact you must resist that tendency.) - and simultaneously your ears get pulled back.

So place your fingers in the general area of the muscles and try to detect the muscles as you attempt to move your ears back.  It'll take some time, so be patient.

When you release the tension on your occipitalis, your forehead will relax and your ears will move forward.  That's what the trick of wiggling your ears is all about - you alternately tighten and relax the occipitalis muscles, making your ears move backward and forward, and the faster you do this the faster your ears move.  Don't laugh.  That's part of the exercise.

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Once you've learnt to do this, the next step is to tighten your occipitalis muscles and KEEP THEM TIGHT.  Don't relax them.  It's as if you begin the process of wiggling your ears but stop half way.  Keep the occipitalis muscles tight for as long as you can.  This tension will keep your forehead tight and the area around your eyes tight!   At first you'll maintain this tension for a few seconds, later for a few minutes, even for  a few hours.  But don't worry.  You won't have to keep up the tension for that long.  Sporadic tension is enough.  It keeps you from furrowing your forehead, and that in itself is all you need.  When you begin to furrow your forehead you will instinctively pull back on the muscles.  It'll become as easy as flossing, driving a car, or watching TV.   

So there it is.  By keeping these muscles tensed, you keep your forehead and the area of the eyes tight.  That is the secret; and it's nature's totally natural facelift.

Best of all it's free.

And now that you know the secret, the rest is up to you.  Do you want a forehead of 'frozen furrows', drooping eyelids etc?

Or do you want to have control of how you look?!

Think of all the people exercising and building up their body muscles in all the health clubs all around the country, and not one of them exercising their forehead muscles!  Incomprehensible!

If you get discouraged, keep this in mind, that learning the secret and mastering the method is just like learning to ride a bike; you learn it once, but it's your's forever.

Live long, die quickly

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Francis Bacon in his book of Apothegms writes the following:

Bias of Ancient Greece,  being asked 'How a man should order his life?' answered: "As if a man should live long, or die quickly."

It makes sense - I guess it means to look after yourself and prepare for old age as if you're going to live a long life, but yet live every day to the fullest as if each day is going to be the last day of your life.  ('quickly' being synonymous with 'soon').

Bias of Priene of Ionia 570 BC was considered one of the seven Sages of Greece.

Michelangelo and hygiene

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Michelangelo's father, Lodovico, in a letter to his son during his stay in Rome at the age of 25, writes:

"Whatever happens, do not expose yourself to hardships, for in your profession, if you fall ill (which God forbid), you are a lost man.

Above all take care of your head, keep it moderately warm, and never bathe: have yourself rubbed down, but never bathe."

This is an era before modern medicine when any slight illness could be a major setback.

George Bernard Shaw and Downton Abbey

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In the TV series Downton Abbey a maid employed at the abbey gets herself pregnant by an army major who is convalescing there after injuries received in the War.  He returns to the front and is killed.  The maid contacts his parents with the news that they have a grandchild.  They wish to pay her for the child on condition that she have no contact with the child.  She rejects their offer.  George Bernard Shaw would have approved.  He seems to have  a low opinion of the parenting skills of the upper classes as evidenced by this letter, dated April 10, 1929.  It  can be seen at Bookman's Alley bookstore in Evanston, Illinois.

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This is what it says:

'If this case is genuine what difficulty does it present?  The girl is lucky enough to have a healthy baby.  She is ignorant enough to think that it would be for the baby's good to sell it into "a wealthy home where it would be loved as  an only child and petted and cared for and given every chance".  She evidently knows nothing of such unfortunate children.  The silly people who are giving her unnatural advice to throw her treasure away would be the first to recoil from her if she took it.  Her omission to provide the child with a legitimate father is pardonable: but she would never be forgiven - nor forgive herself - if she sold it to a rich woman.  If she really feels unfit to be a mother let her present it to a capable woman as poor as herself if she can find one willing.'

G. Bernard Shaw