I’ve been reading about the architecture and social history of St Pancras train station, which has given me something I’d never have predicted, interest in train sheds.
And writing about the wonderful Egyptian paintings of the tomb of Nebamun, soon to be back on display, of which I’ve had a sneak preview.
Mary of Burgundy, the last Valois ruler of the state, wife of Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor, chose to have herself depicted as a hunter and horsewoman, an active, powerful ruler, an only slightly feminised version (she’s sidesaddle) of the traditional knightly portrait of a duke holding a falcon.
There were a few images of her performing traditionally female acts of piety, but only a few. Her posthumous (she died at just 25) portraits, are, however, according to in “The Posthumous Image of Mary of Burgundy” by Ann Roberts (in Women and Portraits in Early Modern Europe, by Andrea Pearson, ed), in she becomes a traditional religious, pious, submissive female. (Maximilian was using her for his own propaganda purposes, he wanted her, and made her appear to hsitory “as a virtuous, passive bride, whose wealth he possesses to do with as he will”.)
How many women must have been rewritten such ways…
Who knows why, since no one seems to believe in the scheme, but the British government is ploughing on with the ID card scheme – which is all built around biometrics – the “fool-proof, high-tech identity solution”. Well hah, hah, hah – this should be April 1.
For in Japan, a woman who had been deported used special tape to fool a fingerprint machine.
* The Folger Shakespeare Library has an exhibition News Before Newspapers – about the really early days of the press. And if you can’t see the actual thing, there’s a pretty good online exhibition – hat-tip to Wynken de Worde.
* “Third-hand smoke” is dangerous – now I know why I instinctively recoil into the back corner of the lift when the smokers come in from their break. (Well yes, they do smell awful too.)
* But something nicer: traditional, fortified homes in China, made out of a packed mix of sand, earth, mud and pebbles bound together with glutinous rice and brown sugar”, some up to 600 years old, “tulou”, have made the World Heritage List, and if not yet safe are at least in line for preservation.
* An “ingenious new parasite” was found last year. It “makes the abdomens of infected ants swell and turn bright red. Birds mistake the ants for berries, gobble them up and spread the parasite’s eggs in their droppings.” (No it isn’t April 1, I checked – it was published in Systematic parasitology – although I can’t help feeling someone missed a trick there – the journal Nature surely would have loved it.)
I’m steaming after reading the story of the pregnant 12-year-old who had no idea how she got that way: “they had been “playing house” when the pregnancy occurred.”
I’m usually have great sympathy with the writers of the very powerful Abortion Clinic Days blog on which this account is written, but not in this case. They say this is a “very religious family” – well no surprise there. But also that “there is no evidence of parental neglect”.
Well, NO – to fail to give a child the information about the facts of life, about the facts of how her body works and what might be done to it – is the most profound neglect. (And presumably this child was menstruating – I dread to think what she might have been told about that.)
This is not so very different from the father who sent his 11 and 12 year old children to walk 10 miles home in the snow. The girl, 11, died and her brother very nearly did – and if this pregnant 12-year-old were to die (and the pregnancy is described as high risk), then the family would be equally culpable.
Reading in this paper that the public generally has a positive perception of human rights in Japan – “A 2008 poll, surveying more than 17,000 people in 34 countries, placed Japan in second place for positive public perceptions among a list of fourteen countries.” – was astonishing.
There’s not only its hideous, almost sadistic use of the death penalty, but also its utter maltreatment of women in the judicial system – as in this rape case, from which we learn that victims are actually forced to re-enact the crime for the police.
In statements to the courts, the Kanagawa police have argued they are not obligated to provide rape victims with underwear or showers and it is an unreasonable request that investigations require the participation of a female officer. The police also said that because rape victims do not need urgent medical treatment they are not required to take them to emergency rooms and they do not believe Jane’s assertion that she was too depressed by the crime to return to the scene. Taking re-enactment photos is normal protocol.
It reminded me of the point at which I abandoned reading Francis Fukuyama’s The End of History, in which he claimed that the almost zero statistics for recorded cases of domestic violence “proved” what a harmonious society it was. (Abandoned reading it by flinging it against the wall in fury – that Thai apartment wall probably still shows the mark.)
If the police won’t record an offence, and society doesn’t even think of the action as such, well, yes, the figures are going to be very low.
And all of that’s without even going into its treatment of non-ethnic Japanese in the society.
Japan should be right near the bottom of any league of human rights.
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