Hitler's handedness

I found this site making fun of Tea Party activists, and posted about it on the facebook. I picked the "Obama is right-handed just like Hitler; that's why I'm voting Tea Party" one as a thumbnail. People seemed not to quite get the joke, so I said something like "it's funny because Obama's a lefty", and somebody else said they thought Hitler was too, so I had to go looking. That's when I found this. It's an insightful analysis of the current political climate that uses a non-issue like handedness to illustrate the craziness of the most vocal far right. It is the same idea, but more detailed and with the other hand. But the fact remains that Obama doesn't write with the same hand Hitler did.

By the way, this post is not in the typeface I want it in, but the controls seems to have stopped working entirely. There goes my consistency.

Louis Armstrong was kind of a nerd

The New York Times on language

When I was reading the article I mentioned in my last post, I found a link in the sidebar of the New York Times website to a discussion of the way a person's language affects their world view. I forgot about it in my zeal to spread the "emerging adulthood" idea to my loyal readership (hi, you two!). It would have stayed forgotten, too, if my father hadn't reminded me of it by telling me about a radio program that dealt with the very same ideas. So you may thank my dad for your current ability to click on this link.

Also, while I was looking for that article (it wasn't as easy to find as the first time), I found a goodly number of other articles about language, mostly elucidating a gripe about modern trendy or erroneous terms or usage. On occasion, however, there is a book review that is really interesting beyond a superficial delight in pointing out the linguistic foibles of others. For example: this review of Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue makes it look like exactly the kind of book I've been yearning for. My interest in language was first sparked by an article about the history of the English language, and I've been wanting to learn more about the subject ever since. This book appears to offer "the untold history of English", which I hope means that it will tell me (when I inevitably obtain it) about those strange quirky corners of the language that have undeservedly gone unnoticed in the general excitement over Latin and Greek and Norman French. I'm pretty excited about it.

Twenty-somethings

As a person in my mid-twenties, I identify strongly with the group described in this New York Times article. I feel like I'm not a child anymore, nor even an adolescent, but I'm a long way from feeling like an adult. I'm in between. And I feel tremendous pressure to stop equivocating and grow up already, though nobody seems to want to tell me what that entails or how to do it.

I am reminded of Hobbits, who come of age at 33, and consider the decade or so before rather an awkward time. It seems we're all more hobbity than we knew.

New Coat

I received a coat for Christmas. There is some assembly required. All right, I admit it: my gift is five yards of coat-weight wool and eight of lining fabric. But it's exactly what I hoped I'd get. Now I just need to decide what kind of coat to make, and make it. Well, I do need interfacing and buttons and thread and things, but all that is less important and easier to come by than the beautiful fabric my aunts gave me.

To that end, I've been scouring the internet for inspiration and came across this blog: Making My Tennant Coat. It's the blog of a guy who's made a reproduction of the coat worn by David Tennant as Doctor Who. He seems to have gotten everything exactly right, every detail the same as the original, even the fabric is (probably) the same fabric used for the costume. Perhaps the coolest thing about him is that he's using a sewing machine made in 1903. 1903! He's using an antique!

He also has other blogs in the same vein, about his progress on other Doctor Who costumes. They are linked in his sidebar. Mostly those are less interesting to me, but the Tennant Suit blog is probably going to inspire me to make a suit (which I've been half intending to do for a while), and to learn how to draft my own patterns. It's daunting, but if a guy with a 106-year-old sewing machine can do it, by golly, so can I.

I doubt I'll replicate any specific coat with this level of accuracy for my coat, but rather draw inspiration from various disparate sources, only one of which will be the Tenth Doctor. This guy's dedication just kind of blew me away, so I thought I'd share.

Alternate album cover day picture

Pocketing the Difference

It's been a year since I wrote anything in this, mostly because I felt it had become a place where I bragged or complained without offering anything else that anyone might want to read, even if they were aware of the existence of this blog. Most people, in fact, are unaware of its existence, because I don't think it's that good a blog (hardly riveting material, nor is it frequently updated).

But now I have something to write about. Sort of. I found something on the internet that I'd been made to read in college, but was interested in regardless. It's an article by Barbara Burman about pockets. It's called "Pocketing the Difference: Gender and Pockets in Nineteenth-Century Britain". I've always been interested in pockets, but this article does so much to make them fascinating that I really want to share a link to it. If I have done this linking business properly, you can find the article here. It's a single chapter of a larger book about dress and textiles in relation to gender studies. The book explains what clothing and cloth can tell us about gender.

I now feel justified, not only in having a blog (I've actually posted about something other than myself), but in my fascination with pockets. Well, call it an interest. I'm not fascinated by them like I am with hats. So, my loyal readership, you now have something to occupy you while you wait with bated breath for my next post. Which may be sometime in the next couple of years.