A poor fellow named Ryan Haecker, a Junior at the University of Texas, was apparently born 150 years too late. This modern world is completely out of sync with his Victorian-era views of clothing and how it relates to the assigned roles of men and women. And this disconnect causes him ... to write:

Dresses epitomize womanhood in the Western world. Such has been the case since the western man adopted pants to replace the tunic in the sixth century (an aspect of the West's Germanic barbarian heritage). Dresses allow us to differentiate between the silhouettes of men and women on restroom signs. Dresses are the indelible image of womanhood because of the symbolic nature of pants and dresses. If all fashions are symbolic, dresses in particular symbolize womanhood by more fully embodying the ideal of a true lady, the objective understanding of what men find attractive in the fairer sex: passivity, domesticity, childrearing, coital love, piety and fertility. These defining aspects of womanhood are immutable. We all tacitly reaffirm these attributes in our attempts to find a partner. Flirtation and courtship are reaffirmations of what it means to be masculine and feminine because it is only by fulfilling the obligation of our form that we can attract the opposite sex.

....

The androgynous masculinization of the modern woman, through the donning of pants, suits, uncovered shoulders and unveiled hair, has in a sense led to the slow whorification of ladyhood. In discarding feminine dress, women seem to have symbolically discarded femininity and modesty (the virtues of women) in favor of sexual virility, promiscuity and immodesty (the vices of men). The ideal form of a true lady is a constant, immutable aspect of humanity, and this strange new development can only represent a bizarre aberration of a perverse and ignoble culture. Dresses are an essential part of any true lady's attire, and they should be worn.

Got that, Mrs Cleek? No more pants for you!

On Icelandic:

Icelandic is a Teutonic language of the Nordic group. It is believed to have changed little from the original tongue spoken by the Norse settlers. English is widely spoken and understood. Icelandic has two letters of its own: Þ/þ pronounced like th in "thing" and Ð/ð pronounced like th in "them."

Wow, that's pretty subtle.

We're considering doing a vacation in Iceland. Looks like fun. But I guess I shouldn't bother trying to learn any of the language if I can't even tell their letters apart...

Kevin Drum reports:

.The general subject here is "universal default." This means that if, say, you're late paying your electric bill, Visa can double the interest rate on your credit card even though your late payment had nothing to do with Visa. Anything that lowers your credit score, whether you know about it or not, can potentially change the interest rate on your credit card balance.

But it's even worse than that! Not only can they double your interest rate if they feel like it, but the new interest rate applies retroactively to your existing balance, not just to any new debt. Your minimum payment of $500 can become a minimum payment of $1,000 overnight and there's nothing you can do about it.

Fun! Read the comments for more credit card horror stories!

This is a broken system. It needs replacing.

TBogg

Update: Ah, the sneaky sumbitch just moved. He didn't give it up for good.

I sure am glad everyone around me is sick this week! It truly is the most wonderful time of the year.

What a bunch of strepsirrhines.

I have been informed that this wondrous and unusually informative blog no longer meets the criteria required to attain a certification of Genius. This is disturbing, and I feel compelled to remedy the situation, lest you, Dear Reader, come to feel you are receiving content of a lower quality than that which you clearly deserve given the, frankly, exorbitant prices you have to pay for it.

Therefore, I am writing this post with the aim of increasing the average sentence length and syllable-per-word count. As even the basest intellect can see, even though I am temporarily ranked at a sub-genius level, I retain my dexterous command of a wide range of sesquipedal, nay polysyllabic, words: from the pedestrian "average" to the rarefied "rarefied". And when it comes to the question of sentence length, I am sure my constructs can exceed even the wildest expectations, as they routinely leave far behind the point where a typical and narrow-minded high-school English composition instructor would scream at the top of his asthmatic, chalk-caked lungs, "run-on!" and unflinchingly venture into Joycean realms where the subject precariously dangles by gossamer beyond the horizon of the scrotumtightening precipice and the object is merely an ever-swirling mist of possible referents, leaving you to backtrack, if you choose, through the labyrinthine twists and turns of my majestic - and assuredly Genius-level - grammatical conflations, should you find you've lost the plot. But I don't expect that you, Dear sharp-witted Reader, should have any problems - you wouldn't be here, after all, if you weren't exceptional. And do not trouble yourself finding mistakes: a man of genius makes no mistakes; his errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery.

There.

Now rest assured, Dear Reader, this post will restore the blog to the reading level your discriminating tastes demand - or my name isn't Cleek J. Haplorrhini.

Haven't done this in a while...

• Syd Barrett - Madcap Laughs. I want to like it, but it hasn't grabbed me yet. I really like a lot of those old Floyd singles that Barrett wrote, but I think that spark was nearly out by this point.
• Sea And Cake - Sea And Cake. I resisted buying this for years, without good reason. But it's great. It's a lot more rough and unpolished than their subsequent records, but it's got a real band kind of feel - not slick and electronic like some of their recent stuff. A good lead-up to Parasol.
• Tord Gustavsen Trio - Being There. Cool, introspective piano-trio jazz. Very nice stuff.
• Bob Dylan - Blood On The Tracks. I really want to like Dylan. But it's just not working for me, outside of Highway 61 and Freewheeling, that is. This one does have the original version of "You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go", which I'd only heard in the Madelene Peyroux cover, so that's interesting (her cover kills the original, b.t.w).
• Amy Winehouse - Back to Black. Hey, why not. It's fun. Some of it's a little too contemporary (?) for me, but the more classic-soul-sounding tracks are pretty good. And "Rehab" is as catchy as anything.
• New Pornographers - Challengers. I like their uptempo stuff better.
• Matt Pond PA - Last Night. I like these guys (this guy? I dunno). They're like the Toad The Wet Sprocket of the 21^st century - very melodic, smart, nicely-crafted songs.

See Films Differently

@ The Straight Dope: Is drinking alcohol a good cold cure?

That said, while there's no evidence that alcohol will help fight colds that've already been caught, moderate drinking may keep colds away. A Carnegie Mellon study from 1993 found that smokers were at greater risk of coming down with something no matter their drinking habits, but nonsmokers' resistance to colds increased with consumption of alcohol (up to three or four drinks daily). And after surveying almost 4,300 Spanish university employees, researchers reported that those who drank 14 or more glasses of wine a week were only 56 percent as likely to catch a bug

Hmm...

If it means the US doesn't invade Iran, I'll give Bush all the credit for Iran's change of plans.

But, still, one thing puzzles me: Bush, Cheney, et al have likely known about this stuff for years now. And still they rattled their sabers. Why do you suppose that is?