If you start that……….,

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A divorce court in China has ordered a man to pay his ex-wife the equivalent of $7,700 as compensation for housework during their marriage.

The case fell under a new civil code in China that enables someone to seek compensation during a divorce if they were the primary carer for children or elderly parents, or shouldered a disproportionate burden of housework. The ruling sparked much furore online, with a large poll from one Chinese media outlet showing that 94% thought the ruling didn’t give the woman enough*  (The Guardian, 24 Feb 2021).

* Yes!!

My comment:  This is a mare’s next.  There is  a host of scenarios here:  who has left the marriage in the first place;  can fault be attributed; who paid the mortgage,  how much of the husband”s money was passed over to the wife for living expenses …..goodness, all sorts of issues and quarrels could emerge.  Is there a fair way of working out the value of housekeeping, cooking and child- raising?   If so, I would like to hear ideas.

Meanwhile, on a personal note (and some some thirty years ago), in parting with my then wife in as civilized way as possible, I gave over the deeds of the house and all the furniture and fittings to her, plus a monthly stipend.  No lawyers. But then I had a greater earning ability than she did at the time.  A comparatively amicable parting, and epicurean peace of mind.

 

Choice – a poem

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They think we’ll rejoice,

Offered infinite choice.

But in fact more is less;

Indecision means stress.

Why think it is clever – –

While wasting our time

(a maddening crime) – –

To propose the adoption

Of every damned option

Under the sun,

Instead of just one?

 

Just take the car,

Where they’ve gone much too far.

Do I have to recap

The ten types of hubcap

The number of doors,

Colored carpets on floors,

The bumpers, the hoods,

Powered windows, faux-woods?

One mentally cowers

In the face of horse-powers,

Different colors and trims,

And personalized shims.

 

Take the cereals on offer:

A hundred they proffer,

And do so in aisles

Stretching out there for miles.

Vitamins added in endless array

In confusing proportions of C, D and A.

If you read all the labels,

Ingredient tables,

I very much fear

It would be a career.

 

Hi-tech sort of gear

Is a category where

They include lots of stuff

That you don’t use enough,

Or remember it’s there,

Or particularly care.

The shops you buy through

Mostly haven’t a clue;

The instructions are vast,

And a whole day has passed

Before you work out

What the item’s about.

 

Oh, take me back home

Where the buffaloes roam,

Where you rock in your chair

In fresh air with no care,

Where in the boondocks

The shops have small stocks,

And you’re settled and done

With a “choice” of just one;

And you buy your provisions

With no endless decisions,

Just a simple invoice and

No multiple choice.

 

So who’s going to tell

The people who sell

That we’re doing just fine

 Without over-design?

Who’s going to complain:

“Keep it simple and plain”?

Let it do just one task,

That’s all that we ask.

I’ll make a new start:

“Give us less à la carte”!

Come, you too can rejoice

With more time and less choice. 

The thief

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Only in America!

A thief who stole an Oregon woman’s SUV with her 4-year-old child inside drove back to criticize her parenting. The unnamed woman left the vehicle idling outside a store while she ran in to buy milk. The suspect stole it and drove off, but briefly returned to demand the woman remove her child. Police said “he actually lectured the mother for leaving the child in the car and threatened to call the police.”.   (The Week)

My comment:  I hope she in turn lectured him about theft and actually called the police, not simply threatened to.

Revisionist history

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 An education commission formed by the Trump administration after last summer’s Black Lives Matter protests issued a report this week equating progressive politics with fascism and accusing American educators of brainwashing kids.

The “1776 Report” prepared by the 18-member commission—with no professional historians—called for “patriotic education,” blasting educators for highlighting the nation’s “sins.” The commission decried the notion that George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were hypocrites for owning slaves, saying that slavery “has been more the rule than the exception throughout human history.” The report, which President Biden plans to rescind, also claimed that the civil rights movement “almost immediately turned to programs that ran counter to the lofty ideals of the Founders.”

James Grossman, the executive director of the American Historical Association, called the report “a hack job” and “cynical politics.”. (The Week)

My comment:  I must say that wasting your time attacking national leaders long dead seems pointless.  They were what they were.  Times were what times were.  What we should now be doing is improving the lives of African Americans, ensuring equal access to education, healthcare  and job opportunities etc. The way of life and the attitudes  of the Founders were hugely different to that of their present-day descendants.  Two people I can immediately think of had ancestors who held slaves, but certainly disagree with the institution of slavery – quite the opposite.

Concentrate on what you can improve today instead of wasting hot air on the late 18th Century and its manifest faults and dubious attitudes.

I

Naming diseases

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“If it was racist to call the virus the ‘Chinese virus’ or ‘Wuhan virus,’ why do you insist on referring to the ‘U.K. variant?’” —Chuck in Wisconsin

For whatever reason, we — media, health experts, politicians, humans in general — have historically referred to novel viruses by their unique new “thing.” But not only is that nomenclature not always accurate, it can also do serious harm.

Take the 1918 influenza pandemic as an example. It did not originate in Spain; the first known case was discovered in the United States. But newspapers covered the effects in Spain first, and so it was called the “Spanish flu.” With the benefit of hindsight, we can correct the false naming convention, but we should also be wary of falling into the same misconceptions in the future.

From Jan. 1 to Feb. 11, 2020, The Washington Post published 31 stories that used an inaccurate naming convention for the coronavirus, out of a total of 175. During that time, there was little information about the virus and even less guidance for media. On Feb. 11, the World Health Organization announced an official name, and the media widely started referring to it as the “novel coronavirus” and “covid-19.”

We’re in kind of a similar situation now with the variants. The media, including The Post, quickly adopted location-based naming for the variants — e.g. the “U.K. variant” for the variant that was first discovered in the United Kingdom. (We should add that the reason it was found there first is probably because the U.K. is on the forefront of genetic sequencing, and has far outpaced other countries in the sheer number of sequences it runs).

But The Post has since changed how it refers to these variants: On Jan. 27, the Post’s stylebook (internal guidelines) was updated to prefer “the variant first identified in the U.K./South Africa/etc.”

You might still find the location-based names in some places, like in headlines where it isn’t possible to fit both the news and “the variant first identified in South Africa.” We are hoping the World Health Organization soon comes up with guidance that all media can follow.

Naming novel things, especially in technical stories, is always a challenge. We have to weigh what readers are familiar with alongside what’s technically accurate. We try to find the right balance. There’s little point using nomenclature that readers don’t recognize, but we also understand the weight of our words and the influence they have? ( Washington Post 8 Feb 2021)

My comment: When the “British variant” hit the news I half worried that, owing to my British accent, a brick might find its way through our front window.  After all, a prominent person calls covid 19 the “Chinese virus”,  and apparently people who look Asian have been picked on.  Small minded, isn’t it?