The interesting Atlantic

My last post came from The Atlantic, which has a couple of other interesting articles up:

*  one showing a few cards from the time of the suffragette movement seeking to inspire fear that men would be completely emasculated.  The "suffragette madonna" gets particular attention:

That's quite an odd mind that came up with that, if you ask me.  (Although I have to say it strikes me as something the mysteriously 1950's Catholic re-incarnation of a man known as Currency Lad would approve of.)













As for this card:

you might have to click to enlarge it, but what is that thing coming out of the baby's mouth?  It looks strangely like it is connected to a computer mouse, but there is presumably another explanation.





*  The other article that caught my eye was one talking about the relatively high wages McDonald's employees get in Australia, compared to the US, at least if they are above teenage years.   Of course, the article does acknowledge that this also means that Australian outlets of the Golden Arches are full of teenage staff, who are (so I believe) worked in a particularly high pressure fashion to extract every bit of human output for the lavish $8 an hour they get paid.   Still, if you're an adult, you are much better off here working for McDonald's than in the US, and the article suggests (quite rightly) that perhaps consumers can tolerate marginally higher prices so that not every staff member in the store is expected to work for the equivalent of pocket money.

*  Wait, there's a third article that's fascinating - a summary of the pre-flight routine of astronaut Alan Shepherd, in which we learn something new - the Mercury astronauts had tiny tattoos to mark the spot for their electrodes (!)   There's a photo of Shepherd in his spacesuit too:

I always liked the slim fitting, silvery Mercury era spacesuits:  they are what a spacesuit should look like, much more so than the later, bulkier, white Apollo suits.

A fair bit of work has apparently been done on the tight, body hugging design for future suits that features in some science fiction (Jerry Pournelle used to feature it a fair bit in his books),  but unless they are silver, they just won't be as cool looking...