The View From Kalamazoo

Diaperless Babies Seen As Earth-Friendly Solution: “Parents are urged to get in tune with their infant’s body signals and hold babies over toilets, buckets and shrubbery or any other convenient receptacle when nature calls…One advocate suggests bringing a “tight-lidded bucket” along to serve as a waste receptacle when mothers take their babies out in public.”

And more:
“”In my mind, diapers became the symbol of the Evil Empire of Western Parenting in which babies must suffer to accommodate the needs of their parents’ broken-continuum culture: a controlled, sterile, odorless, wall-to-wall carpeted fortress in which to live with the illusion of dominion over nature,” wrote Noelle, on the website livingharmony.com.

Despite his concerns, Noelle continued to use diapers on his daughter, despite the fact that he “felt like a monster and a fraud.”

Noelle finally chose to go diaperless and looked to traditional cultures for inspiration. “How I longed for a simple, dirt-floored, baby-friendly hut like that of a Yequana family,” he wrote.”

It’s patronizing. “Ooohh, look at those primitives living in their own filth! They’re so cute!!!”

It’s also patently stupid. The western world’s ‘controlled, sterile, odorless’ environment they despise is the alternative to filth and disease, countless numbers dying in plagues and epidemics – the environment our ancestors tried to escape, not glorify. Haven’t they seen those late-night Save-the-Chldren-esque commercials or taken a f-ing history course in their lives? SANITATION IS A GOOD THING. So much disease – diseases that kill children in huge numbers – are spread through feces. Increasing the risk intentionally for some political fashion is unbelievably stupid – and reckless, and dangerous, and moronic.

Mark my words – I’ll be arrested for physically assaulting some jackass having their infant shit in a can in their cart in the middle of the produce section at Meijer’s.

The British Library has recently expanded its “Turning the Pages” project to ten rare MSS and books:

The ten titles (each showing a couple dozen pages or so) and their descriptions:

Leonardo’s Notebook (Sketches by the great genius and notes in ‘mirror writing’)

Lindisfarne Gospels (Priceless treasure of Northumbrian art)

Luttrell Psalter (Fascinating glimpses of medieval life)

Sforza Hours (Renaissance masterpiece by Birago and Horenbout)

Golden Haggadah (Lavishly illustrated 14th century Hebrew manuscript)
Sherborne Missal (Magnificent 15th century service book)

Vesalius’ Anatomy (Landmark medical work of the 16th century)

Blackwell’s Herbal (George III’s personal copy of a beautiful botanical text)
Sultan Baybars’ Qur’an (Masterpiece of Arabic calligraphy)

Diamond Sutra (Chinese Buddhist scroll printed in 868. The world’s oldest,dated, printed book)

The site is so cool! You can hold the mouse button down and drag the “hand” cursor to open the cover and turn the pages. Two pages are shown at a time (just like a book). Each page is about 2.5″ wide and 4″ high (there’s a magnifying glass you can move around to get more detail).

[crossposted in my lj]