A great answer

[BobM]

This is a post by "Charles" @ Pink is for Boys in response to some foolishness someone else posted.
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In mid 16th century Italy you’d have laughed at men in pants, pants were named after the famous clown, Pantalone. In 393AD Rome, you’d have been leading the mob to exile men in pants after the order was issued by Theodosius I. Men in pants were political subversives. In ancient Greece, you’d have been shocked at the barbarians wearing twin tube leg coverings. In Bulgaria in 867 AD, you’d be waiting for the messenger to return from Rome to get the Pope’s decision on whether you could be a Christian, EVEN THOUGH YOU WORE PANTS. In 1431 AD, you’d have tossed the torch onto the woodpile that burned Joan of Arc to death, because she had worn pants (“clothing not belonging to her sex”); In the 1870s, you’d have been saying along with the editor of the New York Times that women in pants were under “permanent mental hallucination.” In 1943, you’d have been the Chicago cop who arrested Evelyn Bross for wearing pants (“clothing not belonging to her sex”) or you’d have been judge Jacob Braude, who ordered her to see a psychiatrist for six months. Do you think it no longer matters what style women wear, because they’ve all become hermaphrodites? More like you think what they wear doesn’t matter, because the notion of everything goes for women has been drilled into your thinking from day one. You’re a typical conformist expressing the viewpoints dictated by this mass hypnosis environment you’re in that men have to look plain and drab, and that we always have to wear what was invented for riding a horse—pants, centuries after what caused pants has long since faded away. A man needs pants and plain clothes to confer gender on him, but a woman’s gender is conferred no matter what she wears. You are an idiot. I hope your pants are tight enough to squeeze your parts. It’s men that need the extra space a skirt gives—not women. Skirts and pants, fancy and plain clothes—individual differences—not gender differences. What people wear has been caused by social forces, the absorption of concepts from parents and teachers causes learned behavior. Neither has to do with sex chromosomes. Hair length is also a non-gender difference. Short hair on men is a habit tracing to early medieval European military regulations that came about as a measure for controlling head lice. The markers of male identification are facial hair, deeper voice, broader shoulders, narrower hips. These natural differences are in place and need not be added. What you’re appealing to is entirely synthetic and arbitrary.

[Tor]

In case you're wondering, the comment can be found at Men in Skirts | Pink is for Boys. The news source for this has been discussed here, though I'm not sure if the particular post has been directly linked before.

Thanks for posting this. Well worth reading.

P.S. More recently you've been posting in a size that renders closer to the default which I find easier to read. TBH, I've glossed over some of your posts because my internal reader interprets the larger text as shouting even though it isn't in caps. I can shrink the font to read your posts, though.

[BobM]

Sorry about the size. I have had two surgeries on my right eye this year for a detached retina, and it is still full of mineral oil, so it is essentially useless right now. The left eye is dim with cataracts, so I use a 130 font setting so I can read what I write. I certainly have no wish to shout at anyone.

[Tor]

Like I said, it's the way my internal reader wants to interpret text text that is larger than the surrounding text - i.e. in this case other posts - for all that I tell it that it should read as just more text. Your recent posts are much easier to read. I have seen your explanation, and do understand. If I read aright it sounds like your right eye is only temporarily in such bad shape and improvement is coming. If so, best wishes on speedy recovery.

[Kirbstone]

Bob,
Sorry to read about your eye problems. We all rely on them so much that most of us take their continued function for granted.

I do wish you a speedy recovery and trust that in time your left eye cataract can be successfully sorted.

T.

[BobM]

Thank you both for the good wishes. Surgery to remove the oil is scheduled for October 7. Then three weeks for the vitreous humor to refill naturally. I will not allow cataract surgery on the left eye because, according to my doctor, that was most likely what set off the detachment. Apparently it happens in a small percentage of cases. If you want to be grossed out Google "scleral buckle" operation.

[crfriend]

I'd like to pass on best wishes for good luck on the surgery as well.

If you find you need larger fonts, and you're running a reasonably new copy of IE, try holding down the "CTRL" button and run the scroll-wheel on the mouse forward. That'll zoom the entire page in (or out). Corresponding tricks should exist on other browsers.

[renesm1]

Larger font doesn't imply shouting to me! EVERYTHING IN CAPS DOES!!!

BTW, great posting! You are very knowledgeable!!!

[Uncle Al]

Hi BobM,

I use Firefox instead of I.E. but this 'command' works for either browser.

Press and hold Ctrl(control), then press the plus(+) or minus (-) key.
with each press, or tap, of the +/- keys the screen will zoom in or out.
Plus = zoom in, Minus = zoom out.

Hope this helps

Best wishes for a speedy recovery

Uncle Al

[Kilted_John]

Carl's trick also works in Firefox, on both the PC and Mac platforms. Again, on a Mac, replace Ctrl with command.

-J

[BobM]

I'd like to pass on best wishes for good luck on the surgery as well.

If you find you need larger fonts, and you're running a reasonably new copy of IE, try holding down the "CTRL" button and run the scroll-wheel on the mouse forward. That'll zoom the entire page in (or out). Corresponding tricks should exist on other browsers.

I learned computers in the days of punch cards. There was only one computer at Clemson and the line was long. You delivered your deck of cards to the computer center and hoped for the best. A day or two later you either got back your completed solution or were handed your deck with the note that there was an error. What error? Nobody knew. Somewhere in the deck there was a syntax error and when it got to it the computer just kicked out the entire deck. Basic, Cobol, and Fortran were all the rage, and I never went further. I had no idea that I could zoom the screen with such a simple maneuver! Thank you.

[PatJ]

Ahh yes - does anyone remember the languages that preceded Cobol and Fortran like SadSam and Midget? But yes, punched cards (80 columns) and one punch wrong in a deck of a couple of hundred cards and the whole program crashed. The only way correct the problem was with a new card, but we had to make sure it was placed back into the deck in the exact spot or the whole thing crashed again.

Along with punched cards were key punch machines that with a properly designed drum card, could duplicate the punches from a previous card, automatically shift to numeric code, and generally, attempt to make punching up the data and programs a bit easier. That is until one of the star wheels fell out and you suddenly discovered the last hour of work you managed to ruin a deck of punch cards.

Thanks for jarring my memory, but I like the PC a lot better.

[crfriend]

Ahh yes - does anyone remember the languages that preceded Cobol and Fortran like SadSam and Midget?

Now there are two languages I'd never heard of! I've learnt (and forgotten) more assemblers over the years than I can necessarily recall (different computer architectures require different assemblers because the instructions and operation-codes are different) and can still code, albeit a bit wobbly, in FORTRAN, COBOL, and ALGOL (a large improvement over its successors) but spend most of my time now either in C, any number of "scripting languages, and whatever flavor of binary/assembler the machine I'm working on at the moment eats.

But yes, punched cards (80 columns) and one punch wrong in a deck of a couple of hundred cards and the whole program crashed. The only way correct the problem was with a new card, but we had to make sure it was placed back into the deck in the exact spot or the whole thing crashed again.

That's what the sequence-number field was for! Dropped your deck? Some wiseguy shuffled it? Not a problem! Run it for a quick pass through a card-sorter and it'll come out right as rain.

Thanks for jarring my memory, but I like the PC a lot better.

PCs are useful, but at the same time getting to the PC set the field of computing back by almost 20 years in 1980.

[Sarongman]

Staying off topic, all computer aficionados, who remember the punched card system, should pay homage to Joseph-Marie Jacquard, who pioneered the system for the intricate loom weaving pattern bearing his moniker, altered slightly by Paisley weavers forty years later. Also, let's not forget the automatic musical instruments of the later 19th century and the early 20th. Now, as for computing, taken up by Babbage, then the U.S. statistician, Herman Hollereith to feed his census machine, and then, of course, the computer.

[skirted_in_SF]

I learned computers in the days of punch cards. There was only one computer at Clemson and the line was long. You delivered your deck of cards to the computer center and hoped for the best. A day or two later you either got back your completed solution or were handed your deck with the note that there was an error. What error? Nobody knew. Somewhere in the deck there was a syntax error and when it got to it the computer just kicked out the entire deck. Basic, Cobol, and Fortran were all the rage, and I never went further. I had no idea that I could zoom the screen with such a simple maneuver! Thank you.[/size]

I did just enough coding in Fortran and COBOL in the early '70s to learn that I'm a poor programmer.
We were lucky in that our student Fortran compiler (Watfor) would read your whole deck and give you a listing point out all of your errors (as long as you only had one per card). Turn around in our data center was usually two to three hours but it was a long, cold walk from where the rest of my classes were held.