The Chair of Chairs
It's surprising what you learn when Radio 4 is the background to your day. But sometimes I think I must be dreaming.Last night as I was preparing some food I heard an American Professor, speaking with all the authority of someone who had written A History of the Chair, say that if you did a manual job and were on your feet all day, to sit down was a treat.
Well, blow me! I suppose it takes years of academic research to come up with an astonishing insight like that.
As I looked for a pen to write down this amazing aperçu the Professor was continuing to share the fruits of her lucubrations. Before industrialisation, she said, people had to make their chairs by hand.
Truly astonishing.
I think I once heard that there was a time before motor cars when people used to ride around on horses. Could this possibly be true? Perhaps Radio 4 will do a programme about it.
posted by Willie Lupin @ 10:35 AM
6 comments
6 Comments:
How ironic that this post should come on the very same day that I found myself trapped on the sofa with no remote control in my visible perimeter, thus forced to watch a documentary about the history of the tin can (99% steel, 1% tin coating). Fascinating tidbit: the first ever tin can was made in England. If your British heart is so overflowing with pride that you are unable to contain yourself, sit down in a nice chair and calm down a little--and appreciate that you are able to.
I think you've re-defined 'forced' there. But I know what you mean. I was once forced to watch a programme on forensic entomology for a similar reason.
I love these studies into the bleedingly obvious.
Any thoughts on this one, as described by my local newspaper?
"After 18 years of research, Netherlands psychologist Wolter Seuntjens has published exhaustive findings linking yawning with romantic courtship, increased testosterone levels and, in some cases, orgasm.
An abridged version of his 464-page book On Yawning, Or the Hidden Sexuality of the Human Yawn, appears in the February edition of Annals of Improbable Research, a Cambridge-based science journal."
I think it's the 18 years that makes it extra special.
Amazing. One wonders how he first got the idea of a link between yawning and sexuality. Could it have been from observing the behaviour of his sexual partners?
I loved the recent study that most people didn't like going back to work after a holiday,you couldn't make it up
The drug clomipramine (used to treat obsessive/compulsive disorder) is credited with the side-effect of enabling some users to experience orgasms when yawning.
The program on chairs was fine - why do some cultures create them and endow them with all manner of scrolls and whatnots - when other cultures just opted to put big cushions on the carpet? It's a fair question. You weren't forced to listen.
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