The things people say....

[Balanced]

Originally Posted by ChristopherHall

I was shocked to hear that in America it used to be legal for a man to beat his wife. The term "Rule of thumb" comes from the idea that a wife can be beaten by her husband with a stick as long as the stick wasn't thicker than her husband's thumb.

We've made a lot of progress...we've got a little ways to go yet though.

Actually that is a myth. Check your "facts".

http://www.debunker.com/texts/ruleofthumb.html

However, Christina Hoff Sommers documents how the link between the phrase
"rule of thumb" and wifebeating is a feminist-inspired myth of recent vintage.
In her book "Who Stole Feminism" (NY: Simon & Schuster, 1994, p. 203) Sommers writes:

...The 'rule of thumb' story is an example of revisionist history that feminists happily fell into believing. It reinforces their perspective on society, and they tell it as a way of winning converts to their angry creed...

The 'rule of thumb', however, turns out to be an excellent example of what may be called a feminist fiction. Is is not to be found in William Blackstone's treatise on English common law. On the contrary, British law since the 1700s and our American laws predating the Revolution prohibit wife beating, though there have been periods and places in which the prohibition was only indifferently enforced.

That the phrase did not even originate in legal practice could have been ascertained by any fact-checker who took the trouble to look it up in the Oxford English Dictionary, which notes that the term has been used metaphorically for at least three hundred years to refer to any method of measurement or technique of estimation derived from experience rather than science.

[ChTatum]

Originally Posted by Balanced

Actually that is a myth. Check your "facts".

http://www.debunker.com/texts/ruleofthumb.html

However, Christina Hoff Sommers documents how the link between the phrase
"rule of thumb" and wifebeating is a feminist-inspired myth of recent vintage.
In her book "Who Stole Feminism" (NY: Simon & Schuster, 1994, p. 203) Sommers writes:

...The 'rule of thumb' story is an example of revisionist history that feminists happily fell into believing. It reinforces their perspective on society, and they tell it as a way of winning converts to their angry creed...

The 'rule of thumb', however, turns out to be an excellent example of what may be called a feminist fiction. Is is not to be found in William Blackstone's treatise on English common law. On the contrary, British law since the 1700s and our American laws predating the Revolution prohibit wife beating, though there have been periods and places in which the prohibition was only indifferently enforced.

That the phrase did not even originate in legal practice could have been ascertained by any fact-checker who took the trouble to look it up in the Oxford English Dictionary, which notes that the term has been used metaphorically for at least three hundred years to refer to any method of measurement or technique of estimation derived from experience rather than science.

He's voting for Obama, facts don't matter. Just give him change.....

[Balanced]

Originally Posted by ChTatum

He's voting for Obama, facts don't matter. Just give him change.....

That should do it!