Tea at Trianon: Unbreakable Rules of Flight Etiquette

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Tuesday, June 14, 2022

Unbreakable Rules of Flight Etiquette

From Lifehacker:

Last week I asked you for your unwritten rules of flying. This was a request not for hot takes, but an attempt to lock down the bylaws of air travel that should be common sense, but for some reason are not a given. Reading through over 150 responses, I was forced to wonder if human beings were ever really meant to fly at all. There are some areas where I’m sure we’ll never reach true consensus, such whether it is ever OK to recline your seat, or take your shoes off, or bring a baby onboard. And as mask mandates disappear and summer travel ramps up, I doubt we as a society will reach a point of unity any time soon. Still, the promise of a higher understanding of what’s okay on a plane and at the airport sure does sound like major step to making air travel suck a lot less. (Next stop: Making airlines less evil.) Fasten your seatbelts are fastened: Here are Lifehacker readers’ unwritten rules of air travel. (Read more.)