Tea at Trianon: The Posture Is the Purport

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

Sunday, November 15, 2026

The Posture Is the Purport

From Steam Calliope Scherzos:

A decade ago, a trend came along in which men started to encourage the use of “standing” desks for doing work. From what I recall, these kinds of men were sort of unusual, maybe a little too “online” — the kinds of guys who would push the “paleo” diet as well as those toilets where you have to squat down to defecate in them. Their basic idea was that sitting down for extended periods of time is a serious problem, and so the ability to carry out a computer-oriented office job while standing would increase one’s productivity with work, prevent spinal problems from emerging, burn more calories, and so on. Soon, people started to purchase versatile “sit-stand desks” that would enable them to sit as well as stand when they desired, and they became popular enough to merit some research on whether these things are really so effective.
Well, as it turns out, the results were spotty and inconclusive, with scientists declaring that standing may not be all that much healthier than sitting. One recent study in fact used accelerometer data from over 80,000 adults in the UK and found that standing up neither increased nor decreased cardiovascular risk, while for some people, standing too much could create circulatory problems like varicose veins or deep vein thrombosis. The standing-desk advocates had clearly overstated their claims.
Still, though, the ability to change the position of a desk isn’t a bad thing, especially if you’re dealing with a herniated disc or something like that. And besides, other studies have indicated that standing at a desk doesn’t exactly hurt work productivity, even if there’s no slam-dunk evidence that it improves it. So, these desks are still being sold, and some people swear by them, as this thread from the “Dad Patrol” Facebook account indicates. The logic of the placebo effect tells us that if it feels effective for some people, then it probably will be. And the advocacy of standing isn’t exactly all that new, either. Ascetics throughout history have advocated standing for extremely long periods of time, such as the Jains, the Hindu “Standing Babas,” and the Stylites of early Christianity. So it seems that even if the inner satisfaction of pleasure-renunciation is the only advantage of standing up to work, these sit-stand desks are still here to stay. (Read more.)