Sunday Snippets - more on full bodied women, prehistory plus a tongue twister for you

Today's Sunday Snippets records things that I have noticed but not yet commented on.

From time to time I have written in support of full bodied women. In an article in Good, Tod Perry comments on Target Australia's Valentine Day advertisements. I quote:

Target has revealed a sexy new Valentine’s Day ad for lingerie — but, unfortunately for those of us in the United States, the campaign is running only in Australia. The ad features three women with realistic body types posing in seductive lingerie, proving that you can be sexy without having to be a size two.

I quite agree! Speaking as a mere male who has had to live through multiple dieting regimes, life would be a hell of a lot easier if women recognised that many body types are sexy, that they don't have to get thin to be attractive. Of course, if you wan't to diet for health reasons or because it helps your self-image do so, but it's not much fun making love to a rake. Rakes belong in the garden shed.

Staying with sex, the evidence continues to grow showing that different human species interbred. I'm not sure that I would go as far as this headline, Evidence mounts for interbreeding bonanza in ancient human species, but we clearly got around a fair bit!

Kind of helpful to remember at a time when there is so much focus on division and separation that, in the end, we are related to each other and may have some ancestors stranger than we realised.

Just as in Australia convict ancestry within us has moved from a matter of shame to considerable pride, so the Neanderthal within us is coming to become a matter of some pride.

Staying with prehistory, DNA evidence suggests a major shift in human populations in Europe towards the end of the last Ice Age. Hardly surprising, although we are only just coming to grips with the way climate change has affected the human past.

Meantime, new dating techniques have been developed that may allow us to more accurately date Aboriginal rock art.

Finally, and changing direction again, try this English tongue twister from 1922. How did you go?

Postscript

Following up on  the theme of full bodied women, kvd pointed me to this BBC piece on the life of Annette Kellermann.

Kellermann, the name is sometimes spelled with one n as in the BBC piece, had a truly remarkable career as a swimmer, star, performer and swim suit designer, constantly pushing the boundaries.

While I knew the name and a little about her, I had nor realised the full extent of her career, nor the fact that she was born in the Sydney suburb of Marrickville. That's somehow appropriate, given that Marrickville has become a very trendy suburb!    .