Malankazooie, on 11 March 2020 - 12:00 AM, said:
Been seeing a lot of discussion about handshakes. Is it time for the handshake to go away? In an interview a doctor said the origin of the handshake comes from the middle ages and was done to indicate that your sword arm was encumbered. Is that true?
About handshakes though. I've never been too concerned about catching something when shaking hands, but I am bothered by limp, dead fish handshakes, it's high on my list of social faux pas. Learn how to properly shake hands people! Firm, direct, honorable and respectful.
'
It is often when you are told not to do something, that you start to wonder why you do it anyway. And – as we move to elbow nudges – so it is with the handshake. Where did the custom begin?
The standard answer being bandied around (thanks to Wiki I suspect) is that it goes back to ancient Greece. But does it?
It is true that there are plenty of ancient Greek sculptures (funerary mainly) and pottery paintings that show two people clasping each other's right hand. And it is much the same in Rome [...] There is no sign, though, that this was a
greeting in our sense of the word. It looks more like a symbol of closeness, affection or trust.
[...]
In ancient (and particularly Homeric) Greece, if you were meeting someone of higher status to beg a favour, then you would very likely have got to the ground and clasped them around the knees. There was probably plenty of bowing, scraping and self-prostration in ancient Rome too (that kind of abasement was something of which "good" emperors supposedly disapproved – which very likely means that it happened a lot!). But what would more ordinary members of the elite do if they met someone they regarded as an equal? The fact is that they would probably have kissed, on the lips, or lips to eyelids. And not just man to man. The Greek antiquarian Plutarch (who found quite a lot of what the Romans did rather puzzling) asked in his Roman Questions "Why do Roman women kiss their male relatives on the lips?" His favoured answer (probably untrue, but a giveaway of social attitudes to women) was so that the men could tell if the ladies had been at the bottle.'
(These people are all dead now. Though if it's funerary art, maybe they were already dead?...)
https://www.the-tls....-the-handshake/
'One of the earliest depictions of a handshake is found in a ninth century B.C. relief, which shows the Assyrian King Shalmaneser III pressing the flesh with a Babylonian ruler to seal an alliance. The epic poet Homer described handshakes several times in his "Iliad" and "Odyssey," most often in relation to pledges and displays of trust. The gesture was also a recurring motif in the fourth and fifth century B.C. Greek funerary art. Gravestones would often depict the deceased person shaking hands with a member of their family, signifying either a final farewell or the eternal bond between the living and the dead. In ancient Rome, meanwhile, the handshake was often used as a symbol of friendship and loyalty. Pairs of clasped hands even appeared on Roman coins.
While the handshake had several meanings in the ancient world, its use as an everyday greeting is a more recent phenomenon. Some historians believe it was popularized by the 17th century Quakers, who viewed a simple handclasp as a more egalitarian alternative to bowing or tipping a hat. The greeting later became commonplace, and by the 1800s, etiquette manuals often included guidelines for the proper handshaking technique'
https://www.history....f-the-handshake
A rumor is going around the African-American community that black people can't get the novel coronavirus:
'I was casually chatting with a friend Monday when the subject of the coronavirus came up and he said, "I don't think black folks get it."
I was, like, "What?!"
Needless to say, my jaw was hanging as he went on to explain how he had heard that it had something to do with the melanin in darker skin tones. Now, normally, I would have just politely disabused him of that fallacy and kept it moving, as they say.
But earlier, I had been poking around online and stumbled across a few comments on social media in which other African Americans appeared equally as skeptical about the respiratory disease spreading around the globe and its possible impact on them.
I also asked a random sampling of some of my most vocal Facebook friends about the coronavirus and most of them had heard the same thing.
[...] Caudle, also an associate professor at Rowan University[... :]
"I literally was in the beauty shop just yesterday. I'm not even kidding and I overheard this woman talking to another woman and she said something like: 'Did you hear? I heard black people can't get coronavirus,' " Caudle says on the video. "She was literally having a conversation with another woman about this.
"Guys, I'm black. Many of you might be black. There is no evidence to say that black people cannot get coronavirus. This is a myth. Anyone can get coronavirus," she adds.'
https://www.inquirer...g-20200310.html
Apparently some people genuinely believe that beer will kill the virus:
'He'd just broken up with a girlfriend and had gone out for a few beers, alone. He said the beer would protect him from the virus.'
https://slate.com/hu...yft-advice.html
'CDC Director Condemns Trump's "China Virus" Tweet
"ABSOLUTELY WRONG"
The president on Tuesday reposted a tweet that referred to the novel coronavirus as the "China Virus," a term with racist and xenophobic meaning.
[...] The president[...] reposted a tweet from conservative commentator Charlie Kirk on Tuesday referring to the disease as the "China Virus" and calling for the U.S.-Mexico border wall to be constructed. Trump added, "Going up fast. We need the Wall more than ever!"'
https://www.thedaily...ina-virus-tweet
This post has been edited by Azath Vitr (D'ivers: 11 March 2020 - 12:31 AM
Azath Vitr (D'ivers 
I thought you abandoned the site years ago. Nice to see you around
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