Covetousessnessness

I've been pondering the relevance of the "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife" commandment to women of Biblical times.

If I've understood correctly, women could own property - if their father had no son, they could inherit his estate. This was the exception rather than the rule; women themselves were a form of property, hence the phrasing of the commandment. However, obviously, if you can own things, you can covet things. However, since a woman could not own a man, there is no need to warn her against coveting her neighbour's husband - that's already dealt with in the commandment against adultery.

So that tells us two things: one, the commandment does apply to women, and two, hooray that we're not living in Biblical times! :-)

(Again, apologies to knowledgeable Christians, to whom this will all be obvious and a bit dull. :-)

ETA: Mesopotamian women certainly didn't have equal rights, but they did do better in the property department. Egyptian women were unusually close to equality for the ancient world.

ETA: Commenters have pointed out the apparent equality of Minoan women. I wanted to note that Ancient Greek women were pretty much invisible.

The Rule: Kazakhstan

The rule: whenever you hear the name of a country on the news and you don't know where the hell it is, look it up, and post three facts about it.

Kazakhstan:

1. It borders Russia to the north, China to the east, and Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan to the south. (I actually knew where those last three countries are, due to online debates about refugees from the Taliban.)

2. A quarter of a million inhabitants have Internet access; the country suffix is .kz

3. People in eastern Kazakhstan were affected by nuclear weapons testing, both directly, then when they unknowingly took radioactive left-over scrap metal dumped after the tests. (There's an article about this in the current New Scientist.)

Nukes in your backyard?

Bombspotting: Greenpeace protests NATO's nuclear arsenal in Belgium, Netherlands, Germany, Turkey, Italy, and the United Kingdom. (There are plenty of Brits reading this LJ, but hands up if you're from one of the other countries mentioned! :-)

Meanwhile, Brigadier shocks and awes: there is no war on terrorism. Sadly for UNIT buff this is a high-ranking Australian soldier talking about the shift in how war is now fought.

Happy Doctor Who Things

Pink Dalek

Jenny Parks' fan art

Carolyn Edwards' art - you can buy prints!

Old BSG

At least three episodes of this show have a joke where a man is afraid of a woman with authority - a woman in her forties with the title "Siress". (TNG fans will recognise the same retracting-testicles gag in Lwaxana Troi.) My question is, were the responsible writers afraid of their mothers or their wives?