Trivia Question

[mjm4soccer]

It's gotta be some city on the eastern tip of Wisconsin that goes into either upper or lower Michigan. I just don't know what city that would be.

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=Washington+Island,+WI&sll=45.116027,-87.15532&sspn=0.669637,1.763306&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=Washington+Island&ll=45.176229,-85.690613&spn=1.337853,3.526611&t=h&z=9&iwloc=A

[zoony]

This was on the radio this morning...

There's a City inside State A...if you leave this city in any cardinal direction (N,S,E,W) you will end up in the same state "B". What city and state?

The City is Amsterdam, and "B" = "of confusion"

[China]

The answer to the original question is Stamford, CT. You hit NY if you go N, S, E or W.

OK, let's repurpose this thread:

Q: Why Do We Wear Pants? A: Horses

Whence came pants? I'm wearing pants right now. There's a better than 50 percent chance that you, too, are wearing pants. And neither of us have probably asked ourselves a simple question: Why?

It turns out the answer is inexplicably bound up with the Roman Empire, the unification of China, gender studies, and the rather uncomfortable positioning of man atop horse, at least according to University of Connecticut evolutionary biologist Peter Turchin.

"Historically there is a very strong correlation between horse-riding and pants," Turchin wrote in a blog post this week. "In Japan, for example, the traditional dress is kimono, but the warrior class (samurai) wore baggy pants (sometimes characterized as a divided skirt), hakama. Before the introduction of horses by Europeans (actually, re-introduction - horses were native to North America, but were hunted to extinction when humans first arrived there), civilized Amerindians wore kilts."

The reasons why pants are advantageous when mounted atop a horse should be obvious, nonetheless, many cultures struggled to adapt, even when their very existences were threatened by superior, trouser-clad horseback riders.

Turchin details how the Romans eventually adopted braccae (known to you now as breeches) and documents the troubles a 3rd-century BC Chinese statesman, King Wuling, had getting his warriors to switch to pants from the traditional robes. "It is not that I have any doubt concerning the dress of the Hu," Wuling told an advisor. "I am afraid that everybody will laugh at me." Eventually, a different state, the Qin, conquered and unified China. They just so happened to be closest to the mounted barbarians and thus were early to the whole cavalry-and-pants thing.

Turchin speculates that because mounted warriors were generally men of relatively high status, the culture of pants could spread easily throughout male society.

Click on the link for the full article