As International Women’s Day approaches, we remember the milestones in our quest for equality. We think of things like the 19th Amendment, the ability to work outside the home, reproductive freedoms, and Title IX.

But we should also take some time to thank the washing machine, according to the Vatican.

The washing machine has had a greater liberating role for women than the pill, the official Vatican daily said in an International Women’s Day commentary.

“The washing machine and the emancipation of women: put in the powder, close the lid and relax,” said the headline on the article in Osservatore Romano.

“In the 20th cenutry, what contributed most to the emancipation of western women?” questioned the article.

“The debate is still open. Some say it was the pill, others the liberalisation of abortion, or being able to work outside the home. Others go even further: the washing machine,” it added.

The long eulogy to the washing machine - for which the first rudimentary models appeared in the 18th century - highlighted “the sublime mystique to being able to ‘change the sheets on the beds twice a week instead of once’,” quoting the words of late American feminist Betty Friedan.

While the machines were at first unreliable, technology has developed so quickly that now there is “the image of the super woman, smiling, made up and radiant among the appliances of her house”, wrote Osservatore.

That’s a good point.  Who cares about the right to vote when I can do the laundry AND have my lipstick on by the time my husband gets home?

Thanks, Maytag!

So there’s this businessman, see, in China? A married one, named Fan. But this married businessman also has a few mistresses, like five. He puts each up in an apartment and gives them monthly allowances.

With the tough economic times and all, the married businessman decides he can’t afford to keep all five of them, so he does the obvious: has a competition to find out which one to keep.

From CNN.com:

He staged a private talent show in May, without telling the women his intentions. An instructor from a local modeling agency judged the women on the way they looked, how they sang and how much alcohol they could hold, the Shanghai Daily said.

…because being one of five mistresses of a married man isn’t degrading enough. You haven’t really shown someone how much you love them until you debase yourself repeatedly, proving your worthiness to be #1 Girl on the Side.

So, how does the contest turn out?

Well, in round 1, a 29 year-old waitress named Yu is eliminated based on her looks. Yu shows her lack of malice toward Fan and the remaining four contestants by asking all of them to accompany her on a sightseeing trip. You know, one last family trip for her scrapbook. Amazing girl, Yu.

Tragically, Yu accidentally drives the whole lot of them off a cliff, killing herself and injuring the rest.

But don’t worry. After the mishap, Fan shuts down his company, pays Yu’s parents about $85k for her death, and cancels the competition.

Oh, and the four remaining mistresses, along with his wife, leave him.

The End.

It’s apparently the new trend in foreign relations: chucking shoes at world leaders when you don’t like what they stand for.

It happened to President Bush, and now it’s happened to Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao while he spoke in Cambridge.

The sole protestor, a 27 year-old man, was promptly arrested.   Unlike his Iraqi counterpart, though, he’ll just have to appear in front of a magistrate in England, rather than being maimed and tortured in an undisclosed location in Iraq.

What’s funny about this story - I mean, in addition to the general silliness of having a shoe thrown at one’s head - is the Chinese spin on the matter. After the government was done purging message boards of comments about the matter, the boards were left with messages like this:

“The uncompromising Iraqi people threw a shoe at Bush which is a brave act by a suppressed nation,” said one comment on the tiexue.net bulletin board. “But the ugly Englishman threw a shoe at Wen, which was only a barbaric trick.”

In addition to the hilarity of such a simplistic, nationalist comparison, I giggle at the notion of a ‘barbaric trick’.  It might be just a difficulty with the translation, but ‘trick’ seems much too casual a word to put together with ‘barbaric’ and the combination tickles the wordie in me.

Subtitle: Just another reason why all those Facebook apps are a bad idea.

From the AP:

A court in Australia has approved the use of Facebook, a popular social networking Web site, to notify a couple that they lost their home after defaulting on a loan.

The Australian Capital Territory Supreme Court last Friday approved lawyer Mark McCormack’s application to use Facebook to serve the legally binding documents after several failed attempts to contact the couple at the house and by e-mail.

Sure, it starts innocently enough. Good karma here, a high five request there. Maybe a little Scrabulous here and there after dinner - you can quit anytime you want.

Next stop? Foreclosure.

It’s a dangerous path, my friend. A dangerous path.

Switzerland has taken the bold move of disallowing vegans and thin people from serving in its army.