"Rule of Thumb" (was Re: racist opinion a crime)

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

>Carrol used the phrase, "rule of thumb, " I'd heard a few years
>ago about the origins of that phrase in the Middle Ages referring to the
>"proper" dimensions of a rod or stick to use to beat one's wife. A 
>search on google just now brought up some hits. Unfortunately, the 
>first one was from some anti-feminist website that used the 
>disingenuous work of Christina Hoff Sommers. Other hits, more 
>credible, on H-Net. So, just what is the truth regarding this?
>Michael Pugliese

*****   Origin(s) of "Rule of Thumb"

Queries about the phrase "rule of thumb" have appeared repeatedly on 
WMST-L.  What follows are some of the responses people have sent to 
the list.  They have been put together in this file to make it easy 
to find this information  without sending yet more queries (and 
responses) to WMST-L.  For more compilations of WMST-L messages, see 
the WMST-L File List....

<http://www.research.umbc.edu/~korenman/wmst/ruleofthumb.html>.   *****

Yoshie