obama’s hang loose diplomacy

more politics on the ragb dot ag today! actually, i was just tricking you, i’m not really into politics because i don’t see how power struggles are relevant to how we live our lives.

what i really want to talk about is not obama, but obama’s hand. his hand is in the same formation as your hot coworker’s hand when he signals for you to call him. the same gesture is also featured in the king’s speech when king henry viii needs to measure the distance from his chapped lips to his wireless microphone before he records his historic beat boxing rap about how oliver cromwell was a total jerk.

what all of these hands are modeling is the ancient unit of length known as a span. depending on whose hand is working the span, this measurement varies between 6 and 6½ inches (15.25 - 16.5 cm). it was later standardised (as much as archaic anglo-saxon measurement based on a body part can be) to equal exactly a ½ foot.

i would be in violation of my journalistic oath were i not to also report that the distance between thumb and pinky is a schoolyard metric of the supposed length of one’s willy when at its most tumid. if you ever wondered why i purposely dislocated my thumb in front of jennifer reynolds in the sixth grade, it was because i was hyper-extending my span to a whopping 8 inches.

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update: a shaftment is the distance from the end of the extended thumb to the opposite side of the hand. (thanks emily)