In The Building Blocks Of The Universe's section on Calcium:
> Another way of getting round the problem of hard
water is to manufacture compounds that behave like soap
but don't form insoluble compounds with calcium. Many
types of such detergents have been put on the market in
the last ten years, and hard water is far less of a problem
for the housewife than it used to be.
Reads like '90s era comedy, ala "women be cleaning, amirite?", without even the lazy backdoor of "its just a joke".
This is such an uncharitable reading. "Housewifes" were extremely common then and were marketed to quite extensively in those product categories. Acknowledging them in some form is not the same as saying "I have deeply thought about the state of our society and have come to the conclusion that all is as should be."
I’m willing to believe it, but I didn’t notice any in the time I was reading his fiction.