Look into my eyes
And feed me a cracker:
Professor Jin Zhang of the University of Western Ontario has developed contact lenses which could help monitor diabetes by changing color with the user’s glucose level variations. The users will be alerted to dangerous sugar levels with a change in lens color, without needing to undergo regular blood tests. The hydrogel lenses are embedded with nanoparticles which change color by reacting with the glucose in wearer’s tears.
Proportions and entitlement
For the last six months or so, I’ve had this guilty pleasure. It’s a blog called, Why There Are No Girls in San Francisco.* Here’s an example of the content:
SF females (a scattering of honeys from Serbia and Turkey aside) don’t aim for sexy in their dress or carriage. They aim for anti-Florida. They are reserved, borderline haughty in demeanor and fashion themselves in one of three looks: the always vogue “I run Iron-Mans” guy-girl look, the cluttered Hipster, or the famous and very popular “SF black”, where you cover up every square inch of your body but are still fabulous because the fabric is black and black is daring and sexy, right? Not right. Boobs are sexy. Legs are sexy. Black is just a color. Black is what Batman wears so he can be stealthy. When Bruce Wayne wants to impress the ladies he wears a tank top.
Today I read a story in the New York Times about the shortage of men on college campuses, and how it’s affecting more than just the admissions offices:
“Women do not want to get left out in the cold, so they are competing for men on men’s terms. This results in more casual hook-up encounters that do not end up leading to more serious romantic relationships. Since college women say they generally want ’something more’ than just a casual hook-up, women end up losing out.”
W. Keith Campbell, a psychology professor at the University of Georgia, which is 57 percent female, put it this way: “When men have the social power, they create a man’s ideal of relationships,” he said. Translation: more partners, more sex.
The pseudonymous author of WTANGISF probably attended one of these disproportionately female universities and now strugges with the reality of living in a disproportionately male city, but I wonder if both situations are just a symptom of Love in the Time of Darwinism:
Women can take a Chinese-menu approach to gender roles. They can be all “Let me pay for the movie tickets” on Friday night and “A single rose? That’s it?” on Valentine’s Day. This isn’t equality, say the male-contents; it’s a ratification of female privilege and, worse, caprice. “Women seemingly have decided that they want it all (and deserve it, too),” Kevin from Ann Arbor writes. “They want to compete equally, and have the privileges of their mother’s generation. They want the executive position, AND the ability to stay home with children and come back into the workplace at or beyond the position at which they left. They want the bad boy and the metrosexual.”
What’s your take? How do you navigate the modern labyrinth of gender roles better known as sex, dating, and marriage?
* I should mention that I am a girl. And I live in San Francisco.
90%
Almost all of my spam emails are a variation of a deal on VIAGRA®. Where are my offers for Russian love? When I meet the AARP member of my dreams, I will be stocked and ready.
Dear clusterflock
Two questions, separated by your ability to answer each:
1. Do you have a beard? Why or why not?
2. Are beards sexually attractive? Why or why not?
Welcoming party
My first night in Paris. Across the street from my hotel for the week. True to almost all my urban travels, I imagine most of my cash will be spent at concerts — not restaurants, or tours for tourists, or even museum entrance fees (despite my intention to visit several).
When you’re alone away from home, where does your money go?
Follow the example of Juliane Koepcke
On Christmas Eve 1971, the Lockheed Electra she was traveling in exploded over the Amazon. The next morning, the 17-year-old German awoke on the jungle floor, strapped into her seat, surrounded by fallen holiday gifts. Injured and alone, she pushed the death of her mother, who’d been seated next to her on the plane, out of her mind. Instead, she remembered advice from her father, a biologist: To find civilization when lost in the jungle, follow water. Koepcke waded from tiny streams to larger ones. She passed crocodiles and poked the mud in front of her with a stick to scare away stingrays. She had lost one shoe in the fall and was wearing a ripped miniskirt. Her only food was a bag of candy, and she had nothing but dark, dirty water to drink. She ignored her broken collarbone and her wounds, infested with maggots.
On the tenth day, she rested on the bank of the Shebonya River. When she stood up again, she saw a canoe tethered to the shoreline. It took her hours to climb the embankment to a hut, where, the next day, a group of lumberjacks found her.
The whole article is fascinating. Now I can safely say I know how to fall out of an airplane.
For Deron
…Aero-Ace, a collaborative design project, just completed with Bentley — the objective being to explore a new aerodynamic design direction for the luxury marque. Second year RCA students were asked to identify a new vehicle direction for Bentley that would appeal to the ecologically conscious consumer.
Does it do it for you?
We lose nothing by having closed systems
There is a complaint running around that the iPad is a closed system, that people aren’t free to customize it, that it’s not opened up so that we can all poke around inside it. Complaints are that the iPad is killing off an idea of computing that’s open and free for all.
To which I say: Good! Does anybody remember what using a computer is like? I spent a week after reinstalling my operating system picking out the right tweaks and gizmos and gadgets to make things more manageable. Weblogs exist that do nothing but teach you how you can make your experience on a computer less shitty. On a closed system, you can’t do that. You work with what you’ve got. Even if what you have is suboptimal — and guys? We live in the future; suboptimal for us is leagues beyond what the poor savages of 2008 had — when you’re using a device, you have to use it do do something, not just to fuck around.
Some of the biggest complaints come from programmers that say the closed system means people won’t be able to satisfy their computer curiosities. To which I again say: Good! Then they’ll have to satisfy their curiosities about emotional maturity and social interaction and possibly even thinking about making the world a better place.
I like this guy. Never heard of him until this but I can’t wait to dig through his archives, Amanda Mae-style.
PAPPELTALKS
Hubero Kororo designed this interactive CD cover for the band Uceroz. When you pull a tab on the side to open the CD, an ink cartridge leaks and fills the front cover with purple ink. (via)
Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary
The committee will “determine the extent to which the challenged material supports curriculum, the educational appropriateness of the material and its suitability to the age level of the students,” according to school district policy.
Dear clusterflock
“The meek shall inherit the earth.”
Cap. Trade.
Steve Jobs delivers the annual presidential address:
So today, we’re introducing a new plan. It’s called Stimulus 2GS, and it’s sleeker than any economic recovery package ever created. It’s got bridges, it’s got schools, it’s got broadband Internet. All that, and it’s super easy to use—you can control it from iTunes. Pretty cool, huh?
(APPLAUSE.)
Now let’s take a look at national security. When we got in here last year, torture was basically OK. We were water-boarding people and doing all sorts of terrible things. If you’re the president of the United States, how do you solve this? Hmm. Oh wait, we have solved this. We banned torture. Boom. Now that’s what I call an amazing breakthrough.
I need numbers
Everyone planning to attend clusterflockstock II, now is the moment where I need to know officially if you intend to be there, and who you’ll be bringing with you. Memorial Day weekend 2010.* Go.
* Almost definitely Colorado.
Both serve impressive pommes frites
This is not to diminish the thoughtful criticism that is often lobbed at McDonald’s. Many accuse the fast-food chain of enslaving diners with precision-engineered, high-fat, high-salt food that is nearly drug-like in its power to induce a delirious, short-lived “high”, followed by an uncontrollable desire for more. It is just that this pretty much describes the food at the French Laundry, too, just at a considerably higher personal financial cost.
Just like Liz Parker said
My grandmother watched CSPAN like it was a marathon of General Hospital. While she thumbed through the morning’s newspaper and Senate committees hocked in the background, we kids jumped in and out of the swimming pool and then raced each other down to the beach. On the off-chance that she’d manage to grab one of us for a cuddle, Grandma would point at her 6″ television screen and say, “See that man? Look, see that wide smile? That man is a Democrat.
“Now wait. See that scowler? Can y’see how unhappy that man is? That’ll happen to you if you become a Republican.”
I never doubted her, not even for a minute. And then I came across this research, coincidentally from my grandmother’s nephew.
Dear clusterflock
On the heels of Sheila’s post, what in your [house/loft/apartment/shoe] piles up first? My studio just seems to grow scarves.
What this says about me…
Quote out of context
A man cannot withstand a story, even if the man is remarkable and the story is simple. The story always wins.
The Ides of March
Aside from my day job of hunting down a venue for our next big get-together, I’ve suddenly arranged to house three ‘flockers in my studio apartment this spring.
So let me take this moment to formally invite any and all other ‘flockers to show up in San Francisco the second weekend of March. Heck, stay through the third week if you want. Bring a sleeping bag and you can sleep on my floor. If enough of you join us, I have several friends living within a four-block radius I’m sure I can bribe or blackmail accordingly.
It won’t be the real thing we’re planning for this summer, but it’s sure to be a good time.
In case you missed it
After passage of civil rights acts in 1964 and 1965, King began challenging the nation’s fundamental priorities. He maintained that civil rights laws were empty without “human rights” — including economic rights. For people too poor to eat at a restaurant or afford a decent home, King said, anti-discrimination laws were hollow.
Noting that a majority of Americans below the poverty line were white, King developed a class perspective. He decried the huge income gaps between rich and poor, and called for “radical changes in the structure of our society” to redistribute wealth and power.
“True compassion,” King declared, “is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.”
By 1967, King had also become the country’s most prominent opponent of the Vietnam War, and a staunch critic of overall U.S. foreign policy, which he deemed militaristic. In his “Beyond Vietnam” speech delivered at New York’s Riverside Church on April 4, 1967 — a year to the day before he was murdered — King called the United States “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.”
From Vietnam to South Africa to Latin America, King said, the U.S. was “on the wrong side of a world revolution.” King questioned “our alliance with the landed gentry of Latin America,” and asked why the U.S. was suppressing revolutions “of the shirtless and barefoot people” in the Third World, instead of supporting them.
Dear clusterflock
How do you experience vertigo? If at all, that is.
You know I love Barack
But since he moved into the White House, I’ve been paying more attention to Michelle.
It’s as if I wrote it myself
Mouth-frothing for Malcolm Gladwell is at near-fever pitch this year. I’m not saying the guy doesn’t make an interesting argument for how success is nurtured (or can’t be nurtured . . . or whatever the theory of “Outliers” is), but can we get some love for author and McSweeney’s publisher Dave Eggers? Firstly, the guy is seriously committed to educational reform — setting up his 826 tutoring centers in cities across the country. More importantly, perhaps, he’s putting out some of the most compelling contemporary writing on victims of injustice (both domestically and internationally) through titles like “What Is the What,” “Zeitoun” and his “Voice of Witness” oral history series. But beyond being worthy endeavors, they’re actually really good stories.
From The Top 10 Unsung Global Thinkers.
Give it a ponder…
James Lipton — spokesman for teen culture?
Moral High Ground
1. The object of Moral High Ground is to win.
2. Players proceed towards victory by scoring MHGPs (Moral High Ground Points). MHGPs are scored by taking the conspicuously and/or passive-aggressively virtuous course of action in any situation where culpability is in dispute.
(For example, if player M arrives late for a date with player F and player F sweetly accepts player M’s apology and says no more about it, player F receives the MHGPs. If player F gets angry and player M bears it humbly, player M receives the MHGPs.)
3. Point values are not fixed, vary from situation to situation and are usually set by the person claiming them. So, in the above example, forgiving player F might collect +20 MHGPs, whereas penitent player M might collect only +10.
4. Men’s MHG scores reset every night at midnight; women’s roll over every day for all time. Therefore, it is statistically highly improbable that a man can ever beat a woman at MHG, as the game ends only when the relationship does.
5. Having a baby gives a woman +10,000 MHG points over the man involved and both parents +5,000 MHG points over anyone without children.[...]
By making a private joke out of incredibly destructive gender programming, MHG releases a great deal of relationship stress and encourages good behavior in otherwise trying situations, as when he once cycled all the way home and back to retrieve some forgotten concert tickets “because I couldn’t let you have the Moral High Ground points”. We are still the best of friends.
From the MeFi question, What clever relationship “hacks” have you come up with?
Quote out of context
I was interested in the question of whether my son, going through his first language acquisition process, would acquire it like any human language.