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.
dynamo
Independent filmmakers will soon have a new option for renting their films to viewers online: Dynamo, a start-up set to be announced at South by Southwest on Saturday evening, which will allow video producers to set their own prices and embed their videos wherever they want.
We Have A Lucy, Don’t We?
(via)
Largely why I was hated in high school
Phil once asked somthing like “is there a photo of yourself you wouldn’t show someone?” This would be it, if I were showing it. The dude on the left was my neighbor to the north of our house in the background. We shared a driveway.
Thrashing around somewhere in a swamp of its own legislation
Mark Thomas takes on the Digital Economy Bill.
via @glinner
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.
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.
Puppy pimping, a Hallowe’en special
As it turns out, there’s big business in sexy Hallowe’en costumes for pets. Dogs, mostly. I’d like to see you get your gerbil into one of these outfits. I googled ’sexy pet costumes’ and I can’t bear to share the results. Oh ok, then. Unfortunately, it turns out that not all dogs can actually do sexy.
This infomercial is brought to you via Chris W.
Dastardly plots
The perils of losing one’s grip on reality:
Belief in conspiracy theories can be comforting. If everything that goes wrong is the fault of a secret cabal, that relieves you of the tedious necessity of trying to understand how a complex world really works. And you can feel smug that you are smart enough to “see through” the official version of events. [...]
In his book “Voodoo Histories: The Role of the Conspiracy Theory in Shaping Modern History”, David Aaronovitch argues that conspiratorial fantasy can have dangerous real-world consequences. Hitler read and believed The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a bogus account of a global Jewish conspiracy. So did the founders of Hamas.
There was a brief period of time in college when I, too, found comfort in blaming the Bush cabinet for the events of 9/11. It was around that time when a certain video circulated, asking questions about the Pentagon’s destruction. Of course, I soon recognized my own reasons for distrust and the theories dried up.
Do you believe — or have you ever believed — in a conspiracy theory?
Clusterflockin’
Check out Ze Frank’s latest message to Sports Racers and tell me if you can’t find Christopher Walken in there.
The Last Traffic Jam
The average U.S. citizen completely ignores the regularity with which the automobile kills him, maims him, embroils him with the law and provides mobile shelter for rakes intent on seducing his daughters. He takes it into his garage as fondly as an Arab leading a prize mare into his tent. He woos it with Simoniz, Prestone, Ethyl and rich lubricants — and goes broke trading it in on something flashier an hour after he has made the last payment on the old one.
By last week, this peculiar state of mind had not only sucked thousands of American oil wells dry, stripped the rubber groves of Malaya, produced the world’s most inhuman industry and its most recalcitrant labor union, but had filled U.S. streets with so many automobiles that it was almost impossible to drive one. In some big cities, vast traffic jams never really got untangled from dawn to midnight; the bray of horns, the stink of exhaust fumes, and the crunch of crumpling metal eddied up from them as insistently as the vaporous roar of Niagara.
Inspired by Deron.
The United States of Obesity
Health economists once made the harsh financial calculation that the obese would save money by dying sooner, notes Jeff Levi, executive director of the Trust, a nonprofit public health group. But more recent research instead suggests they live nearly as long but are much sicker for longer, requiring such costly interventions as knee replacements and diabetes care and dialysis. Studies show Medicare spends anywhere from $1,400 to $6,000 more annually on health care for an obese senior than for the non-obese.
Thanks, Grist.
With a whimper
There’s nothing we can say about this, except to note that it’s from the Dante’s Inferno ride and was eventually loaded into a storage bin.
Coney Island amusement landmark Astroland is being dismantled, to make way for condos redevelopment.
Warm Welcome for George Bush in Iraq.
Sexy People
More HERE.
From the mouths of babes
As the balloon lifts and drifts between watchers and the late sun
The children gather and wave – eyes full of wonder and hope.
“See ya fuckers!” they sing.
And all is well with the world.
And all is good.
New website for designers reaching directors
The body of this post has been deleted. We don’t mind people promoting themselves, or even their products. We would prefer that if the Christopher Walken account is used for this purpose, some effort be made to engage the clusterflock audience and to come across as a person who values the site.
Copying and pasting marketing text isn’t what we would suggest.
Update: Savannah writes:
Hi there,
I’m Savannah, founder of veaux.org
I understand completely wanting to remove us due to the marketing of veaux. The last thing I would want is for people to feel that they are being bombarded with marketers or something that might seem like spam. In all honesty, I wasn’t sure what the protocol for blogging really meant. For that I really apologize. If I knew differently, I would have gone about it much differently.
Veaux is something that I created to want to help emerging artists become known in the marketplace and to connect with each other and get work in the process. It’s something I truly believe in and so does the veaux team. The team is very passionate to make Veaux a successful venue for these artists. I don’t want my mistake to take away from that.
If you look at the site and feel that it isn’t what clusterflock or any other blog site wants to post, I understand. If you like it, I would…well…we would like another chance.
My sincerest apologies,
Savannah
Discovering Life on Mars: Bad News?
Nick Bostrom, director of the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University thinks so:
Discovering traces of life on Mars would be of tremendous scientific significance: the first sign of extraterrestrial life ever detected. Many people would also find it heartening to learn that we’re not entirely alone in this vast, cold cosmos.
They shouldn’t. To the contrary, if we discovered traces of some simple extinct life form – a bacterium, some algae – it would be bad news. If we found fossils of something even more advanced, like the skeleton of a small mammal, it would be horrible news. The more complex the life we found, the more depressing. Scientifically interesting, yes, but dire news for the future of the human race.
Here’s the basic argument: There is a conspicuous silence “out there,” and this suggests that there is a “Great Filter” (Robin Hanson’s term and idea). This means that the filter may lie in our past (as a highly improbable step in the early development of life) or in our future (as a highly improbable leap needed for a civilization to populate the galaxy and survive extinction. Bostrom’s argument holds that finding evidence of even simple life on Mars would tend to place the GF in out future. And, as he also points out, there may be filters in our past and future.
I have to say that I would still be excited and pleased to hear that life–simple or complex–is or was present on Mars. If we decide to see everything in terms of our potential survival as a species, who needs the threat of a Filter to see our prospects as slim? In many ways I think we have the most to fear from our own egos–our sense of dominion over a galaxy we can’t even reach. News of other life elsewhere may itself be a step that leads to just the sort of curiosity we need to get through the next Great Filter.
Letters To Those Who Have Been Left Behind
Here’s a fantastically insane blog hosting letters written by Christians to non-Christians about why all the good people have up and disappeared from Earth and the lowly heathen jerks have been left behind.
Dear Friend,
Are you looking for me? Is the world looking for millions of missing people that have just vanished in an instant? Are all little children around the globe part of the missing group? If so, I can tell you what has happened. Don’t believe the very convincing lies you will hear. Don’t believe UFO’s got us. Don’t believe some cosmic reaction erased us.
The truth is – are you ready for this? – we’re at a wedding. Yup. In fact, we are the “bride.” The “groom” is Jesus, the Messiah, the Promised One from the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. (Hear, O Israel!) He has come to take His cride, the true Church and all little innocent ones, out of this world because of what is coming.
Yes, yes, I know. There are all sorts of Christians running around now insisting that this explanation CANNOT be the correct one because THEY are Left Behind. This may include some very visible Christians, like maybe a Pope or something. What does this tell you? It tells you that any “Christian” left behind was a phony. They may have said they believed, blah blah blah, but God knows the heart of men, and He has seen that they are fakes.
It’s like fan fiction, only 1000x more pathological.
(thx Sean)
Update: The World Ends This Friday, June 12
The incredibly normal, down-to-earth man in the video below says the world will end this coming Friday. Then again, he also said the world would end in 2000, and when that didn’t happen he picked 2006.
Anyway, this sorta sucks. The weather is supposed to be nice, too.
(thx Cyn-C)