Category Archives: Interesting

How Nice Are Your Buttocks? Let Us Count the Ways

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I might have found all the evidence I need that if you call yourself a psychologist you can get away with saying just about anything, especially if you do it with a British accent.  From Boing Boing:


(S+C) x (B+F)/T = V is the formula that describes the "ideal female ass"
in shape, bounce, firmness and symmetry, according to
psychology lecturer  David Holmes of Manchester Metropolitan University in England:

S is the overall shape or droopiness
of the bottom, C represents how spherical the buttocks are, B measures
muscular wobble or bounce, while F records the firmness.
V is the hip to waist ratio, or symmetry of the bottom, and T measures
the skin texture and presence of cellulite.

Here’s the link to the full source article.  From that article we further learn from Mr. Holmes:

He asked about 2000 women across Britain to assess their bottoms using a simple points scale.

For example, those who believed theirs resembled a trodden doughnut
scored just one point for shape, whereas those with a small peach
scored the maximum five.

Points were then entered into the formula and the closer a bottom scored to 80, the nearer it was to posterior perfection.

"The perfect female derriere has firmness to the touch and a resilience
that prevents undue wobble or bounce, yet looks soft with flawless
skin," Dr Holmes said.

"Slender thighs and a hip-to-waist ratio of 0.7 will frame the perfect bum, well perfectly."

I’d like to meet the woman who classifies her own butt as a "trodden doughnut." 

 

A Feast of Information

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A few weeks ago I gave up on reading RSS feeds through MyYahoo and started using Bloglines and I can’t tell you how much it has helped me.  The change coincided with a ramp-up for me in regards to work so I just don’t have any free time to keep up with reading.  If I were still using MyYahoo I’d be stuck because the RSS feeds are transient; the headlines appear until  they are replaced by the newest posts for that particular feed.  With Bloglines I can save feeds that look interesting and read them later.  Sounds simple, but it is an incredibly valuable tool and when I have the time I’m going to start looking into other tools that might have a similar positive impact on my information consumption.

In looking at my Bloglines feed page I’ve noticed a curious pattern; there are certain blogs (feeds) I check every day and others I let go for a while and within the blogs I read every day there are those that I tend to save lots of stories from and others that, while valuable, provide me with nothing I want to reference later.  Here are some of the blogs I read regularly and the number of stories I’ve saved over the last couple of weeks:

When I think about it I guess it makes sense.  BoingBoing and bookofjoe are both interesting compilations that to me are a unique blend of magazine and catalog, while the others I read more like newspapers.  I probably find just as much of interest on Ed Cone, Vie de Malchance, Hogg’s, etc. but it isn’t the kind of information I save for later use.  On the other hand Boing Boing and bookofjoe always have features about really cool trinkets and doodads that I tell myself I’ll use some day.  Probably not, but it’s the digital equivalent of ripping pages out of magazines/catalogs and stuffing them in a drawer.

BTW, here’s a not-comprehensive list of the things I found valuable enough to save:

Another info-management tool I’m trying to use more is my "social bookmark" page at del.icio.us.  Basically it lets me bookmark and "tag" any pages I come across with keywords that mean something to me.  There’s a little box on the right hand side of my blog that shows my most recent del.icio.us tags but if you want to browse the whole thing you can do it here.

This whole information-overload-management thing is becoming kind of a pain in the ass but I’m hoping to figure out a way to use these tools to organize it all so it is more a fancy feast and less a gluttonous mess.

BovineExcrement! Drug War Coming to Your Toilet

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Two recent news stories involving the US Government and excrement:

According to a Washington Post article that bookofjoe highlighted, the US Government ran a test on a wastewater treatment plant in Fairfax County, VA to determine how many people in the area have used cocaine in the recent past. From the Post article:

County workers collected five days’ worth of water samples between
March 13 and March 17 at the pollution control plant in Lorton,
according to a March 20 memo from County Executive Anthony H. Griffin
to the Board of Supervisors.

The plant, which processes about 67 million gallons of sewage a day,
takes in commercial and residential waste from about half the county,
including Fairfax City, Vienna and Fort Belvoir.

The samples, which totaled about 500 milliliters, were shipped to
the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology in Rockville, where they will
be analyzed for traces of benzoylecgonine, the main urinary metabolite
byproduct of cocaine.

Nice work if you can get it, huh?  My question is, "Why bother?"  What discernible difference will knowing how many people are doing coke make?  Does it matter whether 25,000 or 2,500 people are doing coke?  How?  Why?  Why not spend the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology’s time on something useful, like how many toxins or traces of bio-agents are in the water?  Maybe they already are, but I don’t like the idea that they might miss something because their trying to figure out how many people are pissing cocaine.  Absurd.

The other story that ties our government to excrement, or at least the concept of excrement, is the story about the FCC deciding that the word "shit" and all its derivatives are not merely "indecent" but "profane."  That means they can fine any broadcaster that airs the "shit" words for each incidence and they can also fine those who utter the words on-air.  (If I’m ever interviewed on TV I’ll probably be broke at the end of 30 seconds).  Jeff Jarvis takes great exception to this new FCC "nannyism" as he calls it and thinks that since bullshit is the single best term to describe much of our politicians’ actions that it is infringing on our free political speech to term it "profane."  Read Jeff’s "In Defense of Bullshit" here.

To tie all this together I’ll say just this: we need to call ‘bullshit’ on much of what our government is selling us these days. Of course we can’t call "bullshit" so we’ll have to do what my kids do: come up with a suitable substitute.  How about "Bush!"?

Being Young Ain’t All That Great

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According to this article in BusinessWeek the last decade hasn’t been particularly good for young adults at least in terms of household earning power.  From 1995-2004 the median net worth of young households (25-34 years old) rose only 1.3% adjusted for inflation, while at the same time the net worth of households 35-64 rose 40%. 

For some perspective it would be nice to know how much this varies from past decades.  I always assumed that peoples’ peak earning was in their 40s and 50s so you’d expect the household gains to be greater in older households. And as the article points out one of the reasons that older households have done some much better is because such a large percentage own their homes and the real estate market went nuts from 95-04.  So is the story that the gap between the two growth rates is much greater than in the past?

This just reaffirms what I’ve been thinking as I approach my 40th birthday; while being young was an awful lot of fun I don’t think I’d go back.  Being broke definitely sucked but here are a few other reasons:

  • It took me over ten years to figure out how to be a relatively decent, housebroken husband and father.  I don’t EVER want to repeat that process again.
  • While it was nice having a young body that seemed to bounce back from anything it tended to produce self-abusive behavior.  Toilets are not meant to be hugged.
  • Sleepless nights spent dealing with babies.
  • Mornings after sleepless nights spent dealing with babies when you didn’t wake up and now you’re dealing with one extremely pissed-off, overwraught wife.
  • Tolerating bosses who were basically sub-human because I needed the money and health insurance.
  • Not knowing that the terms "fine" and "dining" are not mutually exclusive.
  • Believing the tag line "made from the finest Bavarian hops."
  • Not knowing that Bavaria was not the last name of a NY Giants tight end…you know, Mark Bavaria.
  • Not knowing how to tell someone to f—off with a smile on my face and get away with it.

I could go on but you get my point: young = dumb + broke.

If One Man Can Father Children by 11 Women, Why Can’t He Marry Even Two of Them?

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An interesting story from CNN’s AC360 blog about 11 mothers in Virginia who selected sperm from the same man when they went in for artificial insemination.  From the story:

Well, while reporting this story, we looked at a case in Virginia where
one man’s genetic profile has proven especially popular. He is said to
be of German descent, tall and athletic, and is responsible for
"fathering" as many as 20 children through 11 different women.

He
chooses to remain anonymous, but the mothers have established an
incredible connection to each other through a Web site called
DonorSiblingRegistry.com. The site allows mothers who conceive children
with donated sperm to connect with one another.

My question is this: Why can a man be the father to children by any number of women he wants, but he is not allowed to marry more than one at a time?  Not that I’m arguing for polygamy (I’ve often said it is way too hard making marriage work with one woman to even consider a second) but isn’t it somewhat strange that a man can sire children with any number of women he wants, and for that matter that a woman can have children by any number of men she wants?

I should also point out that I’m not arguing for laws against sex out of wedlock, but I am questioning why we deal with some moral issues with laws and not others.  There are obvious cases where moral and legal issues overlap: murder, rape, assault, etc.  But when everyone involved are consenting adults who are not harming or adversely affecting others why is the government inserting itself into the equation with laws?

Craigslist Ran More Classifieds Than All US Newspapers Combined

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According to this article Craigslist sites are generating 3 billion page views every month and running more classified ads than all US newspapers combined.  According to Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster the biggest problem they have is keeping up:

"We struggle to keep up. Last year overall
growth was 200 per cent, both in terms of page views and listings – and
if it pools to 100 per cent, we would be happy with that."

I can think of a few newspaper people who would LOVE to have that problem.

Forget Cookies, Those Little Girls in Green Should Be Selling Cars

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Today was a good email day.  My friend Rich emailed me this thought about the Girl Scouts:

In trying to figure out  "just how outrageous" the cost of Girl Scout
Cookies might be, I decided to match the cost per ounce of Tagalogs
against the Lexus ES 330.  Here is what I found:

Tagalogs cost 50 cents an ounce.
The Lexus ES 330 weighs 4,540 lbs or 72,640 ounces.

The Sticker price is : $32,300 or 44 cents an ounce

I would have to pay $36,320, or $4,020 more than sticker price for
the Lexus if the Girl Scouts sold it.

Wow the all NEW 2007 Limited Girl Scout Lexus ES 330 — this is where
the Girl Scouts should do there fundraising…..

1 Car = 10,377 boxes of tagalogs, less work, who knows?

Did I mention that Rich is one of the smartest people I know and taught me just about everything I know about marketing?  He might have a future as a Girl Scout leader…I’d pay big bucks to see him in uniform.

Presidential Health

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Here’s a website that details all the illnesses suffered by the Presidents of the United States.  A surprising number suffered gunshot wounds, and apparently our healthiest President was Jimmy Carter who only has severe hemorrhoids listed.  George W. Bush also has hemorrhoids and his possible experimentation with cocaine is listed as well.

Crooks Just Loved the Piedmont

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According to this article about a book that is about a prolific robbery gang from Philadelphia during the 50s, 60s and 70s, North Carolina and the Piedmont in particular were favorite targets.

They traveled to rob, usually to someplace warm, where tire tracks
and footprints wouldn’t be left in snow and mud. North Carolina was a
favorite target; Kripplebauer saw the state as one big ATM machine.

For years, he and his associates picked off homes in Winston-Salem,
Greensboro and Raleigh, so proficient at thievery that the locals gave
them a nickname: the Hallmark Gang, because they stole only the best
stuff – jewels and silver bearing high-quality hallmarks.

The book is Confessions of a Second Story Man: Junior Kripplebauer and the K&A Gang and it sounds like it might be a good read.

Birders Should Be Recruited for War?

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Okay, the title refers to the war on the H5N1 virus (Avian Flu virus), but I figured it was a little more provocative this way.  There’s an opinion piece in the International Herald Tribune (found via Loose Wire) about the fight against the avian flu and how the spread of the virus shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone since it is following known migratory patterns.  The author, Laurie Garrett, suggests that government officials should recruit birders to the cause:

One of the best untapped resources in this epic battle against
influenza is bird-watchers, who are among the most fanatic hobbyists in
the world. The major bird-watching organizations and safari clubs ought
to work with the World Health Organization and OIE, the World
Organization for Animal Health, to set up Web-based notification sites,
where birders could report sightings of groups of dead birds, and the
movements of key migrating species.

Until a little over a year ago I wouldn’t have paid this any attention because, quite frankly, I didn’t know any birders.  Now I do and I’m finding that the birding community is as fanatic as the author describes. What makes this a particularly good idea is that birders are freakishly attentive to detail and to logging the birds they see, where they see them and how often they see them.  That makes them perfect for this effort.  As long as we don’t ask them to get in front of a camera (these aren’t typically extroverted people from what I’ve heard) the author’s plan should work swimmingly.