The monochromatic era was nasty, brutish, and short

http://www.theawl.com/2012/05/visualizations

Let's play a little game. Think about the First World War for a minute. Good. Now think about the Renaissance. Okay: Which one did you think of in black and white? Did I just BLOW YOUR MIND? Anyway, yes, the reasons are obvious, but it's still kind a neat trick.

h/t TKB

Apropos the TSA

A hat tip to DLB for this one: http://www.marriedtothesea.com/index.php?date=052812

Why suburbs suck

This article hits the nail on the head:

The result of this structure is that people only meet people they want to know.

The entire idea behind suburbia is the exile of important features of regular life from geographic proximity to the home. Because the car has enabled us to move between great distances with a relatively low cost, the dichotomy between "access" and "no access" has been broken by "significantly delayed access." And as a result, people end up at exactly the wrong distance to form communities. In a city, everything is easily accesible; in the country, only a few things are accessible, but they are all nearby. In the suburbs, everything is accessible, but accessing anything is a pain in the ass.

The result is the near impossibility of spontaneity. "Out" does not exist as a place in suburbia; the relatively high cost in time of transportation means that people perpetually exist in some particular place before retreating back at the end of the day to their far-away home. The consequence is the hyper-scheduling of life, the ordering of activities into predetermined blocks, and the play-date theory of adult life.

Unsurprisingly, the near-randomly selected members of a neighborhood rarely align with anyone's personal preferences for a social network, and so geographic communities are completely dissolved. It should surprise no one that "communities" that consist solely of a list of appointments are not communities at all.

NOW silent on fake SE Cupp photo, Roseanne not...

I stumbled across this today...

On Wednesday, we reported that Hustler magazine published a fake, explicit photo of conservative commentator S. E. Cupp in what they call the "Celebrity Gallery."In response to a tweet by Ms. Magazine's Robin Morgan, Green Party presidential candidate Roseanne Barr said defending conservative commentator S. E. Cupp "is more disgusting" than Hustler's explicit photo. "Larry Flynt and the editors of Hustler [have] the apparent IQs of inebriated gnats," Morgan tweeted Wednesday.Barr - who is running as a feminist candidate in the Green Party presidential primary - responded by saying "your defense of women who hate women is more disgusting than putting pics of penises in their mouths, excuse me!"Sandra Fluke and Planned Parenthood's political action committee have condemned the photo, but NOW has remained silent as Larry Flynt, the publisher of the magazine, defended it. (Article Here)

Ignoring the absurdity of Roseanne's comments, which I think speaks for itself, that NOW hasn't spoken up about this is unsurprising. NOW has proved itself to be an organization that prioritizes the left over women as a whole. In their mission statement, it says:

The purpose of NOW is to take action to bring women into full participation in the mainstream of American society now, exercising all the privileges and responsibilities thereof in truly equal partnership with men...IN THE INTERESTS OF THE HUMAN DIGNITY OF WOMEN, we will protest, and endeavor to change, the false image of women now prevalent in the mass media, and in the texts, ceremonies, laws, and practices of our major social institutions. 

It seems to me that an upcoming (and already very accomplished) commentator would have the support of an organization that wants equality and progress for women in this country, especially when the offense involves such a denigrating "false image." I would also think they'd support people like Sarah and Bristol Palin or Nikki Haley against relentless attacks over the past four years (see Bill Maher). 

By ignoring the plight of conservative women in America, NOW demonstrates it is a partisan organization that is looking out for its own political interests rather than the interests of women. While I disagree with much of NOW's perspective, standing up for hard-working women against attacks based on gender seems like something almost anyone can get behind. When the organization fails to do this by putting politics above the "human dignity" of women, I think NOW reveals something crude about its organization and destroys its credibility.

"Food science" strikes again

According to The Atlantic, the so-called Cornell Food and Brand Lab has discovered a way to get people to eat less potato chips:

Study subjects were divided into two groups. One group was told to snack on a set of unadulterated chips while watching a video; the other group watched the same video but munched on a supply of chips in which one in every seven chips was dyed red. Researchers then repeated the experiment, inserting a red chip for every five normal ones.

Apparently, test subjects eating red chips ate less overall than the people eating regular food. This is supposed to be some sort of great victory for science because now there's a convenient and easy way for chip companies to get their customers to eat less chips.

Leaving aside for a moment why any company would ever want to do such a thing, I just want to remind everyone how horrifying it is that there are so-called "food scientists" out there sitting in laboratories plotting new ways to "nudge" people into making FDA-approved correct healthy choices. And it's all funded primarily by tax money.