Ever wanted to be as skinny or as beautiful as a model? You can be! Just take a picture and touch it up with Photoshop. This interactive web page shows you all the changes that have been made to this cover girl’s teeth, eyes, cheeks, waist, hair, skin, jawline, lips, etc.
They took a thin girl and carved several inches off her waist. They added pounds to her breasts. They filled out her hair. No wonder teenagers are having cosmetic surgery for "self esteem" reasons.
Did you know that you can read if the first letter and the last letter are in the right place and all the in between letters are mixed up? Image from http://viral.lycos.co.uk/attachments/3561/Reading_Test.jpg.
Reading_Test.jpg (JPEG Image, 575×600 pixels) – Scaled (96%).
Google recently added a bunch of reports to its search history. Now I can go back and see what sites I most commonly visit on Saturdays or what things I searched for the most in September. Oh yeah, in September I was looking for sailing shoes for my sailing class. Pretty fun stuff.
Two men were found in the same Egyptian tomb – a very unusual occurance. What I think is interesting is how we interpret what that means. The three hypothesis:
Each one is supported by it’s own interests groups. For example, gay advocates support the gay theory. I’m sure the conjoined twins theory is a result of all the recent news surrounding successful dejoining of twins.
As our society continues to change, I wonder what new theories we will come up with?
I like stories about cultural differences. Here’s one from Japan from A Hand in Two Cultures – New York Times.
Or take a simple thing like bathrooms. In Japan, there is no heating system in the toilet, and it is really cold. So we’re used to heated toilet seats. Japanese tourists come to American hotels, and the bathroom is warm but the bench is cool. We really don’t like that.
Japanese toilets in homes are raised like seats like ours. In public buildings they are in the ground and you squat over them. I broke all my credit cards that I was carrying in my back pocket that way once …
In this New York Times article, Executives Gone Wild: It’s Not a Pretty Sight – New York Times, Ben Stein compares what employees and stockholders are losing to what executives are making at a few large corporations. For example, at Delphi, the chairman wants to cut workers’ pay from $25/hr to $12 an hour while the top 600 manages are going to make $510 million. Read the article for a few more examples like that one.
12 weeks maternity AND paternity leave at 75% of pay at Google!
Everybody learns differently. However, our school system targets visual/audio learners who learn best from sitting in lectures, reading books and taking notes. Lucky for me, that’s the way I learn best. However this year I’ve had a chance to learn how difficult it is to learn in styles that aren’t yours. I took Anatomiken classes at the Boulder College of Massage Therapy, BCMT, a very kinesthetic learning class, you actually make muscles out of clay and place them on a plastic skeleton. (For all you visual learners that are interested in Anatomiken, watch the demo carefully! Don’t bother trying to follow along.)
BCMT recognizes that there are many different learning styles and they try hard to meet all the learning styles in every class. I wish our elementary and high schools did the same. This Washington Post article, Disappearing Act, talks about how many boys don’t do well in our current system.
Boys
have a lot of Huck Finn in them — they don’t, on average, learn as
well as girls by sitting still, concentrating, multitasking, listening
to words.
As the parent of a very bright 5 year old boy who has a lot of trouble sitting still and concentrating on learning how to read, I could relate to the article.
People with better memories are not necessarily better at remembering things. This study shows they are better at ignoring the unimportant things. They filter better so they only have to try to remember the important things.
That makes me feel better. All those things I can’t remember? They weren’t important.
Boing Boing: Better visual working memory stems from ignoring stuff.