Month: May 2012

Lindy West advocates calling out racist relatives on social networking sites:

Traditionally, it's been easy to laugh off bigoted relatives if you only have to see them once every few years. Those old-timey prejudices can seem almost like a wacky novelty act—and besides, it's more peaceful, and kinder to your mother, to just ignore them. But Facebook brings all that garbage hate-speech into your computer and into your bedroom and into your loved ones' faces. It would be totally unacceptable for anyone to call one of your friends a slur in your living room, and it is equally unacceptable on the internet. So Facebook forces your hand. If you ignore grandma's racist/homophobic bullshit you're complicit; if you delete it you're a coward. 

The Dish covered how to deal with bigoted family over the holidays here, here, here and here.

Eric Horowitz defends the idea:

[T]he popularity of the cards is a reminder that dating is an area where people really want improvements in comfort and efficiency. Our cars work well. Our TVs are in a definition that’s of sufficient height. But a lot of people are unhappy with the quality of their romantic life. That’s one reason why online dating continues to grow. And it will continue to grow because being in a romantic relationship is a big deal, and the current "market" created by social conventions is not coming close to maximizing efficiency.

We're right back to "calling cards". Abby Schreiber spoke with David Coppini, owner of the "Call Me Maybe" card seen above:

The craziest thing is that I didn't have anything to do with it because it was a present.  One of my best friends gave me 150 business cards on Friday because it was my birthday — he made them on Vistaprint. … My friend made the mistake of posting the card on Buzzfeed with my phone number on it.  My phone is dead. I've been getting 20/30 calls per hour. I don't even know how many, it never stops.

Heikki Leis photographed the many varieties of mold for his series Afterlife. Mycologist Kathie Hodge enlightens us about our common roommates:

A third of food is lost to spoilage, and most of that is due either to mold or bacteria. Within the realm of the kitchen, some fungi are plant pathogens. For example, when you find a lemon with blue mold, that's a disease the lemon got in the field. That fungus has been eating it all along, despite how well you've washed it. But you don't notice it until it erupts in your kitchen.

She admires the image of beet mold seen above:

Isn't it beautiful? It's so hairy. There are fungi on the surface on the wrinkly beet skin, but I can't guess at what they might be. But it looks like the fungus digested parts of it and then absorbed it into its mycelium. The fluff is the fungus fruiting. Its function is to make more spores. Each hair ends in a sphere with spores that will then look for the next victim.

(Image: Beet mold by Heikki Leis)

Many American schools have resorted to "no-bicycle" policies, accelerating a trend of fewer and fewer children riding to school:

According to [the U.S. Department of Transportation] surveys, in 2009 only 13 percent of all children walked or rode to school, whereas in 1969 nearly half (48 percent) did. The remoteness of the new schools is not the only cause: Among students who lived within one mile of school 43 years ago, 88 percent walked or bicycled, while today only 38 percent do.

It's not just an American problem:

One British study found that over the course of four generations, the distance that eight-year-old children in one family (the Thomases of Sheffield, England) were allowed to roam from home had shrunk from 6 miles (for great-grandfather George in 1926) to one mile (for grandfather Jack in 1950) to half a mile (for mother Vicky in 1979) to 300 yards (for son Ed in 2007). Another study reported that, on average, today's children are two years older than their parents were when first allowed to do things like use public transportation, sleep over at a friend's house, or babysit for a younger sibling.

Pamela Haag defends the industry's obsession with creating "unique" looks for Pinterest-obsessed brides:

I left the [conference of wedding merchants] feeling as if weddings are as eclectically improvised as ideas of marriage are becoming. The marriage replicates the wedding. For my parents the challenge was that they had almost no meaningful lifestyle choices. Most all were going to get married and, within marriage, the majority would follow the established gender roles, and achieve the same benchmarks. Today we have choices galore. … Every marriage era has its trade-offs, its upsides and downsides. Still, if I had to pick, I’d go for the unique over the ambivalent consolations of conformity in the tulle-wrapped Jordan almond favor-giving day of yore. It makes for a more self-realized marriage (and wedding). 

The industry is also absorbing a backlash against the strapless dress.

(Video via Buzzfeed: "Wait for it… Gotta give it up for this bride and groom.")

A recent study found that hospitals have some serious time-keeping issues:

Of over 1,700 devices checked [at four prestigious East Coast hospitals], only 3% were found to be accurate to within three seconds. One in five were off by more than 30 minutes; one ultrasound machine was running 42 years (and some minutes) early. The average error was a staggering 24 minutes.

Such discrepancies might have been responsible for drug dosing errors, missed or repeated procedures and therapies that lasted longer or shorter than necessary. In 2007 Andreas Valentin, of the Rudolfstiftung Hospital in Vienna, examined 113 intensive care units in 27 countries, finding that mistimed medications were the leading error in the administration of intravenous drugs, accounting for nearly half of all mistakes.

Mark Duffy snarks:

Good idea—put a helmet on dead meat shaped like a coffin.

Paul M. Barrett recounts the story of Gaston Glock, the man behind the world-famous gun. How an attempt to regulate it failed:

[T]he magazine-capacity law worked in Glock’s favor. First, the law contained a loophole: All guns and magazines manufactured before the effective date in 1994 were "grandfathered" in. So Glock ran the factory at full tilt and built up a huge inventory of "pre-ban" product. When the ban took effect, the price of those guns skyrocketed, leading to huge profits for Glock.

Second, Glock was able to continue to sell to the police, who were not covered by the assault-weapons ban. Third, Glock frequently did trade-in deals with police departments which resulted in former police weapons ending up on the used-gun market. Fourth, Glock introduced several smaller models, known as Pocket Rockets, which complied with the ammo restriction. In the end, the legislative attempt to stifle Glock and its large magazines had very little effect. Then, in 2004, the law expired by its own terms, and the NRA blocked its extension. Today, Glock can once again sell pistols with as many rounds as its customers might want.

Stefany Anne Golberg believes contemporary backpackers overpack:

We can see our souls in the contents of our baggage. Pack too much and we risk being weighed down by the place we’re trying to leave. Pack too little and we risk losing ourselves.

In the 1960s, backpackers left as much as they could behind in order to release themselves from the burden of self. Now backpackers take as much as they can take in order to be self-sufficient. In the ’60s, the backpacker’s quest was to remove everything — often one’s self-understanding, one’s identity — to access something pure. Today, backpackers want to assert their identity across national boundaries with the help of the things they own.

(Photo by Garry Knight)

Suzy Khimm investigates. One reason? American women are more scared of divorce:

[I]f divorce rates are higher in a society, women have a higher incentive to obtain work experience in case they find themselves alone in the future. … European women anticipate not getting divorced as often and hence find less reason to insure themselves by working as much as American women.

Another factor:

Our divorce argument is further supported by empirical studies finding that US states that adopted "no-fault" divorce laws in the 1970s experienced a spike in female labour supply relative to other states (no-fault divorces do not require a showing of wrong-doing by either party). This is also precisely the time when Americans gradually started to work more than the Europeans. Most European countries adopted no-fault divorce laws later and still have significantly lower divorce rates. Our tax argument finds support in studies pointing out that European and American tax levels were about equal around 1970 when they began to diverge.

We conclude that in response to changing social norms, American women have moved to insure their own future by working harder, while European men in response to higher taxes have found it less attractive to work long hours.