On Beauty

Such a great time-lapse video: before/makeup/photoshop/after (be sure to watch the high-res version)I think every 13-year-old should see material like this in their classroom. Of course, when I feel like being shallow, I binge by trash-talking about the "ugly" contestants on Canada's Next Top Model (I will marry you, Number Six) and even The Bachelor (yes, I admit, I've watched two episodes this season). When not watching TV I don't seem to have such a critical eye though, not sure why TV does that to people.

There's another video on that site (campaignforrealbeauty.ca) that shows interviews with teenage girls and their mothers, talking about beauty and pressure. One girl made a comment that stuck in my head:

The first time I ever heard I was ugly, at school, was in grade 3 or 4. It was like, the first time anyone told me that, so, I didn't know what to feel; then I just felt it all the time.

I wonder if everyone reflects on this and we just don't talk about it with each other, or whether they just interviewed some very self-aware girls.

For more before/after Photoshop fun, see Glenn Feron's Art of Retouching site (temporarily under construction at the time of this post).

Update: What a coincidence, I just noticed these stats on Numeric Life:

56% of women and 43% of men are dissatisfied with their physical appearance.
[...]
More than 290,000 women in the US had breast implants in 2005, up 37% from 2000.

So I guess men are almost as neurotic on average about their appearance as women are.

U.S. Debt Trivia

Having some fun perusing Wikipedia's page on U.S. public debt.

• U.S. public debt on 30 December 2005 was $8,170 billion (or $8.1 trillion), which is nearly six times the amount of United States currency in circulation (M1 Money Supply), estimated to be $1,372 billion.
• The debt equates to $28,412 per head of the U.S. population, or $58,390 per head of the U.S. working population.
• Total U.S. household debt, including mortgage and consumer debt, was $11,400 billion in 2005.

So the U.S. government owes nearly as much as all individual U.S. citizens combined. Hmm.

Apparently there was recently a Canadian political party called the Canadian Clean Start Party, and their stated goal was to reset all outstanding public debt by simply defaulting on it. Responsibility is for losers. Hey it worked for Argentina right?

More Photos of the Day

I like these portraits, also from lense culture.

Made in China

Since the world relies heavily on China to manufacture goods, I thought this series of photos from lense culture was interesting. It's by a Canadian photographer who, over the course of three years, collected images of the civil/industrial/urban landscapes that have developed in modern (pseudo-mega-capitalist) China. Don't stop until you at least come to the giant pile of rotary telephone dials.
P.S. I'm glad I don't work in a factory.

Men Have Pee-Pees, Women Have Boo-bies

Very informative movie from break.com: a Saudi television show uses a Tablet PC to illustrate the main difference between men and women, and it might not be what you think.

Smoking Area

I thought this was pretty clever (sent by my Dad).

Best Political Ads Evar

For those who haven't seen the classic Daisy Girl ad, check out LBJ's campaign spots from the 1964 presidential election race (Quicktime).
I absolutely love the catch phrase "or we must die." The way the narrator delivers her lines in the "Ice Cream" spot is surreal too:

Children should have lots of Vitamin A and Calcium, but they shouldn't have any Strontium 90 or Caesium 137. These things come from atomic bombs, and they're radioactive. They can make you die.

Old Dawkins Article

Back when I found this post-9/11 commentary by Richard Dawkins I had a bunch of stuff to say about it (blah blah religion blah blah), but now I don't have the typing stamina to really comment, so for fun I'll just quote a few bits that use particularly damning language:

(quoting Douglas Adams)
Now, the invention of the scientific method is, I'm sure we'll all agree, the most powerful intellectual idea, the most powerful framework for thinking and investigating and understanding and challenging the world around us that there is, and it rests on the premise that any idea is there to be attacked. If it withstands the attack then it lives to fight another day and if it doesn't withstand the attack then down it goes. Religion doesn't seem to work like that.
[...]
If somebody thinks taxes should go up or down you are free to have an argument about it. But on the other hand if somebody says 'I mustn't move a light switch on a Saturday,' you say, "I respect that."

And Dawkins mostly nails it on the subject of religion as a label:

It is not an exaggeration to say that religion is the most inflammatory enemy-labeling device in history. Who killed your father? Not the individuals you are about to kill in 'revenge.' The culprits themselves have vanished over the border. The people who stole your great grandfather's land have died of old age. You aim your vendetta at those who belong to the same religion as the original perpetrators. It wasn't Seamus who killed your brother, but it was Catholics, so Seamus deserves to die "in return." Next, it was Protestants who killed Seamus so let's go out and kill some Protestants "in revenge." It was Muslims who destroyed the World Trade Center so let's set upon the turbaned driver of a London taxi and leave him paralyzed from the neck down.

One thing that's funny (i.e. not funny) about the religion-as-a-label rant is that after the Soviet revolution the atheists also labeled themselves as "us" and all religions as "them" and proceeded to imprison or murder religious people outright. Labels seem to be the problem in a much more general sense, just moreso those that tend to be passed down the generations (*cough* religion *cough*). To me there's a qualitative difference between saying "I'm Christian" and "I'm guided by Christian values" ... it's sortof like the difference between "I'm Canadian" and "I grew up in Canada."

(quoting Rev. Billy Graham, concerning 9/11 attacks)
I have been asked hundreds of times in my life why God allows tragedy and suffering. I have to confess that I really do not know the answer totally, even to my own satisfaction. I have to accept, by faith, that God is sovereign, and He is a God of love and mercy and compassion in the midst of suffering. The Bible says God is not the author of evil. It speaks of evil as a "mystery."

Hey, sounds lame, but at least he knows what he doesn't know.

Explicit Enough?

You have a dirty, dirty mind. Shame on you.