"Lower gaydar accuracy for men’s faces was explained by a difference in “false alarms”: participants were more likely to incorrectly categorize a straight man as gay than to incorrectly categorize a straight woman as gay. Why might “false alarm” errors be more common when judging men’s sexual orientation? We speculate that people overzealously interpret whatever facial factors lead us to classify men as gay. That is, it may be that straight men’s faces that are perceived as even slightly effeminate are incorrectly classified as gay, whereas straight women’s faces that are perceived as slightly masculine may still be seen as straight. That would be consistent with how our society applies gender norms to men: very strictly. (Decades of research has established that, at least in our culture, it is considered much more problematic for a boy to play with Barbie dolls than for a girl to play rough-and-tumble sports.)"
"Death should inform life. Other people just think they have all this time in the world, but I have never thought that. I have it written into my will that my gravestone is going to say “Fun! Fun! Fun! Death."
— Kara Swisher discusses life, D: All Things Digital | Page 2 of 2
"2,153 Apple employees reference the term “MBA” in their LinkedIn profiles out of a nonretail workforce of nearly 28,000. More than half the employees who reference “MBA” have been at Apple less than two years"
"After Brown Sugar went platinum, Rock put D’Angelo on The Chris Rock Show. Later, when D was mixing Voodoo, Rock hung out some in the studio. No surprise, then, that the first thing out of Rock’s mouth after “Hello” is a joyful “He’s back!” But he adds a sobering downbeat: “D’Angelo. Chris Tucker. Dave Chappelle. Lauryn Hill. They all hang out on the same island. The island of What Do We Do with All This Talent? It frustrates me."
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“Who wouldn’t want to drive an ice-cream truck?” she says, ringing her brass bell as she rolled slowly past stone walls and Colonial style houses. “People recognize you and it’s like, ‘It’s the ice-cream lady!’ ”
She worries about a chilly reception when she tells people she doesn’t have some of the classics. When she learned recently that she couldn’t get Toasted Almond from her distributor, she dashed to the grocery store and “cleaned them out,” snagging the last few boxes. On Thursday, she was selling those, which she belittles as “little,” for a buck a pop, about half her normal price.
"— Not Cool: I Scream, You Scream, We All Scream ‘Where the Heck’s Our Ice Cream?’ - WSJ.com
"Later, when I reach Janis Gaye, Marvin’s second wife—and a longtime D’Angelo fan—I tell her about the dreams D had of Marvin, and she isn’t surprised. Her own children dreamed of Marvin on the night he was killed, and D is just a few years older. “Marvin is a protector, and I’m sure there was something in Marvin’s spirit that saw something in D’Angelo’s spirit,” Janis says. I tell her about Rock’s stern admonition that D needs to step it up, and she agrees. She even has a suggestion: “He should go to Marvin’s Room, the studio that Marvin built,” she says of the famed studio on Sunset Boulevard where Gaye recorded many of his hits. “Go in and take his fifty songs. Not to sound kooky or out there, but Marvin will help him to choose."
"Aperitivi are a big deal in Milan. During the day, thousands of outdoor chairs bask empty in the sun in expectation of aperitivo hour. At 7 p.m., the patios are teeming with men and women downing fruity red concoctions served in oversized wine glasses. The next night, I ordered a fragolino (prosecco, fresh strawberry juice, and vodka) at Bar Basso, which, according to the gentleman across the table from me, has been the spot for aperitivi for thirty-five years. The gentleman in question, whose name is Marco Zanini, was not wearing a fantastically well-fitting suit. He had the kind of sideburns an HR executive would consider subversive and was wearing a checkered flannel shirt and horn-rimmed glasses, sporting a look you might describe as “Milanese lumberjack.” He was, of all things, a fashion designer."
— Milan’s Secret Side: The Quiet Italian : Shopping & Style : Condé Nast Traveler
"Coltrane was going to blow his horn in a way that no one had ever blown that European instrument before. Wow John! That’s what I’m about. I’m a jazzman in the life of the mind, and I’m going to blow my horn and sing my song in such a distinctive way that people will have to take notice. Not notice of me but of the point."
"I’m going to play Al Jazeera in the club, and you’re going to like it,” she said. “And it’s going to be cool, but not weird cool. It’s going to be like Kanye West and Jay-Z cool."
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When evangelicals vote, they think more immediately about what kind of person they are trying to become — what humans could and should be, rather than who they are. From this perspective, the problem with government is that it steps in when people fall short. Rick Santorum won praise by saying (as he did during the Values Voters Summit in 2010), “Go into the neighborhoods in America where there is a lack of virtue and what will you find? Two things. You will find no families, no mothers and fathers living together in marriage. And you will find government everywhere: police, social service agencies. Why? Because without faith, family and virtue, government takes over.” This perspective emphasizes developing individual virtue from within — not changing social conditions from without.
If Democrats want to reach more evangelical voters, they should use a political language that evangelicals can hear. They should talk about the kind of people we are aiming to be and about the transformational journey that any choice will take us on. They should talk about how we can grow in compassion and care. They could talk about the way their policy interventions will allow those who receive them to become better people and how those of us who support them will better ourselves as we reach out in love. They could describe health care reform as a response to suffering, not as a solution to an economic problem.
""The first season of “Game of Thrones” built up skillfully, sketching in ten episodes a conflict among the kingdoms of Westeros, each its own philosophical ecosystem. There were the Northern Starks, led by the gruffly ethical Ned Stark and his dignified wife, Catelyn, and their gruffly ethical and dignified children. There were the Southern Lannisters, a crowd of high-cheekboned beauties (and one lusty dwarf, played by the lust-worthy Peter Dinklage), who form a family constellation so twisted, charismatic, and cruel that it rivals “Flowers in the Attic” for blond dysfunction. Across the sea, there were the Dothraki, a Hun-like race of horseman warriors, whose brutal ruler, Drogo, took the delicate, unspellable Daenerys as a bride. A teen girl traded like currency by her brother, Daenerys was initiated into marriage through rape; in time, she began to embrace both that marriage and her desert queenhood. (Although the cast is mostly white, the dusky-race aesthetics of the Dothraki sequences are head-clutchingly problematic.) By the finale, she was standing naked in the desert—widowed, traumatized, but triumphant, with three baby dragons crawling over her like vines. (This quick summary doesn’t capture the complexity of the series’ ensemble, which rivals a Bosch painting: there’s also the whispery eunuch Spider; a scheming brothel owner named Littlefinger; and a ketchup-haired sorceress who gives birth to shadow babies.)"
"Happiness is a treadmill of a goal for people who are not happy by nature. Being an unhappy person does not mean you must be sad or dark. You can be interested, instead of happy. You can be fascinated instead of happy."
— Augusten Burroughs on How to Live Unhappily Ever After - WSJ.com
"‘The Boy Who Cried Wolf’ is a theatrical version of a supposed biographical event of my life. Getting my first erection at a modern art museum didn’t actually happen to me, but it was a theory I wanted to posit. St. Ives, where the story takes place, is where I grew up. In Britain, the implication of the Tate St. Ives — a global multimillion pound institution landing in a fishing town — is a story that everybody is sick to death of hearing: The Bilbao Effect. But in my piece, it becomes the best thing that ever happened to me. They exhibit a Patrick Heron picture, my erection helps me achieve my own sexuality. The piece is almost like an advertising campaign for a museum, which is something that an artist can’t and shouldn’t really do, at least in terms of taste."
"I finally saw HBO’s new show Girls. Lena Dunham’s dystopian vision of what happens to a very cloudy NYC when it is mysteriously converted to an all-girl boarding school is convincing and chilling. Will humankind survive? As a white male, I’m on the edge of my seat."
