Archive for December, 2005
Mona Lisa: Emotion Recognition Software
Friday, December 16th, 2005How did Mona Lisa feel? According to software, 83% happy and 9% disgusted.
What will this software be used for, anyway? Mapping a person’s attitude at work? Objectively judging someone’s emotional experience in a store? Decoding a terrorists face when boarding a plane? (A leer of contempt is an emotional tipoff for bombers, I read somewhere. It also indicates over 97% of the time a marriage’s demise.)
Hmmm, imagine a word association test as customer service surveys:
- Think of Dr. Clouthier’s patient care. Snap!
- Think of Dr. Clouthier’s reception area. Snap!
- Imagine the amount of waiting time before treatment. Snap!
- Imagine how long you spend with the doctor. Snap!
- Think about your typical visit fee. Snap!
- Think about your interaction with the assistant. Snap!
Get the gist? No more sifting through the vagaries of people trying to spare your feelings. Just cold hard data:
- 90% of your sample, Dr. Clouthier, express happiness as their 76% dominant emotion when it comes to patient care
- 10% of your sample, express anger as the 95% dominant emotion
What do you think about that? Would people be willing to participate if the study was blinded? Would the recipient of the feedback value it?
Interesting.
Sleep Right
Friday, December 16th, 2005Sometimes I harken back to the good old days with misty-eyed nostolgia for what could still be. For example, why did we ever get rid of the Pony Express? No one has that much to say that is so insightful that it can’t wait a month or two to say it. In fact, all the blabbering dullards with cell phones perpetually plastered to their auricular orifices would have to pause and consider the price of expressing every stupid thought that pops into their heads with The Pony Express.
Along the same lines of sentimentality, who decided that it was a good idea for married couples to share a bedroom, a bed and a bathroom? I mean, isn’t enough that one must live F-O-R-E-V-E-R with the same person, watch them grow old and pretend not to see said person clipping his or her toenails for eternity?
Ahhhh, but that last one, could be avoided if only….
The list of inconveniences regarding too much personal space sharing is long:
- One person wants to read late, the light is on, the other person lays irritated as heck
- One person wants to eat pork and beans breakfast, lunch, and dinner and the poor spouse must endure spontaneous combustuous eruptions all night long
- One spouse received the genetic misfortune of a floppy soft palate that flaps and causes window-rattling snores, the other spouse must suck it up for love
- One spouse gets home late from work and makes more noise than a bull moose in mating season trying to get to the closet in the dark
- One spouse experiences restless leg syndrome, hot flashes, adenoid clearings and the other spouse must feel and hear it all
- One spouse thinks that “putting away” clothes means dropping it on the floor, the bed, and rarely the hamper
- One spouse unwinds to the TV the other spouse believes TV is of the devil
You see the pattern here?
Separate sleeping, dressing and hygiene quarters solves soooo many problems. You want your laundry done? Do it. You want a clean bathroom? Clean it. You want to stay up ’til 2 a.m.? Fine, disrupt your own sleep. You want to fart a blue streak? You smell it.
So many romantics (most with secretly crappy marriages, I’ll venture to guess) will wax elephant about cuddling, snuggling, and intimacy. Pish posh! Canoodling ends precisely two minutes after the dirty deed is done and lasts for two minutes before the hubby “feels out” if “it” is going to happen. If it’s a negatory, guess what? All coziness ends and snoring commences.
Conjugal visits can be arranged. Conversational interludes can be scheduled into Blackberries.
In the olden days, marriage was a contract that included fidiciary duty and conjugal dues. Friendship was a plus. Companionship a bonus. Love a blessing.
And even if you had all that, you still didn’t have to share your bed without an invitation, your bedroom without a knock on the door, and good heavens…never your bathroom.
Futurist Faith Popcorn predicted “nesting” (staying instead of going out), I predict married couples cohabitating independently. (And happier, too.)
Oh, come on! It already happens anyway: parents split up for baby care so at least someone gets sleep, menopausal women flash hot and cold and need their own comfort zone, gadget-addicted men fall asleep in the barcolounger or in the guest bedroom.
Why not bring married people out of the closet, er bedroom? Imagine a world where there are two individually decorated master bedrooms joined by a sitting room where couples may converse before retiring to their own spaces for peaceful slumber? It’s going that way with his and hers closets, his and her sleep numbers, and more recently his and her bathrooms and now with both husband and wife working, his and her offices.
Let’s go the logical next step: Sleep in peace in his or her bedrooms. Adorn your room your way. Sleep when you want. Share only what can’t be had alone and keep your space…your own.
Most of us grow up sharing a bedroom with a noisy, smelly sister or brother, graduate to bothersome college roommates and long for the day when we have our own space. Then we get married and jump right back into the offending situation. Why? Because of cultural norms.
Times change. Cultures advance. Sometimes cultures slip up. One bedroom for two grown adults just may be one advance too many. What’s old is new again! Sleep in your own bedroom and be on the cutting edge of a new revolution.
It’s Fake: Stem Cell Research Being Withdrawn
Thursday, December 15th, 2005Read here. Not at all surprised.
Voting: Pull Out Your Burkas Ladies
Thursday, December 15th, 2005Since when did women all over Iraq wear Burkas? At least they are voting.
Novak
Thursday, December 15th, 2005Why doesn’t HE reveal the source? And why is every other news person being subpoenaed but him?
Plot to Kill Bush: Did You See This Story Anywhere?
Wednesday, December 14th, 2005If it weren’t for blogs, no one would know about the attempted assasination of President Bush.
Here’s a moral difference for the Lefties who loathe everything this President stands for: while Bill Clinton brought the country to new lows in so many ways, an attempt on his life during his term or even today would enrage me. Why? I disagree with his politics and most of what he stands for.
But he represents America, for better or worse, as a former leader and living ex-President. His murder would be symbolic against our country’s sovereignty. Anyone who even plotted to kill him should be strung up no questions asked.
See? Many liberals today would take great glee in the demise of our current President even if it meant taking them down the swirling spiral, too. Idiots.
Pray for Iraq
Wednesday, December 14th, 2005The thought that thousands of formerly oppressed people will freely exert self-determination brings tears to my eyes tonight. It may be romantic, idealistic, but I can’t help it. I so want these people to succeed at bringing peace and order to a country that has known only war and deprivation in modern times.
Neighboring countries watch Iraq with mixed emotion, no doubt. Tyrants, despots and the ruling religious zealots would love nothing more for Iraq to disintegrate into sectarian violence. While the average men and women most likely secretly root for their neighbors. If it can happen there….
Why not here? Why not?
Harper’s Bazaar: How Bazaar
Wednesday, December 14th, 2005The Mr. Dr. handed me a letter from a frequent flier club saying that in 30 days my points would be lost, if not used. Since they didn’t add up to much, they sent along a list of magazines so that my company loyalty counted for something.
Being a slave to shelter magazines, I decided to venture into exotic periodical lands. One such choice was Harper’s Bazaar. It has been a good fifteen years since any spare time or money has been spent on fashion magazines. Why not a freebie?
Harper’s has a method to their fashion madness each month, I’ve noticed.
- Celebrity Cover airbrushed to perfection
- Fabulous for all ages (famous people of all ages looking fab)
- Pictures of Unwearable (for normal people) fashion
- Advertising for ridiculously expensive jewelry and make-up
- Glossy spread on cover celebrity imparting zero insight into vapid psyches
- End with “What’s IN, What’s OUT”
I truly cannot believe such fluffy wisps of nonsense sell magazines. This mag is obviously not aimed at teenagers–it’s aimed at fifty year old women who are still intellectual teenagers.
Distrurbing trends:
Men getting plastic surgery
Pre-pubescent girls who weigh fifty pounds
Plastic surgery, I’ve decided is a horrible solution almost every time. It is heinous on men. Exhibit A–Jerry Jones. Exhibit B–Karl Lagerfeld. Exhibit C–Burt Reynolds.
Not having cable, much popular culture eludes me. But even Paris Hilton and the now anorexic Nicole Ritchie have penetrated my EST thanks to my nail guy who tapes all shows with said delightful ladies. Thinking that their tiny, boney arms were aberrations, it came as a shock to see skeletons, I mean girls, who were younger and so emaciated that they looked like starved refugees. Horrible! Kate Moss looks positively healthy and wholesome compared to the new models. Watch out Kate! Holograms are the new “next”.
Finally, in Bazaar, the “Wedding of the Year”, took the stage. Another skeletal woman, Delphine Arnault (keep scrolling down at that link, she’s the skinny one in the shimmery silver confection on the right. Scroll down further and you see what old, rich people with too much plastic surgery look like. I love NYC!) married Alessandro Vallarino Gancia in the “famous Chateau d’Yqem in Bordeaux! It is about time that chateau gets some decent use.
The sheer emptiness of it all shocks me. The last time this feeling whooshed through me was at the gambling pit of The Mirage in Las Vegas watching people throw thousands of dollars away within minutes.
Men, in contrast, read mind junk food like Esquire. Funnily enough, the same models prance through those pages–just in menswear. How daring! How cutting edge! How androgynous! But at least Esquire contains some interesting writing. I stumbled across David Sedaris there. Other great writers started their careers there.
But not in women’s magazines. Oh no! For the vainglory of it all, these magazines stubbornly adhere to ephemeral nothingnesss.
Maybe MoDo was on to something. She can hardly blame men for objectifying women, wanting to date “secretaries” and other lesser beings (than her). Women do it to themselves. Clinging to some fading, warped visage of slutty youth, women like Ms. Dowd are bound to be disappointed. Turning herself into some plastic, sleazy version of women a true man never found interesting to begin with–except to schtup–she and others like her, suddenly see themselves as they always were: beautiful, empty, promiscuous showpieces. And to think she thought she was liberated when she fell right into the classic female dichotomy: Madonna or Whore. Just a whore.
Harper’s Bazaar and all the other female magazines amaze. Not one thing has changed in the last fifteen years except the models are skinnier, more boy-looking and everything is strangely homoerotic. We’ve come a long way baby.
