Air New Zealand has a new ad campaign where employees are in body-painted uniforms.
A blog post in the NY Times brings up a study on interracial dating and its correlation to height.
We argue that a simple preference for a taller husband (or shorter wife) can explain part of the gender-specifi c asymmetries across ethnic groups in the propensity to outmarry. Blacks are taller than Asians, and their height distribution is closer to whites. Because they are taller, black men have better prospects on the white marriage market than Asian men. For women, the reverse is true. Because Asians are relatively short on average, women fare substantially better on the white marriage market than black women.
As ridiculous as this study seems, the comments are much more telling. To nobody’s surprise, the first comment is in regards to varying penis sizes amongst men of different ethnicities.
A male is judged fit and competitive not only by his height, but also by the size of his reproductive attributes. I don’t mean to feed stereotypes, but those are statistically proven trends – Black males are more endowed than white males, and Asian males – less (including Southeast Asian). It makes sense, therefore, that a white woman would go up from white to Black, but not down to Asian, and… poor Black women have no higher aim to go for.
- DM
Please don’t be such a size queen. Alas, the hits keep on coming.
OK, maybe it’s a lot to do with culture and diet. But white women are bigger, smoke more, drink more, argue more, play sports more often, take big strides when walking, etc. compared with Asian women. Seriously, a lot of my Thai friends (I’m in Thailand) see foreign women and think that they’re transvestites. As an Asian man, wouldn’t you want someone MORE feminine than you?? Would you date someone that (on the surface) reminds you of a man? Or for black women, wouldn’t you want someone more masculine than you.
- Ryan Coughlin
I’m kind of speechless, but that usually is the case with articles meant to pander to extremely vitriolic comments rather than intellectual discussion.
I’ll be quoting passages from Infinite Jest that I really enjoy while participating in Infinite Summer.
The worst mornings with cold floors and hot windows and merciless light — the soul’s certainty that the day will have to be not traversed but sort of climbed, vertically, and then that going to sleep again at the end of it will be like falling, again, off something tall and sheer. (46)
The Washington Post discusses the death of Michael Jackson being first spread through sites such as Twitter before being confirmed by more traditional news sources. Interestingly, consumption of news can be tracked with Google Trends and iTunes.
Within a few hours of the news of Jackson’s death, his 1982 album “Thriller” was the No. 1 album on iTunes. Several of his discs were also in the top 10 of the digital store.
I’ve always been fascinated by the power of social media that permeates through our daily lives. I am sure for the upcoming year there will be many supposed lifelong Michael Jackson fans, all of whom are unwilling to admit to his death being a catalyst to their consumption of what’s now considered relevant. I’m sure of it because until this afternoon, no one was talking about Michael.
Poor lake bacteria eaten boy.
Back of the Cereal Box explores the etymology behind classic video game character names. It’s an exhaustive list, going through the Mario series to the Final Fantasy series. If you’re into classic gaming, you might make it through the entire read.
Betty Dobson goes draws and narrates the inner workings of the vagina.
Via clusterflock, my virtual source of everything the past few weeks.
An awesome video by Ari Marcopoulos.
Rora put his black Canon down in his lap, then under the table. He snapped a picture of the graces’ legs, covering the click with a false cough.
Why did you take that picture?
That’s a stupid question, Rora said. I take pictures.
Why do you take pictures?
I take pictures because I like to look at the pictures I take.
It seems to me that when people take a picture of something, they instantly forget it.
So what?
So nothing, I shrugged.
They can look at the picture and remind themselves.
But what do you see when you look at a picture you took?
I see the picture, Rora said. What’s with these questions?
When I look at my old pictures, all I can see is what I used to be but am no longer. I think: What I can see is what I am not.
Drink more coffee, Brik, Rora said. It will pick you up.
Via clusterflock.
My friend Tweeds and Kit started a blog, Kitonomics. Please check it out.
Yunxiao’s counterfeit cigarette industry
Slate reports on the booming industry of counterfeit cigarettes in Yunxiao, China.
Creepy to think that ‘one in three’ Chinese men under the age of 30 will die from smoking. 2.2 trillion cigarettes annually? The statistics are mind-boggling.