Previously, on "young and pretty trumps everything."
See also: the under 30 set who say "i will always stay fit"
Is this title supposed to refer to something?
Says the gorgeous, leggy 18 year old.
Still, she was at Burger King. It's not like she was hanging on the bar slurring, "How about you buy me a martini?" to passing sailors.
Wait, American sailors drink martinis now? Or even hang out in bars where they serve martinis?
That's a classy navy you've got there.
I'm trying to think what heebie would have considered a more appropriate status update.
I went all the way to burger king tonight to get a burger and realized i didn't have cash or my credit card, so the guy at the window just gave me a free burger. I love being young and hot! :).
Hmm, that doesn't seem better. I guess maybe she could have just kept her mouth shut, and never mentioned the incident to anyone.
Did I imply I disapproved of her status? I was amused.
I went all the way to burger king tonight to get a burger and realized i didn't have cash or my credit card, so the guy at the window just gave me a free burger. It is a sad commentary on the inherent unfairness of our looks-obsessed society that I was able to get a free burger where a much more needy individual who wasn't incredibly young and hot like me would have been denied. lol!
6: Everyone in our navy is gay, ajay. Of course they're classy.
I went all the way to burger king tonight to get a burger and realized i didn't have cash or my credit card, so the guy at the window just gave me a free burger. Why don't those sorry kids lugging those heavy backpacks of cans just go to BK?
Did I imply I disapproved of her status?
You implied that it lacked awareness.
14: If FB status updates become self-aware, I'm going to make the Luddites look like moderate social reformers.
I do think she lacks awareness. I think if she believed she got the burger for being young and hot, she wouldn't have posted about the incident, because she's generally very nice and sweet.
I'm trying to come up with the most humorless reply I can to the OP. The best I can come up with is: How do you think the cow feels about random acts of kindess?
13: Hey! I found the reference!
We drove into the drive-in and she didn't have to pay
because we dressed her up to look just like a Chevrolet
Very funny, heebie!
Giving someone a free Whopper for being young and hot is like demonstrating your appreciation of a beautiful wild bird by shooting it.
17:That's not even trying
Okay, one can be fairly certain that the counterman did not himself pay for the gifted hamburger. Thus he committed a crime, a sin, the original sin? at the instigation of feminine wiles and wares. The 2nd oldest story, after the naming of the animals.
23: "The counterman did give me and I did eat."
24:
.... from the franchise of good and evil*.
*Really, applies better to Taco Bell.
This reminds me of that much-Facebook'd study about the effect of pretty-lady newsreaders on male attention and memory, which left unspoken the lumpen fact that I men don't pay any attention at all to unattractive women.
27: Which suggests that octagonal isn't the idea shape for a stop sign if you want it to be noticed.
The 2nd oldest story, after the naming of the animals.
Hard to say which came first.
I don't even have a TVunattractive women.
22: What song is that?
It reminded me of these horriying lyrics
You're high above me flyin' wild and free
Oh but someday lady you'll accomp'ny me
but that's more caging the bird rather than shooting it.
OTOH...
This is an excellent example of how encountering innocent need on the street can inspire the proletariat to expropriate the commodities and surplus supposedly "owned" by KAPITAL and redistribute it in spontaneous, though conditioned by long developing class consciousness, revolutionary acts.
29.2: In my groundhog program-related searches the other day I came across the fact that an alternate name for a groundhog is "land-beaver".
That's a classy navy you've got there
They have a song about them called "In The Navy". It goes:
Our little submarineys
Are knee deep in martinis
Our favourite drinks
Are sweet and pink
And really rather queeny.
Frigging in the rigging, etc ..
34: Now "woodchuck" seems vaguely frightening.
32: I found that song already.
I was asking what song Annelid was referring to in 22. Or maybe I'm misunderstanding.
.... from the franchise of good and evil*.
*Really, applies better to Taco Bell.
Remind me which is the good part of Taco Bell.
37: Oh, that's this one, then (lyrics).
If they can't afford Whoppers, let them eat BK® Quad Stackers. Three-quarters of your daily recommended sodium intake in one convenient form factor.
She should probably get some forgiveness for lack of self-awareness just because what's going on is kind of puzzling; we hashed it out at length in the thread Apo linked in 1, but the tendency for men to do small favors for attractive women while genuinely not expecting anything in return isn't something that makes a whole lot of sense, and I think it takes a while to recognize it.
I had a story like this one which I'd thought I'd told here but can't find -- walked a mile through the snow to go see Dr. Strangelove when I was at U of C, left my wallet at home, random dude bought me a ticket and gave me his card so I could pay him back, and did so in the least attempting-to-pick-me-up way possible -- no conversation or anything. And I thought he was a very nice person, watched the movie, and went home and sent him a check for $3 with a thank you in the memo space.
In retrospect, the fact that I was an adorable nineteen-year-old (assuming you were into surly, ill-dressed androgynes, but some people must be) probably explained the interaction, but it never occurred to me at the time, because he wasn't hitting on me.
Gorgeous and leggy is nice but an affinity for Burger King? Gah. A girl with brains and class would know that Wendy's is the proper venue for a late night burger run.
The link in 32 is made awesome by the fact that the first comment is "Simply the most important song ever written."
Heh. It was Wendy's. I changed it to Burger King in the course of shuffling inconsequential words around in the post.
...assuming you were into surly, ill-dressed androgynes, but some people must be....
Cough British people cough.
...it never occurred to me at the time, because he wasn't hitting on me.
Part of me wants to call that the mark of a real operator. Cf. The Tao of Steve.
Whenever I see pictures of college age students partying and wearing revealing outfits or flashing their boobs or whatever, the first thing I think is "Kid, you're not going to be cute forever. You need to put down the girly drink and get some studying done."
I think this is a normal adult reaction. Yet most of the reactions I see from other people are "Oh my god, that slut should be ashamed of herself!" or "Hey hottie, come over here." A little less often you see "Stop affirming the patriarchy by catering to male desires!" or "We've got to do something to prevent the impending acquaintance rape of that poor woman!"
assuming you were into surly, ill-dressed androgynes, but some people must be
http://lookatthisfuckingoogle.tumblr.com says yes!
"Stop affirming the patriarchy by catering to male desires!"
Oh, Jezebel, so much to answer for.
She should probably get some forgiveness for lack of self-awareness
She's actually a very lovely young adult. Talented, hard-working, friendly, the whole nine yards. I like her quite a bit.
Hmm. I actually feel kind of bad for her, just bc she probably won't stay unaware forever, and the longer it takes, the worse the revelation will be. Having occasion to question the basis of most of the relationships in your life probs doesn't encourage one to be open and trusting in the future.
On the other hand, maybe she'll take the blue pill. If she's also cool and sweet, well, bonus. Attractive people don't usually have to be.
Bummer that she's only 18.
47: Mate, you're not going to be young forever. Put down the naughty Facebook photos and get some studying done.
"Kid, you're not going to be cute forever. You need to put down the girly drink and get some studying done. Better get it on film while it lasts."
Never knew the word 'oogle' before.
In regards to 50, 51 revised to: Dammit, she's only 18.
She's actually a very lovely young adult. Talented, hard-working, friendly, the whole nine yards.
And impeccable taste in fast food. Great things are in her future.
Whenever I see pictures of college age students partying and wearing revealing outfits or flashing their boobs or whatever, the first thing I think is "Kid, you're not going to be cute forever. You need to put down the girly drink and get some studying done."
I think something along the lines of "Remember to value yourself on the inside!" Akin to protecting yourself against Donaquixote's 51.
54: I learned it here.
When I see young college students partying, as long as they haven't gotten too obnoxious, I think "Good for you."
45: Heh. It was Wendy's. I changed it to Burger King
Oh great, ruin my research in 41. But then again, Yes! Wendy's tops out with the Bacon Deluxe Triple with 200 more calories and 15% more sodium.
I tell all my dates "Great things are in your future." Even the ones I don't take to Wendy's.
I tell all my things, "Great dates are in your future!" Then I put dates all over the house.
50: I like her quite a bit.
Well du-uhh, what with the hottness and all.
Well du-uhh, what with the hottness and all.
I like her despite her competitive advantage with the male of the species on the veldt.
That burger is rightfully mine!
I parsed 48 as "look at this fuckin' Google", and got confused. A tumblr of browser screenshots?
64: On the veldt, everybody looks the same when the sun goes down.
When I see young college students partying, as long as they haven't gotten too obnoxious, I think "Good for you."
Yeah, this.
Also, some bastard closed the Wendy's in Oakland. Assholes.
||
Mubarak said to be about to step down, military in talks to take power. And nobody consulted bob.
|>
37: actually I was referring to the classic "I Shot the Parrot (With a BLT from Burger King)"
Well, quite. I didn't go to enough rowdy parties when I was at university and I should probably have studied less and gone to more parties instead. You've got the rest of your life to work hard and be serious, someone should have told me. If you're staying up to four in the morning at university, it bloody well should not be because you are reading about the evolution of the synapsids.
72: Right, because evolution is just a theory.
Class consciousness does not reside in an individual, you silly personality-cultist.
al Jazeera>/a> article, not live feed
In a statement televised on state television, the army said it had convened the meeting response to the current political turmoil, and that it would continue to convene such meetings.
Protesters say:If Suleiman, they just change their signs. Factory workers increasing their strikes. I think they have a revolution over there. The workers have forced the students and TS folk to turn this into an economic, redistributive, revolution. Unfortunately the doctors and lawyers are starting to show up. Beware the Mensheviks.
re: 72
Exactly. I went to a reasonable number of parties, due to being a lazy sod about studying, but still, it should have been more, dammit.
Even better, wait 10 years to go to college so you can really single-mindedly focus on partying. And then go, for some reason, to grad school.
Nyeah-nyeah, I partied a lot in college and you didn't.
I'd pay $5 to hear Charlie Sheen's Phi Beta Kappa speech.
You people couldn't be more wrong about Wendy's. Wendy's sucks. In fairness, all the fast-food burger places suck, if you're a vegetarian. But Burger King, bless the monarch's heart, deigns offer a veggie burger, albeit overpriced and not particularly delicious. That's the sort of thing that can cheer a young lad's heart when he's on the road in Oklahoma or some other provincial backwater.
You know how renaissance people judged character by appearances? I think they might have been on to something, in that if one's interpersonal experiences have been, in the aggregate, more positive, one might be less likely to become bitter, spiteful, etc... and more likely to be generous, trusting, etc... . Like a reverse stochastic categorical imperative.
Also, some bastard closed the Wendy's in Oakland
?!
But Wendy's has things like a cheese and broccoli baked potato, which I order sometimes.
80: Not everyone knows who their father is, fm.
Hmm. I actually feel kind of bad for her, just bc she probably won't stay unaware forever, and the longer it takes, the worse the revelation will be.
This seems to be true. I respond to most of the stories on "What it's like to be a woman in philosophy" with fascinated agreement. But occasionally a woman who seems to have just immigrated from the planet Saturn will say that although she's never been harassed or approached improperly, it was disturbing when some man admitted that even in the workplace, he perceives certain women as more attractive than others, and even worse, he selfishly claims that he's unable to stop this unacceptable and odious behavior.
And veggie burgers are inevitably wretched.
80: I'm talking about the Pittsburgh neighborhood and not that city in California.
80: I think there's something to that. Not that the effects of being attractive on personality are all positive, but they're significant. You notice it a lot with little kids -- adorable, winsome babies get much more random conversation from strangers than unfortunate-looking babies, and IME they tend to end up more outgoing and friendly as a result.
On the veldt, everybody looks the same when the sun goes down.
Although, veldt goggles are the opposite of beer goggles.
We should try to guess how hot the commenters are based on the adorableness of their comments.
It's only the Estates-General, only February. October is still a long ways away. This is the easy part, the challenge is always when the petit-bourgeois try to steal the Revolution. Since the divisions are internal, that is when the non-violence stops working.
87: Old ladies are suckers for a baby with hair. The bald kids get less attention.
You know how renaissance people judged charactersuitability as a mark by appearances? I think they might have been on to something
89: Nosflow must be a veritable Adonis.
87: Or, do babies who get more attention become more winsome and adorable as a result? Cause or effect?
84: But occasionally a woman who seems to have just immigrated from the planet Saturn will say that although she's never been harassed or approached improperly, it was disturbing when some man admitted that even in the workplace, he perceives certain women as more attractive than others, and even worse, he selfishly claims that he's unable to stop this unacceptable and odious behavior.
I shouldn't gripe about conventional overstatement, but are you really thinking about a particular individual who you could honestly describe as quite this silly?
87: tying it together, I note that I was (judging by photos) an ugly, hostile and sullen child, which probably explains why I ended up reading about the evolution of synapsids at four in the morning rather than going out and getting burgers with adorably naive female philosophy students in unintentionally revealing dresses (also known as "Freudian slips").
I'll try this one out: the chance to be generous and acknowledged as generous is pretty rare. Most of the time, if you give someone something, even a kind word, the reaction is suspicion or calculation. People in need of help who will say thank you are rare-- just beggars and optimists down on their luck, really.
The complicating factor is a sense of entitlement on the recipient's part or obligation on the donor's, which clouds the interaction. Since the interaction is completely superficial, everything rides on abilities to judge from appearances and the intonation of a few words, which ability is all over the place in a population. Like everyone else, I like to think that I am good at this, but know that I'm not particularly so in fact.
97: here's one that bothered me.
If female undergraduates are fair game for (imagined) sexual conquest, what about graduate students or colleagues? When do we just get to be philosophers?
Never, if you think "(imagined) sexual conquest" is as bad as actual attempts at actual sexual conquest.
97: I was surprisingly old before I recognized that gender makes a significant difference in the world and that men leer even in the workplace.
96: Well, it's a vicious (virtuous?) circle. But random physical attributes do start things off -- Sally had great hair as a baby... cartoonishly perfect curls. Looked kind of like this, only tidier. And she got buckets of adult cooing over her for it, which fed the development of behavioral winsomeness, and so on.
The attempted link was to this.
The workers have forced the students and TS folk
Who knew there were so many transgendered Egyptians?
101: I was surprisingly old before I was able to recognize attractiveness bias in myself and compensate for it. Or try to. Honestly, you meet a really attractive woman and for a little while everything devolves to, "You're pretty. Let me do things for you."
Nyeah-nyeah, I partied a lot in college and you didn't.
I've gone over this before. I have no regrets.
I think there's something to that. Not that the effects of being attractive on personality are all positive, but they're significant.
Another thread about the experience of being attractive.
Never, if you think "(imagined) sexual conquest" is as bad as actual attempts at actual sexual conquest.
"[A]s bad" is doing a lot of work there. Personally, I have had occasion or two to think, "Could you please listen to me as if I were a good lawyer rather than a pretty girl?" And this is as someone who dresses poorly and doesn't take particularly good care of herself. I hate to imagine how put-together women feel.
100: Yeah, but if you click through and read the whole thing, she's talking about being disturbed that her colleagues said they were actually unable to focus on teaching when one of their students was dressed too sexily, and that they couldn't control this reaction. And it doesn't seem to be all that silly to be disturbed by that.
I was surprisingly old before I was able to recognize attractiveness bias in myself and compensate for it. Or try to.
Huh. I definitely recognize it in myself, but I wouldn't say I make any attempt to compensate for it. Is that wrong?
What Di said in 107. Noticing that pretty people are pretty, not a big deal. Thinking about pretty people in the privacy of your own skull, also not a big deal. Saying that you can't do your job properly in the presence of pretty people, and that there's no way to overcome that reaction, seems like a problem to me.
re: 108
Yeah, I can see how that can easily get creepy, but, the key word is 'reaction'. I can't see how anyone can will themselves not to find someone hot, wearing something revealing, attractive at some level. The key thing is that they not turn into some drooling idiot.
98. Unless you seriously think you're likely to get laid, a good book about synapsid evolution is probably more entertaining than an evening in the company of an adorably naive student, if we're to be absolutely honest. Adorably naive students are generally boring; it's the precociously cynical ones who are fun.
This is a generalisation I'd defend regardless of the gender, orientation and looks of the students concerned.
Heebie took too long to respond to 94. I'm now revising my evaluation of her to -150 million. Maybe -250 million.
109: Very probably. Sorry, but...yeah.
Unless you seriously think you're likely to get laid, a good book about synapsid evolution is probably more entertaining than an evening in the company of an adorably naive student,
I'll wager that this sentiment will garner more support from the unfoggedetariat than it would from the population at large.
Wait, I guess it depends on what we mean by "attractiveness bias". I wouldn't, say, give a better evaluation to someone because they were attractive.
I hate to imagine how put-together women feel.
Why, that's one of my *favorite* things to imagine.
118: What did you mean by "attractiveness bias"?
114: You wouldn't believe the darling things I'm saving up to say once we finish figuring out how many new burst pipes we have from last night, despite the fact that we had installed faucets at the lowest points of the pipes so that we could completely drain the pipes, and then we did drain the pipes completely, and yet they're frozen now.
To balance my BK fanboyishness above, allow me to say: remember when they changed their fries, and they were objectively worse? Not that I didn't hit up Free Fry Day more than once, but man: total suckitude (saving grace: onion rings PLUS! onion-ring-specific sauce!). In contrast, I confess that Wendy's advertisements of new fries have caught my eye, but I've yet to try them. Perhaps when they put one other thing on their menu that I deem edible. (Just one, guys. You can do this.)
It took me a long time to notice that I suffer from attractiveness bias because I would imagine that whoever I found attractive had all kinds of other positive qualities, like intelligence or goodness. I only ever caught on to the fact that I did it when I saw other people do it in a completely transparent fashion. (I specifically remember a 40-year man telling me in great detail about how an 18-year old woman seemed so wise and how she was a builder, not a destroyer, etc., etc. To this day, I don't know how to evaluate non-heads-of-state on the builder/destroyer axis.)
Old ladies are suckers for a baby with hair. The bald kids get less attention.
I was bald until I was 2. #explainsalot?
113: this is written either by a man who has spent too much time having to work with naive students, or by a man who has never read about synapsid evolution. I don't even believe it now and I certainly didn't aged 19.
I generally find it easy to set aside the attractiveness of colleagues, students, etc when there is engaging work that we are doing together (i.e. when it's easy.) The downtime is when it gets harder, but then again, it is less likely to be interfering with something.
Semi-related: I was cringing with embarrassment when I hear the Craigslist congressmen posted pictures of himself shirtless, but now that I've seen the pictures I think he looks pretty good.
122: How can you say that they were objectively worse? The Onion had a survey about the new Burger King fries, and 15% of respondents said they could no longer believe in a God would deny them such tastier, crispier fries for so long.
126: I was honestly surprised when he resigned. Say what you want about the new class of freshman representatives, but...a Republican who feels some sense of shame and humanity? There's a f***ing throwback.
121: That sucks, heebie. Though tragedy isn't really adorable, so I'll have to adjust your score to zero.
The flexed arm in a self-snapped photo makes him look pathetic.
123. latent unfocussed hostility shows up sometimes-- envy, rage, a focus on dogwalking in Houston...
129: Okay, now what do you mean by "prefer"?
125. Prehistoric synapsids are extremely cool.
On the other hand, naive students gave me the pip from the get go. I think it was mainly their voices. And their naivety. I mainly hung out with the ones who would have been geeks if there had been anything to geek out about in those days. A lot more entertaining. And, on balance, hotter.
124: you have a few typos (two missing spaces and an extraneous #) in the last sentence of your comment.
126, 128:
Yeah, although I was kind of looking forward to the spectacle of watching the scandal unfold, I have to say that I kind of respect him for his decision to quit immediately and try to keep his family from falling apart. I mean, obviously there's plenty of poor judgment here too and I don't know the guy at all, but that seems like a difficult, praise-worthy choice.
How can you say that they were objectively worse?
Uh, I worked in the mall food court during high school. I'm pretty sure this makes me a lifelong expert on Matters Fastfoodinal. It's kind of like how I qualified for Egyptologist by drawing a picture of squirrel on a pyramid that one time.
you silly personality-cultist
Cut and paste, bob! Cut and paste!
Unfortunately the doctors and lawyers are starting to show up. Beware the Mensheviks.
Don't worry, they can go to reëducation camps. Or the authorities could just kill everyone wearing glasses—that's a sure-fire way to keep the revolution pure.
... I would imagine that whoever I found attractive had all kinds of other positive qualities, like intelligence or goodness.
Ahem. [Flexes, runs fingers through luxuriant mane, pages through The Little Flowers of Saint Francis, rescues endangered tiger cub, smiles dazzlingly at the deserving poor.]
137.2: People with glasses aren't usually that attractive anyway.
I've been acting as hot as possible, and I still can't get these pipes to lay.
140: When I don't have my glasses on, everybody is attractive.
Apo's glasses emit anti-gravity rays.
145: You're supposed to grade on "adorableness", not "pornableness".
Whenever I see pictures of college age students partying and wearing revealing outfits or flashing their boobs or whatever, the first thing I think is "Kid, you're not going to be cute forever. You need to put down the girly drink and get some studying done."
Incorrect! I've studied plenty, but think I ought to have taken way more have naked pictures of myself when I was 25.
now that I've seen the pictures I think he looks pretty good
For a 46 year old, yeah. It's the dudes-with-iPhones-style picture he took that made me laugh.
Resigning that quickly over a fairly vanilla transgression makes me a little suspicious about what else he hasn't confessed to, but maybe that's just wishful thinking.
Er, half naked.
Oudemia's a mermaid!
150: I bet he just didn't like finding out that being in Congress would interfere with his dating life.
150: Break into his basement and check for new cement.
I bet he just didn't like finding out that being in Congress would interfere with his dating life congress.
I ought to have taken way more have naked pictures of myself when I was 25.
I can sell you copies of the ones I have.
113: Adorably naive students are generally boring; it's the precociously cynical ones who are fun.
Shocking, I know, but I'm with Chris Y. Adorableness has its place and all, but (a) naivete isn't always adorable, not by a long shot; and (b) I'm stubborn.
Lost my train of thought there for a moment, but yes, to continue (b), and a feminist, so hotness isn't correlated with adorableness.
128
126: I was honestly surprised when he resigned. Say what you want about the new class of freshman representatives, but...a Republican who feels some sense of shame and humanity? There's a f***ing throwback.
My theory is that he resigned because there's an actual picture out there. It's worth a thousand words, after all. Even though this particular photo happens to be G-rated, it's still too goofy and sticks in the mind too much. David Vitter kept his job, but I'm sure he wouldn't have if there were photos out there of him playing around in diapers.
89: Nosflow must be a veritable Adonis.
154: Oh, Stanley. Everything you do is adorable. I'm giving you an 8.
He might honestly be trying to keep his marriage together. This guy, I feel kind of bad for -- sure, he was cheating on his wife, but didn't appear to be doing anything particularly awful beyond that.
160: Yes I thought that as well. I suspect a lot of the differing trajectories of these political scandals is due to (not necessarily public) fact differences in the politicians' "legitimate" relationships.
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There sure are going to be lots of open Senate seats up for grabs in 2012.
|>
160: He's clearly not the sharpest tool in the shed.
OT: A deep reading of "Spot the Differences."
137:I am summoned! Thought this one through whilst walking the dogs in 19 degree but very sunny conditions.
Egyptian people living on $2 a day:"Marat We're poor. Don't make us wait anymore"
Doctors, lawyers, and student wanna-bes:"Power to the people! Wait, wait. We must not become a mob. We must be ruled by science, reason, law. Rule of law, not rule of the people."
People:"We're poor. Don't make us wait anymore."
D & L"s:"Okay, but first a constitution, then elections and then laws! You, the people are writing the laws. Well, actually, I and my esteemed loyal opposition will be writing the laws in your name."
People:"Poor. Poor."
D & L's:"But I need the wealth of the counter to set up the liberal democracy and properous economy, and to battle my evil opponent who last week was my esteemed colleague. You don't want him to win, do you? We will get around to you after all the elections are run, and all the laws are written. In the meantime, in order to win the future, I need some new taxes to send my son to Princeton. You can make it on $1.50 a day."
People:"Holes in our bellies and holes in our clothes.
Why do they have the gold and why do they have the power
Why do they have the jobs at the top
We got nothing
Always had nothing
We want our revolution now."
D & L's:Obama!
160: Really? It's not really just cheating. If you just want to have sex with someone other than your wife, there are ways to do that that don't involve posting goofy pictures of yourself on the internet. He decided to do this in a way that was extra risky and thus reckless wrt his family's privacy. It's not like being a congressman was something that took him unawares.
He does look super goofy, in a midlife crisis kinda way.
Of course blood will flow, Bob, the leader promised it.
I see we've taken a familiar detour. Before we go on, are we the Judean People's Front or the People's Front of Judea? I get it mixed up.
168: Whichever. We're splitters, in any case.
posting goofy pictures of yourself on the internet
He emailed the picture, didn't he? The craigslist recipient outed him.
Let's not forget that the guy is a Republican; the egregious betrayal of Family Values is a bit of a problem politically, even aside from his wife.
Speaking of congress critter follies, I only learned this morning from Gail Collins' column that Connie Mack IV (real name is Cornelius Harvey McGillicuddy IV)--the baseball manager is Connie Mack I) is married to Mary Bono. And I've no idea whether there is any fire to this smoke.
The woman apparently licking Bono's breast is Edra Blixseth, a disgraced former billionaire who is at the center of a criminal investigation probing whether she made fraudulent representations about her financial worth to a number of banks.
166: That seems like additional stupid, rather than additional lousiness, to me. He was using a fake name, he probably doesn't get recognized in public much (and I think the picture was emailed, not in an ad) -- he was still within the realm where someone had to actively bust him. This isn't wildly clever behavior, but regardless of his politics (which I assume are awful but I don't know about beyond his party ID) I wouldn't particularly want him out of office for it.
170: Let's not forget that the guy is a Republican; the egregious betrayal of Family Values is a bit of a problem politically
David "Diapers" Vitter and the voters of Louisiana say a very small bit of one.
the egregious betrayal of Family Values is a bit of a problem politically, even aside from his wife
Really? For a member of the party of David Vitter and John Ensign? I mean, I think the fact that he's a Republican is what makes it surprising that he's stepping down.
173: note the added value in 174, fucknuts.
173: To be fair to parsi's point, Louisiana has a level of political corruption/incompetence/etc. that is rarely matched.
He was using a fake name
Wait, really? I thought I read that he lied about his age, marital status, and occupation but stupidly used his real name. I must have my facts mixed up.
170 & 172: Ok, slightly less attention seeking, but I would argue still so dumb as to make me wonder if there wasn't something self-destructive about it.
171: Christ on SALE, what the hell is all that about? This is not least of my questions, but is certainly foremost in my mind at the moment: that rack belongs to a 49 year old? Seriously? WELL DONE.
Oh, ick. I hope this is just my own unpleasant mind, but I bet I know why he resigned. The woman he was emailing was black. Wanna bet he thought that the interrracial aspect was going to end his career? If that was his thinking, I've lost my sympathy for him.
176: to be fair to the people of Louisiana, it seems that they're no more corrupt and crazy than the people of Arizona.
173: note the added value in 174, fucknuts.
While the non-fucknuts among you should just revel in the pwnage of the pseud-shifter.
177: And I think you're right, he was using his own name.
181: now I know what Bob sees in you.
179: Why would that affect your opinion one way of the other? This is a Republican we're talking about. Maybe it really would end his career.
177: That's what I thought.
180: I formed by opinion about Louisiana politics during the Edwards vs. Duke race and have yet to see a reason to revise it.
185.2: That was the "Vote for the Crook: It's Important" race, right?
I haven't followed much about the guy's political stances -- I know there's a lot of reporting out there about him now, to which I haven't paid much attention -- but Wikipedia says he's a social conservative who opposed the repeal of DADT, and he won reelection in 2010 with 76% of the vote. I'm just wondering whether the nature of his constituency and his past political campaigning made it utterly non-viable for him to remain in office, having shown himself behaving like a gigolo. How strong is the Tea Party, or the conservative activist movement, in that area of NY?
Yeah, he used a fake name on craigslist, and he looks very good for a 46-year-old, except for the flexing and mugging for the camera thing.
Pwned by now, I bet.
OT (but sort of on the topic of sexy sexism): have people seen this video from the Black Keys?
184: Oh, he might be right about his supporters. But if the difference between "I can ride this out, it's a personal peccadillo," and "It's all over, cut the suffering short" is that he doesn't want to be out there in public having admitted that he had sex with an African American woman, he's either racist himself, or knowingly dependent on the votes of racists. Which is enough to have lost my sympathy.
If he would have bulled through and kept his job after adultery with a white woman, but this tipped the scale enough that he wouldn't even try, I don't think much of him.
Correction to 187: Yeah, he used a fake name on craigslist
Wrong. There was a "I don't think" in there, but then I rewrote the sentence - badly.
186: Yes. And it was important, but the crook did keep being a crook. According to Wikipedia, Edwards was just released from federal prison (to a halfway house) last month.
admitted that he had sex with an African American woman
I'm fairly sure they didn't have sex? I'm not even sure he had her picture. But I haven't kept up on all the details.
hat rack belongs to a 49 year old?
Wealthy 49-year-old Palm Springs widow of Sonny Bono significantly lowers the probability of those being natural.
Okay, now what do you mean by "prefer"?
Like to be around.
And, looking at the picture in question, they don't look natural at all.
195: Be careful before the physics people start in on you for using "natural."
193: hat rack belongs to a 49 year old?
Now, now. Just because a hat rack was designed by humans, doesn't make it unnatural.
192: Yeah, I don't think he ever saw her, and they never got past the email stage. I'm assuming he resigned so quickly because he's done this (many times) before.
The right move for any political scandal is to never resign. They can impeach you or vote you out of office, but don't quit. The election is in well over a year and 76% is a lot of support.
Sorry about that. Here, dream away.
Is that a ginger nubbin??
I could have gone my whole life without seeing a ginger nubbin.
You could have, sure. But now you don't have to!
You're welcome.
200: Huh. Maybe I just have an unpleasant mind. But for a congressman from western NY, her ethnicity seems like something that would make this a much bigger scandal (even though they hadn't had sex) and I think it's a natural assumption that his resignation is about being unwilling to weather that increased scandal.
Let's not forget that the guy is a Republican; the egregious betrayal of Family Values is a bit of a problem politically
No, it's Democrats that resign after scandals like this. Republicans don't. Exceptions: Bill Clinton and this guy.
200, 205: I think oudemia is probably right, at least on the point of him having done this a bunch of times. He is probably guessing that now that his face is on the news, dozens of other women will be popping-up with the same story. The odds of somebody getting caught at this are pretty slim unless they keep at it.
Leaving aside 202, how many men have pictures of their nipples that aren't taken at a beach or pool?
199: Some hat racks are fedorable.
"I said My God, what did you measure them with and she said.......Stetson" --Jerry Jeff Walker
The odds of somebody getting caught at this are pretty slim unless they keep at it.
I'd say the odds of a member of congress getting caught are relatively high, even if it was a one-off event. That said, he was brand new to congress. I can't imagine he just got elected and then as part of his celebration decided to start looking for affairs on craigslist. So yeah, he's probably been at it a while.
207: Sure, but that's not really a distinction from any other sex scandal, survivable or not -- anyone who gets caught for anything, it probably wasn't their first or only time.
I'd say the odds of a member of congress getting caught are relatively high, even if it was a one-off event.
Not for somebody that junior. I wouldn't recognize my own member of Congress (and I've had the same one for 8 years).
211: oh. well nevermind then. I must be getting bad information from somewhere, because I swear I read that.
189: Okay, are you high? He's a Republican. Of course he knows he's relying on the votes of racists.
204: Not that many men are so thoughtful. Or ginger. Because of the veldt, I assume.
Hint of this being part of a pattern (from Politico so no link): Lee, sources said, was one of several junior GOP lawmakers that Boehner allegedly warned to "knock it off" with regard to his partying with female lobbyists last year.
200, 201, 205, etc.: Is nobody but me willing to give this guy credit for possibly thinking of his 1-year-old? I mean, surely Lemmy's right that if he had just stuck to his guns he could've ridden this out. He's in a safe district and it's 20 months to the next election.
It's hard to impute any kind of decency to someone with his voting record, but I'm going to try.
And on preview, agreeing with 215. It's kind of charming that LB thinks *this* is what makes clear that he was relying on racists.
Boehner allegedly warned to "knock it off"
219: So he knew it when he saw it.
219: It's hard to blame Boehner if he did have affairs. A man as powerful as he is that cries so often would have to fight off the women. And a man that cries that much isn't likely to be too good at fighting.
I must be getting bad information from somewhere, because I swear I read that.
A number of early reports had him erroneously as a first-term Congressman, despite being first elected to Congress in 2008. He seems to have been a bit of a rising star, what with the spot on Ways and Means. Um, laydeez.
I think it's more likely that Boehner and the rest of the GOP leadership view Lee's egregious stupidity as an unacceptable continuing risk. Which, you know, it is, especially if he'd already been warned. (Also, whoever mentioned pictures as a big thing: YES, this. He looked like an idiot. Every paper would have run that pic if he'd made it a continuing issue. Makes all the difference.) They probably offered him the usual deal. Resigning is not nearly as bad as getting blacklisted.
Is nobody but me willing to give this guy credit for possibly thinking of his 1-year-old?
I'm willing to as well: about his 1-year-old and his wife. He's only 46; they had a child a year ago. The revelation that he's actively seeking affairs online isn't a small thing.
I feel badly for the wife. On the political front, if his personal behavior reveals that he's been running for and holding office in bad faith (hence promoting or blocking legislation for reasons other than honest endorsement of those beliefs and values), then he's essentially corrupt.
BagNewsNotes thinks the full length picture of Lee is worth seeing. I left a comment saying that he's another good example of someone where the two sides of his face aren't conveying the same emotions.
it's his inclusion of one piece of hardware to suggest another
Looking at the full picture, this strikes me as reading way too much into it.
Well, that's what the BagNewsNotes does.
So what you're saying, Megan, is that he's a sbigot?
You know full well that I would never say anything like that, Stanley.
I bet if you look directly at Stanley, you burn your retinas a la a solar eclipse.
Only when he's wearing his horsey sweater.
After the BagNewsNotes picture, I feel even more badly for the guy and the overall circumstances. People take photos of themselves in their bathrooms with a cell-phone! They do, frequently! It looks like someone standing in their bathroom.
As for the two sides of the face thing, to tell you the truth, I'm thinking that's a function of age. Really.
233: I think this is probably right, the function of age thing. But I also just think he looks really sad. Forlorn, and despairing. Like he's looking into an existential abyss, Cthulu's got his soul, all of it.
People take photos of themselves in their bathrooms with a cell-phone! They do, frequently!
Especially people looking to find dates on craigslist.
You think the sides of his face are two different ages? That's an interesting prospect.
Existential abyss, take a look at my really good abs for a 46 year old.
234
Like he's looking into an existential abyss, Cthulu's got his soul, all of it.
That doesn't happen to non-Republicans when they look in a mirror, though.
236: No, you just get less symmetrical as you get older.
Hmm. Maybe that is the Republican idea of sexy face.
He looks remarkably like my dentist. It's uncanny.
That's the rest of the scandal. He's been cleaning teeth under a false name for kicks.
Stanley's dentist removes his shirt before he drills him in the mouth.
239: By what mechanism? Mini-strokes? Or maintaining a lying facade on the right side for much longer. That would do it
243: It's true, but I'm simply enamelled of him.
232: Thank, Annelid!
Re: the photo, wouldn't it be normal to smile in that type of photo? Not necessarily an "I'm happy" smile, but a smile that at least says that I'm friendly and not totally depressed.
The two sides of the face thing really is uncanny.
236: Not exactly: I think one side of his face is beginning to sag a bit more due to age than the other side. You could consider that a reflection of something spiritual/emotional/psychological, or it could just be physiological. I'm not averse to acknowledging a mind-body connection, not at all, but sometimes it's really just physical.
Somewhat apropos of this, in the thread Apo linked in 1, just prior to the comment he linked to, there's a mention of humility in which B says, part of why I refuse to be humble about my own incredible hotness and fabulosity is because I think the fake humility insistence is bullshit
I didn't read the thread through, but tying this together with Heebie's OP here on the gorgeous leggy 18-year-old, I thought about the principal thing that's so interesting about growing older: your body starts to malfunction in various ways, and you learn humility.
I'd venture that one half of Chris Lee's face shows the humility.
247: Honestly, I think it has more to do with the lighting, and the fact that his left (on the right to us) brow is slightly raised, which I think is a normal degree of asymmetry.
248: I hope so!
Frankly I think donaquixote's lead should be followed. Continue discussing hat racks.
248: I was going to make a similar comment. I don't think he was (not here anyway). At least I don't recall noticing it as much at first. I suspect that now he's gotten comfortable he may just be warming up.
I thought about the principal thing that's so interesting about growing older: your body starts to malfunction in various ways, and you learn humility.
Interesting. The older I've gotten, the more comfortable I've become thinking of myself as attractive. Maybe that is a humility thing, though, as I think I've also grown more generous in my assessments of others. (I have a friend who dabbles in photography. She very genuinely thinks people are gorgeous, regardless of age, height, weight, complexion, etc. This is so right, and makes life so much more beautiful. The outlook totally comes through in the pictures she takes, too, which is awesome.)
I'd venture that one half of Chris Lee's face shows the humility.
And the other shows the heat.
The older I've gotten, the more comfortable I've become thinking of myself as attractive.
I thought about the principal thing that's so interesting about growing older: your body starts to malfunction in various ways, and you learn humility
Well, this is the great arch of life, right? You grow increasingly comfortable in your body in the first half, and then it starts to fail you in the last half. Di, I'm not really sure how old you are, but I think you maybe just haven't yet reached the point at which your body has started to malfunction in meaningful ways.
My foot still hasn't totally recovered from that sprain/stress fracture/whatever it was in early December. And my hair grows greyer and greyer.
My foot still hasn't totally recovered from that sprain/stress fracture/whatever it was in early December
My arch of life, let me tell you how it hurts.
I'm probably not old enough for my body to have malfunctioned as much as it already has, and yet...
A materialist should feel comfortable describing poor decisions as malfunctions of the body, right? That's probably the position Representative Lee should take with his wife: "It's just aging, honey--I'm 46, my body is starting to malfunction in unexpected ways. My face is no longer symmetric and I post topless pictures of myself on craigslist."
256: I, on the other hand, only occasionally get worrisome stabbing pains from the wrist I sprained a mere 6 months ago. I have none right now, for instance. Health care is a crutch for the sick and injured.
259: Oh, ouch. Maybe Representative Lee should move on.
256: LB, I was wondering whether your recent-ish skin cancer thing means that you have pre-existing condition now.
Dunno. I've never had non-employment related health insurance, so I don't know what the standards are.
261: In the context of a politician engaged in adultery, I think of the phrase "Move On" as meaning the press/public should ignore the affair.
263: I don't either. I think it may be. I was thinking about it in connection with people who are without pre-existing conditions and who think of those who do have them as weirdo sick people, which would be wrong. The employer-provided health insurance thing is a buffer, or barrier, to understanding.
I'm a little worried about Republican efforts to block the new health insurance law, that's all.
I don't think I understand 261.
262/263: A friend who had a small spot of melonoma removed in his 20s (about ten years ago) had some trouble getting insurance on account of it, to the extent that he ended up going without insurance when he was between jobs for a while. (But he was a young single healthy male, so that was arguably a rational decision.) I think you'd definitely have to disclose it, or risk rescission (usually anything you've had done in the last 10 years, is what the applications require you to disclose, right?). Some insurers might view it as a nonissue, others might not.
264: Particularly as the origin of the organization with that name was a group advocating that Congress censure Clinton and then move on.
melanoma, I mean.
LB's issue might have been less serious, though. I missed the details on that.
It was -- basal cell, which is the least serious kind of skin cancer.
265: Well, possibly I'll have more empathy now. Who knows?
270: did you lack empathy before now? If so, I must have assumed that was because you're a lawyer and you live in New York.
Which is to say, you're history's sixth greatest monster.
It's a hard question to answer -- would someone who lacked empathy know what it feels like?
I don't think I understand 261.
I don't think I understand 270, either.
Probably comes out of a failure on my part to understand 265.
270 and following: I was remembering times that LB has said that she's a healthy (non-pre-existing condition) person; I was putting that together with considerations upthread about how things occur as we grow older, and how surprising that is; and gesturing vaguely toward humility yet again.
Probably not very important. It's not about LB. I've mostly been thinking about what seems to be an increasingly wide divide between the youthful and the aging. I'm sure that divide has always been there. We mark it now, perhaps, more notably.
If by "we" you mean "those of us who now count themselves among the aging and increasingly infirm", then yes, I think that's probably right.
The young don't even have the decency to remember what it was like to be old.
278: That one would've knocked 'em dead at a conference planning session.
I would invite all the old people to stand on my lawn. If I had a lawn.
277: You could switch to "Von Warfarin."
"Warfarin" contains many of the same letters as "Wafer" and is a medication that a large number of older people are prescribed (to keep their blood from clotting inside legs, brains, cardiac arteries, etc.). You may know it as Coumadin.
The split expression thing is really uncanny if you actually cover up each half while looking at the other half. One side of his face is saying,"Hi! I'm harmless! Let's have fun!" And the other side is saying, "And then I'll have my people take you out."
Warfarin got its name from the funding source for the original research. The Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation. Pretty amusing.
Down low.
Too slow.
284:I approve of "Von Warfarin" A friend of mine tried to kill himself with Coumadin...his failure was not a source of joy. Blindness and brain damage etc. Anyway, back to the news and analysis ||
Wow! Not even a lifting of the state of emergency! I've come around to accepting what As'ad Abukhalil has consistently said. The US, Israel and Saudi Arabia will not let him go. The speech sounded like it was written by Frank Wisner. The empire has dug in for the long haul. It looks like things are going to start getting really violent. As Abukhalil posted a few minutes ago, he is begging the protesters to storm the Bastille....Richard Estes, lots of good links
And Richard Seymour aka "Lenin" on "Gramsci and the Southern Question" for those who need to refresh their theory.
wherein he maintains that coercion and consent are different moments in a unitary political process: consensual power is exerted within the subaltern class alliance that seeks to assume leadership of society; coercive power is exerted over the defeated, previously ruling, classes once leadership is attained.
|>
Anyway, back to the news and analysis
Hey, could you also do traffic on the 9s? Kthx.
285: No way. That is not what the halves of the face are saying. For fuck's sake, I've heard this halves-of-the-face thing before, and given any number of random photos of people, you can generate all kinds of conclusions. Please. We can look at auras too, I guess.
In a more moderate tone: you and Megan have high standards for symmetry.
||
Seymour again, link in 288
UPDATE 5: Crowds in Cairo and Alexandria are incensed. Suleiman speaks briefly on Egyptian state television, maligns Al Jazeera, insists upon the need to restore order and urges everyone to go home to revive the Egyptian economy. John Bradley, the author of a recent book about the potential for revolutionary change witihn Egypt, Inside Egypt, speaks from Al Jazeera's London studio. He agrees with Abukhalil and bluntly says: They are saying one thing in Washington and doing another. Indeed. The mendacity of the Obama administration is breathtaking. It will consign Egypt to an indeterminate period of out of control violence if necessary to prevent the success of the movement. Predictably, the US response to the speeches of Mubarak and Suleiman is silence.
I, history's lowest Munchkin, feel no need for further comment. Back to your regular scheduled whatever.
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290: Yeah, I didn't see what 285 describes either, but I thought it might just be that I lack some capacity to read faces.
I dunno, Bob. I know basically nothing about Egypt, but I actually have a hard time seeing the regime turn to violence at this point. For one thing, there's no more "the regime"; when the generalsecretary of the ruling party of your one-party state is saying the dictator should go, and the military council doesn't let him participate in the meeting, the dictator is done. "Reputation of power is power," as Hobbes put it; at this point the military has made it common knowledge that it will not put down the protestors on HM's behalf, and once it's done that, it can't take it back, because why obey the captain's order to fire, if the generals yesterday said not to, and you know all the other privates know it, too, etc.? Again, I don't have any local knowledge, but the key point is when the front-line soldiers start fearing being put on trial/up-against-the-wall after the revolution more than they fear being court-martialed/shot once it's put down, and I don't see how that point hasn't been crossed by now.
The link in 287 has one seriously evil picture of Mubarek. Just the devil incarnate. Nice job, photogs.
(That's been my main source of optimism--the army high command turning reluctance-to-fire from a hopeful belief to *common knowledge*, with all that implies about expectations and incentives.)
290: I'm still waiting to hear what mechanism you propose for the notion that "faces get more asymmetric as they age." Higher gravity on the left? You face north all morning and south all afternoon? Handedness means differential application of skin cream?
The concept that people express different things with the two hemisperes of their faces is more likely to explain asymmetric aging than "faces just do that."
You face north all morning and south all afternoon?
You have to do this if you want a good even coating of moss all around your head.
[You can take the boy out of Chicago, but you can't take Chicago out of the boy.]
Either his Dorian Grey sunlamp is to the left of his bed, or his connective tissues are aging a little differently on the left and on the right.
When I had a facial tic, it was always on the right. There's a Buddy Guy song, "When my Left Eye Jumps."
I would have assumed that asymmetry would increase with age but this study, at least, says no significant differences based on age or gender and that the highest (most asymmetric) values were in adolescents. Which also makes sense.
297: Are you asking for a cite or something?
You're free to explain the fact that faces just do that in terms of what they're expressing rather than in physiological terms. If you want to go for the latter, it would be something to do with connective tissues, as lw says.
I think my face and most of the rest of my body is slowly becoming more asymmetric as a result of sleeping on my left side all night every night.
As a result of the gravitational consequences of sleeping on my left side all night every night, I should say.
303: You should make a plaster cast of the right side of your face and body, reverse it, and embed it into your mattress. Then you can make time work for you, rather than against you.
302 before seeing 301. The studies will have to take over. I admit that I find it stunning to suppose that facial symmetry remains constant as one ages; it really does not comport with my acquaintance with older people.
There appears to be a relatively large literature on lateralization of facial emotion expression, but not a lot I could find supporting the idea that the two sides of the face express different emotions. It's certainly plausible that one side of the face would express emotion more strongly than the other, as I think emotional processing is pretty lateralized, but the two different emotions idea doesn't seem well supported.
Here's a seemingly fairly typical cite that seems to basically support what Megan's saying.
302: You're dismissing a phenomenon (sides of face reflect different emotions) out of hand, and proposing a more ridiculous phenomenon (sides of face age differently) as the alternative. So I'm gonna ask you how you think that happens.
"Because of connective tissue" isn't an answer, unless you want to explain the difference between connective tissue on the left and the right side of the same face. Different blood supply to the right and left? Connective tissue on the left hoards all the vitamins? I might believe 'always sleeping on one side', except that Science says that faces don't age asymmetrically (per 301).
To the OP, I feel a bit sorry for the young woman heebie describes when she hits middle age. Dolly was always a head-turner, and I think it's partly for that reason that she has such poor negotiation skills. All her life, people (chiefly men) went out of their way to please her. Much of the time she didn't even have to ask. As her youthful good looks have begun to give way to middle aged good looks, she is having to come to grips with a meaningful skill deficit; she doesn't know how to ask for what she wants, much less forcefully demand it. She never had to.
Oooooon the other hand, this meta-analysis seems to argue for some brain lateralization, but bascially make the point that it's not that simple, which seems to be a trend in recent conceptions of lateralization of brain function.
A lot of the results are about laterality in response to facial expressions, rather than in production of facial expressions. Doesn't seem out of the question, although my bias would be for supporting the "it's not as simple as all that" caucus.
stunning to suppose that facial symmetry remains constant
Well, that study doesn't measure within-subject change over time. It just says that the three age cohorts they used (12-15, 18-30, and 31-56) weren't much different from one another.
Wrote 309 before seeing 303 and 304.
does not comport with my acquaintance with older people
I'd believe that older people have suffered undiagnosed mini-strokes.
Saying "different" emotions is me being sloppy, although I think of their left side of their face as their public presentation and what they want the world to see. I assume their right side is their more unguarded emotions.
Saying "different" emotions is me being sloppy, although I think of their left side of their face as their public presentation and what they want the world to see. I assume their right side is their more unguarded emotions.
This sounds totally like woo-woo goofiness but as I was writing a response I realized it's basically consistent with that one study I linked and, apparently, with a significant current of (seemingly not uncontroversial, but who the fuck knows. I spent two minutes looking) research into emotional expression in faces. So there you go.
310: Lower blouses and asking older men for things. Some combination of the two work fine.
285: No way. That is not what the halves of the face are saying.
Yes it is.
The plastic surgeons cited in 301 publish an article every month. Yes, the random variation in fine vascular structure is most apparent [during rapid growth in childhood and adolescence, after many years of life].
I have a pretty hard time taking research focused on marginal phenomena very seriously-- is this persistent left-right variation in expression ever more than a 1:1000 effect? The PET scans of left-right asymmetry for people experiencing strong emotions are interesting, and it looks like people stopped paying much attention to the outside of the head when they could look inside.
Actually, I am amusing myself, and lack all conviction. I do think the public/private idea is interesting, but I wonder if the asymmetry is similar or related to handedness--that would probably be the simplest explanation.
309.1: Ignoring for the moment the SCIENCE Apo found that says that older people aren't more asymmetrical than younger people, because anecdotally they look that way to me, is it really all that implausible that aging would cause asymmetry. If apparent aging is the result of accumulated and imperfectly healed tissue damage, doesn't it sound reasonable that some of that damage would be in the form of localized events -- a bit of connective tissue in the left cheek snaps, creating a visible saggy bit of skin; the matching bit of connective tissue in the right cheek stays connected, but instead one in the right eyelid goes? And then the accumulated events give rise to an asymmetrical appearance?
Lateralized expression of emotions isn't ridiculous either, although I don't see what you see in the picture of Lee, but there's nothing implausible about age-related asymmetry.
319: that definitely seems plausible, and the idea that laterality of external features corresponds to characteristic strongly lateralized functions in the brain is pretty much debunked, I think. So really what you'd be looking at is that emotional states were more strongly conveyed on one side of the face, and the other was more neutral.
Well, that sounded contrary. Lateralization is interesting, so are facial expressions (Ekman and Darwin both).
But papers focusing on cheaply measured phenomena that always remain barely detectable just don't seem worth reading. And a group that publishes a paper a month for 10 years- why?
I can't hear you, LB. All I can hear right now is the rushing sound caused by the balmy, lilac-scented validation pouring over me, bathing my skin and face in a warm euphoric glow.
When Owen Wilson was a baby, his head was a perfect sphere. Fact.
Nothing wrong with cheap measurement, if you're measuring the right things and can be sure you have an effect. Seems hard to be sure you have an effect in this case, though.
Yes, the important part is that the effect is at the threshold of detectability always, i.e., that there's no condition under which a strong effect is observed.
Isn't it obvious that all of this just the effect of lighting and one raised eyebrow? Or maybe you all know this and this is an elaborate joke.
I think I know what you lot mean by "cheap measurement". But if someone wants to explain the term, I wouldn't complain. And I'll take your answer off the air, as I have to go ride my bike.
My nose also became markedly less symmetric when it was hit pretty hard by a concrete floor, one time when I was drinking about 7 years ago. It wasn't broken, but it somehow shifted pretty dramatically anyway. Pictures from before and after are strikingly different. I'm not sure if that counts as "age-related" asymmetry, but it certainly counts as becoming less symmetric with age. I imagine less significant daily traumas could, over time, have similar effects.
I thought your nose got stuck in an elevator. Or was that someone else?
More examples for people who don't see the effect in Lee's face.
It didn't get stuck in the elevator's doors. They just shut on it, which pinched painfully. But I was able to remove it. That didn't have any effect on my facial symmetry, that've I've noticed.
Ogged divided the face in half, to make the effect more extreme.
This image suggests that Lee's split expression is an ongoing, or at least repeated, condition, rather than a one-time trick of lighting and photography.
320.1: At a general level LB is incredibly right. The symmetry of initially symmetric artifacts* degrades through time absent a complete repair program (and in humans that repair mechanism is incomplete to begin with and itself degrades with time). I'm sure there is a completely half-assed (but essentially correct) way to bring entropy into this and violate many blog and critical thinking bans and best practices.
*Explanation of the teenager issue being that at that point of their lives they are not yet completely physically formed, and the closure of asymmetrical developmental gaps can still increase their facial symmetry. But after 20 or so it's all downhill in the direction of lopsidedness.
The lady in the last photo has the sides reversed, doesn't she?
Seriously, with PET scans, it should be possible to get reproducible results by correlating faces with brains which are seething more rather than less.
We could even compare PET scans of more and less repressed people, and verify whether Gretchen Rubin or Penelope Trunk are happier.
In my experience, half asses are never symmetrical. But that might just be cheap measurement on my part.
Lower blouses and asking older men for things. Some combination of the two work fine.
Dolly has mastered the former technique for sure, to the delight of all who know her.
Oh damn, someone please redact 341.
289: Hey, could you also do traffic on the 9s? Kthx.
KTHX. I did the traffic in Reno, just to watch the bourgeoisie die.
346: Oh wait ... that doesn't help.
I don't know, she had no problem asking for exactly what she wanted when we... oh, wait.
From 291: The mendacity of the Obama administration is breathtaking. It will consign Egypt to an indeterminate period of out of control violence if necessary to prevent the success of the movement.
Marc Lynch (aka Abu Aardvark) calls bullshit:
Those who are suggesting that Obama wanted Mubarak to stay are nuts.
351: Are you suggesting Obama isn't evil? How dare you!
328: looking at a picture as opposed to doing a PET scan.
352: He may still be! Who knows what sort of diabolical 11-dimensional chess he plays?
Lower blouses and asking older men for things. Some combination of the two work fine.
Dolly has mastered the former technique for sure, to the delight of all who know her.
God bless First Lady Oops, then.
351:Then Houston, we have a problem, because that is exactly what millions of Egyptians believe this very minute. Check al Jazeera.
I don't think the Egyptian people are nuts, I think Lynch is an establishment hack.
Wait, could it be, it could! that Lynch would say that Obama is having a slight problem delivering a coherent message
Hack
Check al Jazeera.
Been watching for a while, thanks!
353: thanks. I thought as much but wanted to be sure. Man, a bike ride does a person good. Also, California really does kick the pathetic asses of every other state in this godforsaken union.
Hack
You should have that check out.
ed
I really do hate my iPad something fierce.
314: I think of their left side of their face as their public presentation and what they want the world to see. I assume their right side is their more unguarded emotions.
Do this mean left side as you're looking at them (i.e. stage left), or their left side subjectively?
Finally, in the hackishness of Marc Lynch category, Obama, Clinton, Netanyahu, and the Sauds might want Mubarek to go, and Suleiman and the rest of the NDP regime to stay.
Clever Marc Lynch tricked me again.
For fuck's sake, don't quote people who get invited to the White House at me. It makes me crazy.
Fred Thompson, Christopher Lee, Bjorn Lomborg, Ms. Lee: Their subjective left (my right as I look at them) is the public face.
Bush is reversed; was he a lefty?
It makes me crazy.
Among other things.
364: Bush is reversed
That's what I was working toward. At least, he doesn't fit the proposed pattern if you assume that his downward frowny face (linked in 334, for those who are following along) is the public face.
Bush is reversed; was he a lefty?
So our Tea Party brethren (and other Republican amnesiacs) would have you believe.
Here's Paul Amar for a look at what real analysis is like. Dated Feb 10
Kinda long, focuses on economics of Muslim Brotherhood, police brutality, and the role of women in this Revolution.
Who's he? He isn't one of the beltway crowd, one of the very serious people, one of us.
42
In retrospect, the fact that I was an adorable nineteen-year-old (assuming you were into surly, ill-dressed androgynes, but some people must be) probably explained the interaction, but it never occurred to me at the time, because he wasn't hitting on me.
I am not convinced this had anything to do with you being a girl. Lots of people are generous enough to help somebody out (to the tune of $3) in the stated circumstances. I see a surprising (to me) number of people giving money to beggars who definitely are not attractive young women.
364: According to this, he was right-handed.
23
Okay, one can be fairly certain that the counterman did not himself pay for the gifted hamburger. Thus he committed a crime, a sin, the original sin? at the instigation of feminine wiles and wares. The 2nd oldest story, after the naming of the animals.
Good point. They are lucky they weren't arrested .
370 cont'd: And presumably he still is!
I've been trying not to make faces, smiling, smirking, grinning and whatnot, in the background as I go about my business, getting the laundry from the dryer and so on. Also ruminating upon various photos of myself. I sport an asymmetrical aspect at times, I suspect, especially as I've gotten older, and I never thought it was a bad thing, to tell you the truth. Some of it's just asymmetrical aging, and some of it's being of various minds about life, the universe and everything.
None of this means that Bush II wasn't an evil motherfucker, of course.
I see a surprising (to me) number of people giving money to beggars who definitely are not attractive young women.
Maybe you just have really high standards.
I love that there are people in this world who write articles on Wikipedia on such crucial topics as "Handedness of Presidents of the United States".
285: That's exactly how I read the expressions, fwiw.
374: It's important for our newfound empirically-based reality, essear. You have to know the handedness of people in order to read their facial expressions. It has to do with brain science.
I kid.
256
My foot still hasn't totally recovered from that sprain/stress fracture/whatever it was in early December. And my hair grows greyer and greyer.
Things could be worse. Cashiers could start giving the you senior discount without being asked.
Incidentally, I don't particularly think looking at one side of a person's face or the other tells you anything in particular; we generally evaluate facial emotions fairly holistically, so will intuitively get the gist regardless of how asymmetrical somebody is.
378: My brother used to card people who requested a senior discount from the fast food joint he worked at in high school.
Megan was talking about a person being in harmony with him- or herself, and suggesting that facial asymmetry is a clue to that. Or rather, that an asymmetry of seeming expression is a clue to is. It's a longstanding notion. I don't dismiss it out of hand. It's not going to be proven or disproven by science, though, because the very idea of being-in-harmony isn't a scientific one, as we understand science.
Now I kind of want to apologize to Karl Popper.
383: Please don't. Though I forget which side you were on.
384: I'm on the side that thought Karl invented jalapeño poppers. He didn't, but they're still delicious.
In any case it certainly seems premature to make claims about how "we" understand science.
That was quite a path to Popper. Some guy is married to a crazy lady --> BG says not to abuse the terms for crazy --> schizophrenia --> Cosma --> Philosophy of science. I may have skipped a step because I don't recall it making that coherent of a picture.
And abusing ttaM for reasons that seem pointless in retrospect.
387: Cripe, Tweety, I was preparing a statement of comity with 379 to the effect that being-in-harmony doesn't necessarily require a match in facial expression, and in fact we present holistically, as you put it (or, a person can be of two minds while still being a full and whole person).
There's no need to argue about what counts as science, is there?
She could've gotten busy.
374: probably wouldn't violate viewpoint neutrality if I edited it so both categories were labeled "underhanded."
391: yeah, that isn't what I meant, though. We process other people's facial emotions holistically, which is to say, we process information from the entire face more-or-less simultaneously (with cultural and other individual variation in which parts of the face are most important to that judgment). So, really, different thing.
And whether or not we have to argue about what counts as science, we just spent a significant chunk of the week doing it.
