Many of today’s most-respected thinkers, from Stephen Hawking to David Attenborough, argue that our efforts to fight climate change and other environmental perils will all fail unless we “do something” about population growth. In the Universe in a Nutshell, Hawking declares that, “in the last 200 years, population growth has become exponential… The world population doubles every forty years.”

But this is nonsense. For a start, there is no exponential growth. In fact, population growth is slowing. For more than three decades now, the average number of babies being born to women in most of the world has been in decline. Globally, women today have half as many babies as their mothers did, mostly out of choice. They are doing it for their own good, the good of their families, and, if it helps the planet too, then so much the better.

{ Prospect Magazine | Continue reading }

photo { Abby Wilcox }

More than a decade after Bill Clinton left office and Ken Starr returned to private practice, public discourse has never regained its breath. The national conversation is every bit as histrionic as it was back then. Only now, at least most of the time, there’s no equivalent scandal to sustain it.

So we are left with ever-present outrage in search of something to be outraged about. We have a tone in search of a target.

{ Joshua Greenman/NY Daily News | Continue reading }

Dual Function Design, November 10, 2008
By B. Govern “Bee-Dot-Govern”

This item has wolves on it which makes it intrinsically sweet and worth 5 stars by itself, but once I tried it on, that’s when the magic happened. After checking to ensure that the shirt would properly cover my girth, I walked from my trailer to Wal-mart with the shirt on and was immediately approached by women. The women knew from the wolves on my shirt that I, like a wolf, am a mysterious loner who knows how to ‘howl at the moon’ from time to time (if you catch my drift!). The women that approached me wanted to know if I would be their boyfriend and/or give them money for something they called meth. I told them no, because they didn’t have enough teeth, and frankly a man with a wolf-shirt shouldn’t settle for the first thing that comes to him.

I arrived at Wal-mart, mounted my courtesy-scooter (walking is such a drag!) sitting side saddle so that my wolves would show. While I was browsing tube socks, I could hear aroused asthmatic breathing behind me. I turned around to see a slightly sweaty dream in sweatpants and flip-flops standing there. She told me she liked the wolves on my shirt, I told her I wanted to howl at her moon. She offered me a swig from her mountain dew, and I drove my scooter, with her shuffling along side out the door and into the rest of our lives. Thank you wolf shirt.

Pros: Fits my girthy frame, has wolves on it, attracts women
Cons: Only 3 wolves (could probably use a few more on the ‘guns’), cannot see wolves when sitting with arms crossed, wolves would have been better if they glowed in the dark.

{ Amazon.com }

The press seems to be having a little trouble distinguishing between verbal and physical harm lately. Earlier this month, New York Post Page Six contributor Ian Spiegelman dashed off an e-mail to writer Douglas Dechert threatening to “push your face inside-out in private or public” and to see “how many times I can slam my fist into your face before someone pulls me off.”

{ New York Observer, 2004 | Continue reading }

{ Encyclopedia Britanica broome | Thanks AJJ!}

Witter: Are you moving more into the mainstream? Have you sold out to commercialism?

Grayson Perry: In this game you make more money not selling out to the mainstream. I’m not scared of being popular though.

{ Grayson Perry, cross-dressing ceramicist | Times | Continue reading }

artwork { John Guerrero }

The doors open and three women step on: a blonde, a brunette and one whose hair has been bleached and blown dry so many times it’s not a discernible color. All of the women could stand to have a good 3 inches cut off their hair. They wear slight variations on the Little Black Slut Dress. They wear too much makeup, a pair of shoes that doesn’t quite match the dress, towering heels.

The man in the corner rolls his eyes and thinks to himself, “And I’m the hooker.”

That’s right: I’m 47 years old, I’m a good 30 pounds overweight, and I make my living by taking care of men who come to Las Vegas hoping for some skin time with other men — for a fee. And in case you’re ready to dismiss me as someone clinging onto the last shreds of his faded beauty, you should know that I was well into my 40s before I started hooking.

{ Salon | Continue reading }

photo { Stephen Shore, Clovis, New Mexico June, 1972 }

{ Laura Taylor }

“Perhaps most troubling,” says the report, “the FBI could not determine in many cases whether the lost or stolen laptop computers contained sensitive or classified information. Such information may include case information, personal identifying information, or classified information on FBI operations.” Laptops can also contain goodies like the software that the FBI uses to make its identification badges, a copy of which was installed on a laptop stolen from the Boston Field Office in July 2002.

In the 44 months that it took to complete the new audit, the FBI lost 160 weapons and 160 laptop computers—a massive improvement over the 354 weapons and 317 laptops lost during the first 28-month-long audit. In any organization the size of the FBI, equipment is going to be lost, misplaced, or stolen, so perfection is not to be expected.

{ Ars Technica, 2007 | Continue reading }

{ Tap water can be unhealthy but still legal | NY Times | full story }

John Kay’s thesis is quite straightforward: the subtitle “Why Our Goals Are Best Achieved Indirectly” rather gives it away. He argues that we often cannot solve problems directly because of their inherent complexity, the incompleteness of our knowledge, the interdependence of the actors and the environment, and the fact that most models designed to assist decision-making are highly imperfect descriptions of reality. So we often get closest to our ultimate goal by pursuing intermediate objectives, or working towards some higher goal that may have the side-effect of delivering what we need, be it more profit, more market share, or success in politics or war.

{ Howard Davies/FT | Continue reading }

unrelated { An Insufficient Appreciation of the Coen Brothers | Curator | full story }

If we are ever contacted by aliens, the man I’m having lunch with will be one of the first humans to know. His name is Paul Davies and he’s chair of the Seti (Search For Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Post-Detection Task Group. They’re a group of the world’s most eminent scientists and will be, come the big day, the planet’s alien welcome committee.

{ Guardian | Continue reading }

photo { Tim Barber }

In a Tampa Bay area hospice, the mystery of a man with no identity.

Here lies a man who does not exist. He is very old, and maybe a little deaf. His hair has gone white and his teeth have gone missing. He will tell you he is 95. But later he might say 94, or 93. He says he has traveled the world as a hobo. Slept under trucks, on park benches, in barns. Played football with Burt Reynolds and baseball with Fidel Castro.

But his stories shift and change, and he admits he hasn’t always been truthful. But no one knows why. He carries no identification. He swears he’s never smiled for a passport photo. He has no birth certificate, no Social Security card. No family. Just a couple of old friends. And before he dies, even they want to know: Who is Roger George?(…)

People die with secrets all the time. Secret affairs, secret pasts, secret urges. Roger George’s secrets appear to be much more fundamental. Maybe he’s entitled to those secrets, whatever they are. Or maybe he’s just a sweet old man with a foggy memory and a colorful life.

{ St. Petersburg Times | Continue reading }

In the fall of 1996, a $30-million Hollywood production almost ground to a halt because of facial hair. As producer Art Linson recounted in his 2002 memoir, “What Just Happened?,” Alec Baldwin surprised everyone when he showed up to film “The Edge” (1997), a man-against-nature thriller, with an overgrown beard. A profanity-laced debate ensued between producer, star, agent and studio executives.

Finally it came down to this: The execs, who had already sunk millions into the production, wouldn’t shoot the picture with their expensive star acting behind a hairy hedge. The stand-off might have ended badly for the studio if the star had walked, but in the end he didn’t: Mr. Baldwin blinked, emerging from his trailer clean-shaven for the first day of filming.

Why risk so much money over a few whiskers? The answer to that question and other mysteries of modern-day film financing can be found in “The Hollywood Economist,” Edward Jay Epstein’s latest foray into the seamy underbelly of Hollywood spreadsheets.

{ Wall Street Journal | Continue reading }

Can a clean smell make you a better person?

That’s the provocative suggestion of a recent study in the journal Psychological Science. A team of researchers found that when people were in a room recently spritzed with a citrus-scented cleanser, they behaved more fairly when playing a classic trust game. In another experiment, the smell of cleanser made subjects more likely to volunteer for a charity.

The findings suggest that simply smelling something clean makes people clean up their behavior - that a smell can provoke a mental leap between cleanliness and morality, making people think differently about the world around them. The authors even suggested that clean smells could be employed as a tool to influence how people act.

The idea that a smell can affect something as complex as ethical behavior seems surprising, not least because smell has long been seen as a “lower” sense, playing on our emotions and instincts while our reason and judgment operate on another plane. But research increasingly shows that smell doesn’t just affect how we feel: It affects how we think, in ways that are just beginning to be understood.

{ The Boston Globe | Continue reading }

One of the works that helps visualize the breakthrough is a painting done in 1961, which consists in a greatly enlarged version of a simple black-and-white advertisement of the kind that appears in side columns and back pages of cheap newspapers. It advertised the services of a plastic surgeon, and showed two profiles of the same woman, before and after an operation on her nose.

{ NY Times | Continue reading }

artwork { Andy Warhol, Before and After, 1961 }

“The government has been telling us the truth,” declared David Clarke, a senior lecturer in journalism at Sheffield Hallam University, who has a side interest in U.F.O.’s. “There are a lot of weird things in the sky, and some of them we can’t explain, but there’s not a shred of evidence for a single alien visitation.”

Which is, frankly, a letdown, as is the government’s prosaic explanation of why, for decades, it has meticulously documented reports of U.F.O. sightings. (…)

In the old days, the United States systematically compiled reports of U.F.O. sightings, too. But its last program, known as Project Blue Book, was closed down in 1969 after government officials concluded that if something was out there, it was not anything they wanted to investigate.

{ NY Times, 2008 | Continue reading }

previously/related { Now, just where might this Great Filter be located? }

{ Barron’s notes that the M1 money multiplier biweekly indicator is worth watching closely. | Barry Ritholtz | Continue reading }

Vatican’s chief exorcist says Devil is in Vatican. Father Gabriele Amorth said people who are possessed by Satan vomit shards of glass and pieces of iron.

The French railway operator, SNCF, has mistakenly put a dramatic statement on its website saying more than 100 people had died in a train explosion. The false announcement, of an explosion in Macon in the Burgundy region, was part of a training exercise.

Man used his penis to assault female police officer. 5 more penis-related attacks.

Naked man escapes Swiss brothel fire.

The super-sized 43st mother who is determined to become the world’s fattest woman.

Six women in New Jersey are recovering after they received buttocks-enhancement injections containing silicone used to caulk bathtubs.

Recent polls put belief in angels in the UK at around the 40 per cent mark; in the US it is more like 70 per cent.

2500 of the world’s stock of 5000 languages are expected to die by the end of the century.

“Your Mind and Your Money” series aims to help people understand the psychological and emotional biases that influence their investment decisions.

Excerpts from the Lehman Report.

Men and women invest differently, a growing body of research has found. And in at least one important respect, women may be better at it.

Scientists have determined that the female memory is more powerful than the male, and that it is likely to improve with age, while men’s deteriorates.

Men think about sex almost 5,000 times a year – but only get down to doing it 104 times, a new study has found.

The cocaine conundrum. Effective treatment remains elusive.

Hydrogels are the only materials that have the potential to be used as a replacement material for functional tissues like cartilage, sinews or muscles. However…

The further back in time we go, the more and more fragmented the Earth’s geological record becomes.

Interview with Andrey Ternovskiy, 17 year old founder of Chatroulette.

If a stranger came up to you on the street, would you give him your name, Social Security number and e-mail address?How privacy vanishes online.

General knowledge, from capital cities to key dates, has long been a marker of an educated mind. But what happens when facts can be Googled?

These new tablets may be slimmer and lighter, but just like the last generation, once you peel away the hype, you’re left with a nonfunctioning hunk of metal and plastic at the bottom of the pool.

As this invigorating new work shows, however, nothing could be further from the truth: The War that Killed Achilles gives us an Iliad that is in essence a powerful piece of anti-war literature, savage in its condemnation of the folly and cost of war, and brutal in its depiction of the human consequences.

Tribune Company CEO Randy Michaels has banned 119 “newsspeak” words and phrases from ever crossing the lips of anchors and reporters at WGN-AM. There’s a list here, but if you’d like them in a sentence, how about this.

How women artists fought back in the ’70s.

Lucian Freud: the year I sat for the master. He has painted the grand and the famous - from the Queen to Kate Moss. So what is it like posing for the great man?

As she prepares for her retrospective at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Kate Moss opens up about her 20-plus-year career at the top of the fashion world.

Reality TV’s new crisis.

A journalist’s adventures in the world of taxidermy, where she observes the art of incising, skinning, sculpturing and reassembling.

How Kenny Rogers and Frank Sinatra could help stroke patients.

If you follow those 10 steps, you can ensure that your first anal sex experience is pleasurable rather than painful.

Coming from a fatherless home, I could never imagine a day when I could sympathize with a deadbeat dad and yet here I am, a father myself, and it has become abundantly clear why men walk out on their families.

When you hit 30 you can either go the way of the rural indie artist guy or you can shave your head, switch t-shirts to polos, and be the old city hardcore guy.

Kubrick’s The Shinning clock.

Jetpack, $86,000

This is getting so confusing.

Release the Bionic Mickey Rourke…

{ New Balance 365, a collection of 365 short films that engages consumers 365 days a year by asking them to think about “the balance”. | Mother NY }

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