Monthly Archive for April, 2008

The criminalization of a disease - revisited

I was just thinking about my previous post on this topic, and it occurred to me that one of the consequences of the proposed law is a ban of all people who appear anorexic from all media.

After all, when a news-station uses a very thin anchor, does it not follow that it promotes anorexia? Notice that it does not even matter if the person is, in fact, anorexic. The appearance of very thin people on television validates and enforces the unhealthy body image of all anorexics.

Nevertheless, this law does seem unjust to me. Why target only extreme thinness? Why even target extreme thinness? Is not extreme fatness a bigger problem in the western world? Wouldn’t it be more appropriate, and more effective for the general health of the people, to criminalize the promotion of obesity? We’d certainly have to ban commercials for plus-sized fashion, fast food, super markets - anything plus-sized or super-sized for that matter. No more Roseanne on television. No more Pavarotti. Surely, there are enough regular-sized people out there who can do the job.

Perhaps, we should consider criminalizing the promotion of all extreme body-images. People who are too tall, let’s say. Did you know that some people willingly submit themselves to unnecessary orthopedic surgery to add a few inches to their height? It happens. Surely, that can’t be right. But what can they do when they see that people prefer taller partners, taller people get the “higher” positions etc? Why doesn’t anyone notice how tall those extremely thin models are?

There goes diversity. (Freedom must have left earlier.)

The Glass House

Philip Johnson\'s Glass House

Philip Johnson’s Glass House is beautiful. It is stunning. But stunning is not the word for it, there’s no element of surprise in the impression it makes - it fits its surroundings so that you would almost expect it to be there.

I realize, it’s not everyone’s cup of tea.

And there’s no place for it in the Netherlands, where I live. A house like this needs a forest.

I would like to have a house like this. If I could afford it, I would probably build a house that would be halfway between the Glass House and a Minka. But I would build it to last, my house, with comfort, security, and autonomy in mind. Have you read Charles Platt’s “The Silicon Man”? That’s what I have in mind when I talk about security and autonomy. Or the house from that Bruce Willis movie with the hostages, where the house turns into a fortress at the push of a button.

It’s a libertarian fantasy, I suppose. I’m sure I’m not the only one to think of this. A fortress of one’s own… Not quite what Henry David Thoreau had in mind, I suppose.

Photosynth & HTM

Someone should put Numenta HTM and Photosynthtogether. I think HTM could speed up the process of finding associations between pictures, and probably also reduce the capacity demands. Just an educated guess, of course.

Vilayanur Ramachandran: A journey to the center of your mind

Ramachandran talks at TED about Capgras Syndrom, Phantom Limbs, & Synesthesia.

Christopher deCharms: Looking inside the brain in real time

Mathemagics

This guy squares 5-digit numbers in his head!!!

Peel P50

Peel P50

What a weird little car! I didn’t know it existed before I saw it on Top Gear.

This clip is definitely worth watching - especially the part where Geremy Clarkson attends a BBC staff meeting on “How to Reduce the Carbon Footprint of our Ethnically Diverse Disability Access Policy for Single Parent Mothers” in this little car.