Tag: culture

Mormon boob jobs

I wanted to show that god-fearing folks steeped in old-fashioned values are just as susceptible to the effects of shifting sex ratios as cosmopolitan, hookup-happy 20-somethings who frequent Upper East Side wine bars. I have seen more outrageous boob jobs and facial plastic surgery in Utah than almost anywhere in the country—especially among Mormon women. They may claim chastity as a virtue overall, but that’s not stopping anyone from getting a set of double-Ds.

Built for Eternity

The clock under construction in Texas will be astronomical, mechanical and solar-powered, and will tell time in a similar way to the Hoover Dam’s celestial map, only with moving parts. Those parts will be made from durable but worthless materials (to deter vandals) designed to never corrode or degrade each other in friction. It promises to be in perfect working order some time in the near-ish future. The clock has been in development since 1986. It will be very large, standing over 60m tall. It will be hidden behind 2 heavy metal doors in the side of the mountain and will require the ascension of steep, winding stairwells to navigate its parts and to make it work. There it will be occasionally ticking, like a bomb. The only light will come from a small window at the very top of the clock’s chamber; inside you will not be able to see anything, it will be so dark you will need to have brought your own light source. The chamber will house bells that can play more than 3.5M unique variations of sound, programmed by Brian Eno, when the clock chimes.

Kazakhstan Sleeping Villages

tl;dr: no known cause

Radiation. Government conspiracy. Mass hysteria. There are plenty of theories as to why the residents of a tiny Kazakh mining region keep falling asleep for days at a time, but no answers. Deputy Prime Minister Berdibek Saparbaev announced that the mystery of the sleeping sickness had been solved: It was the specific combination of reduced levels of oxygen and heightened levels of carbon monoxide and hydrocarbons. But as usual, rumors overshadowed reality. “The real moment is that we came to the conclusion that there are natural processes that lead to the combination of these kinds of factors and that specifically this combination of factors could give this effect. I can’t say for certain now. Our assumption is that all 3 components must coincide. When all 3 exist, that’s when people will start falling and sleeping again.” He had searched for similar cases in scientific literature, but so far had found nothing. He suggested the illness would return in September when people started to heat their homes.

Fashion twins

If we’re going to a party, we’ll discuss what to wear like any other couple, except the difference is we want to look the same. Someone once told me that if she and her husband came down wearing the same color top, they’d change. What a shame to be so insecure. We both have very strong identities as individuals and wearing the same clothes doesn’t affect this; clothes don’t make your personality. Instead, dressing the same gives me a lovely feeling of closeness to Donald.

Spornosexuality

While the Barbie doll’s body has been getting thinner and thinner over the years, action figures such as GI Joe have been getting more muscular. It is not only size but definition. One study, co-authored by Harvard’s Pope and Olivardia in 1999, compared action toys from different decades. The earliest models had no abdominal muscles; the 1970s models showed some; but by the mid-1990s the toys displayed ‘the sharply rippled abdominals of an advanced bodybuilder’. Tellingly, Ken, Barbie’s boyfriend, was the exception, but then he is regarded as a doll not an action figure, and is aimed at girls.

The past was not peaceful

Left-liberals who espouse strident progressive social justice views ascribe regressive practices among non-whites purely to extraneous Western colonial influences, as if non-white peoples were innocents in the garden before the arrival of Europeans. Whereas a previous generation of white supremacists perceived in the non-Western the inferior and primitive, a modern generation of Westerners sees the authentic and pristine. Though the moral valence differs, the underlying structural framework is the same. To truly carve nature about its joints in a manner which exhibits appropriate fidelity we need to go beyond this reflex. Hopefully in such a manner we can also begin to probe our own past without fewer illusions which are haunted by the present