Sapere Aude
Tag: culture
An underground youth culture in Japan with distinctive music, fashion and make-up, where the skin is darkened using tanning products is spreading worldwide. Young people in the UK have been learning about the intricacies of ‘manba‘ by making friends on the other side of the world using social networking sites and learning how to re-create the style through videos on YouTube.
paging bruce sterling for OMG globalization commentary
Whatever the reason for handshaking, it isn’t needed. Like the Qwerty keyboard (which is designed to slow us down so that the typewriter doesn’t jam), it’s a relic of an older time that’s not only no longer needed but actually causes inefficiency. I can live with the keyboard. But I’d rather not have to catch another flu or cold from a handshake. The fact is that handshakes spread germs. You shake someone’s hand and then touch your nose or mouth and you can get sick. I don’t like getting sick. But to turn down a handshake is such an insult that there’s little choice. The hand is out there, in front of me waiting, so like everyone else I grasp it.
+1 bows would work better.
If you don’t know what to do, and you’re frightened, might as well panic. That seems to be the first rule of being a member of the human race. Apparently, panicking is an acceptable substitute for forethought, contingency planning or actually taking productive action. We almost want to blame the thing we’re anxious about on the person who isn’t panicking. “Don’t you care! Can’t you see that we’re all gonna die! That we’re going to go bankrupt? That the world as we know it is going to end?” More people are killed by deer than sharks, but you don’t see park rangers running around like nutcases.
Here’s a still frame from our new movie, The Other Scissor Sister.
human-dependent robots that navigate the city with the help of pedestrians they encounter. One man turned the robot back, saying out loud to the Tweenbot, “You can’t go that way, it’s toward the road.”
Random-ass white dudes should be placed all over your corporate website for no fucking reason. Curly-haired black women are the preferred marketing tool to sell obscure telecom products and telephone services so as long as their skin tone isn’t too dark. She should be dark enough to score that hip diversity dollar, but not so dark as to scare away that heartland racist dollar.
In the past 5 years, Arlo has become one of the sharpest, most original dressers this side of second grade. (Arlo on Dad’s show: “That’s where I’ve gotten a lot of my inspiration.”) His look is part Oliver Twist, part Royal Tenenbaums—eclectic and kidlike, but somehow knowingly so. (His favorite item right now: a fez. “I like to flick the string,” he says.) Even in L.A., a city where 50% of the populace dresses to be noticed, Arlo stands out. A favorite story in the Weiner family is the time perma-cool rocker Beck followed Arlo down the street, so taken was he by the kid’s head-to-toe plaid.
between this and the UWS restaurant critic kid, i had a total ‘kids today’ moment.
8 of the top 10 pornography consuming states gave their electoral votes to John McCain in last year’s presidential election – Florida and Hawaii were the exceptions. While 6 out of the lowest 10 favored Barack Obama.
an unusual group of 150 Ukrainian women who call themselves “Asgarda.” These women live in the Carpathian Mountains and follow a rigorous routine of fighting and boxing, often with medieval weaponry.
Gregor J. Rothfuss 