about face

Stephen Fry (sourse image from: E-Verse Radio)

"The authors [Kelsey Blackburn and James Schirillo from Wake Forest University] explain: 'Our results suggest that posers' left cheeks tend to exhibit a greater intensity of emotion, which observers find more aesthetically pleasing. Our findings provide support for a number of concepts – the notions of lateralized emotion and right hemispheric dominance with the right side of the brain controlling the left side of the face during emotional expression.'
     Participants were asked to rate the pleasantness of both sides of male and female faces on gray-scale photographs. The researchers presented both original photographs and mirror-reversed images, so that an original right-cheek image appeared to be a left-cheek image and vice versa.
     They found a strong preference for left-sided portraits, regardless of whether the pictures were originally taken of the left side, or mirror-reversed. The left side of the face was rated as more aesthetically pleasing for both male and female posers."
— Springer Read more...

"What you see in the mirror in old age may reflect more than your features. According to researchers publishing in a July, 2011 issue of Economics and Human Biology, the symmetry of those features can trace your early history. Studying a group of octogenarians, David Hope, Timothy Bates, and colleagues found that being poor in childhood led to greater irregularities in facial symmetry many decades later, but not in body symmetry.
     The researchers measured the facial and body symmetry of 292 people who are part of the Lothian Birth Cohort 1921, one of two birth cohorts under study at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. The year 1921 is of interest because almost every schoolchild in Scotland born in that year took a mental ability test known as the Moray House Test."
— Emily Willingham, EarthSky
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"For those of you who have one side of your face bigger than the other, I used to have the exact same problem. I'm not exactly sure what caused it, but my face used to be perfectly symmetrical. Then, after two and a half years of braces, my mom started noticing that my left side, namely the cheek along the jawline, was larger than my right side. I rarely noticed it, but it's a lot more pronounced in pictures. This went on for several years, and I began to worry whether this was going to be permanent. My mom's theory was because I always rested my face on my right hand when listening to lectures in class and over time this caused an indentation.
     So, I tried sleeping on my left side all the time and also resting my face on my left hand. It didn't seem to work. What was interesting was sometimes my mom would notice the asymmetry getting better, but then it would go back to the way it was. I was starting to think about cosmetic surgery, when one day I decided to start chewing on my right side. I'm right handed, and all my life I have favored chewing on the left side. Over time, it progressed to me chewing only on my left side and never on my right. Immediately afterwards, my mom noticed a difference that would not revert back to the original asymmetry.
     After about 3-4 months of chewing solely on my right side, my face went back to being symmetrical again (it's still not 100%, but it's no longer noticeable). I was so happy, and I couldn't believe the solution was as simple as developing the right jaw muscle by exercising it. All those years of neglecting the right masseter caused it to shrivel from disuse. Now, I make sure to alternately chew on both sides.
     For those of you who also chew heavily on one side, I strongly encourage you to try what I did. You never know, a possible solution to the asymmetry could just be a couple months away. Another idea asking a doctor what sort of exercises you could do to develop the muscle on the side of the face that is smaller. Good luck."
— Guest, (In a discussion about "corrective measures for asymmetrical face") Steady Health
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love is blind

"Each woman watched three videos while having her brain imaged by positron emission tomography, better known as a PET scan. These scans detect minute changes in radioactivity in the brain that correspond to the amount of blood flowing to any given region. Regions with more blood flowing to them are considered more active.
     One of the videos used in the study was a simple nature documentary about marine life in the Caribbean. The other two were selections from ;women-friendly' pornographic movies, one depicting only foreplay and manual stimulation and the other depicting oral sex and vaginal intercourse. Earlier studies had shown that the higher-intensity video showing intercourse produced stronger physical arousal in women than the foreplay-focused movie clip.
     The scan results revealed that the high-intensity erotic video — and only the high-intensity erotic video — resulted in far less blood being sent to the primary visual cortex. The region is still active, just much less so. Usually, that effect is only seen when people are asked to conduct a nonvisual task, like remembering words, while also watching some sort of visual stimuli.
     To [Gert] Holstege [a uroneurologist at the University of Groningen Medical Center in the Netherlands] those results suggest that the brain is focusing on sexual arousal as more important than visual processing during these erotic films."
— Stephanie Pappas, LiveScience
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"subversive quotation of the penis"

"The Very End of Clacton Pier" 

"[...] the artificial prosthesis of the dildo not only has the potential to blur the boundaries between different sexual and gender identities, but also those between human beings and technologies. Through the concept of Preciado’s dildo, post-porn is already located within the scope of a feminist posthumanism. With reference to Foucault, the term technology is used to describe not only the inorganic and artificially created object but also its forms of application, i.e. discourses and practices that surround the tool or machine and activate it culturally in the first place (Preciado 115-117).
     In a feminist-posthumanist perspective, the inorganic and technological on the one hand and the organic and supposedly natural on the other hand are never located in an exterior relation to each other. This inseparable interconnection is analogous to the one between sexuality and power. Every mode of medical-technological interference with the human body – for instance the contraceptive pill – transgresses the boundaries of the organism and thereby renders such borders fragile and permeable (Preciado 109-127).
     So does a tool called dildo. When someone masturbates with a dildo in queer post-porn and the streams of lust circulate between the dildo and the organism, the attempt to establish the skin as a distinct barrier between the human being and technology becomes impossible and pointless (Joy 21:30-21:55). The diverse and rapidly increasing forms of interconnection between the organic and the technological produce new bodies over and over. As early as 1985, the feminist biologist and science historian Donna Haraway termed these hybrids cyborgs (Haraway 149-181). According to her, every human body is always already a cyborg as every body constantly is technologically connected. Hence, the body cannot be conceptualized without referring to technologies since it is produced by them in the first place."
— Stefan Offermann, Gender Forum
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"It is what Derrida has called the dangerous supplement that destroys what it completes."

"In this theoretical context Beatrice Preciado has analysed the paradoxical production of the female orgasm. The 17th century saw the beginning of a number of medical campaigns against masturbation, then considered a dangerous and abnormal exposure. These campaigns reached a peak in the 19th century when a vast number of instruments were invented to prevent the spread of the masturbation disease. These instruments, ranging from chastity belts, cock rings and bondage systems to electroshock apparatuses, marked the body with regions of pleasure and pain, isolating them in order to medically determine where sex is located.Through a play of repression and permission, these anti-masturbation devices show that sex lies in the genitals and that the orgasm is the corresponding bodily reaction. At the same time, medicine developed a method for treating female hysteria using genital massages to stimulate orgasm both as a symptom of and a cure for a hysterical fit. For Preciado the female orgasm was produced at the intersection of these two reverse strategies of repression and production.This is why she suggests that the dildo is the truth of heterosexuality that will betray its logic – because it is the bad copy of the penis that denaturalises the sexual field and its dual distribution of positions.

Coco De Mer (from: InRumor.com)

     In its most strategic sense, the dildo disrupts the distinction between living subjects and dead things: The dildo is detachable and therefore resists the force with which the body reappropriates pleasure, as if pleasure were something that emerged from the body. The pleasure produced by the body belongs to it only to the extent that it is reappropriation.(…) The enjoying dildo knows that pleasure is never given or taken, that it is never there, that it is never real but always embodiment and reappropriation. For Preciado the dildo, as subversive quotation of the penis, reveals the inconsistency of the heterosexual regime.
     By a mere act of multiplication, it exceeds the sovereignty of the single signifier and rejects the separations that the latter has instituted. It is what Derrida has called the dangerous supplement that destroys what it completes. Replacing the one with the multiple, this instrument demonstrates that the pleasure produced by sex can neither be attributed to a bodily region nor declared as subjective property: The dildo shows that the signifier that generates sexual difference falls outside of its own game. The logic that it establishes isthe logic that will betray it.“
— Katja Diefenbach, Fizzle Out in White: Postporn politics and the deconstruction of fetishism
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god particle or higgs bozo

Source images: Sagacity; Frum Forum

"Metaphors like these [etch a sketch]  inexact as they are, are the only way the layman can begin to grasp the strange phantom world that underpins the very fabric of not only the Romney campaign but also of Mitt Romney in general. For we have entered the age of quantum politics; and Mitt Romney is the first quantum politician.
     A bit of context. Before Mitt Romney, those seeking the presidency operated under the laws of so-called classical politics, laws still followed by traditional campaigners like Newt Gingrich. Under these Newtonian principles, a candidate’s position on an issue tends to stay at rest until an outside force — the Tea Party, say, or a six-figure credit line at Tiffany — compels him to alter his stance, at a speed commensurate with the size of the force (usually large) and in inverse proportion to the depth of his beliefs (invariably negligible). This alteration, framed as a positive by the candidate, then provokes an equal but opposite reaction among his rivals.
     But the Romney candidacy represents literally a quantum leap forward. It is governed by rules that are bizarre and appear to go against everyday experience and common sense. To be honest, even people like Mr. Fehrnstrom who are experts in Mitt Romney’s reality, or 'Romneality,' seem bewildered by its implications; and any person who tells you he or she truly 'understands' Mitt Romney is either lying or a corporation. [...]
     The basic concepts behind this model are:
     Complementarity. In much the same way that light is both a particle and a wave, Mitt Romney is both a moderate and a conservative, depending on the situation (Fig. 1). It is not that he is one or the other; it is not that he is one and then the other. He is both at the same time. [...]"
— David Javerbaum, The New York Times
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bored doctors + movies = no fun

"Pelvic Massage" (from: Wikipedia)

"Male doctors found their hysterical and neurasthenic patients especially frustrating. Many doctors suggested that women would feel better if they engaged in sexual intercourse until its natural conclusion with a male orgasm. But given the ineffectiveness of vaginal penetration in satisfying many women, doctors resorted to other solutions. Doctors manually massaged the women’s clitoris until she achieved relief, i.e. experienced an orgasm, although it was not recognized as such. Annoyed doctors complained that it took women forever to achieve this relief; moreover, they thought this condition beneath their respectable professional demeanor to treat. On the other hand, the repeat business of these women was good for their pocketbooks."
— Erik Loomis, AlterNet
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"For hysteria unrelieved by husbandly lust, and for widows, and single and unhappily married women, doctors advised horseback riding, which, in some cases, provided enough clitoral stimulation to trigger orgasm.
     But many women found little relief from horseback riding, and by the 17th century, dildos were less of an option because the arbiters of decency had succeeded in demonizing masturbation as 'self-abuse.'  Fortunately, an acceptable, reliable treatment emerged: having a doctor or midwife 'massage the genitalia with one finger inside, using oil of lilies or crocus' as a lubricant. With enough genital massage, hysterical women could experience sudden, dramatic relief through 'paroxysm,' which virtually no medical authority called orgasm, because, of course, everyone knew that women did not have sexual feelings, so they could not possibly experience sexual climax. [...]
     Electricity gave women vibrators, but ironically, within a few decades, electricity almost took the devices away from them. With the invention of motion pictures, vibrators started turning up in pornography and gained an unsavory reputation. By the 1920s, they had become socially unacceptable. Vibrator ads disappeared from the consumer media. From the late 1920s and well into the 1970s, they were difficult to find."
— Michael Castleman, Victorian Pleasure Parties
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dissing information

Phot: Heidi Sagerud (universetoday.com)

"'After I showed them the materials three times, one of the them stepped forward and said, "This event never happened. We were never here. We're confiscating all this data, and you're all sworn to secrecy,"' Callahan recalled. [...]
     'There was a page that said unlawful disclosure of any UFO information is a $10,000 fine and 10 years in jail,' Fox said. 'If I had mentioned anything to anybody, they would've grabbed me and sent me for a Section 8,' he added, referring to a military discharge when someone is deemed mentally unfit. 'So I just kept my mouth shut.'"
— Lee Speigel, Huffington Post
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“I would’ve hoped they would’ve been more open-minded instead of going ad hominem and calling me clueless and stupid,” said Michael from Montgomery, Ala. That’s where he teaches nuclear counterproliferation and deterrence theory, at the Air War College, as an associate professor. “I know they categorically reject UFOs, I just didn’t know how deep it went.”
— Dr. George Michael (via Herald Tribune)
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the best form of flattery

"The Tennessee Senate just days ago passed their alternative to the much lampooned 'Don’t Say Gay' bill that would classify holding hands as a 'gateway sexual activity' in their new 'family life education curriculum.' The bill also includes specific provisions that allow parents to sue teachers if they deviate from the specified curriculum.
     For the past few years Tennessee has been the subject of nationwide ire for its attempts to pass an infamous 'Don’t Say Gay' bill, that would have prohibited the mentioning of anything about homosexuality by teachers or students. In a new family life instructions bill, holding hands and kissing could be considered gateways to sex. [...]"
— David Badash, The New Civil Rights Movement
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"The rules, which apply to all public places, include a ban on all forms of nudity, playing music loudly and dancing, exchange of kisses between men and women -- and even on unmarried couples holding hands. Any breach of the guidelines, by nationals or expatriates, carries a possible prison penalty, the paper said."
— Topix
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"So not only is hand-holding a gateway to sexytimes, but the Tennessee State Senate, having exhausted all other possible things to give a damn about in their state, is making darn sure that your teacher can't demonstrate hand-holding in the classroom, while saying 'see? Don't do this.' Also out: winking, wearing short sleeves, any shoes not issued by the U.S. Army, and giving other children those horrible, chalky Valentine's Day candies with vapid little sayings on them. I don't know how many of our nation's children have gotten laid as a result of exchanging those wretched, inedible things, but that's not a risk good conservative Republicans can be taking anymore."
— Hunter, Daily Kos
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"[...] anything that propagates sex and is full of music, wine, lobster, nail polish, firecrackers, statues, sewing catalogs [...]"

"Obviously, Gotto and Johnson don't remember what it's like to be teenagers, because just about anything at that age feels like sexual contact. Hell, reading this legislation and remembering how fucking hot Tim Boblitt looked in his football uniform, I'm not sure it'd be legal for teachers to encourage young straight women to go to football games. The definition of gateway sexual activity is so vague it's hard to tell if we can even allow young people to sit together on school buses. What if their thighs touch? Their hands brush together? Their heads bonk into each other as they cross railroad tracks?"
— Betsy Phillips, Nashville Scene
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"In their ideal world, women are covered from head to toe, only learn how to cook and clean to take care of their husbands, and rarely venture outside the home. [...]
     'These people want to destroy society and the best way of doing that is by destroying education,' said Nur Waheed, holding the hand of his four-year-old granddaughter outside a butcher’s shop."
— Reuters (via The Express Tribune)
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"One Taliban list of prohibitions included: pork, pig, pig oil, anything made from human hair, satellite dishes, cinematography, and equipment that produces the joy of music, pool tables, chess, masks, alcohol, tapes, computers, VCRs, television, anything that propagates sex and is full of music, wine, lobster, nail polish, firecrackers, statues, sewing catalogs, pictures, Christmas cards. They also got rid of employment, education, and sports for all women, dancing, clapping during sports events, kite flying, and characterizations of living things, no matter if they were drawings, paintings, photographs, stuffed animals, or dolls. Men had to have a fist size beard at the bottom of their chin. Conversely, they had to wear their head hair short. Men had to wear a head covering."
— Wikipedia
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