Monthly Archives: June 2010

The Eye of the Beholder

Posted on June 24, 2010 | 31 Comments

Have you heard of the social network/dating web site known as BeautifulPeople?  They are the guys who don’t take just anyone.  When you apply for membership, you post your picture on the site and for 48 hours the existing members have a chance to look at it, exchange catty comments, and then either accept you or reject you.

It’s all about looks.

They made the news a while back when they whacked something like 5,000 members who were deemed to have put on too much weight.  That’s a big no no in the world of Beautiful People.  The founder famously said “Letting fatties roam the site is a direct threat to our business model.”

They’re back in the news again!

Apparently they’ve gotten tired of being branded as vapid, self-indulgent and smug and have decided to do something truly altruistic.

In order to help the rest of us achieve our dreams of populating the planet with beautiful people, they have started a sperm and egg bank!  At first it was for members only, but now anyone can access Beautiful Person DNA. The Vancouver Sun quoted BeautifulPeople’s founder as saying: “Initially, we hesitated to widen the offering to non-beautiful people.  But everyone — including ugly people — would like to bring good-looking children into the world, and we can’t be selfish with our attractive gene pool.”

Setting the tone at the top, the site’s managing director said, “If you had your choice between a genetic donation from Brad Pitt or Shrek, you’re going to roll with Brad Pitt.”

The way it will work is that the existing cadre of beautiful people who may be interested in making sperm or egg donations will be linked up with uglies who express an interest in procreating that way. 

I don’t know about you, but I see a lot of potential for buyer’s remorse with this whole thing.

I’m no scientist, but my understanding is that when you get an egg or sperm you get the whole package from a DNA perspective. That DNA might be making someone conventionally attractive in their twenties, but I’d want to know if there are any sour notes in the genetic symphony.

I guess you could get a clue from looking at the BeautifulPeople site .  As they explain, “Beauty is subjective and BeautifulPeople Network believes that beauty lies in the eye of the beholder.  The rating module was born from this very principle.  By giving the power back to the members to define their ideal of beauty in a democratic way.”

So the bottom line is that if you want to use the BeautifulPeople sperm/egg bank, you will produce an offspring 50% of whose DNA came from a person who joined a social networking site because they thought they were beautiful and had their assumption validated democratically.

Somehow I’m not getting a more comfortable feeling about the survival of the human race.

Before you think I’m overreacting, there was another interesting item in the news today as well.  Two guys in Australia are recovering in the hospital after undergoing surgery to remove air rifle pellets from their butts.  Apparently, they had been drinking and after having exhausted all of the other pertinent topics of the day, began to debate whether “it would hurt” to be shot in the butt with an air rifle. 

As you know, when the human mind comes up against impenetrable questions, the natural reaction is to experiment to find out the truth.  As a result of the experiment, according to the cops, “both men have been admitted to hospital and require surgery to remove slug pellets from their buttocks and legs.” 

Think about it.  Although we probably all have a mental picture of these two guys that says otherwise, it is not outside the realm of possibility that they may be members of BeautifulPeople. And they might have signed up for the sperm donor option.

Beautiful Donor Reunion Fun Run–2025

Not only that, I saw recently that more than half of all people in Russia don’t know who built the Berlin Wall (58% said they didn’t know and only 24% said the USSR).  Why is this possibly meaningful?  Because Russian woman are the third most beautiful in the world according to BeautifulPeople.  That is based on the percentage of Russian woman who apply to BeautifulPeople and are accepted.

And the phenomenon is global.  The New York Post reported that schools there are grading kids based on something called “Holistic Rubrics” which means that even if you get the wrong answer, you get credit for making a mark on the paper.  For example, one question was “How many inches long is a two foot skateboard?”  A kid got half credit for saying 48 inches.  The logic is that he added 24 + 24 rather than 12 + 12 so he had the concept right. 

Another question: “If you have 35 boxes with ten books each, how many books in total do you have?” An answer of 150 is good for half credit. 

My first hope is that none of these kids become airline pilots. 

And my second hope is that they don’t grow up to become BeautifulPeople members!

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Posted in The Eye of the Beholder--Jun 23

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Everything You Need To Know About Football/Soccer

Posted on June 22, 2010 | 17 Comments

I never thought I would ever do a sports-related post.  But here goes.

I called my parents in the US to wish my father a Happy Father’s Day.  In the course of the conversation the topic of the Football World Cup came up.  They had heard the news that 78th ranked New Zealand had managed a tie against the defending champion Italians after having tied against Slovakia earlier. 

I told them that, yes, the All Whites had managed two ties against impossible odds and that that everyone was going crazy down here.  But my father’s only question was something like, “Why do they call the team the All Whites?  Are they really all white?  Isn’t that a problem in South Africa of all places?”

You may have wondered the same thing.  I know I did when I first came down here.

Well, the answer is simple.  It all has to do with the way things get named in New Zealand.  Things are named very literally, which is not to say unimaginatively. 

In the US a lot of things are named after people.  Cleveland and Columbus, Ohio are named after people.  And there are lots of places named Washington and Lincoln.  Or things have historical or geographical names.  The river in Ohio is called the Ohio River and Niagara Falls is named after the Niagara River. 

It’s a lot more straightforward in New Zealand.   For example, the country basically consists of three islands.  The northernmost is called the North Island.  The one south of it is called the South Island.  The little one further south is called Stewart Island.  But in the old days, the three islands were called North Island, Middle Island and South Island.

There is a big mountain range in the South Island with some serious mountains.  Edmund Hillary trained there before he climbed Mt. Everest.  The mountain range is called the Southern Alps.

Like most big cities Auckland has a tower.  It’s the tallest tower in the Southern Hemisphere.  It’s called the Sky Tower.

A main road in Auckland is called Great North Road.  Yes there is a Great South Road.  When Great North Road got too busy they built a parallel road and called it New North Road.  There is also an Old North Road. 

You see the way it works?  They keep it simple down here.

Which brings us back to the All Whites.

The biggest, most popular and successful team down here is the rugby team.  They are named the All Blacks.  That’s because their uniforms are all black.  Really.  It’s sort of like a holistic version of the Boston Red Sox.

So most other teams, out of respect or lack of imagination, are a variation on that theme.

You’ve already heard of the All Whites. 

The cricket team is called the Black Caps.  Guess what color hat they wear?

The ice hockey team is called the Ice Blacks and the field hockey team is known as the Black Sticks.  Kids playing junior rugby are on the Small Blacks.  Anyone want to take a guess what the basketball team goes by?  Yes, the Tall Blacks!  And the softball team is the Black Sox (they don’t know what happened in Chicago in 1919).  The team that New Zealand sends to the World Cyber Games is called the e Blacks.  

And that’s the way it works.

There is a minor exception, but it sort of proves the rule.  A well known symbol of New Zealand is the Silver Fern (cyathea dealbata in case you are into botany).  Virtually all of the teams use the silver fern frond as a symbol on their uniforms and several of the women’s teams have incorporated the fern idea into their name.  For example, the women’s netball team is the Silver Ferns.  The women’s rugby team is known as the Black Ferns and the women of cricket go by the White Ferns.   

Consistent aren’t they?

One last thing.  There was a bit of controversy a few years ago over the NZ badminton team.  They actually called themselves the Black Cocks for a while.  I know you don’t believe me but it’s true.

I hope this information is helpful to you—at least when the All Whites become a household term in the next couple of weeks you will know how they got their name.

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Posted in Everything You Need To Know About Football/Soccer--Jun22

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