A group of psychologists believe that emotional insecurity may actually be a survival advantage. So now you can blame evolution for the fact that you've never had a relationship last longer than six months. Thanks, Charles Darwin!
Evolution isn't just something that took place a million years ago. Human beings continue to evolve, although that seems to be both good and bad news based on new research by Dr. Stephen Stearns, an evolutionary biologist at Yale. On the plus side, women in the future will have healthier hearts, lower cholesterol levels, and an easier time reproducing. The not-so-good news: According to Stearns, your great-great-great granddaughter will probably be shorter and chubbier, too, although if it's any consolation, your great-great-great grandson will be a lot wimpier, since men seem to be growing progressively weaker over time. As one expert puts it, "An average Neanderthal woman could have whupped Arnold Schwarzenegger at his muscular peak in an arm-wrestling match." [Daily Mail, Time]
At least America's last remaining actually influential film critic is Roger Ebert, and not, like, David Denby. Because Ebert, who can no longer speak due to removal of his cancerous jaw, now just writes crazy mean blogs and reviews and columns, calling out everyone who bugs him. Like Ben Stein, and his stupid anti-evolution movie.
Now that I've started getting Mad Men on Netflix, I plan to catch up with every other ad critic in the past year by cleverly inserting a reference to the show into each advertising-related item that I write. In this way we seduce you with a connection to a piece of pop culture detritus you enjoy, then use that as a catapult into our sales pitch, represented in this case by a plea for you to read the rest of this post, with the implied promise that it will be worth your while. So, remember that Mad Men episode where they're all marveling at the Volkswagen "Lemon" ad? That particular ad was a breakthrough just because of its honest, direct style. It was the opposite of Lucky Strikes' "It's Toasted" campaign—an equivalent would have been something like "Lucky Strikes—you'll die but you like them anyways." VW continued on a streak of spot-on advertising that spanned at least the next two decades. Look at this classic VW TV spot and ask yourself, has advertising advanced past this yet, idea-wise?
The revolutionary information age is great and everything, but it makes crime a really big hassle. In the McCarthy era, they ran down the Reds by tracing their anti-American magazine subscriptions. Dragnet cops could storm into the library to demand a suspect's list of books borrowed. But now criminals use the internet, and its treasure trove of crime information is an equally rich source of evidence against those who access it. We've already seen a Facebook update lead to a murder-suicide. And now, the latest entrant in the annals of "Bad Things To Do Online": Google "How to kill with a knife," and then murder your wife and child:
All those crazy-ass H.P. Lovecraft stories are true. We are fracking aliens! "Scientists from the Imperial College of London claim to have found evidence that life on our planet did not originate from Earth itself. For the first time, the scientists say, it is confirmed that an important component of early genetic material found in meteorite fragments is of extraterrestrial origin."
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Newsweek is considering a move from Midtown to SoHo. It would join media outlets already in place that range from high-end names like New York Magazine to many of the country's most popular blogs and other online operations. Is the SoHo area NYC's new media district? Rents are cheaper than Midtown, and it's an easier commute for the critical mass of Brooklyn-based writers. Plus, it's just cooler. Take a look for yourself: more than a dozen of the eclectic downtown media neighbors, mapped above.
These new jeans may be a turning point in the evolution of pants. It goes like this: first, baggy jeans came into style. People bought big pants and let them sag. Then, baggy pants slowly went out of style, and tight pants came into fashion. But still—people missed their baggy pants. Fast forward to this moment in time: a company called Soulful Commandoe has introduced jeans that are both tight and baggy at once. This breakthrough was apparently achieved through the addition of several vertical inches of fabric in the waist area, as well as the inclusion of some gratuitous suspenders. Truly a development that will go down in fashion history. Click through for some larger pictures [The Gluttony via Satchel of Gravel] of this Pants Pants Revolution:
Ben Stein's big movie about how evolution haters are ruthlessly marginalized is working its way toward release, and in the meantime the loopy New York Times columnist is having fun marginalizing real scientists who want to see the film, including two who appeared in the movie and were thanked in the credits. One evolutionary biologist, PZ Myers of the University of Minnesota, signed up on the Web for a free screening of Stein's film, Expelled, then got tossed out of line because he wasn't sympathetic to the cause. But his buddy, Darwinist Richard Dawkins of Oxford, got in - this is what happens when you try and hold a creationist pep rally while an atheism conference is in town - and filed a review of the film (shocker: thought it sucked), including this summary of how Stein twisted his words:
A while back, we learned of popular right wing hack and '80s relic Ben Stein's upcoming documentary, Expelled. It's about how all the secular Darwinist scientists persecute those people brave enough to speak made-up truths to power. Stein, whose training and expertise in the sciences is limited to a career of unrepentant bullshitting, wishes to give creationists, intelligent design advocates, and other various nutjobs their rightful place in the sun of academia. If you see his movie, though, don't review it.
