Thank You, Dr. Cohen-Or

“Beauty, contrary to what most people think, is not simply in the eye of the beholder,” said lead researcher Daniel Cohen-Or of the Blavatnik School of Computer Sciences at Tel Aviv University.
Attractiveness – for men or women – can be objectified by a computer and boiled down to a function of mathematical distances or ratios, Cohen-Or said, admitting that the work is likely to be controversial.

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Father of the Year

I hope that Steve Crisp, father of Brandon Crisp, the Canadian boy who died of injuries after running away from home, is proud of himself.
Worried about his son’s “obsession” with his XBox, Crisp took the gaming console away. So far, so good.
When Brandon threatened to run away, though, Crisp crossed the line from responsible parent to irrational control freak: he helped the kid pack. As he put it, “I really thought he would be home later that day with his tail between his legs.”
Tough. Macho. Good job, Steve-o. I hope you rot in hell.

The Solace of Rain

It’s been gray and rainy today and there were serious downpours at times.
As a result, there are no barking dogs or loud kids.
One could be content if there weren’t economic chaos afoot: more layoffs in the news and the stock market is way, way off again today, post-election.
So much for the assumption that prices took account of Obama. I wonder what the market would have done if McCain had been elected.

The Next President

John McCain’s concession on Tuesday night was one of the best speeches I’ve heard him deliver, and it got me to thinking that my earlier inclination, to wish the Obama administration ill, was perhaps misguided.
For all his foibles, McCain is at heart a warrior, loyal to his chief, and that’s perhaps the way the rest of us should think about it as well, nonetheless keeping an eye on the stewpot.

Continue reading The Next President

Matter Over Mind

It’s 9:19 PM, and I just drove 60.1 miles in the dark, in the rain, on seven different highways. I am thrilled beyond belief to have made it, having mentally prepared myself to do otherwise if need be.

One Can Only Hope

It looks like a done deal, Obama is so far ahead in the polls that a landslide victory is almost a certainty.
Given the complexity of the times we live in, one can hope that the next Presidency, built on salesmanship and hype more than substance, will teach the public a lesson.
A failure to achieve could possibly set up a resurgence in 2012 of real conservative values, defined one hopes by people who are not tied emotionally to Reaganism but rather, espouse a Libertarian point of view.
It’s discouraging that the voters make the same mistake over and over again, three times in a row, casting ballots with the gut instead of the brain. Insanity.

Silver Lining

If Hillary Clinton had been elected, I would have been persuaded that sexism was for all practical purposes dead in the United States.
Of course, the fact that she was not, and that Sarah Palin also has been brutalized in the popular media, tells us otherwise.
Conversely, someone observed yesterday that if Obama wins the Presidency, there would be no validity for future equal opportunity complaints from the Black community.
Certainly, this is a pretty persuasive argument: if a Black man, or at least a half-Black man, can raise over $600 million and win a Presidential election, doesn’t that mean that all the billions invested in affirmative action really have worked?
In that case, will progressives have the guts to tell Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson to kindly sit down and SHUT UP?