Page Three Comes to Page One

Generally speaking--or, heck, specifically speaking--I have no objection to female nudity.  A day that includes unexpected glimpses of naked women can never be considered an entirely wasted day.  Nevertheless, I was shocked--shocked!--today when I surfed over to The New York Times website and found--on the front page--a breast!  A breast adorned with the Star of David, no less!  Had the Times decided to amp up circulation by, ahem, amping up its readers' circulation?

Well, no.  Or probably not.  The story behind the breast reported on Israeli efforts to encourage more women to undergo screening for a gene that greatly increases the risk of contracting breast cancer.  One could argue, therefore, that the picture was meant simply to illustrate and not to titillate.  But is that the case?  Here's the picture:

 

On the one hand, it's an arresting image, what with the Mogen David and the surgical scar; indeed, I assume the scar is what captured the photographer's fancy.  On the other hand, the picture also features prominently--provocatively--a nipple.  A nipple!  And thus crosses one of the red lines of "indecency" with which we're all familiar (just ask Janet Jackson).  It was clearly intentional, too; otherwise, the photographer could simply have asked the model to pull her shirt up another half inch, right?

Why female nipples are considered such hot buttons (ahem) remains a mystery to me, but there it is.  And so when the editors chose this image for the front page, they obviously knew they were choosing a picture that some people would consider--on some level--"indecent."  Maybe not Page Three of the Daily Sun "indecent," but "indecent" nonetheless.

Does this image herald a new, bustier age in mainstream journalism?  One can only hope.

Picture Perfect

I came across an ad for app called Phototune the other day.  As far as I can tell, it's a sort of PhotoShop rival that allows you to tweak your pictures and make yourself and others all kinds of gorgeous--or at least sharpen contrasts and eliminate unwanted shadows.  In theory, I guess PhotoTune does for pictures what AutoTune does for singers (hopefully without quite so much of a Bieber effect):

I
Anyway, while I was skeptical at first, I have to say that the software seems to work better than expected, as can be seen from these before and after pictures of Yours Truly.  First, the original:

 

 

And now, the PhotoTuned:

 

 

Not bad, I guess.



 

 

Monday Miscellany

Warning: This Commercial Contains Explicit Hypocrisy

In commercials for its "Black Friday" deals, Wal-Mart ("the happiest place on earth") used AC/DC's "Back in Black" as background music.  Does anyone else find it interesting that the store uses music in its commercials from a band whose albums it probably refuses to stock?

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At the Baseball Talks, They Did "Nude Descending a Staircase"

At a press conference announcing a tentative deal to end the lockout, representatives of the NBA, the team owners' group, and the players' union took a moment to recreate Leonardo Da Vinci's "Last Supper":

In an unrelated story, Miami Heat forward Lebron James (not pictured) announced that he was "taking his talents to Gethsemane."

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And, for a Great Dane, Scooby-Doo Is Really Cowardly!

I just noticed: On "The Flintstones," Fred powers his car with his feet!  That means that, when he's driving, he's actually just walking--and carrying his car at the same time!!!  What an idiot!

The Solipsist's New Groove

A fun time-waster 'cause we're too tired to come up with anything original right now. A Facebook friend posted the following activity:

Go to Wikipedia.org and click on "Random article." Whatever comes up will be the name of your rock band.


Next, go to Quotationspage.com, and, again, click on "Random quotes." Take the last few words on the last quote on the page. This will be the name of your album.


Finally, go to Flickr.com, and "Explore." The third picture that comes up will be your album cover.


So, our new band is Coconut Jam. Our new album will be called "Plow into a Parked Car." And here's our album cover:



It's gonna rock!

More Damn Lies

Just sayin'.

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Quite a bit about statistics in the news today. First, the New York Police Department has commissioned a panel to determine whether commanders are cooking the books. Specifically, they worry that precinct commanders may downgrade felonies into misdemeanors or fail to submit reports in order to make it seem as if the rate of serious crime is going down. Disturbing if true, but an understandable response to the reliance on statistical performance measures.

The NYPD depends on a program called CompStat, which looks at rates of different crimes in different areas and then places the onus on precinct commanders to reduce those rates. If sufficient progress is not achieved, these commanders' careers may suffer. So commanders have a clear incentive to minimize felony rates.

On the other hand, programs like CompStat guarantee their own ultimate failure. Initial progress may be relatively easy--reducing the number of armed robberies from 100 to, say, 75 in a given area: a nice 25% drop. But as numbers decrease, it becomes ever harder to achieve further reductions. And in a city like New York, where the crime rate is unlikely ever to hit zero, the incentive to fudge one's numbers to achieve continued "success" may become overwhelming.

This is not to excuse precinct commanders who deliberately brush serious crimes under the rug. But those who live by statistics must adapt those statistics to measure results once "success" has been achieved.

Or one could just make up numbers, as it appears "Doctor" Andrew Wakefield did several years ago when he trumpeted results of a study that linked vaccines to autism. His report has finally been revealed to be a hoax, which may or may not convince vaccine-averse parents to protect their kids against nasty diseases. Numerous studies undertaken in the years since Wakefield's hoax that showed no link between vaccines and autism didn't convince these folks, so we are less than optimistic.

On the bright side, trillions of measles viruses that would have died needless deaths due to vaccinations did get to live out their lives happily in children's bloodstreams since 1998, when the original study came out.

Finally, a prominent psychology journal will publish an article offering compelling proof of the existence of ESP. Professor Daryl J. Bem of Cornell University bases his conclusions upon (among other things) an experiment wherein volunteers were asked to predict which side of a covered computer monitor contained an image. When the image was erotic in nature, participants were correctly able to guess--sorry, "predict"--which side contained the image 53% of the time (as opposed to 50%, which would be attributable to "chance"). Interestingly, the participants did not do better than chance for non-erotic pictures.

In other words, smut increases one's psychic ability by approximately 3%. So, before you make any major investments in the stock market, you might do well to flip through some back issues of Hustler.

Solipsistography:
"Taking Control, G.O.P. Overhauls Rules in House"
"New York City to Examine Reliability of Its Crime Reports"
"Study Linking Vaccine to Autism Was Fraud, Journal Reports"
"Journal's Paper on ESP Expected to Prompt Outrage"
Image of Dr. Evil from Moviefone.co.uk.

Conspiracy Theory

This is Bernard Madoff, the man behind one of the biggest financial frauds in history:



This is "Sonja Kohn," an Austrian banker who originally portrayed herself as one of Madoff's victims, but who is now being sued as one of his biggest accomplices:


Again, Bernard Madoff:

"Sonja Kohn," a "self-made woman," according to The New York Times:


I'm sorry, are we the only one who sees this?

(Image of Madoff from wikipedia.org; image of "Sonja Kohn" from The New York Times)

Picture This

Remember the school photograph? That invariably embarrassing remnant of your awkward years, always within easy reach of your mother, so she could whip it out for your girlfriend whom you've brought over for dinner despite your overwhelming dread that your mother would do just this very thing and show this woman, this goddess, this girl of your dreams that horrible picture of you in that mysteriously stained Snoopy sweatshirt with the braces and the bowl haircut and the. . . .

Sorry. Painful memories. Where were we? Oh, yeah. The school photograph.

So, anyway, the horribly awkward school photograph may soon become just another quaint relic of 20th-century life like rotary phones and America's high standing in the world. Now even this most hallowed symbol of childhood innocence has become the preserve of the retouchers. Photographers shamelessly offer parents the chance to alter their children's class photos, eliminating unsightly cowlicks, scabs, and signs of parental abuse.

Sure, when Stalin did it, he was "horrible"; when parents do it. . . .

Honestly, though, we say it's about time! Consider the possibilities! Let's say little Gertrude forgets to smile in her school picture. And maybe she had a bad hair day. And her new glasses broke, so she had to wear her horrible old Coke-bottle lenses. Well, just slip the photographer a few bucks, let him do his digital magic, and, Voila!, Little Gertrude becomes the belle of Mrs. Rosenberg's first-grade class:

Actually, the Solipsist has been meaning to post a picture of himself. Hold on. . . .We're just going to snap a picture of ourselves. . . .There! Now, let's lose the glasses. . . . Hmmm. . . . Maybe we should make the eyebrows a bit darker. . . . The salt-and-pepper hair is fine, but let's thicken it a bit. . . .Oh, and let's fill in the five-o'clock shadow, too. The chin could be a little "squarer.". . .Oh, what the hell, let's make the whole jawline a bit more angular. There! Perfect:

(WOS: Seriously, you need to do something about this Clooney fixation.)

(Image of dorky kid from the New York Times; image of "Little Gertrude" from Askmen.com; new picture of Solipsist from The Telegraph.)

Four

Let's see how many random bits of silliness the Solipsist can dash off before he's interrupted by a student or bear attack!

1) The rumors are true! Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton confirmed today that they will be co-starring in a Broadway revival of "Fiddler on the Roof." At their press conference, the political powerhouses wowed the assembled journalists with an impromptu performance of "Do You Love Me?":

2) If someone has a "mild" case of Tourette's Syndrome, does that mean their scatological outbursts are confined to "Shucks!," "Golly!," and "Fiddlesticks!"?

3) Dig the punctuation in that last section!

4) It's a guy thing:

Generally, complaints about public restrooms are the province of the fairer sex, but we men have to deal with something, too: Insufficient Urinal Spacing (IUS). You guys know what I'm talking about: IUS occurs when the facilities are placed so close together that you really can't avoid touching the fellow next to you. Generally, such touching can be confined to elbows, but who wants to (literally) rub elbows with a micturating male? It drifts dangerously close to Sen. Larry Craig (R-Gomorrah) territory. We say, if you're not going to provide actual physical dividers, keep urinals at least one foot apart!

Uh-oh, here comes a student!

Note: An earlier edition of today's post incorrectly identified former Senator Larry Craig as "R-Sodom." We regret the error.

Sunday Paper Recap

Check out the picture on the front page of the New York Times, from an article about the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston:

Looks like cancer is the new Beatles.

Also, we want to provide a heads up to Sloppist Nation about another front-page article: "H1N1 Widespread in 46 States as Vaccines Lag." The headline in the print edition is more alarming, "Obama Declares Swine Flu Outbreak a National Emergency."

Scary, right? Don't panic. The presidential declaration of an "emergency" is more of a technical, legal measure than a statement of objective fact. By declaring an "emergency," the President has empowered hospitals and local governments to take certain measures--like setting up alternate treatment sites and triage centers--if they become overwhelmed with swine flu patients. Note the "if"; this hasn't happened yet. In other words, this is what is known to rational people as a precautionary measure.

We point this out (a) to reassure Sloppists that they are in no more danger of contracting swine flu today than they were yesterday and (b) to gird Sloppists for the inevitable:

Dick Cheney: This is just further evidence of President Obama's limp-wristed, liberal attitude toward public health. His willingness to surrender to H1N1 emblematizes his approach to national security. No doubt if the President has his way, Al Qaeda will be put in charge of the immunization efforts!

Rush Limbaugh: Comrade Obama yesterday declared a "Swine Flu Emergency." Folks, this is just one more example of the lengths the White House, along with Nancy Pelosiskaya and Harry Reidovich's politburo, will go to slip us a dose of socialized medicine.

Glenn Beck: (Weeping) America, we must defend ourselves against Obama's swine flu epidemic the way the Founding Fathers intended! With guns!

Sarah Palin: Gee willikers! We never had a swine flu emergency when Republicans were in charge! Where did this come from, anyway? China? I can see China from my bathroom window! I could have told Barack and Joe that this was coming.

Be prepared.

Snuff

How does a photograph become iconic?  One word: Death.

Neda Agha-Soltan was a philosophy student in Tehran.  Clandestinely, because it is against the law for Iranian women to do so, she studied singing.  In what would be considered too-obvious symbolism were it to appear in a novel, her first name is Persian for "voice."  Like most of us--and we mean no disrespect when we say this--she was a nobody.   And then her life bled away on a Tehran street and on televisions and on computer screens and newspaper front pages around the world.  Now she is "the voice of Iran."

The video brings to mind other iconic photographs.  In its immediacy, it is evocative of perhaps the most famous war photograph of all time, Robert Capa's 1936 shot of a Republican militiaman apparently being shot in the head during the Spanish Civil War:

One cannot help but imagine what Capa thought.  Right place, right time?  When he set out for the front that day, he could not have expected to get that shot.  Given the angle, Robert Capa himself must have been virtually in the line of fire.  Did he know that he had captured history? Created history?  Did he know his photograph would generate massive support for the Republican cause?  How many men were inspired by this photograph to enlist?  How many met a similar fate?

Consider another iconic moment of death, the shooting of a handcuffed Viet Cong prisoner in Saigon by General Nguyen Ngoc Loan in 1968 (photograph by Eddie Adams):

Does it matter that the prisoner himself was apparently a war criminal?  No.  This picture arguably marked the beginning of the American public's decisive turn away from the Vietnam War--a turn that perhaps became irreversible after the publication of another photograph, a modern Pieta:

Here, we know the victim's name.  Like Neda Agha-Soltan, Jeffrey Miller was a student.  He was one of four Kent State University students shot by National Guardsmen on May 4, 1970.  We even know the name of the anguished young woman--girl, really--kneeling above Miller: Mary Ann Vecchio.  

In confrontations with authority, students disproportionately bear the brunt:

Is this, too, an image of imminent death?  We don't really know.  There is speculation about what happened to "Tank Man"--the only name we have for him--after the protests in Tienanmen Square.  Some say he still lives, very quietly, in China.  Others believe he died during the protests or shortly thereafter.  Somehow, this seems more likely.

At least Tank Man, unlike our other subjects, appears to be an agent of his own destiny.  He clearly made a choice to confront authority; we like to think he was willing to martyr himself for his cause.

Was Jeffrey Miller willing to die for his cause?  Maybe, but we can assume he didn't expect to.  Neda Agha-Soltan wasn't even protesting when she was shot.  She had gotten out of her car for a breath of fresh air when a bullet struck her.  Maybe she and Miller will meet somewhere and compare notes.

One other thing that we can't help noticing: In this newest exhibit in the Gallery of Death, we literally watch Neda die.  This is different.  With those other icons, we saw a moment of death; with Neda, we get a narrative.  We cannot help but wonder if she realized what was happening--not just that she was dying, but that her death was unimaginably public?  Did she notice the videographer?  As an apparently apolitical woman, would she find comfort in the fact that her death is inflicting massive, possibly irreparable damage on the Iranian clerical regime? 

For her sake--and for ours--we hope so.  Otherwise, this isn't history.  It's a snuff film.

(Neda Agha-Soltan image from NYTimes.com; Robert Capa--Falling Soldier image from photo.net; Kent State shooting image from Forgotten Ohio: Kent State University; Vietcong prisoner image from Arkitektrue.com; Tienanmen Square image from Wikipedia)