Quick, who are these six people?
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Apparently, it’s all in the eyebrows. In an MIT study subjects were asked to identify celebrities by altered photos: without eyebrows, and without eyes. With eyebrows, but sans eyes, celebrities were recognised 60% of the time. With eyes but sans eyebrows, only 46% of the time. So, stop plucking them or we’ll not be recall … who are you again?
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And again:
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Not so hard, then. Duh, but anyway, answers –
l-r; top first: R Nixon, W Ryder, T Rein, M Turnbull, Rusty, Delta.
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An online interactive chicklit novel by instalments
Great fun: Saving Face by Dahlia Lithwick, at Slate. Lithwick is otherwise a senior editor at Slate and their extraordinarily erudite legal correspondent. The interactive bit is that readers write in with suggestions, or answer the author’s calls for ideas and assistance.
It’s up to Chapter 7. Here is the first bit of Chapter 1:
You know that small secret shiver of delight you get whenever you hear about somebody you know splitting up?
I’m not getting it.
“But why?” I ask Marina, again, juggling phone, water bottle, and steering wheel. “Is he cheating?”
“No,” she says.
“Are you cheating?” Like I wouldn’t know. Marina hasn’t participated in an unreported sexual act since 1989.
“No!”
“Is he stealing office supplies? Seducing his students? Plagiarizing arcane law review articles?” I strain to imagine poor Bob committing these or any other such wrongs. Aside from his invisible floor-length cape of boringness and a tendency to begin every sentence with the law professor’s “So,” Marina’s husband is pedestrian in every way. He was, as far as I can tell, born 43 years old and has spent the rest of his life making middle age his primary place of residence. He’s 36.
“He hasn’t done anything,” sighs Marina. “I haven’t done anything. We just aren’t happy. We haven’t been happy in years. There he was, walking out the door just now, and I couldn’t think of even a single reason he shouldn’t.”
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Recent posts: Barack the barbarian … Friday Mulch: Tarantino defended; and a 40-yr-old drumbeat … Gloriana: the fever of human voices … Nick Cave, censored … Julia Gillard: the fish rots from the head
7 Comments
Where are you W H Chong? I’m hooked on your blog and missing you.
Dear Smithy,
Kind of you to say so, and appreciated.
Last week I was away for an all-day for 6 days drawing workshop. Like a bootcamp.
The last three of which I was on Codral. After we finished up on Saturday I collapsed and spent Sunday in bed.
And during which I had no time to make any posts even though I feinted with some nonsense about eyebrows.
The truth is that it does take a goodly amount of time to blog up to a respectable standard, to keep it going, esp. daily.
And I s’pose I am assessing whether that commitment is time well spent … all that opportunity cost.
Goodness knows what my webmistress (Ms Jane) will think of this online confession.
So, dear Smithy, I not know where to from here.
Carpe diem quam minimum credula postero – the old Horace.
There is a whole wonderful wide weird world to survey, but ever the old watch ticks on, the digits flip over, the LED of the oven clock blinks into that curious interregnum of night between sleep and wakefulness … blogger space, blogger time.
Right now I dunno, if I ever did. I’m thinking about it.
Regards.
But you wouldn’t want to just leave all these wonderful observations in your clever head would you? Or just deal them out to the lucky people who are your friends? The clocks blink for all of us. And, Horace or not, the future will come and your writing will still be there. Heartfelt plea.
OMG, actual fan mail.
Dear Smithy, lovely!
I’m thinking about it. My webmistress is going to talk to me…
Oh W H Chong, you must not leave the blogosphere. Among the dross, your blog is golden. It sends me on fascinating tangents and is witty, erudite and perceptive. So I second Smithy: heartfelt plea.
I thought it was an piece on Bilateral Anophthalmia – my mistake
Erudrollition.