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This is why I married them.
Reblogged because it made me smile for having married well.
Amen.
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Men, Women, and Parking Spaces
Subtitle: Wherein I take my personal observations and consider them normative…
Yesterday, I wrote:
I just realized that the difference between the way men & women choose a parking place for a car has everything to do with public bathrooms.
I have long noticed a difference between myself and my wife when choosing a parking spot in a not-crowded parking lot.
I will leave at least one vacant spot between myself and the next car.
She will park right next to another car even if she doesn’t have to.
Yesterday I realized that our friend (also female) had done the same thing.
Maybe it was because the parking lot just had the lines re-painted, but suddenly I saw it just like each spot was a urinal.
Every man over the age of reason understands that when choosing a urinal, you choose the one as far away from any other guy as possible. There was even an email which circulated a few years ago which had ASCII drawings showing how to decide.
But the rules boil down to this:
Unless you are at a sporting event, concert, or other extremely-high bathroom-volume experience, you do not choose to stand next to another guy at the urinal. Ever.
I mentioned this to The Wife and at first she laughed—but then she added: “Well, see, we always choose a bathroom stall next to someone in case there isn’t any toilet paper.”
I rest my case.
Really, what more evidence do you need?
Coda: when not using the urinal, men might choose a bathroom stall next to another guy. Most guys will try to get some distance between them and the next guy, but really, our highest priorities for the sit-down are a) clean seat and b) no previous unflushed content. Also, if we look down and there is no toilet paper, there is exactly a 0.000000% chance that we would ask the guy in the next stall for toilet paper. Seriously, I would sooner use my underwear as toilet paper than stick my hand under another guy’s stall asking for toilet paper, because these are your options for what happens next:
1) He pees on your hand
2) He poops on your hand
3) He ignores you
4) He’s an elected Republican official and puts his dick in your hand because he thinks you gave “the signal”
5) He comes out of his stall, kicks in the door to your stall, and beats the crap out of you.
6) He actually gives you toilet paper.
Now I know that seems like a one-in-six chance, but really, that last option is like 2% because “getting your hand peed on” has about a 75% probability.
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YouTube - The Wire Season 1 Opening & Intro
“Got to. This America, man.”
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In retrospect, all revolutions seem inevitable. Beforehand, all revolutions seem impossible.
– Michael McFaul, National Security Council by way of Signal vs Noise -
Pssst, wanna buy a Prada bag for $20?
A Movado watch for $25, a Gucci handbag for $20.
…
Federal officials, working with the Derry police, spent two years investigating the sale of counterfeit products at a local flea market.
…
Buying a product that looks like the real thing but isn’t may seem like a victimless crime, but it isn’t. Among the victims are the people who lost a job or didn’t get one because of the counterfeit trade
…
Wow. Unbelievably flawed logic. No one who pays $20 for a Gucci bag would pay $700 for it if the fake weren’t around. Yeah, I get that they shouldn’t be allowed to put fake labels on shit, but a two year investigation to raid a flea market? Please.
Haha… that logic is pretty self-serving. To their point though (but certainly not in agreement), those that are willing to drop $700 on a handbag are going to be less likely if the $20 version is being flaunted by the “undesirables”.
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As I mourn the loss of someone I didn’t know, hadn’t heard of and could have conceivably never have learned of, I am amazed at the unexpected consequence of the digital-social lives we now lead. I remember talking with an alumnus of my grad school after a number of attempts to link up. We laughed about how much I “knew” about him and his family just as a result of having met him once and following his flickr stream. I congratulated him on his latest child and wished his wife (also an alumnus) and family the best. It felt just a little creepy to have that intimate knowledge of someone I didn’t “know”.
Today I learned of the death of @jamield. After seeing it mentioned for the 3rd or 4th time on twitter, I did a little research. After reading a poem dedicated to her and a couple of other thoughts, I began to get some notion of who she was. It turns out that @jamield was just another person. I mean, she wasn’t “famous” as we might consider a celebrity. She had micro-celebrity of a sort. Internet-famous, even. Based upon the response to her passing away, I can only say that she touched a lot of people’s lives. She was apparently warm, friendly and quick with a joke. A good person.
I read her last twitter updates. Checked out her tumblelog. I am struck by how innocuous her last messages were. It drives home the sudden and unexpected nature of her death. The sudden nature of death in general. I guess I’m struck by the outpouring of sympathy and feelings of loss from others who had never met or heard of @jamield either.
I didn’t know Jamie Leigh Dyer Dordek, but if she was anything close to the things that have been said of her, I too am sad for the loss.
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![lindstifa:
I am in lurv.
sniffyjenkins:
Why did I not know about this blog before, people?
Tiny Art Director. She’s four years old. He’s Dad (Bill Zelman). She tells him what to draw. He draws it. She critiques it & then shit happens. It’s utterly charming & very funny. Example:
“The Brief: I’m going to tell you what to draw. Draw a dragon sneaking up on a girl. She’s picking flowers.The Critique: Daddy it’s not supposed to be like that! He has dog legs! I’m so mad at you! I’m going to erase those legs! Daddy why did you do those legs??? [collapses in tears]Job Status: Rejected”
Tiny Art Director
This is utterly adorable.](http://30.media.tumblr.com/B2w8yBalbkesnq9gPIiIcGCGo1_400.jpg)
I am in lurv.
Why did I not know about this blog before, people?
Tiny Art Director. She’s four years old. He’s Dad (Bill Zelman). She tells him what to draw. He draws it. She critiques it & then shit happens. It’s utterly charming & very funny. Example:
“The Brief: I’m going to tell you what to draw. Draw a dragon sneaking up on a girl. She’s picking flowers.
The Critique: Daddy it’s not supposed to be like that! He has dog legs! I’m so mad at you! I’m going to erase those legs! Daddy why did you do those legs??? [collapses in tears]
Job Status: Rejected”This is utterly adorable.
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vctips: When you email me a slide deck that ends in “version12.ppt”, somehow I don’t think I’m the first person you’re pitching… (@joshk)
–Is being the first person I’ve pitched important to you? Are you looking to plant a flag or do a deal? If you want me to lie to you and tell you that you’re my first, I can do that, I just didn’t realize that would sweeten the pot, so to speak.
Incidentally, if you get “version1.ppt”, I’d think it’s a safe bet that little time or thought has been put into it. I don’t think I’ve ever sent anything to anyone important that didn’t get to v5 at least.
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A friend had work commissioned by the MoMA. I missed it but here’s a video on the installation.
Titled, “I Want You To Want Me,” it’s a data visualization made up of data from dating profiles.
Hot. Ness.
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For most of its history basketball has measured not so much what is important as what is easy to measure — points, rebounds, assists, steals, blocked shots — and these measurements have warped perceptions of the game.
–I read the excellent article about Shane Battier titled The No-Stats All-Star and I couldn’t help but consider how the same misguided obsession with easy-to-measure statistics has influenced the design of social networking applications and rendered many of them ineffective.
Is Facebook or Tumblr really more useful when you have more friends?
(via muchonieve via zachklein)
This is the standard incentive system issue. The behavior you want to motivate is rarely easily measured. In team sports they focus on all of these individual stats even though what really matters is how the team performs. The problem is it’s very difficult to quantify the benefit a player provides to a team.
For example, in business, sales would seem to be about as close to an easily quantifiable activity. However, if all of your incentives only focus on the quantifiable ($), then you can motivate other dysfunctional behaviors in the margins. That’s why my understanding is that you need to push other more subtle levers focused on team dynamics to motivate the appropriate behavior.
