Cougars

The attention is flattering, but it’s not the most comfortable experience. I wonder if it’s anything like when a super old guy touches a young girl on the shoulder and attempts to strike up a conversation with her, with some random pick up lines. I sort of wish there was a guy equivalent of a giggle, a pointed finger, and then running away with the girlfriends, hand covering mouth from full on laughter.

# # #

Someone was searching on WordPress with these terms: “Should Cougars shave?”

Millennials, damn them and their TV shows to hell

There was a kind of informative piece about the group previously known as Generation Y on 60 minutes. They’re the boomers kids. I would actually put GenX, my generation, a little at odds with GenY. Millennials are the coddled children of the boomers who actually value family (yeah right) and are sickeningly friendly with their parents. GenXers are known as the drugged out disaffected, cynical, atheistic results of broken and divorced homes who are lacking in identity because of their small numbers and small visibility. If I go to TV show stereotypes, are Friends, Seinfeld, Simpsons, Will & Grace GenX representations? If so, is GenY represented by reality shows or complex serials: 24, Survivor, American Idol?

I’m not sure why I don’t like the new TV, is it a culture conflict? Perhaps it’s just too inefficient. I mean what crazy person makes watching TV into work? TV addicts, that’s who. I like to be able to understand a story without investing too much. I can’t commit myself to watching something unless I really like it, and I can’t really like something without understanding it. So, basically the new television doesn’t work for me. I guess since my demographic is small, no one will go back to the old simple, mindless, but entertaining TV.

Gays, Evolution: Anti-machismo

Psychology Today magazine has an interesting piece in their May/June 2008 issue. Here’s the story: Link.  A brief summary below.

Women might prefer less male like behaviors in selecting a mate. Since the gene pool is largely shared between males and females (except for the Y-chromosome), it may be that some less fratboy-like straight guys are better parents or are easier to get to do work around the house, or whatever. Perhaps selecting for this increases the possibility of gay offspring.

Another possibility highlighted is that a ‘male-love’ gene makes a woman really like men and like having children besides. This means more offspring. It might be that such a gene influences the male offspring to also sometimes really like men also. But since the percentage is low, this is not sufficient to counteract the evolutionarily beneficial effect of having more offspring.

Some of my previous posts on this topic:

Gays, Evolution: Teamwork, Sacrifice, and
Gays, Evolution: Hemispheric Brain Dominance

Questions: CA Supreme Court ruling on Same-sex Marriage

It’s all over the news and I’m very happy, but I wonder about a few things:

• Would same-sex marriages from San Francisco in 2004, be reinstated?
  From a NYTimes article: Looks like the answer is no.
• Is it then possible for same-sex couples to get married today? (not that I’m planning anything)
  From a NYTimes article: Takes into effect in 30 days.
• Is it likely this would be appealed to a US Federal Court and on upwards? If so, why wasn’t the Massachusetts case appealed to a US Federal Court?
  Marriage is a state regulated activity, so perhaps the Federal Courts would not accept the appeal on that ground.  But actually, I’ve also read this is a state constitutional issue, so the highest court is the CA court.

Google’s Kaizen

One of the things that has impressed me about Google is the ability to constantly update its services, but almost always improve them, and sometimes dramatically. Recently, they added a feature to Reader to share items on a feed, and then a few days ago to add a note to items being shared. All of this is done in a minimalistic way, with a simple interface. Contrast this with Microsoft, Yahoo or Facebook. Microsoft updates Windows or Office and invariably makes them worse. Yahoo updates Mail to be more outlook-like, but makes it agonizingly slow and full of banner ads which take up valuable screen real estate. My Yahoo! always reports the wrong number of e-mail messages waiting. I’ve wasted so much time pulling up the website only to find no new e-mail. [I've since found out that using one of the links to top level mail box instead of directly going into the inbox folder clears the mail indicator.]  Facebook changes their feed import mechanism and limits the ability to preview the content or removes hyper links in imported blog feeds.