Read more about the article Makeup is the new girdle.
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Makeup is the new girdle.

I stopped wearing cosmetics a few months ago, after about half a year of using the stuff only sparingly. I started weaning myself off makeup because I had come to hate the hassle of applying it, and because I hated fretting about my appearance. I was also beginning to think of makeup as old-fashioned, an antiquated 'modesty' that inspires shame in one's true appearance. The longer I go without a cosmetic product on my face, the more I believe that makeup needs to go the way of the girdle. The restrictive, uncomfortable, needless, obsolete girdle. How many undergarments are you wearing right now? I'm guessing two at most. Likewise, I only wear two small undergarments below my clothes, even on the most formal occasions. Interview? Presentation? Class? Wedding? A bra and underwear are always adequate. Since I've never had to wear more than two undergarments, I find it staggering that women used to wear massive bras, high-waisted underwear, girdles, pantyhose or stockings, garter belts, slips, and camisoles. I often wear less than that as a full outfit. Anyone who knows me in real life can confirm that I regularly step out in leggings and a t-shirt (plus two small undergarments beneath). I don't say this to titilate, just to illustrate, because I suspect my bare-bones attire is quickly becoming the norm. I've spent a lot of time on college campuses- big and small, public and private, Jesuit and blessedly godless. Everywhere I've seen legions of women and girls decked out in equal or greater states of undress than my own. Gone are the girdles. [More . . . ]

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On dealing with the lack of hell

I sometimes listen to AM religious talk radio because I'm amazed at the sorts of the things I hear. Today, while listening into local St. Louis 24/7 "TruthTalk" Christian radio station KJ SL in my car, I heard a bit of contentious discussion between a radio host and a caller. I believe that the host of the radio show was Bob Dutko. Dutko has long held the position that "Jesus really is the only way and He really did rise from the dead, physically and historically." When I first tuned in, the caller was talking, saying something much like this: I believe that the spirit of God resides in every person, and that people can live good and meaningful lives without belonging to any church. I believe that God will reward them based upon the good things that they do, and based upon how they treat others, regardless of whether or not they follow any religion. Good-hearted people who do not believe in Jesus or follow a religion will not go to hell. The host told the caller that his "new age" religious outlook was hopelessly naïve, and that he needed to read the Bible, whereupon he would see that there is only one way to avoid hell is by accepting Jesus Christ as Savior. [More . . . ]

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The Edge of Physics

I watched Anil Ananthaswamy's TED talk video "What it takes to do extreme astrophysics" last Sunday. I thought he was eloquent and passionate. Intrigued by his way with words, I picked up his book - The Edge of Physics, on which his talk was based - from the local library the next day. I now need to add it to my own. Ananthaswamy has created a fascinating survey of history and extraordinary efforts of today's cosmologists to uncover the knowledge of the origins and the fundamental structure of the universe. It’s a quick read, even though I found myself pausing to seek out (and read) Hubble’s 1929 paper “A Relation Between Distance and Radial Velocity Among Extra-Galactic Nebulae”; Ostriker, Peebles and Yahil’s 1974 paper “The Size and Mass of Galaxies, and the Mass of the Universe” and to look up where these researchers are working. I thoroughly enjoyed his narrative and particularly the composition of the book. Ananthaswamy's wonderful story has exquisite descriptions of the exotic and dangerous locations where the investigative scientists have found the “environmentally silent” conditions necessary to the detection of theorized particles and energy or of nearly unimpeded observation of the universe. Transitioning smoothly from optical cosmology to detection of neutrinos, dark matter, dark energy, Higgs bosons and more, Ananthaswamy excels at simplifying complex subjects, his narrative interwoven with the history of the building blocks leading to the current competing theories. As an engineer, I wonder how knowing the nature of dark matter or the validation of supersymmetry or superstring theories is useful; or more practically, how that knowledge can be used. But as a former physics major who never lost interest in the subject, I love the quest for knowledge. It doesn't matter if it can be used for anything practical. I was asked in another thread what I might consider literature (with a capital "L")...I'm thinking The Edge of Physics qualifies for me.

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On celebrating the death of Osama Bin Laden

In the New York Times, Jonathan Haidt has invoked group selection theory to explain why so many people outwardly celebrated the death of Osama Bin Laden.  To understand why the reaction was natural and predictable rather than primal and boorish, Haidt pointed out that we are more than "selfish creatures, able to act altruistically only when it will benefit our kin or our future selves." We often do function like this, but we, unique among primates (and akin to bees and ants) simultaneously function intensely at a second higher level.

This [higher level] competition favors groups that can best come together and act as one. Only a few species have found a way to do this. Bees, ants and termites are the best examples. Their brains and bodies are specialized for working as a team to accomplish nearly miraculous feats of cooperation like hive construction and group defense. Early humans found ways to come together as well, but for us unity is a fragile and temporary state. We have all the old selfish programming of other primates, but we also have a more recent overlay that makes us able to become, briefly, hive creatures like bees.
As Emile Durkheim pointed out, humans don't merely act on narrowly focused selfishness; rather, they are subject to emotions that "dissolve the petty, small-minded self. They make people feel that they are a part of something larger and more important than themselves." Human beings can be knitted together through a benign "collective effervescence" that goes by the name of "patriotism," which Haidt distinguishes from "nationalism,"
[T]he view that one’s own country is superior to other countries and should therefore be dominant. Nationalism is generally found to be correlated with racism and with hostility toward other countries, but patriotism by itself is not."

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