Hello and welcome to 1984!

The TSA (http://www.tsa.gov/evolution/innovation.shtm) recently revealed its "innovative" plan to revamp airport security. From a cursory glance, it looks like a cross between the DMV and a slaughterhouse. A detailed read of the site confirms it :)

Now you'll be able to listen to soothing music (because we don't have enough of that on the plane to begin with, right?) as you wait in line to get frisked by friendly-cop, read officer profiles, and get your privates publicized in a giant vacuum tube.

Happy blues

This is one of those things that sound really smart on paper, but just looks plain stupid in real life - like the Ab Energizer belts.












According to the Japanese company, Yumetai, donning these bad boys while eating reduces your appetite. They maintain that this is because the blue shade calms the brain's appetite center and/ also block's rays of red light which stimulate appetite.

Which is a smart way of saying "this makes your food look yucky so you don't eat as much". I'd love to see an obese family sit down at the dinner table, say a prayer and put these babies on in unison.

Aooow!

It's just a map, stupid!

In another episode of "Things Sane People Don't Really Care About" I present to you something that has been bugging me for quite some time now: The inaccuracies with the traditional Mercator Map.

The Mercator Map(which is the standardized map of the world as we know it) suffers from a lot of inaccuracies and misrepresentations. Given that its a "conformal map"- i.e. based on a visual impression of shape, it ignores relative size and proportionality.

Why should you give a hootininny about this? Well, for starters:


1) Africa is 11.6 million sq miles while the former Soviet Union is 8.7 million sq miles. Now take a look at the highlighted portions on the traditional Mercator map below. Does this still appear to be the case?














2) Greenland is 0.8 million sq miles while China is 3.7 million sq miles. Looking at the Mercator map below would lead one to think the EXACT opposite.














My gripe is that this (Mercator) map is the map we grew up on! I mean, from a very young age, we were conditioned to look at the world in a certain way- a way that misrepresented the relative size of many countries. This causes a lot of geographical and cultural bias: Human perception and understanding is relative- Looking at Greenland relative to China would give the impression that Greenland is a lot larger than China, and thus (maybe) a lot more rich in natural resources owing to an abundance of land.

Africa is depicted much, much smaller than the former Soviet Union- which again, is troubling. Imagine if Africa was depicted proportionally to what its actual size was---suddenly, all its internal problems would start looking a lot more urgent given its sheer size.

The things I choose to care about.

Life Before Death

For those expecting light humor, skip this post.

You can always trust the Germans to incorporate something morbid into art- A team of German photographers has just completed an extremely thought provoking, albeit controversial, photo experiment. They've taken a series of portraits of people when they were alive and then again on the day of their death.













I'm having a hard time explaining how I feel right now- its a combination of a million different things. The whole 21 grams thing, the existence of a soul, the end of a micro-legacy, inevitability, how we will be remembered upon our deaths etc etc.

But most of all, I kept wondering how small we really are in the grand scheme of things.

Link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/gallery/2008/mar/31/lifebeforedeath?picture=333325401