LCD SOUNDSYSTEM. SHUT UP AND PLAY THE HITS. Trailer
(Source: youtube.com)
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[Flash 10 is required to watch video]
Happy New Years from New Orleans everyone! We’re sitting scarily close to some illegal fireworks that are incredible/terrifying.
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get out of there cat. you are not a seasonal beer left over from October and you are not even old enough to drink. just because you can fit in the box does not mean you should be rewarded with beer.
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Featuring the a capella stylings of Smith’s Smithereens and Amherst’s Zumbyes, and the high-G hitting talents of Mariah Carey.
Merry belated Christmas, y’all.
In retrospective celebration, I’ve recently rediscovered and been reminiscing over this shoddy Winter Weekend video I scrapped together last year. I may have regretted (but probably didn’t) spending an entire Sunday editing this video instead of studying for finals at the time- but now that I’ll never get to be a senior at Smith, at my last winter weekend, drinking snugglers and listening to my friend’s acapella group singing at Friedman B2 ever again, I’m really glad I was able to technologically transcribe some of the essence of that weekend.
I made this on the Sunday of Winter Weekend, immediately following all the festivities, so our blissful contentedness and simultaneous need to relish every moment due to our awareness of how rapidly we were moving forward from that time in our lives seems palpable to me in this video.
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Early Christmas present to myself: tiny dagger earrings from The Shape of Lies. The owner, Peggy, is really nice and knows every piece in the store intimately well.
12 hours away from a long holiday weekend- hope everyone is doing well.
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Shame” is rated NC-17 (No one 17 or under admitted). Younger viewers will have to go elsewhere to learn that sex can sometimes be fun.
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A.O. Scott (via parentsstronglycautioned)
It takes acting chops to make sex addiction look as awkward as Michael Fassbender was able to make it in “Shame.”
I’m also really loving, thanks to Lily (a different one from myself), this “New York Times Movie Ratings” tumblr that collects all these gems of judgment hidden away in those oft-overlooked last lines of NYT movie reviews.
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Worn on October 8th, 2011: Scoop maxi dress, Sisley blazer, Saks hat, Sam Edelman wedges.
Oops. Did I say a new entry by next Sunday when I meant next Sunday a month from the day of posting? Nonetheless, I apologize, dear zero to five loyal readers. I don’t mean to make false promises over the internet. If anything, take it as an indicator of my own wishful thinking about the availability of my free time. As if, by simply tumbling about activities that I don’t have the time for, I could create new pockets of time within my week, thus causing a rift in the space-time continuum that leads our universe to collapse in on itself, but allows me a few extra hours to write new entries and wiki the first season of The Cosby Show to my heart’s content. Wishful thinking.
Also, I think Revolve Clothing might want to look into getting new copy-writers. Their site described these wedges as: “work-appropriate shoes need not be so workday boring.”
Anyhow, I have about a billion emails I need to write or respond to, but instead of writing those, I wrote this!
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Is Empathy In Our Genes? (CNN) →
A large part of how we relate to people emotionally may be hardwired into our DNA. A new study suggests that character traits such as being open, caring, and trusting are so strongly linked to a certain gene variation that a total stranger, simply by watching us listen to another person, may be able to guess whether we have the variation with a high degree of accuracy.
Previous studies have linked several personality traits to variations in this gene, which acts as a docking station (or receptor) for the brain chemical oxytocin — often referred to as the “love hormone” because it plays a role in social behaviors such as bonding, empathy, and anxiety.
People who have two “G” variants of this oxytocin receptor gene tend to have better social skills and higher self-esteem, research has shown. Conversely, those with at least one “A” variant tend to have a harder time dealing with stress, worse mental-health outcomes, and a greater likelihood of being autistic.
“We’ve known that genotype can influence personality, but we’d only ever studied what goes on inside a person — things like behavioral scales and heart-rate measurements,” says Serena Rodrigues Saturn, Ph.D., a senior author of the study and an assistant professor of psychology at Oregon State University, in Corvallis. “This is the first time anyone has observed how different genotypes manifest themselves in behaviors that complete strangers can pick up on.”
To explore the relationship between a person’s genetics and demeanor, Rodrigues Saturn and her colleagues recruited 23 romantic couples, and videotaped them while one partner recalled and discussed a time of suffering in their lives. The other partner, who had given a saliva sample to determine his or her genotype, was simply asked to sit and listen.
The researchers then showed 20 seconds of each video clip to a group of 116 people. None of the viewers knew the video subjects, and they watched the clips with the sound off so they had no knowledge of the situations being discussed. They were then asked to rate how kind, caring, and trustworthy the listening partner seemed, based only on visual cues.
“They looked for things like nodding along with their partner, holding eye contact, keeping an open body posture,” Rodrigues Saturn says. “Those people were judged as more social and caring, as opposed to others who seemed much more aloof.”
Although they expected to find some association between the subjects’ genotypes and their rankings, the researchers were “blown away” by how accurate the observers’ intuition actually was, Rodrigues Saturn says. Out of the 10 people who were ranked as “most prosocial,” six had the GG genotype, and of the 10 ranked “least trusted,” nine were carriers of at least one A variant.
The findings were published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Keith Kendrick, Ph.D., a neuroscientist at the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, in Chengdu, says it’s important to note that genes besides the oxytocin receptor gene — not to mention other, non-genetic factors — influence social behavior as well. Oxytocin receptors have been shown to be modified by a person’s environment, for example, so life experiences presumably play a large role too, he says.
“Just because you have an ‘A’ version of this one receptor gene clearly does not mark you down as a completely unsocial individual,” says Kendrick, who was not involved in the study. “Obviously many different genes contribute to something as complex as social behavior, but it is interesting that this particular one appears to be so influential.”
One genotype isn’t necessarily better or healthier than the other, Rodrigues Saturn says. Although scientists used to refer to the gene’s “A” variant as a “risk” variant (because it increases risk of autism and social dysfunction), many experts now think of the variations as just that: variations that may—along with many other forces — play out in personalities.
“It’s important to understand that some people are… naturally more held back, or may be overcome by their own personal stresses and have a hard time relating to others,” Rodrigues Saturn says. Putting these people in more comfortable environments that naturally induce the production of oxytocin may help to coax them out of their shells and help them feel more “warm and fuzzy,” she says.
(Copyright Health Magazine 2011)
Relevant, always.
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Promise
By next Sunday I will post an update about my life, a new outfit post, some posts about film, an answer to a question, and new posts in general. Because I am still alive. And I am not a robot.
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fucking sick →
I agree and also feel a little sick when I hear Penn State football fans claiming that Joe Paterno is a victim of all this. Certainly he’s gotten the the lion’s share of the media attention but anyone with as much knowledge of the situation should have gone to the proper authorities about this. Anyone who failed to do so should face the repercussions.
I fail to see how the fact that he was a great football coach factors into this.
(Source: lovesetyougoing)
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A Bite Of The Big Apple of the Day: Andrew Clancy spent a year shooting random scenes around New York, the end result of which is this lovely five-minute compilation aptly entitled “A Year in New York.”
Music: “We Don’t Eat” by James Vincent McMorrow.
[uproxx.]
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From the moment Kael began as a film critic at The New Yorker, at the start of 1968, she presided over the movies in the manner of Béla Károlyi watching a gymnast on the balance beam—shouting directives, excoriating every flub, and cheering uncontrollably when a filmmaker stuck his landing. She spent much of her career chastening Hollywood’s excesses while brushing off complaints about immoderation on her own part. She did not regard this as a hypocritical endeavor. Kael wrote quickly and at length, regularly pulling all-nighters into her Tuesday deadlines with the help of cigarettes and bourbon (till she gave up both). Her kinetic passion, her chatty-seatmate prose, and her detail-heckling made her a pop-culture oracle in an era that desperately needed one.
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Neurotics experience more immersion when watching films (BPS Research Digest) →
Descriptions of neurotics are typically unflattering: they’re fearful, tense people, prone to catastrophise and will often shy away from challenges. Well, here’s some more uplifting news for folk matching this personality description. A study of film immersion has found that people who score highly in neuroticism (as measured by agreement with statements like “I worry a lot”) tend to feel more absorbed in films. This is associated with their enjoying horror and sad films less, but comedies more.
David Weibel and his team had 64 participants (average age 28 years) watch three movie clips taken from The Shining (the scene where the boy is playing in the hallway); The Champ (a boy’s father dies after suffering a severe beating in the ring); and When Harry Met Sally (the scene where Sally fakes an orgasm in a cafe). The participants, half of whom were students, rated how immersed they felt in the clips and how detached they felt from their real, physical environment. They also said how much they’d enjoyed the film excerpts.
The half of the participants who scored higher in neuroticism experienced more immersion during all three clips - happy, sad and scary - compared with the lower scorers in neuroticism. “A possible explanation,” the researchers said, “could be that neurotics usually have a highly reactive sympathetic nervous system making them sensitive to any environmental stimulation.”
The more neurotic participants also liked the scary and sad clips less, but enjoyed the funny clip more. The implication is that immersion mediates enjoyment, but unfortunately this wasn’t tested.
Weibel’s team said their finding has theoretical import because media experts tend to assume that engendering greater immersion in an audience will always lead to more enjoyment. “Our findings contradict this assumption,” they said. “In the two negatively connotated conditions, participants scoring high on neuroticism experienced more presence than those scoring low, but at the same time reported less enjoyment than individuals with low neuroticism scores. We therefore assume that for these participants, the feeling of being there in the sad or fearful world was experienced in a negative way. This in turn resulted in decreased enjoyment.”
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Weibel, D., Wissmath, B., & Stricker, D. (2011). The influence of neuroticism on spatial presence and enjoyment in films Personality and Individual Differences, 51 (7), 866-869 DOI: 10.1016/j.paid.2011.07.011Interesting results though of course, not universally applicable. Eg. I lean towards neurotic and get very immersed in the things I watch (I have cried during trailers…), however, I am a lot less sympathetically sensitive in my first-person interactions and I prefer sad movies.
