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40 days ago
Of course I'm talking about a vibrating mascara. What else could it be? For the unenlightened gender among you, mascara is an integral part of a woman's life -- if she only has 30 seconds to put on some makeup before rushing out the door in the morning, she would put on mascara alone. (So next time you see a girl with luxurious long lashes and think she's born with it -- remember what your friend Jackie told you: it's Maybelline.) But what distinguishes this mascara, called "Maybelline Pulse Perfection", is that it has a small built-in motor engine, so when you touch a button, it delivers 7000 vibrations per minute, which promises efficient separation, lengthening, and curling of the lashes. The operating word here is "efficient" -- because who wouldn't want a motor engine to accomplish what you so painfully have to do yourself? I found myself liking this pulsating mascara a lot so thought it would be fun to share. Oh I almost ...
73 days ago
I came to the office to get some work done on Saturday and stepped into a costume party of the new first-year class outside the building. It was a beautiful day -- clean, light, magical, the transition of seasons palpable in the air. On this particular day, you can smell the exuberance of youth, too. To the contrary of popular beliefs, glowingly healthy, good-looking young people don't usually make appealing photography subjects. My teacher used to say, if you really have to photograph people, go for little children and really, really old people. I couldn't understand the rationale behind it. But the method has face validity: flipping through any travel brochure or National Geographic-style magazine, you'll indeed find that those two demographic groups are most often represented, and they often make the most impressive images. But why? Over the years the answer slowly came to me. Little children and the elderly possess the gift of completely immersing themselves in the ...
81 days ago
I grabbed my dust-ridden camera today and shot these flowers in my garden and my neighbors' gardens. I've been watching them for the entire summer, usually sitting on the porch after my daily run, and they taught me so much about how to live a life that's all about the free and creative expression of the timeless and boundless essence of Life, with beauty, uniqueness, and grace. So before they disappear before my eyes, being absorbed into the ever-moving pendulum of time, I took these images in their memory. "To see a world in a grain of sand, And a heaven in a wild flower, Hold infinity in the palm of your hand, And eternity in an hour." -- William Blake "Auguries of Innocence"
84 days ago
No, that's not completely true. What I was trying to say is that Netflix knows me better than my mother, my best friend, and my OB/GYN combined. I've been subscribing to Netflix's service for a few years. Based on what movies I have rent in the past and how I rated them, Netflix makes guesses on what movies I would like and use it to customize its movie recommendations, through a statistical technique called "collaborative filtering." The general premise behind this is -- and ironically, this is exactly what I do for a living -- that each consumer, rather than an individual with unique, idiosyncratic tastes and preferences, is merely a mundane collection of data points to be mathematically analyzed, precisely targeted, and relentlessly exploited, all in the name of better serving you, Ma'am. So through the years Netflix has been assiduously refining its bets given more and more data points from me. In the beginning, it would make generic suggestions such as ...88 days ago
No I'm not pitching a new reality TV show about competitive eating. I got the idea for this post after watching the movie " Julie and Julia ". But this post isn't about the movie -- although it's a fantastic movie I'd recommend with all my heart, not the least because every screen minute with Meryl Streep (as Julia Child) and Stanley Tucci (as her husband, Paul) together is such a delight and privilege to watch -- but it is because seeing Julia Child's immense, dynamite, larger-than-life passion for food totally amazed me because I've been losing interest in food over the past months. That may sound like an insane statement, but my behavior is solidly rational, to the extent that a cost-benefit analysis is rational: while I certainly derive pleasure from eating good food, such benefit usually pales in comparison with the cost of shopping for food, preparing it, cooking it, and cleaning up the inevitable mess. Such benefit is often even outweighed by the ...
