Dan Mayer's Blog

I read a bunch of interesting things this morning that I guess I should share with you.

A little bit of little man syndrome:

The Height Gap - If you haven't heard many advantages come with being tall. More interesting is entire societies have height trends depending on how they are doing. Many times height is tied to a growing economy and our income gap could be partly to blame...

I should be learning new things:

Want to learn new things and spend some time on self improvement, a list of some of the best free educational resources online, for almost any topic, including learning new languages... Free Online Education

Relationships require learning too:

Relationships are always wonderful, but not without challenge, and this is a good little read about the parts of a relationship that probably aren't worth wasting time fighting over... everyone has things that bother them more or less, and just because your line is different than someone else's doesn't mean you can force and expect them to care about something, or at least so I read in the interesting, Marriage is not always 50/50

Musing on the oddness of society:

A interesting and twisted look at the trends and causes of the shrinking thin models, and how thin now is a sign of money Body Image from Botticelli to Britney.

"Today, worrying about extra poundage is a chic neurosis everywhere from network television to Bridget Jones' Diary. We associate extra weight with things that we consider low-class: fast food, dietary ignorance and lack of gym membership. The rich, on the other hand, can shop at Whole Foods, go on the South Beach diet and cultivate enough Protestant work ethic to deny themselves dessert. If an archaeologist digging up a Barbie doll some 40,000 years into the future hypothesized the artificial Aphrodite was part of our religion, he wouldn't be far off the mark."

The article in its entirety I don't know if I agree with, but I think it would be an interesting area to research more as it is something I have thought and written about in the past. A paper I wrote years ago played with some similar thoughts, Deriving the Beauty of Women.

All work and no play, makes Dan a dull boy:

Besides all of the interesting reading out on the web, there are always great books and things to learn, but sometimes you need a break to just enjoy the simpler things, and with all of that I will leave you will a simple flash game that I enjoyed for about 20 minutes, Tower Defense