Tag: science

Human fronts cover of magazine shocker 

by rev0107, posted in Newell News International

‘Human fronts magazine’ #shocker what difference does her sex make? Is it brave? Sure, anyone who stands up and does something that challenges rigid social constructs such as gender realignment is bound to be brave. The public declaration also helps empower people who have been too fearful to do so themselves but she is still human like you and I. The simultaneous hero worship, idolisation and abuse of Jenner reflects more on our failing as a society to accept people for who they are and content of their character rather than for the way they look than it does about Bruce Jenner, now Caitlyn. 

“It’s wrong”, “it’s sick”, “it’s twisted”, “it’s not natural”, “it will become the norm” and that’s just the ones I could print from people I know. They are also the same phrases once used about children of a white and black parent. Gender realignment won’t become ‘the norm’ because of the grand introduction of Caitlyn Jenner but it might be the start of a wider acceptance in society of gender realignment and the realisation that when all is said and done, they are still human, just like the rest of us. 

The bigger question for me is whether the hero worship of Jenner is based on the decision and public announcement to have a gender realignment or because she could afford to have the surgery done that she wanted? Would the praise be as grand if she was less than beautiful, by our current definition of the word? Others that have gender realignment are not so lucky to have the financial resources at hand that Jenner did and that leaves them at risk of further divide and ridicule from society. If the praise is not because of her brave announcement and introduction but because of her aesthetics then, fresh from the burden of being a man, Caitlyn will now face the challenge of being a woman in a world where beauty is the only currency many people understand.

As for those people suggesting the level of hero worship doing the rounds will lead to this becoming the ‘norm’, I would be surprised if anyone just woke up one day and said: “Fuck it. Today, I’m going to be a woman” or vice-versa and have an operation to be gender realigned. Anyone who does think that really doesn’t understand the torment people go through. The others, claiming it’s not natural, how do they know? How do we truly know anything? If there were no dolls, action figures, pink dresses, toy guns or make up and we were brought up in a sex neutral environment, would we truly know whether we were men or women? 

The critics (always plenty of them) are pointing fingers at the ready out of the box reality show Caitlyn has ready to air. These are probably the same critics that give up every spare moment to see what the Kardashian’s are up to or what happened at the Sugar Loaf on Towie last week. It’s not called the third mall from the sun for nothing, everything is for sale and it’s all got to go!

As for Caitlyn, let it go. She’s just another human finding her way in the world, the universe having a human experience. #embracehumanity people, it’s a big universe and we might be all we have.

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Internet mass hysteria – 50 Shades of #TheDress

by rev0107, posted in Newell News International

Not withstanding the fact the Internet is a great place to assemble for hysteria, ‪#‎thedress‬ is all the things people say it was and not at all because of the way our eyes and brains interpret information.

The image that sparked the debate
The image that sparked the debate

For a start there are technical issues with the image taken, it is subject to lighting issues – the white balance isn’t taken into account, which has a significant impact on the colours contained within an image, but who is going to know anything about that if they have never learned about it? There is also the issue of the various screens out there that people would have been viewing the dress on, making subtle but significant changes to what you see.

The dress taken from the website
The dress and the image taken from the website
50 Shades of dress
50 Shades of dress

Then there is the actual light spectrum and the tiny band which we can see. Millions of colours or variations from a simple set of prime colours we learn about, a handful of names to describe them and our eyes work with red and green (maybe blue too?) The restrictions on our ability to define the colours we see then impacts our ability to reconcile what is there versus what we see.

Which brings me on to my favourite part of all of this; we only see 10% of what’s in front of us and our brains make up the rest using its experience. This is why eye-witness reports are not always reliable and why someone in a gorilla suit can walk across a stage and no one sees him. We can override what see with what we think is there, or by what we think should be there.

For the record, after plugging back deep into the Matrix, I thought it looked gold and blue, but may have been black and white on the assumption the image taken was influenced by the camera settings.

Here another dress that suffered the question of ‘what colour is it?’

The first time I saw the hysteria of colour
The first time I saw the hysteria of colour

Other memes from the Internet over #thedress.

Before 'The Dress' there Timon and Pumba
Before ‘The Dress’ there was Timon and Pumbaa
Lewinsky
A dress that caused a real stink when I was a child, the dress worn by Monica Lewinsky

Now if only we can get people to care about and debate issues that are really affecting us with the passion shown over this dress the world might start to see some real change.