Never Too Young?

Today Michael directs us toward a New York Times article, "Never Too Young for That First Pedicure."

...Which is pretty revolting to me. Granted, I'm not the norm-- I only started wearing minimal makeup when I was in college. Still, I'm guessing most people recognize this as a frightening phenomenon, even if it isn't completely unexpected.

Michael points out this line: But I’d rather my girls try it and decide they don’t need all these products to be beautiful, and then do something more vital with their time and money and efforts, like write a poem or take a walk or save the world.

I wonder how often that works, and how actively mom is trying to lead her daughters away from this kind of behavior. Seems like throwing a salon birthday party anyway might send a bit of a mixed message...

Mc & D

Vicki is the queen of odd links such as these:

1. "McDonald's adopts feng shui" is an Enquirer article about... well, you get it. Quite the contrast to the McDonald's I recently visited in Chicago, which had "no loitering" signs plastered everywhere. I also like this line from the article: It also fits into McDonald's larger corporate practice of catering to local tastes, such as a fondue-style burger in France or a pita-wrapped "McArabia" sandwich in the Middle East.

2. "Disneyland Will Go Back to the Future" takes a look at the forecasted House of the Future. That has got to be a tough racket... as fast as technology moves these days, it's hard enough just to keep up, let alone be that far ahead of the pack. Though if anyone could do it, I guess it'd be the D.

Phun

Absolutely too cool not to share: check out this "2d physics sandbox." Thanks Jared!

NYT: EcoMoms

Ryan sent me a great article from The New York Times, which takes a look at "Eco-Moms" and how green fanaticism is affecting today's families:

Lately “local lifestyle activism,” much of it driven by women, has been on the rise and is likely to continue, Dr. Dunlap said. “Just belonging to a national environmental organization, which seemed effective in the 1970s and ’80s, doesn’t work anymore, particularly in an era of government unresponsiveness,” he said.

Ms. Pinkson and her colleagues are well aware of “the mom demographic,” as they call it, in which, according to surveys for the Boston Consulting Group, women say they “influence or control” 80 percent of discretionary household purchases. Thus far, their thrust has been more about being green consumers than taking political action.

Thanks Ryan!

Shameless Plug

Check out this article about one of WonderGroup's most recent television spots, AirHeads' "Amplified"!

RADAR and WonderGroup Pump Up the Volume for AirHeads

P.S. Here's a version of the spot I found on YouTube...

Second Skin

Via Laughing Squid by way of Kris, check out the trailer for Second Skin:



From Second Skin's own site, a description:

Second Skin introduces us to couples who have fallen in love without meeting, disabled players who have found new purpose, addicts, Chinese gold-farming sweatshop workers, wealthy online entrepreneurs and legendary guild leaders - all living in a world that doesn't quite exist.

I think that, despite the stereotypes that run rampant about gamers and especially WOWers, the lay man still underestimates people's addictions to these games. I can imagine that this documentary would be illuminating, but can probably bring little but harm to the people being portrayed.

Predictify.com

News about the SuperBowl? Nah.
News about Super Tuesday? Nah.

My interests tend to be on the webby side of things. Today's link actually comes from NPR's Marketplace program... tonight I heard a really interesting story about the website Predictify.com.



Predictify is a site that asks users for predictions and opinions on things... then pays them for it if they're right. They make their money from people who pay to ask the questions, then dole out a share of that profit to the people supplying the predictions.

Here is their basic How It Works info. It's an interesting way to think about how to use this kind of data... people on teh webz love to vote for stuff, rank stuff, tag stuff, and this takes it a step further.

From the looks of it, the site isn't really booming yet. There aren't a ton of questions, although the ones posted seem to have a solid response base. (Also, the site was really laggy for me, but maybe 9:30pm is a peak time for them?)