Golden rules to live by while travelling the world

Lists of travel tips usually suck (get to the aiport early! make sure your passport is up to date!) but this list contains a number of good ideas that I haven’t really seen before.

13. Buy your own fruit. It sounds simple. It is simple. Just do it. You’ll love it. And I don’t mean, if there happens to be a fruit stand outside your hotel door you should buy some, because you need to have 9 servings a day. What I mean is, find fruit and buy it. Make it a daily task that you’re going to track down a fruit stand, a farmers’ market (they’re not just in San Francisco) and get some good fresh fruit. The entire process will expose you to elements of daily life you would have otherwise ignored. Trust me: You’ll have memories from your trips to buy fresh fruit.

By Jason Kottke  •  Nov 30, 2011 at 10:12 am

The 5 Best Toys of All Time

“Treasure Box” photo by Flickr user Evelyn Giggles. Used under Creative Commons License.

Here at GeekDad we review a lot of products — books, toys, gadgets, software — and I know it’s impossible for most parents to actually afford all of the cool stuff that gets written up. Heck, most of us can’t afford it either, and we’re envious of the person who scored a review copy of a cool board game or awesome gizmo. (Disclosure: that person is probably me.) So while we love telling you about all the cool stuff that’s out there, I understand that as parents we all have limited budgets and we sometimes need help narrowing down our wishlists.

So to help you out, I’ve worked really hard to narrow down this list to five items that no kid should be without. All five should fit easily within any budget, and are appropriate for a wide age range so you get the most play out of each one. These are time-tested and kid-approved! And as a bonus, these five can be combined for extra-super-happy-fun-time.

“A Gripping Scene” from Flickr user chefranden. Used under Creative Commons License.

1. Stick

What’s brown and sticky? A Stick.

This versatile toy is a real classic — chances are your great-great-grandparents played with one, and your kids have probably discovered it for themselves as well. It’s a required ingredient for Stickball, of course, but it’s so much more. Stick works really well as a poker, digger and reach-extender. It can also be combined with many other toys (both from this list and otherwise) to perform even more functions.

Stick comes in an almost bewildering variety of sizes and shapes, but you can amass a whole collection without too much of an investment. You may want to avoid the smallest sizes — I’ve found that they break easily and are impossible to repair. Talk about planned obsolescence. But at least the classic wooden version is biodegradable so you don’t have to feel so bad about pitching them into your yard waste or just using them for kindling. Larger, multi-tipped Sticks are particularly useful as snowman arms. (Note: requires Snow, which is not included and may not be available in Florida.)

As with most things these days, there are higher-end models of Sticks if you’re a big spender, from the smoothly-sanded wooden models (which are more uniformly straight than the classic model) to more durable materials such as plastic or even metal. But for most kids the classic model should do fine. My own kids have several Sticks (but are always eager to pick up a couple more when we find them).

One warning: the Stick can also be used as a sword or club, so parents who avoid toy weapons might want to steer clear of the larger models. (On the other hand, many experts agree that creative children will just find something else to substitute for Stick, so this may be somewhat unavoidable.)

Although she is not generally known as a toy expert, Antoinette Portis has written this helpful user manual for those needing some assistance in using their Stick.

Wired: Finally, something that does grow on trees.

Tired: You could put someone’s eye out.

Disclosure: I have received several samples of Sticks from one manufacturer for review.

“It came from the mail room” by Flickr user last mariner. Used under Creative Commons License

2. Box

Another toy that is quite versatile, Box also comes in a variety of shapes and sizes. Need proof? Depending on the number and size you have, Boxes can be turned into furniture or a kitchen playset. You can turn your kids into cardboard robots or create elaborate Star Wars costumes. A large Box can be used as a fort or house and the smaller Box can be used to hide away a special treasure. Got a Stick? Use it as an oar and Box becomes a boat. One particularly famous kid has used the Box as a key component of a time machine, a duplicator and a transmogrifier, among other things.

Still stuck for ideas? Check out this Box user manual by Antoinette Portis for a few more ideas.

The Box may be the most expensive item on my list, available from many retailers and shipping companies, but they can often be had cheaper if you know where to look. Amazon is one of my main sources of the small- to medium-sized Box; I include one with virtually every order I place there. If you don’t mind second-hand toys, the grocery store, bookstores and recycling centers are also great sources for Boxes. Oh, and the best place for the extra-large version is an appliance store (though sometimes they’ll try to sell you an appliance along with it, which could get pricey.)

Note: If you’re in a pinch, Laundry Basket is a similar item and can often be substituted for Box in some instances, though it’s generally not as great for costumes (other than a turtle). And if you’re thinking of using Box for your next building project, Mr. McGroovy’s Box Rivets make a great optional accessory.

Wired: Best celebrity endorsement: Calvin & Hobbes.

Tired: Paradox: what do you put Box in when you’re done playing with it?

“How long is a piece of string?” by Flickr user izzie_whizzie. Used under Creative Commons License.

3. String

My kids absolutely love String — and when they can’t find it, sometimes they substitute other things for it such as scarves or blankets, but what they’re really after is String. Now, I should start off by saying that String is not intended for toddlers and babies: it is a strangulation hazard and your kids must be old enough to know not to put it around their necks. However, when used properly your kids can really have a ball with String.

The most obvious use of String is tying things together, which my kids love to do. You can use it to hang things from doorknobs or tie little siblings to chairs or make leashes for your stuffed animals. Use String with two Cans for a telephone (and teach your kids about sound waves), or with Stick to make a fishing pole. You’ll need String for certain games like Cat’s Cradle — there’s even an International String Figure Association for lots more information. String is a huge part of what makes some toys so fun — try using a yo-yo or a kite without String and you’ll see what I mean. Try the heavy-duty version of String (commonly branded Rope) for skipping, climbing, swinging from trees or just for dragging things around.

Although you can buy String at a store, it’s generally sold in much larger quantities than your children will probably need — usually my kids are happy with roughly two or three feet of it. I actually have no idea where it comes from, because I don’t remember buying them any, so it must be pretty easy to come by.

Wired: It really ties everything together.

Tired: There’s a reason “no strings attached” is a benefit.

“A Series of Tubes” by Flickr user Orin Zebest. Used under Creative Commons license.

4. Cardboard Tube

Ah, the Cardboard Tube. These are kind of like the toy at the bottom of a box of Cracker Jacks — they come free with a roll of paper towels and other products but you have to wait until you get to the end of the roll before you can finally claim the toy. (Perhaps this explains why my kids — who love the small size — go through toilet paper so quickly.) The small- and medium-sized are most common, but the large versions that come with wrapping paper can be more difficult to obtain — I had a roll of Christmas wrapping paper that lasted about three years before my kids finally got the Tube. There’s also an extra-large size that is sometimes sold with posters, and a super-sized industrial version which you’ll generally only find from carpet suppliers. (Of course, carpet stores aren’t toy stores, and while their product also goes by the name Cardboard Tube it’s hardly the same thing and probably shouldn’t be considered a toy.)

My kids have nicknamed the Cardboard Tube the “Spyer” for its most common use in our house, as a telescope. (Or tape two of them together for use as binoculars.) But if you happen to be lucky enough to get a large size, the best use is probably whacking things. Granted, Stick is also great for whacking, but the nice thing about Cardboard Tube is that it generally won’t do any permanent damage. It’s sort of a Nerf Stick, if you will. If that sounds up your alley, look up the Cardboard Tube Fighting League — currently there are only official events in Seattle, San Francisco and Sydney, but you could probably get something started up in your own neighborhood if you wanted. Or if you’re more of a loner, perhaps the way of the Cardboard Tube Samurai is a better path.

Obviously if your own kids are younger you’ll want to exercise discretion about these more organized activities, but it probably wouldn’t hurt to provide them with a Cardboard Tube or two just so they’ll get used to the feel of it. You never know if your kid will be the Wayne Gretzky or Tiger Woods of Cardboard Tube Fighting, right? Best to give them the opportunity so that if they show some particular aptitudes they’ll have that early advantage. And if not, well, there are still plenty of people who enjoy playing with Cardboard Tubes casually without all that pressure.

Wired: Comes free with purchase of toilet paper, paper towels, and wrapping paper.

Tired: Doesn’t hold up to enthusiastic play.

“Most exciting things ever” photo by Flickr user pfly. Used under Creative Commons License.

5. Dirt

When I was a kid one of my favorite things to play with was Dirt. At some point I picked up an interest in cleanliness and I have to admit that I’m personally not such a fan of Dirt anymore — many parents (particularly indoor people like me) aren’t so fond if it either. But you can’t argue with success. Dirt has been around longer than any of the other toys on this list, and shows no signs of going away. There’s just no getting rid of it, so you might as well learn to live with it.

First off, playing with Dirt is actually good for you. It’s even sort of edible (in the way that Play-doh and crayons are edible). But some studies have shown that kids who play with Dirt have stronger immune systems than those who don’t. So even if it means doing some more laundry (Dirt is notorious for the stains it causes) it might be worth getting your kids some Dirt.

So what can you do with Dirt? Well, it’s great for digging and piling and making piles. We’ve got a number of outdoor toys in our backyard, but my kids spend most of their time outside just playing with Dirt. Use it with Stick as a large-format ephemeral art form. (Didn’t I tell you how versatile Stick was?) Dirt makes a great play surface for toy trucks and cars. Need something a little gloopier? Just add water and — presto! — you’ve got Mud!

Dirt is definitely an outdoor toy, despite your kids’ frequent attempts to bring it indoors. If they insist, you’ll probably want to get the optional accessories Broom and Dustpan. But as long as it’s kept in its proper place, Dirt can be loads of fun.

Wired: Cheap as dirt.

Tired: Dirty.

Libraries as Incubator

The recently launched Libraries as Incubator Project seeks to broaden the public’s notion of libraries “by celebrating the ways that they nurture arts communities around the country.” Check out the LIP website, which features “the work of artists who have relied on the support of libraries during their careers, as well as libraries that have supported the arts through unique collections or initiatives.”

Read more at Design Milk: http://design-milk.com/time-02-2011/#ixzz1f7NZ91FK

The Museum of Broken Relationships

“Everyone has had that moment – days, months, even years after the end of a relationship, when you come across something inextricably linked with that person. The Museum of Broken Relationships collects those trinkets – everything from poems to a grand piano, nasal spray to necklaces. It’s a magnificent, moving show, simultaneously both intensely personal and completely universal.”

(via djmidnightt)

Psychologists debunk 6 common gender-essentialist myths about sexuality

BREAKING: Science confirms what feminists have been saying forever. All those myths about innate gender differences when it comes to sex? Not actually true. In a new review of research, University of Michigan psychologist Terri Conley and colleagues debunked six common gender-essentialist myths.

1) Men want “attractiveness,” while women want “status”

Sure, maybe on paper they do, but in the real world where actual relationships take place, attraction doesn’t fall into such simple stereotypes. Shocking, I know.

2) Men want many more sexual partners than women do

Turns out if you look at medians instead of averages to avoid skewing the data with a few Don Juan wannabes, men and women both say they want one sexual partner. (Just one! That is truly the most surprising finding of the whole study.) And if you get people to tell the truth, gender differences in actual sexual partners disappear too.

3) Men think about sex more than women do

Ok, they do. But only 18 times a day–not nearly the every seven seconds we were told! And they also think about other needs, like food and sleep, more than women do.

4) Women have fewer orgasms than men do

True, but the “orgasm gap” is clearly more dependent on relationship type than biology. While women orgasmed about a third as much as men during first-time hookups, that number jumps to 79% in committed relationships.

5) Men like casual sex more than women do

This is one of the most persistent myths out there. But the researchers say that women’s reluctance to accept an offer of casual sex is mostly because they’re not convinced the guy will be good in bed (see #4) and are afraid of being slut-shamed. If you account for these two barriers, the gender difference disappears.

6) Women are pickier than men

Everyone tends to be choosier when they’re approached by a potential partner, and less choosy when they’re doing the approaching. So it’s our lingering expectation that men do the asking and women the accepting–not some evolutionary bullshit about spreading seeds–that keeps this myth alive.

The researchers end with a nice little smackdown of evolutionary psychologists’ explanations for gender differences in sexuality. Instead of being rooted in our evolutionary past, such differences can be explained by “much more mundane causes: stigma against women for expressing sexual desires; women’s socialization to attend to other’s needs rather than their own; and, more broadly, a double standard that dictates (different sets of) appropriate sexual behaviors for men and women.”

Word. Now please let’s put these myths to bed for good.

10 Things Not to Say to a Depressed Person

1. It’s all in your head. You need to think positive.

Upon hearing this, I wanted to throw a life-size figure of Tony Robbins at them. Because, while optimism is certainly important in training the brain, studies have shown that people who are severely depressed or acutely anxious only activate their amydalas (fear center of the brain) by forcing positive thinking

2. You need to get out of yourself and give back to the community.

This is one that certainly made bad things worse. Because now, in addition to feeling severely depressed, a person also feels guilty and self-absorbed. Yes, giving back is important, but only when a person is healthy enough to hold a ladle at a soup kitchen.

3. Why don’t you try and exercise?

This is good advice. Exercise has strong antidepressant effects. However telling someone that they need to exercise is a little like telling someone their butt looks fat in those jeans. You need to hint at it, but not put it directly on the table, or else the person may very well take up kick-boxing and practice with you.

4. Shop at Whole Foods and you will feel better.

Why does this get me? Because 1) I don’t have the money to shop at Whole Foods, and 2) although I know that my diet affects my mood, and the more organic the better, I resent your telling me that my Frosted Flakes is what’s causing power outage in the left frontal lobe of my brain.

5. Meditation and yoga are all you need.

Correction: meditation and yoga may be all that people experiencing mild and moderate depression need. Both are important tools to reduce depression. However, acute anxiety and severe depression are different animals altogether. In fact, my suicidal thoughts worsened with yoga.

6. Get a new job.

Maybe the job is making your loved one depressed. Stress is never a good thing for our health, and especially our emotional health. It pours toxins into our bloodstream. But don’t encourage a major decision while the person is depressed. A balanced perspective is needed.

7. Are you happy in your relationship?

Again, relationship problems might certainly be triggering the depression, but I’ve talked to too many people who almost left their husbands and wives when they were clinically depressed, thinking that something around them must be the problem. Since a spouse is the closest thing, he or she gets blamed for the mood dips.

8. You have everything you need to get better.

This, of course, implies that all pharmaceutics are toxins that do nothing more than dull your emotions. Guess what? Some forms of modern medicine actually aid recovery!! Seriously! Kind of like chemotherapy for cancer patients, and insulin for diabetes. Would you tell a woman with breast cancer she has everything she needs to get better? No. I didn’t think so.

9. Do you WANT to feel better?

This was my very favorite. Because it suggests that we can will ourselves to be as happy as we want. Want to be a little more giddy? Let me just adjust the optimism lever a tad. There we go … happy again! Again, I do think you do to watch your thoughts, retrain them and retrain them, applying tools for optimism. But I don’t think we can pull ourselves up by our bootstraps without any help every time. Please don’t make the person feel like a failure in addition to depressed.

10. Everyone has problems.

Although mentioned in the CBS News article, it’s important to note again because it comes up so often. Forget about Congo and Bangladesh when talking to a depressed loved one. Some people absolutely do have it worse. But that doesn’t make her pain any less real or profound. Chances are if you do bring it up, she will also feel weak and pathetic … like she has no right to feel the way she’s feeling, which will, of course, make her feel worse.

(Source: psychcentral.com)

Citogenesis

Wouldn’t It Be Cool if Shakespeare Wasn’t Shakespeare?

Tom Gauld

By STEPHEN MARCHE Published: October 21, 2011

“Was Shakespeare a fraud?” That’s the question the promotional machinery for Roland Emmerich’s new film, “Anonymous,” wants to usher out of the tiny enclosure of fringe academic conferences into the wider pastures of a Hollywood audience. Shakespeare is finally getting the Oliver Stone/“Da Vinci Code” treatment, with a lurid conspiratorial melodrama involving incest in royal bedchambers, a vapidly simplistic version of court intrigue, nifty costumes and historically inaccurate nonsense. First they came for the Kennedy scholars, and I did not speak out, because I was not a Kennedy scholar. Then they came for Opus Dei, and I did not speak out, because I was not a Catholic scholar. Now they have come for me.

Professors of Shakespeare — and I was one once upon a time — are blissfully unaware of the impending disaster that this film means for their professional lives. Thanks to “Anonymous,” undergraduates will be confidently asserting that Shakespeare wasn’t Shakespeare for the next 10 years at least, and profs will have to waste countless hours explaining the obvious. “Anonymous” subscribes to the Oxfordian theory of authorship, the contention that Edward de Vere, the 17th earl of Oxford, wrote Shakespeare’s plays. Among Shakespeare scholars, the idea has roughly the same currency as the faked moon landing does among astronauts.

The good news is that “Anonymous” makes an extraordinarily poor case for the Oxfordian theory. I could nitpick the film all day. (In fact, I did on the day I saw it.) Mistakes are plentiful and glaring. In an early scene, Shakespeare’s contemporary Christopher Marlowe watches a new play, “Henry V,” which supposedly happens on the same day that Lord Essex departs for Ireland. But Marlowe died in 1593, while Essex left for Ireland in 1599. When Marlowe is killed, Ben Jonson confronts Shakespeare with the crime, saying that he “slit [his] throat,” but Christopher Marlowe was actually stabbed above the eye, according to the coroner’s report. Simple chronological or factual fudges, you might say — sure, but there’s more. The theatrical censor responds with shock to the idea that in Shakespeare’s version of “Richard III,” the king is portrayed as a hunchback. But Shakespeare did not invent that idea. In the influential “History of Richard III,” by Thomas More, written around 1516, Richard is “little of stature, ill featured of limbs, crook backed, his left shoulder much higher than his right.” And so on. In the film, Shakespeare’s fellow playwrights are all amazed that “Romeo and Juliet” is in iambic pentameter, but by the time “Romeo and Juliet” came out, drama in iambic pentameter was the standard; the first extant English play in iambic pentameter was “Gorboduc,” by Norton and Sackville, in 1561.

The craziest idea in “Anonymous,” however, is that Edward de Vere wrote a version of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” 40 years before its performance at court, putting the composition of the play somewhere around 1560. (That’s what the film implies, anyway: we see a scene from “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” performed at court, and then the title “40 Years Earlier,” and then a kid who turns out to be the earl reciting Puck’s final speech.) The idea that a kid wrote “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” isn’t even the crazy part. To put the issue in a contemporary framework, it’s one thing to say that somebody other than Jay-Z wrote “The Blueprint”; it’s another to say that this clandestine Jay-Z wrote “The Blueprint” in 1961. You can’t write a hip-hop masterpiece before hip-hop has been invented. And you can’t write “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” until English secular comedy has come into existence.

Even with the best intentions, most historical dramas sacrifice history for drama, switching around events and creating composite characters. Real life lacks narrative tension; that’s why people go to the movies. Shakespeare himself never hesitated to alter the details in his own history plays if he thought the change would improve a scene. (Although I might add that the Oscar-winning “Shakespeare in Love” managed to be pretty good with only a handful of tiny anachronisms.)

“Let me offer you a different story, a darker story,” the prologue of “Anonymous” announces, and like an Oliver Stone movie, it is fiction that wants to confuse itself with fact. It’s the best of both worlds for Emmerich: he gets to question hundreds of years of legitimate scholarship without any need to be consistent with basic chronology, because, after all, it’s just a movie.

And if you take “Anonymous” as just a movie, it may not even be that bad. I couldn’t possibly judge, because I was apoplectically stuttering about the inconsistencies, but several legitimately solid reviewers have already approved of the film. The movie is certainly overflowing with those superactorly British actors who tend to make you feel that you should be enjoying their performances even when you’re not. And I fear that the attraction of the Oxfordian theory, to people who don’t know any better, may be profound. Counternarratives have an inevitable appeal: wouldn’t it be cool if there were yetis? If the United States Army were keeping extraterrestrial remains in the Nevada desert? If aliens with powers beyond our imagination built the pyramids? If Shakespeare wasn’t Shakespeare but actually this, like, lord who had to keep his identity secret?

You don’t have to be a truther or a birther to enjoy a conspiracy theory. We all, at one point or another, indulge fantasies that make the world seem more dangerous, more glamorous and, simultaneously, much more simple than it actually is. But then most of us grow up. Or put down the bong. Or read a book by somebody who is familiar with both proper historical methodology and the facts. The errors in “Anonymous,” I should point out, do not require great expertise to identify. Any undergraduate who has taken a course in Early Modern Drama, and paid attention, should be able to spot at least 10. (That might make a good exam, come to think of it.)

In the movies, a few mistakes don’t matter, but the liberties with facts in “Anonymous” become serious when they enter our conception of real history. In scholarship, chronology does matter. And the fatal weakness of the Oxfordian theory is chronological, a weakness that “Anonymous” never addresses: the brute fact that Edward de Vere died in 1604, while Shakespeare continued to write, several times with partners, until 1613. “Macbeth” and “The Tempest” were inspired by events posthumous to the Earl of Oxford: the gunpowder plot in 1605 and George Somers’s misadventure to Bermuda in 1609. How can anyone be inspired by events that happened after his death?

So, enough. It is impossible that Edward de Vere wrote Shakespeare. Notice that I am not saying improbable; it is impossible. Better scholars than I will ever be have articulated the scale of the idiocy. Jonathan Bate in a single chapter of “The Genius of Shakespeare” annihilated the Oxfordian thesis. If you want to read the definitive treatment, there is James Shapiro’s more recent “Contested Will,” although that book is nearly as absurd as its subject, because using a brain like Shapiro’s on the authorship question is like bringing an F-22 to an alley knife fight, and he kind of knows it. He ties his argument into the larger question of art and its relationship to the artist’s life, but even so the whole business is evidently a waste of his vast talent.

Besides, no argument could ever possibly sway the Oxfordian crowd. They are the prophets of truthiness. “It couldn’t have been Shakespeare,” they say. “How could a semiliterate country boy have composed works of such power?” Their snobbery is the surest sign of their ignorance. Many of the greatest English writers emerged from the middle or lower classes. Dickens worked in a shoe-polish factory as a child. Keats was attacked for belonging to the “cockney school.” Snobbery mingles with paranoia, particularly about the supposedly nefarious intrigues of Shakespeare professors to keep the identity secret. Let me assure everybody that Shakespeare professors are absolutely incapable of operating a conspiracy of any size whatsoever. They can’t agree on who gets which parking spot. That’s what they spend most of their time intriguing about.

The original Oxfordian, the aptly named J. Thomas Looney, who proposed the theory in 1920, believed that Shakespeare’s true identity remained a secret because, he said, “it has been left mainly in the hands of literary men.” In his rejection of expertise, at least, Looney was far ahead of his time. This same antielitism is haunting every large intellectual question today. We hear politicians opine on their theories about climate change and evolution as a way of displaying how little they know. When Rick Perry compared climate-change skeptics like himself to Galileo in a Republican debate, I dearly wished that the next question had been “Can you explain Galileo’s theory of falling bodies?” Of all the candidates with their various rejections of the scientific establishment, how many could name the fundamental laws of thermodynamics that students learn in high school? Healthy skepticism about elites has devolved into an absence of basic literacy.

The Shakespeare controversy, which emerged in the 19th century (at that time, theorists proposed that Francis Bacon was Shakespeare), was one of the origins of the willful ignorance and insidious false balance that is now rotting away our capacity to have meaningful discussions. The wider public, which has no reason to be familiar with questions of either Renaissance chronology or climate science, assumes that if there are arguments, there must be reasons for those arguments. Along with a right-wing antielitism, an unthinking left-wing open-mindedness and relativism have also given lunatic ideas soil to grow in. Our politeness has actually led us to believe that everybody deserves a say.

The problem is that not everybody does deserve a say. Just because an opinion exists does not mean that the opinion is worthy of respect. Some people deserve to be marginalized and excluded. There are many questions in this world over which rational people can have sensible confrontations: whether lower taxes stimulate or stagnate growth; whether abortion is immoral; whether the ’60s were an achievement or a disaster; whether the universe is motivated by a force for benevolence; whether the Fonz jumping on water skis over a shark was cool or lame. Whether Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare is not one of these questions.

Unfortunately, the nonquestion of Shakespeare’s identity is now being asked on billboards all over the world. It will raise debate where none should be. It will sow confusion where there is none. Somebody here is a fraud, but it isn’t Shakespeare.