Without a doubt, the vast majority of people will engage in masturbation over the course of their lifetimes. May, even, is National Masturbation Month. Yet self-pleasure still remains a divisive issue, as it has for some time, and moreover, the question of its role forms the basis for much of the cultural divide in our nation today.

Masturbation is a hot-button issue because it sits at the heart of several fundamental questions of existence. Our treatment of the topic/practice can reveal such things as what we think the purpose of sex is, how we view morality, and how we consider our place within our bodies. In turn, these answers shed light on the greater questions of today’s society: gay marriage, pornography, abortion.

The Atlantic has some background:

The view of masturbation as benign and beneficial is a new one. The Judeo-Christian tradition has long been hostile towards self-pleasure, at least for men. The Talmud compares spilling seed to spilling blood; the Zohar (the central work of Kabbalah) calls it the most evil act a man can commit. The traditional Christian view was no more tolerant; Catholic and Protestant authorities framed masturbation as a deeply sinful (though forgivable) waste of precious semen. Women were left out of these prohibitions for the obvious reason that most male religious authorities didn’t consider the possibility that women were capable of or interested in giving themselves orgasms.

As we at the Airspace have covered, the inventor of the Graham cracker warned against the practice, going so far as to create the bland food to curb lust. But the greater effort was to control the sexuality of women. As recent discoveries have shown, early vibrators were to make hand-stimulation look worthless by comparison. And leader’s like Sylvester Graham and John Kellogg (of cereal fame) hoped that a sexually independent man would be above the influence of lustful, manipulative woman.

Once more Hugo Schwyzer at the Atlantic manages to give an un-biased history of the masturbation debate:

The contemporary catechism of the church doesn’t mention the waste of seed. Rather, heavily influenced by the late John Paul II’s “theology of the body,” it insists that our sexuality is intended for one purpose: “the relationship of one person to another, in the complete and lifelong mutual gift of a man and a woman.” Evangelical Protestants often make the same case; the anti-porn ministry XXX Church teaches that ”It is a selfish act that pleases no one but you. God created sex to be between a man and his wife. Not a man and his girlfriend and not a man or woman with himself or herself.”

As religious conservatives see it, the great mistake we make when we masturbate is to claim our sexuality as ours alone. All sexual activity must be about “mutual self-giving” between a husband and a wife, the church claims, arguing that masturbation is “an intrinsically and gravely disordered action.” Since masturbation is the first sexual act in which most people voluntarily engage, it is in a very real sense the original sexual sin from which all the others—based as they are on this mistaken sense of autonomy—flow. On the right, opposition to the idea of masturbation as an acceptable practice is growing rather than declining.

Generally, masturbation puts the singular body, the individual and his or her self, at the center of the equation. This may, as the Church has argued, turn the sexual act into a selfish exercise, something we should be ashamed of. But on the other hand, it empowers us to recognize that we are both individuals and animals, and thereby, that the immense power of sexual pleasure can be in our hands alone. Any alternative implies that sex and bodies are the purview of the community.

Attribution

“Masturbation Is at the Root of the Culture Wars,” Hugo Schwyzer, The Atlantic

The post Different Strokes for Different Folks: How Masturbation Divides Us appeared first on The Airspace.

“I should be more grateful of my natural beauty” one woman concludes after participating in the Dove Beauty Sketches. In fact, the woman, Florence concludes that natural beauty “couldn’t be more critical to your happiness.”

Florence came to these undesirable conclusions through participation in a commercial released as part of Dove’s campaign to promote “real beauty”. The commercial, titled Dove Real Beauty Sketches is the most viral video commercial of all time, amassing over 114 million views in the month following its release.¹ Viewers of the commercial responded with tears, hope for change, and a feeling that this campaign might cause people reconsider the way they look at themselves.² This initiative was launched in response to company research in 2005 that found only 4 percent of women see themselves as beautiful.² The campaign, according to Fernando Machado the global brand vice president, is focused on turning beauty from a source of anxiety to a source of confidence. This campaign, and the resulting commercial have two fundamental problems. The first is that it promotes a world in which women should simply see themselves as more beautiful in order to increase their worth, rather than valuing other characteristics that they might possess. Secondly, the basis of their campaign, and reasoning for launching it—that women tend to see themselves as less beautiful than they truly are—is scientifically wrong.

Dove’s “real beauty” initiative, unsurprisingly, combats women’s anxiety about beauty in a way that still promotes the importance of beauty. As a company that profits from the sale of beauty enhancing products, they pair the idea that “you are more beautiful than you think” with the concept that possessing beauty is essential to life and happiness. It seems that Dove is arguing that women see themselves more negatively than they should, at least in part because they are overly critical of their physical beauty. Dove still tells ladies beauty is supremely important to the way they view themselves

In fact, after the transformative experience of the Dove Real Beauty Sketches, Florence finds that her perception of her own natural beauty “impacts everything.” Instead of responding to the finding that beauty is a source of negative affect and anxiety for women, we should argue that there are other qualities women possess which are significantly more important than being considered beautiful. Instead of proving to women that they are worth more than they thought because they are more beautiful than they believe, we should prove to them that their worth is not a constituent of their beauty. Dove has the right intention of reducing anxiety about beauty itself, but it seems their methods also promote it in other, more subtle, ways.

The second, more objective problem with Dove’s Beauty Sketches is the evidence and research supporting their commercial is highly disputed by a large body of psychological scholarship. In a recent article in Scientific American, Ozgun Atasoy³ shows most women see themselves as less attractive than they actually are contradicts the well-established doctrine of “self-enhancement.”

Self-enhancement is the theory that individuals tend to see themselves in a more positive light than is actually accurate. This is corroborated by a recent study conducted by Nicholas Epley, a professor at the University of Chicago and Erin Whitchurch, a professor at the University of Virginia.⁴ In this study, Epley and Whitchurch took photos of participants and digitally modified them into more, and less attractive photos. Participants were then shown the original photo and modified photos, and asked to choose the photo that they believe is the original. Unlike what the Dove campaign would likely predict (that participants would choose the less attractive photo), participants tended to choose the modified photos that enhanced their attractiveness as the actual photos. Further, when participants were choosing for a stranger, they tended accurately choose the original photo of that stranger from the given set of photos. It seems that people tend to view themselves as more attractive than they truly are, rather than less attractive.

Atasoy continues on to argue not only does research show that we tend to see ourselves as better than we truly are, but most of us see ourselves as better than the average (an obvious impossibility). This extends beyond beauty, to unrealistic optimism and to overestimate our own good behavior. In fact, we even tend to believe that we are less prone to self-enhancement, essentially that we are better than average at accurately assessing ourselves. Though this cognitive mechanism seems harmful, as it causes our representation of ourselves to be different than the truth, many argue for self-enhancement as valuable. Self-enhancement causes individuals to truly believe that they are better than they are, and have better characteristics than they do, which can lead to higher confidence. Confidence is an important factor in credibility, likeliness to be hired for certain jobs, and even for attractiveness as a romantic partner. Thus, it seems that self-enhancement can and does have important practical consequences.

It also seems that the tendency to be optimistic and believe that one will succeed at a higher rate than the average would be an important factor in hope. One will be more likely to believe that circumstances will change and become better for them, and thus will be more likely to continue to look forward and exert effort to change their situation. Hope is an important component in the human desire to continue to exert effort, as we believe that this effort will tend to create positive results. Self-enhancement might be our best defense against giving up, and an important tool in believing in ourselves, even through adverse circumstances. It even seems that knowledge of this premise might be beneficial to Dove itself, as exploitation of it might leave women scrambling to raise their actual attractiveness to their perceived level (though most women would likely believe that they are the minority that is better than average at assessing their attractiveness).

It seems Dove got it wrong. They are promoting a view that in some ways increases anxiety about beauty, all based on the false premise that women see themselves as less beautiful than they actually are. Their commercial shows women that others see them as more beautiful than they see themselves, and thus (as we should base our opinion of ourselves on others’ opinions of us), we should recognize ourselves as more beautiful. A more accurate commercial might have been to show women over-reporting their attractiveness, and overemphasizing the role of their physical features in their overall worth. Then, the subjects they interacted with could counter by emphasizing the other, non-physical qualities that the person demonstrated, and express that this is an important factor in that person’s worth. If Dove’s intention is to emphasize “real beauty,” they should not be proud of Florence’s conclusion that natural beauty “couldn’t be more critical to your happiness,” and should instead place importance on the non-physical, and non-beauty product enhanced aspects of beauty.

Attribution

¹“How Dove’s ‘Real Beauty Sketches’ Became the Most Viral Video Ad of All Time”, Laura Stampler, Business Insider
²“Ad About Women’s Self-Image Creates a Sensation”, Tanzina Vega, New York Times
³“You Are Less Beautiful Than You Think”, Ozgun Atasoy, Scientific American
⁴“Mirror, Mirror On The Wall: Enhancement in Self-Recognition”, Nicholas Epley and Erin Whitchurch, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin

The post You Think You’re So Pretty: What Dove’s ‘Sketches’ Video Got Wrong appeared first on The Airspace.

It might surprise you to hear that the Slurpee was an accident. Yet the beloved concoction, as a matter of fact, got its start when a Dairy Queen soda machine kept on malfunctioning. Its operator, Omar Knedlik of Kansas City, placed bottles of soda in his freezer as a failsafe. The bottles came out a little too icy and slushy for soda, but they were a hit. Soon, Knedlik had made his own machine to turn out these sodas, creating a new product altogether.

The original name, though, wasn’t Slurpee. It was ICEE, a brand that continues to this day. When the 7-Eleven corporation licensed the product in 1965, they renamed it to Slurpee, after the distinctive sound made while sucking the slush up a straw.

They took off nationwide soon thereafter, launching a plethora of flavors and even a little jingle called “Dance the Slurp.” Merchandising tie-ins certainly helped, and continue to this day. Promo cups and flavors have come to into their own in the past decade, though. Starting with Men in Black II and continuing for brands such as Iron Man, the novelty drinks have taken on new forms. The peak, though, would have to be in 2007, when 7-Eleven redesigned some stores as Kwik-E-Marts renamed the products “Squishees” all in advertising The Simpson’s Movie.

Here’s some other fun facts for us on the Slurpee:

• The Slurpee Capitol of the USA is Kennewick, Washington, which has the most popular Slurpee-selling store in America.
• Every July 11 (7/11), the stores celebrate “7-Eleven Day” by giving away an estimated 5,000,000 Slurpees nationwide.
• Most, but not all, Slurpees are kosher, and some machines have even been certified kosher.
• Mixing flavors is popular: up to 58% of Slurpee drinkers will mix flavors together.

And I’ll let the writers at Mental Floss cover perhaps the strangest of Slurpee phenomenon: The 7-Election Slurpee tour:

Since the 2000 presidential election, the company has run a promotion called “7-Election,” where customers vote by purchasing special red or blue coffee cups printed with each candidate’s name. The cups are scanned at check-out and automatically entered in this unscientific, but surprisingly accurate poll — in 2000 and 2004, the number of coffee cup votes and the number of actual popular votes for both candidates was only off by 1 or 2 percentage points. While 2008′s 7-Elections results were still correct, they gave the election to Obama by a landslide — 60 percent to 40 percent — when the margin was really only about 7 percent. In 2012, Obama won the 7-Election by a similar margin.

Altogether, the Slurpee is pretty cool if you ask me.

Mental Floss via The Week
Image via CNN and Getty

The post The Story of the Slurpee appeared first on The Airspace.

The human body is one of the most fascinating and puzzling ecosystems in the universe, a complex community of cells, germs and microbes that is still being mapped and decoded. Recent discoveries in this field have caused scientists to reevaluate the way we look at our internal functions, and perhaps we aren’t as much ourselves as we would like to believe. The relationship between the person and the 100 trillion bacteria that inhabit them is no longer being looked at as that of host and parasite, but a symbiotic relationship that makes every human more of a walking colony than a single entity. In fact, for every human cell there are about 10 microbic cells; the germs don’t just inhabit us, they outnumber us. From The New York Times:

Justin Sonnenburg, a microbiologist at Stanford, suggests that we would do well to begin regarding the human body as “an elaborate vessel optimized for the growth and spread of our microbial inhabitants.” This humbling new way of thinking about the self has large implications for human and microbial health, which turn out to be inextricably linked. Disorders in our internal ecosystem — a loss of diversity, say, or a proliferation of the “wrong” kind of microbes — may predispose us to obesity and a whole range of chronic diseases, as well as some infections. “Fecal transplants,” which involve installing a healthy person’s microbiota into a sick person’s gut, have been shown to effectively treat an antibiotic-resistant intestinal pathogen named C. difficile, which kills 14,000 Americans each year.

This isn’t just an ego check for the human race, its a medical revolution. The microbes that inhabit us play a crucial role in training the body to function and reject harmful viruses and pathogens, and the control of these microbes (through techniques like the aforementioned fecal transplants) could potentially open up a whole new way to fight everything from poor immunity to terminal disease. Although the scientists working on the forefront of these discoveries are careful not to make such grandiose claims, it seems as though the future of medicine may lie in the human race’s ability to understand our plurality.

Attribution

The New York Times

The post We Are More Germ Than Human appeared first on The Airspace.

The robots are back. The internet has been abuzz with hype for Daft Punk’s long awaited follow up to 2005′s Human After All, and today we finally get to hear it. While the official release date is still a week away, iTunes is offering fans the chance to stream all 13 tracks early. Simply follow that link, hit “View in iTunes”, and enjoy.

This comes following the hugely successful release of the album’s lead single, “Get Lucky,” a heavily disco-influenced jam featuring Pharrell Williams and Nile Rogers. After “Get Lucky” broke Spotify streaming records, the album is predicted to be one of the most successful releases in recent history.

Pre-order Random Access Memories on Vinyl, CD, or from iTunes

To hear Pharrell’s take on the mysterious proccess of recording with Daft Punk, check out this behind the scenes interview via The Creators Project.

And finally, an unboxing of the LP.

Definitely buy the Vinyl LP

The post Daft Punk Streams New Album ‘Random Access Memories’ appeared first on The Airspace.

I’m afraid that I just blue myself. It’s the final countdown until the Bluth family is back and as dysfunctional as ever. The resurrected cult classic will return on May 26th for a fourth and final season released exclusively on Netflix. It’s been a long and painful time since the show was cancelled in 2006, and, well, I don’t want to blame it all on 9/11, but it certainly didn’t help.

For now, the trailer can help keep our anticipation at bay. All of the Bluths may have grown up a bit and Buster may have bedazzled his hook, but the family looks to be up to their old antics.

The excitement can’t be contained.

A coodle-doodle doo.

Update: Netflix has released four new clips from the upcoming season. With 36 hours to go before season 4 goes live on Netflix’s servers, it seems like they are just teasing us now.

Attribution

Hollywood Reporter

The post The Bluths Return: Watch The First ‘Arrested Development’ Season 4 Trailer appeared first on The Airspace.

As the old phrase goes, “never hire a man to do a goat’s job.” At least that’s what O’Hare, Chicago’s international airport that moves over 60 million passengers a year, is hoping to prove. Starting this summer, people may be able to look out their windows while landing and see a herd of goats grazing on the vegetation around the runways.

The city of Chicago’s Department of Aviation hoped to find an eco-friendly way to manage the 120 acres of vegetation is has on O’Hare’s property, so they awarded a contract to bring 25 to 30 of the pastoral creatures to the Central Commissary Holdings LLC, which owns a popular restaurant Butcher & The Burger in Lincoln Park. The goats are currently living on a farm in Barrington Hills, IL, where I assume they are training for their upcoming summer job.

Butcher & The Burger is a build-your-own-burger type restaurant with an accompanying butchery. Joseph Arnold, a partner at Butcher & The Burger told the Chicago Tribune “We raise our own hogs and chickens, and bought these goats on a whim a while ago, not thinking a goat burger wouldn’t be on the menu.” Luckily for the goats, Arnold never had the chance to turn them into patties. “When (the city) put the bid out, we thought it was a really cool local, sustainable idea. We’re all from Chicago, and this is the type of thing we’re all about,” said Arnold. He truly believes the goats will make “the perfect lawn mowers” for the city.

But the job wont be easy for the little goat fellows. They will be placed at four different locations on the property where the terrain is particularly rocky along different formations like cliffs and streams. The nature of this land would make it a bit troublesome for traditional mowers to do the job. Hiring goats to clear 250 square feet of hard-to-reach vegetation per day seems like a bright idea, after all.

This isn’t the first time an airport has brought on four-legged help to tend the grounds. San Francisco airport brings in a herd for two to three weeks every June to clean up the area. Their logic is that two endangered species live on the property, the San Francisco Garter Snake and the California Red Legged Frog, and the goats allow the airport to trim the grass without harming the creatures.

Seattle’s Sea-Tac Airport also tried to bring in some goat laborers back in 2008, but kicked them out after a week. The program was discontinued because the goats were much too effective. “Goats, indiscriminate eaters, eat everything, including the trees and native plants that we wanted to protect,” said Christina Faine, an airport spokesperson.

The goats and their personal shepherd will make the journey from Barrington to the airport in June. The grass doesn’t know whats coming.

Attribution

Bridget Doyle, “Goats to graze among runways at O’Hare”, Chicago Tribune
Aaron Cooper, “Chicago airport gets goats”, CNN

The post Chicago O’Hare Airport Hires New Grounds Crew: Goats appeared first on The Airspace.

The all-seeing eye of Google has revealed itself yet again, this time in the form of a series of animated timelapses that show how the earth has changed over the past 25 years. Google partnered with the United States Geological Survey (USGS) to collect over 900 terabytes of data from USGS’s Landsat satellite and compile the results into 25 year long time lapses. Each frame in the timelapse represents a year of satellite data in a 1.7 terapixel snapshot. Because the Landsat has been active for so long (it started recording data in 1972), Google was able to use these images to capture some truly monumental changes in the planet. Glaciers can be seen retreating in Alaska, man-made islands can be seen springing up around Dubai, and Brazil’s deforestation can be witnessed in its horrifying enormity.

Check out these important timelapses or Landsat compilations from any other spot in the world at Google’s Timelapse project.

Attribution

The Verge
Google

The post Google Timelapse Shows Glaciers Melting And Islands Being Formed appeared first on The Airspace.

Last year, MIT physicist Frank Wilczek had a crazy idea. The Nobel Prize-winning (2004) professor has had crazy—almost impossible—ideas before, but this one fundamentally challenged one of the hard and fast rules of physics: perpetual motion is not allowed.

What he developed was a proof for “time crystals.” Now my notion of the structures is hazy, but here’s how they work in concept: they are objects that move in a repeating pattern, around and around, without expending energy or stopping. And, the kicker, “time crystals” manage to do this by breaking the symmetry of time, and in essence, allowing for a type of perpetual motion.

You see, crystals are a bit funny. When they form, their atoms organize into rows, columns, and stacks. Crystals, then, form an exception to the typical spatial symmetry of nature in that they ignore a plethora of choices for a discrete configuration. Wilczek is hoping that, when tested, crystals might also prove to break the temporal symmetry of nature, challenging the idea that objects not in motion would stay the same as time passes.

Natalie Wolchover at Wired has more:

Wilczek mulled over the possibility for months. Eventually, his equations indicated that atoms could indeed form a regularly repeating lattice in time, returning to their initial arrangement only after discrete (rather than continuous) intervals, thereby breaking time symmetry. Without consuming or producing energy, time crystals would be stable, in what physicists call their “ground state,” despite cyclical variations in structure that scientists say can be interpreted as perpetual motion.

How can something move, and keep moving forever, without expending energy? It seemed an absurd idea — a major break from the accepted laws of physics. But Wilczek’s papers on quantum and classical time crystals (the latter co-authored by Alfred Shapere of the University of Kentucky) survived a panel of expert reviewers and were published in Physical Review Letters in October 2012. Wilczek didn’t claim to know whether objects that break the symmetry of time exist in nature, but he wanted experimentalists to try to make one.

The theory is not without its critics—some point out the Wilczek may have been confusing the behavior of crystals in excited states with their ground states. But that hasn’t stopped a group of scientists (an international team led by Berkeley nanoengineers) from prepping a test, though this test has no planned completion date.

So here, in laymen’s terms, is how the experiment will proceed. First, the Berkeley team will build a time crystal by concentrating calcium ions into a chamber surrounded by electrodes. Diode lasers (thanks to a new scientific breakthrough) will be used to scatter excess kinetic energy, leading the calcium ions to crystallize into their ground state. From there, a magnetic field will be turned on, causing the crystallize structure to rotate.

Back to Wolchover for a wrap-up:

If all goes as planned, the ions will cycle around to their starting point at fixed intervals, forming a regularly repeating lattice in time that breaks temporal symmetry.

To see the ring’s rotation, the scientists will zap one of the ions with a laser, effectively tagging it by putting it into a different electronic state than the other 99 ions. It will stay bright (and reveal its new location) when the others are darkened by a second laser.

If the bright ion is circling the ring at a steady rate, then the scientists will have demonstrated, for the first time, that the translational symmetry of time can be broken.

Whether successful or not (or even attempted), the theorization of “time crystals” should keep physicists pondering the fabric of time and space.

Attribution

Wired, “‘Time Crystals’ Could Upend Physicists’ Theory of Time” by Natalie Wolchover

The post Time Crystals: Revolutionizing Our Concept of Time appeared first on The Airspace.

Even institutions as large as the Galactic Empire from the Star Wars universe must have oversight boards to make sure budgets are set and spending stays in line. Michael Peck drafted a letter for Foreign Policy addressed to “Lord Vader” and the “Imperial Navy” from the “Imperial Government Accountability Office” concerning the lack of project management and oversight surrounding the Death Star. The audit was performed at the request of Emperor Palpatine and was compiled from research from “numerous interviews with Imperial Navy leaders as well as Imperial Ministry of War senior executives.”

The letter has some concerns, and some recommendations, excerpted below.

“Frequent Turnover in Senior Personnel Hampers Continuity. Competent management is key to a project as large as the construction of a moon-sized warship. Yet the unfortunate deaths of the last five Imperial admirals in charge of the Death Star project have contributed to a lack of continuity and institutional memory. We estimate that repeated asphyxiation of project managers has set back construction of the PCS by 16 months. Senior Imperial Navy leadership informs us that there have been difficulties in recruitment of qualified candidates, with several promising officers suddenly requesting early retirement when queried about becoming project leaders. Recommendation: Motivating project leaders through incentives such as cash bonuses, slaves, and land grants on habitable worlds. A reduction in the use of strangulation as a motivational tool.”

“Inadequate Reactor Shielding Has Not Been Mitigated. The Death Star is sufficiently armored to withstand repeated hits from the full Rebel battle fleet. However, the thermal exhaust port of the PCS’s main reactor is not armored, and the shaft to the reactor is not compartmentalized to deflect blast effects. During our interviews with experienced TIE fighter pilots, they unanimously agreed that the port is so narrow that no fighter—not even one flying down the approach trench—could obtain a sufficient firing angle, especially when attacking craft would be under continuous fire from shipboard weapons and interceptors. The prime contractor, Darkside Technologies, also assures us that the reactor is sufficiently shielded to withstand a hit from a proton torpedo. We reiterate the concerns stated in our previous report regarding the validity of the contractor’s testing of reactor protection, and we remain concerned that penetration of the port could result in a catastrophic explosion of the main reactor. Recommendation: A permeable barrier over the port to allow heat to escape while deflecting projectiles, as well as compartmentalization to channel blast effects. Independent third-party validation of Darkside Technologies’ testing of reactor shielding.“

“Inadequate Marksmanship Training Has Not Been Addressed. Stormtrooper Command (STORMCOM) requires all troops to receive extensive blaster training. Yet our audit of their marksmanship tests finds that 70 percent of stormtroopers cannot hit a large stationary object, such as a ship, at a distance of 10 feet. This calls into question the ability of the Death Star crew to repel boarders. Recommendation: More rigorous marksmanship training. Increased use of guard bots.“

“Insufficient Analysis of Alternatives to Death Star. While tests indicate that the Death Star can vaporize planets and thus encourage loyalty to beneficial Imperial rule, the Imperial Navy has not demonstrated that a fleet of Star Destroyers cannot effectively accomplish the same mission through devastation of a planet’s surface at far less cost. Recommendation: Further modeling and simulation is needed to determine whether conventional ships can perform the same Imperial loyalty mission as the Death Star.“

Lord Vader responded to the audit in simple Vader style: “I find your lack of faith disturbing.”

Attribution

Read the full letter on Foreign Policy

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