Smile. People Will Think You're Up to Something.

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As if It Needed to, Virginia Bans Smiles at the DMV

DMV officials say the smile ban is for a good cause. The agency would like to develop a facial recognition system that could compare customers’ photographs over time to prevent fraud and identity theft. “The technology works best when the images are similar,” said DMV spokeswoman Pam Goheen. “To prepare for the possibility of future security enhancements, we’re asking customers to maintain a neutral expression.”

People smile for their driver’s license photos? I have four different photo IDs handy, and I’m not smiling in any of them. The last time I got a photo taken for a passport, the guy operating the camera asked if I wanted it taken again, before he printed it out. My face was centered and my eyes were open, so my response was, “It’s a passport photo” (i.e. not a portrait). He replied that he had a lot of customers ask for a re-shoot because they felt the photo wasn’t very flattering. At which point I would say: I refer my honourable friend to the reply that I gave some moments ago (British Parliament. C-Span. Catch the fever.)

The fraud mentioned above is duplicate licenses — they match your photo with those already in the system. And your name and address, I presume, if they are attempting to eliminate identity theft.

Making it Up as You Go Along

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fact unchecked is billed as A daily dose of misinformation, fact unchecked is the after dinner breath-mint to the information saturation buffet. Any similarity to actual truth is coincidental, unintentional, and gravely unfortunate.

With amazing tidbits like

The song “Louie Louie” is an adaptation of a lesser-known Robert Frost poem “And There Went Louis.”

and

Residents of Quito, Ecuador are five times as likely to experience vertigo than the average South American citizen.

Hold It!

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RunPee.com

A website that tells you when during a movie you can dash to the bathroom without missing anything critical.

If only conferences had this service, for that balance between proper caffeination and the full bladder.

Grow Up

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25 And Over

Instructions upon reaching the age of 25.

Grow up.

And when I instruct you to grow up, I do not mean that you must read up on mortgage rates, put aside candy necklaces, or desist from substituting the word “poo” for crucial syllables of movie titles. Silliness is not only still permitted but actively encouraged. You must, however, stop viewing carelessness, tardiness, helplessness, or any other quality better suited to a child as either charming or somehow beyond your control. A certain grace period for the development of basic consideration and self-sufficiency is assumed, but once you have turned 25, the grace period is over, and starring in a film in your head in which you walk the earth alone is no longer considered a valid lifestyle choice, but rather grounds for exclusion from social occasions.

20 items.

4. Develop a physical awareness of your surroundings. As children, we live in our own heads, bonking into things, gnawing on twigs, emitting random squawks because we don’t know how to talk yet. Then, we enter nursery school. You, having graduated college or reached a similar age to that of the college graduate, need to learn to sense others and get out of their way. Walk single file. Don’t blather loudly in public spaces. Give up your seat to those with disabilities or who are struggling with small children. Take your headphones off while interacting with clerks and passersby. Do not walk along and then stop suddenly. It is not just you on the street; account for that fact.

I developed some of these earlier than 25, thanks to being in the navy (they frown on being late, for instance, though they’re not too keen on having you walk in heels). OTOH, being in grad school, and the corresponding lack of money, delayed a few others.

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CSI Utah

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Mysterious disappearance of explorer Everett Ruess solved after 75 years

The mysterious disappearance of Everett Ruess, a 20-year-old artist, writer and footloose explorer who wandered the Southwest in the early 1930s on a burro and who has become a folk hero to many, has been solved with the help of University of Colorado at Boulder researchers and the National Geographic Society. The short, compelling life of Ruess, who went missing in 1934 after leaving the town of Escalante, Utah, has been the subject of much speculation.

Not-so-Great Expectations

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Gendered expectations in teaching

[T]he expectations of how a male versus female instructor will behave are actually quite different. One of the papers I read discussed the fact that they interviewed students after they filled out evaluations (where a male versus a female teacher were rated and came out the same, quantitatively). It turns out that while the teachers were rated the same, the students have obvious differences in expectations. It came out that female instructors were available outside of class for more time than male instructors, but that they were still viewed as not being sufficiently accessible outside of class. In other words, students expected that female instructors should be willing to put in more time outside of class to help students in order to rate as well as male instructors who put in less time. If you think about the implications, it basically means that women will often have to do more work to get the same ratings.