Cheesecake

The Cheescake Factory is celebrating its 30th anniversay on July 30th this year. To celebrate they are going to offer a slice of any of their cheescakes for $1.50 on the 30th. This is the price of a slice when they opened 30 years ago. It’s limited to one per person, but if you bring a couple friends you could split them (they serve HUGE slices) and have a delicious coronary.

See the press release here, and further proof here.

Facebook is redesigning its layout. Things are going to look very different after tonight. Facebook is going to roll it out slowly, so some people will see it before others. You can see a preview of the new layout at www.new.facebook.com. You might have to have the facebook developer application installed.

Of you can read about it here.

Weezer’s pork and beans music video is a computer nerds biggest meta-inside joke. I’ve liked weezer for a while now, and this video only adds to the appeal. They are like Ok Go, where they actually put some effort into the concepts for their videos.

The video concept is a bunch of famous internet video stars adapting their hilarious videos to the weezer song. That probably doesn’t make sense, so just watch it:

If you are a huge nerd like me, you probably get most of those references. For those of you who don’t and have some free time, or are a really big weezer fan, check out the list of references.

A short list of the big ones:

• the numa numa guy
• dramatic chipmunk
• mentos/diet coke experiment
• “leave britney alone” guy
• Ms. South Carolina

And the list goes on.

You might have heard about this already. The democratic national convention is being held in Denver this year. Barack is going to be nominated to be the Democratic Nominee for President. Because of how popular the event is expected to be, he has decided to hold the ceremony in a stadium in Colorado.

Now for the cool part, if you make a donation, in any amount at this page, you are entered in a contest to be backstage at the event. 10 people will be selected and flown out for the last two days of the convention.

Enter here!

Kevin Powell, a member of the real world’s very first season, is running for Congress in NY.(link, link)

I don’t think I feel good about this on the whole. Reagan was the first actor President. While some (conservatives) would say he was a good President, he opened the door for others to follow after him.  I fear with Schwarzenegger and now Kevin, we are seeing more actors realizing they can act their way through an election.

Does that neccessarily mean they are good policy makers? Actors are good at portraying an image. That is their career. They can deliver lines with good emphasis and sincerity. But they are lines they don’t write. Forgive the sterotype, but actors aren’t generally known for their academic savvy. I’d rather have the intelligent but socially awkward person leading my country than the guy who can deliver a line well but doesn’t understand the words coming out of his mouth.

The problem is that in an election, time and time again the person who looks better and more confident wins. Think JFK during the first televised debate. With that example, he was obvious qualified, and a great president. But those who listened to the debate thought Nixon won, while those watching the debate thought Kennedy won. Obviously, appearance and poise do matter.

In the future, Policy wonks running for office need to work on their charm in order to have a shot at being elected.

I read a great article in Psychology Today that many people, while being in love with an exclusive partner, still think about other romantic possibilities - people we think might be a potential replacement if our current relationship doesn’t work out.

This is not having a secret lover on the side. People like to feel secure, and even in exclusive relationships, we now that they could potentially end at any moment after a big fight out of the blue. A study from Stockton college in New Jersey of college students’ relationships shows that these “backup partners” are not merely short-term flings, but “a person who is viable as a serious partner in their own right.” We become attached to these backup boys and girls, and the students got more upset when their backups found a new partner than when flings hooked up with others.

There are two reasons people seek out insurance policy relationships:

People get very anxious about the potential to be left alone without a partner. In our society, single people- especially women- get stigmatized as having something wrong with them. Psychologically, we also know we can’t reproduce and pass on our genes if we are single. Interestingly, women who did not have “backup beaus” tended to be more depressed- probably because subconsciously they are coming to terms that they are in danger of being left alone. By having a second partner waiting in the wings, we can quickly move to another stable relationship, and avoid the period of being single while looking for a new partner.

The other reason many people have backup partners is that they like to gauge their own romantic market value. How many times have you casually flirted with someone that you aren’t really attracted to- just to see if you’ve “still got it”. Psychologists say you might be testing the water to see if they are a potential backup partner, especially if they know about your current relationship.

Of course, we should look at the person who is the backup plan. Often these partners in waiting will wait a long time because they perceive the person they are waiting for as a stellar mate that they already sort of have, and have invested alot of time and energy in. They already have a good history. They will wait for the possibility that this person will turn to them instead of going out and having to settle for a lesser, different relationship.

I’d be curious if anyone out there can examine their current relationships and see that they either have a backup beau, or are a backup for someone else.

Traditionally women seem to think that if they are too eager towards a guy, he will think she is easy and be less likely to fall for her.

However, research has shown that in fact, women who play hard to get are a turn off to men.

In 1973, Elaine Hatfield (formerly Walster) and her colleagues published six experiments designed to test the hypothesis that men desire hard-to-get women more than easy-to-get women. In one study, for example, women who initially declined a date with a man before eventually accepting it were no more or less desirable to the man than women who eagerly accepted the date right away.

The study found that if you play hard to get, it is important with whom you play hard to get.

After these five experiments failed, Hatfield finally recognized that there are two distinct ways in which a man can think of a woman as hard to get: (1) how hard it is for me to get her and (2) how hard it is for other men to get her. In her sixth and final study, Hatfield discovered the truth: Men are most attracted to women who are hard for other men to get - but easy for themselves to get!

So, they key is to appear interested in the guy, but also be uninterested in other guys. It is important to make the guy feel like he is the only one for you.

Of course, it’s never good to be desperate, either. The key is to be selectively hard to get. If you’re interested in somebody, make sure he knows you like him, but do so in a way that doesn’t suggest that you’d take just anybody. It’s okay to be eager, as long as you do it with dignity.

The economy is in a recession, oh okay technically its not a recession, but its certainly slowed. Fuel is costly, actually energy costs in general are high. Which means prices all around are increasing. The housing market is crap. The dollar is down against the Euro and British Pound (and many other currencies), and worries about inflation are on everyone’s mind.

So, why is consumer spending still going up? Shouldn’t people be spending less, since they have huge economic concerns about the future? Some would say it is solely because of the IRS rebate stimulus checks, but I would have a different argument.

A study from the Journal of Consumer Research states that “Feeling powerless can trigger strong desires to purchase products that convey high status.”

After recalling situations where they were powerless, participants were willing to pay more for items that signal status, like silk ties and fur coats, but not products like minivans and dryers. They also agreed to pay more for a framed picture of their university if it was portrayed as rare and exclusive.

“As an analogy, consider two individuals, one a successful millionaire and the other a recently demoted banker,” write the authors, “Both might view a Rolex watch as a clear status symbol. However for the millionaire, wearing the watch might not make the millionaire feel any more powerful than he/she normally feels. In contrast, for our demoted banker, wearing the same watch might make the banker feel significantly more powerful.”

In a society with a plummeting savings rate and skyrocketing debt levels, this research has broad implications. “It suggests that in contemporary America, people use consumer purchases to compensate for psychological states of insecurity,” write the authors.

“Spending beyond one’s means in obtaining status-related items is a costly coping strategy for dealing with psychological threats such as feeling powerless.”

I was traveling downtown in Richmond for work today. As I pulled up to a light I had a traumatizing experience.

rolling up next to me at the light was a dark blue Lincoln towncar. I had my AC on and windows up because it was sunny and hot out. However, I heard the unmistakable sound of water hitting my driver’s side window. I look over and notice water drops on my window. Shifting my focus from near to far, I looked beyond my window into the car next to me. Smiling at me were three young kids with a water gun. I suppose they train for drive-bys at an early age in RVA.

Luckily I had my impenitrable forcefield up so I simply stuck my tounge out in retaliation. That did little to hide my fear. Long after the car had moved on, I was still trembling in fear. Watch out for drive-bys in Richmond.

PS - there were TWO adults in the front seat. Who lets their kid shoot random strangers with a water gun? What if we were moving, and I freaked out and swerved and hit something? Nice parenting.

Article from the NY Times about a study that examines female sexuality, and makes the claim that women aren’t really excited by a naked guy, or some kind of male visual sexuality, but the “degree of sensuality”.

The concept is that men can see a naked woman just standing there and be almost immediately turned on. However, the researchers showed women naked men doing routine things, and the women didn’t respond. But they showed women who claimed they were straight women doing sensual things, and the women were more turned on than when viewing the naked man.

Dr. Chivers, a research fellow at the Center for Addiction and Mental Health at the University of Toronto, says she has data to support this assertion. She recently published results of a study in which she showed people video clips of naked men and women in various sexual and nonsexual situations and measured their genital arousal.

Heterosexual women, Dr. Chivers and her colleagues found, were no more excited by athletic naked men doing yoga or tossing stones into the ocean than they were by the control footage: long pans of the snowcapped Himalayas. When straight women viewed a video of a naked woman doing calisthenics, on the other hand, their blood flow increased significantly.

What really matters to women, Dr. Chivers said, at least in the somewhat artificial setting of watching movies while intimately hooked up to a device called a photoplethysmograph, is not the gender of the actor, but the degree of sensuality.

The interesting conclusion the researcher comes to is that, like many have suspected for years, female sexuality is often not straight or gay, but often a variable point at some measure in between.

Dr. Chivers’s work adds to a growing body of scientific evidence that places female sexuality along a continuum between heterosexuality and homosexuality, rather than as an either-or phenomenon.

The interesting part, is that this phenomenon appears only in straight women.

Straight and gay men, as well as lesbians, were more predictably aroused by images of their preferred sex, Dr. Chivers found. “Heterosexual women are responding to women, which is counterintuitive,” Dr. Chivers said. “Why are women so turned on by watching other women?”

I do find it interesting that two women making out is considered hot or at least arousing by almost everyone. Guys will definitely be a bit turned on by it. And while a girl might not admit it, this study seems to show they would be aroused by it as well. But, if two men make out, I bet the opposite is true. I wonder how the gender roles influence this.