“Overshare: Where too much information is not enough”

Ok, after no investigation whatsoever, I think that I’ve definitely identified a currently blank space in the social networking environment.

We need a LinkedIn for relationships. It’ll be called OverShare. Or should it be OvrShr? I think web 2.0 laws dictate that you remove as many vowels as possible.

by vincos

So lets start with the basics, it would have to have the following:

About Me
- Age
- Relationship status
- Desired relationship status
- Orientation
- Religion
- Location
- Education

Nothing too scary there. This is more or less the standard sort of info you’d find anywhere, with the addition of the “Desired relationship status” field because you might be dating someone you want to marry, or you might be married to someone you are planning on leaving.

by rustybrick

My Personality
- Romantic rating
- Emotional Stability rating
- Logic rating
- Spiritual rating
- Public comments

Here you’d get into more detail on your own personality, rating yourself out of five in the above fields. Are you a romantic person? Are you a spiritual person? Are you bipolar and illogical?

by ocularinvasion

My Sexuality
- Orientation
- Things I’ve tried
- Things I’d like to try
- Things I won’t try
- Public comments
- Selective comments (hide from certain sex/orientation/people/ex’s?)

This would essentially be an expanded, more detailed version of the orientation field from the basic info section. Do you like boys? Do you like girls who look like boys? Do you like girls who look like boys to tie you up in public and walk on you in heels while someone in a latex bodysuit photographs it? Do you like kissing? Yes or no, check the box.

by to cloud nine

My Relationship(s)
- Status (Previous/Current/Future)
- Commitment level (out of five: 1=acquaintance, 2=friend, 3=special, 4=relationship, 5=permanent)
- Person’s name
- Timeline
- Emotional Rating (out of five and n/a)
- Intellectual Rating (out of five and n/a)
- Sexual Rating (out of five and n/a)
- Spiritual Rating (out of five and n/a)
- Marriage Potential Rating (out of five and n/a)
- Positive and negative baggage
- Public comments
- Selective comments (hide from certain sex/orientation/people/ex’s?)

This is really the meat of the site. You would fill out one of these for each previous and current relationship. You’d also be able to add either planned or desired future relationships. Filling in a desired future relationship could also be linked to a dating site, to allow you to instantly connect with someone that matches your needs. They would then be able to refer to OverShare to see how religious you are, if you prefer intelligent partners, and if you are too much, or not enough of a slut for them.

by inju

These would be networked with everyone you’ve had a relationship with, and theirs would be networked out as well. In the end you would be able to trace through people’s romantic history and see how everyone connects to everyone else. You may have indirectly had sex with hundreds of people.

The really cool part is rating people. People love judging other people (see Hot or Not) and ranking things using stars, this combines both of those. And if you think that your entire sexual history with someone cannot be summarized in a rating out of five (I can’t imagine why) then feel free to elaborate in the public or selective comments area.

by Nikita Kashner

The key to making people comfortable with divulging all of this is being able to selectively hide certain information from certain people. You may not want to your ex to know that that thing they did to your thing hurt but you didn’t say stop because you wanted to do that thing to their thing too. Because of that, making information selectively available is key and I haven’t exactly worked out how to do that without crippling the site entirely. Hide too little and no one uses it, hide too much and it’s pointless.

But I really think this site would be a resounding success. Everyone wants to know the details of everyone else’s lives, and these are the most interesting parts. It would be supersized-dencentralized-self-moderated gossip.

So I didn’t end up taking any shots until Saturday because my life is boring and no one wants pictures of me at the gym or me at work. So really, this should be “Photos of Saturday” not “Photos of the Week” but whatever, it’s my blog and I’ll do what I want.

by static416

Got a new phone with Koodo because Rogers sucks a great deal. It’s going to save me about $20-25 a month. But it’s mostly a moral thing, after seeing what Rogers is planning on charging people for iPhone service, I’m just sick of them screwing their customers as much as possible and as often as possible. I’m going to control myself now, because I could totally go off and end up ranting about the horrible telecom corporations in this country. Save that for later.

by static416

Evelyn and I walked around Saturday morning. Got some ice cream and Indian food before going up to check out Joey Comeau. It was pretty entertaining.

by static416

Above is me looking like I have a slight palsy or something. Evelyn was pretty much the only one laughing at his jokes, and she laughed so loudly that I’m sure everyone else thought she was planted to warm up the crowd. But she got his number and a signed book out of it. Though we have yet to determine if it’s his real number or Pizza Pizza.

Later it was off to Andrew’s fancy-shmancy penthouse in Waterloo with Emma and Ahmed. It’s ridiculously large and currently still under construction. He only has plans for two hot tubs. Only two. I don’t know how he can live in such poverty.

by static416

This is Emma hanging out on the couch, talking to Ahmed, who was on the other couch.

by static416

I sat to the side and took stalker photos like I usually do.

And that was my exciting Saturday. Out of 245 photos I took, 10 were worth saving and only 5 worth posting here. I’ve got to start improving that ratio.

Be sure to tune in next week for more mediocre photos of people you don’t know, in uninteresting situations. You can’t get this kind of entertainment anywhere else.

It seems like every couple days another study is released. At that point the journalism machine spins into overdrive and starts turning facts into speculation, correlation into causation.

A recent example is the an article in the New York Times that summarizes a study on female bisexuality. The facts of the study were that the women in the study were aroused by photos of naked women or sexual acts, but found photos of naked men about as appealing as landscapes. The author of the study maintains that this doesn’t mean much because of the unnatural environment the test was conducted in, and the multitude of things that cause you to find someone attractive. Despite this the journalist then speculates that all women are inherently bisexual, or at least significantly more so then men. This is a pretty big leap in my opinion.

by Katkreig

How did the photos of naked women compare to those of naked men? A naked woman with her legs spread is always going to convey a different message than a naked man with his legs spread. And why only photos? Attraction is based on more than just the image on my retina.

by Svedek

In addition to the concerns with how they solicited and judged arousal, there is also the cultural aspect to consider. I imagine that this study was probably done entirely in one city. The women there will have different ideas of what is acceptable in male pornography from other areas of the world.

by Erik K Veland

In fact, it’s pretty likely that women in North America will generally feel uncomfortable with the idea of a naked man because of the stigma against that our culture. It’s a common stereotype in hetero-normative society (yes I used that term! 73 points!) that the male form is utilitarian, rough, and non-sexual. Whereas the female form is beautiful, elegant, and sexually-focused.

by Pulpolux !!!

Just because a select group of women were not as aroused by a certain photo of a naked man as they were by a certain photo of a naked woman does not instantly mean that all women are inherently bisexual.

It’s these sorts of extreme extrapolations that always bother me. Journalists don’t seem to grasp the difference between correlation and causation. Causation is much much harder to prove. Our brains like to assume that because two events occur simultaneously, or in sequence, that one causes the other. The reality is rarely that simple.

by Changhua Coast Conservation Action

If there was an increase in violent crime at the same time as an increase in the violence on television, most people would just assume that the TV caused the crime. But just because the two events occurred, does not mean that they are at all related. In fact, it could be argued that the rise in violent crime caused the rise in television violence as TV shows attempted to change their programs to reflect reality.

by davekellam

In order to prove causation, you have to show many cases where one event directly lead to another. The bisexuality study would have to show many things to prove that women are inherently bisexual. They would have to start by showing that women, when controlling for differences in age, location, cultural background, and ethnicity, find men equally sexually attractive as women. Not photos of men and women, but real men and women. Then they would have to show that men do not have the same inclinations, in order to prove that this is a female thing and not merely a human thing.

by City On Fire

Doing either of those things is extremely difficult. Therefore their existing study simply shows that a particular group of women from a particular portion of a society find photos of other women attractive without controlling for environment, culture, society, psychology, or even trends like fashion.

by /reshi

One poorly thought out study that shows a correlation in a small group does not mean anything about humanity in general. The only thing it shows is that journalists are bad at interpreting studies.

This is a crater in the desert which has been burning since 1971. It’s like something out of a movie or Lord of the Rings.

From the Wikipedia article:

Darvaza underground is naturally rich in natural gas. In 1971, during a drilling, geologists accidentally found an underground cavern filled with natural gas. The ground on which the drilling rig was placed collapsed, leaving a large gaping hole exposed with a diameter of about 50-100 meters. To avoid poisonous gases coming out of the hole, it was decided to let the gases burn. As of 2008, gases in the underground cavern are still burning without interruption.

Hilarious.

I’ve noticed that my priorities shift depending on who it is I’m hanging out with at the time. It makes sense really, as everyone judges themselves based on their peer group and if you find you’re not measuring up, you’ll want to improve. The interesting extension of this is that it makes me sorta question how important these goals and subsequent accomplishments are if they are based so much on those around me.

by Paul Watson

I’ll give you some examples. If I hang out with my buddies from high school and their friends, exercise becomes more of my focus. With Joey, it was all about education and philosophy, I wanted to read more and go back to school. With John and his friends, it tends to be more sci-fi and electronics, buy computers and talk about space flight. With internet friends its blogging and photography. With Steph it’s about inside jokes and drinking (are those goals?). With work people it’s programming and XBOX (we’re getting farther from goals here).

by static416

All of these things seem proportionally important to me depending on how much time I spend with these people. They all come from certain parts of my personality, so I own them to some degree. But if they shift so largely in importance, they can’t be that important, can they?

by margolove

So does anybody really choose their own paths then? I mean sure, you make the choice between Engineering or Architecture, but you knew you were going to be taking a job-training sort of applied science because that’s what your parents thought was important. You’ve really only chosen between two relatively similar paths and even those two options were dictated by others. And not going to university was never even considered because of the social class you are in.

by pierofix

People pride themselves on the choices they make in life and denigrate others for making the wrong ones. But I think that it’s very difficult to say with any certainty that you really are solely responsible for where you are in life. If you’d had a slightly different family, different friends, or a different cultural context you may be homeless instead of driving a Maserati to your corporate lawyer job and you might still have a similar personality. I guess it’s not that I think there is no free will at all. It’s just that I think that whatever free will we have is a very minor influence compared to the effects of biology and social context.

by A.J.R

On Wednesday Steph and I got some coffee and conversation at Letteri. I took pictures of her face..

by static416

… she took pictures of mine.

by static416

Friday a bunch of my friends came down for some drinking and a sleepover. Things started off rather civilized, with some beer and music.

by static416

But after having 6 beers each before we left the apartment, followed by one in the distillery, another two at Betty’s, and a shared pitcher at the karaoke bar, things became rather hazy. By the end of the night with Andrew occupying the couch, and no one wanting to sleep on the floor, we opted for a threesome instead.

by static416

That’s Lisa attempting to pull off Matt’s pants and boxers, Matt fighting back, and me shielding my eyes from the flash and the possibility of seeing Matt’s ass.

The next morning brought bacon and eggs at a local cafe and lots of liquids to sooth our sore heads.

by static416

Lisa likes Tropicana. But no pulp.

by static416

This was inspired by a website I was reminded of by the latest episode of Spark. It’s called Some Photos of That Day.

I had seen this site and a related blog entry quite awhile ago, but listening to the originator of the site talk about it really made me want to do something similar. The subject of the site is Jamie Livingston, here’s his wikipedia entry:

Jamie Livingston (October 25, 1956-October 25, 1997) was a New York-based photographer, film-maker and circus performer who from March 31, 1979 through to the day of his death on October 25, 1997 took a Polaroid photograph every day.^[1]

Livingston’s ‘Polaroid a Day’ photographic diary started at Bard College and though some photos have gone missing from the collection, 6,697 Polaroids remain. The collection, dated in sequence, has been organized by his friends Hugh Crawford and Betsy Reid into an exhibit at the Bertelsmann Campus Center at Bard College called “JAMIE LIVINGSTON. PHOTO OF THE DAY: 1979-1997″, which opened in 2007.

What’s so interesting about this site is seeing the highs, lows, and expansive mediocrity of someone else’s life. This is especially well punctuated by the fact that starting on May 2, 1997 he begins his losing battle with cancer. Enroute to his death he ties up loose ends, including proposing to, and marrying his girlfriend which is expressed in the photo of the ring above and subsequent photos of the marriage.

The last photo shows his friend playing music for him in his hospital room before he dies the following day.

Now I don’t expect to die anytime soon, but I think that having relevant photos of a large part of my life would be valuable to me and interesting to others. I’m not expecting it to be overly artistic, but only for it show what I’ve been up to.

When I started writing this post a few days ago I was going to take a photo each day and post them here. However, after thinking about it, I don’t want to be spamming my blog with photos of what I had for dinner on a daily basis.

by static416

Instead I’m going to still try to take some photos everyday, and then on Sunday’s I’ll post a selection of them with a few words about the context and maybe what I did that week. Luckily my life is not very interesting so the posts will be brief.

For a quick taste of what you’ve got coming to you, here’s a photo I took of the cold medicine section of the pharmacy I was in while I waited for Steph to get her birth control (I hear that her and her boyfriend have pre-martial sexual intercourse).

by static416

I was listening to CBC this morning on the way to work and they were talking about some survey that showed that something like 45% of men and 35% of women are overweight, and another 10% of both sexes are obese. The hosts of the show were astonished to realize that their BMI put the them both solidly in the overweight area, with the guy bordering on obese. Both of them remarking “But I don’t think of myself as fat, maybe a little pudgy, but not fat.”

by glangille

So how do people justify their weight to themselves? I have a couple theories. People compare themselves to other fat people, and they have the misconception that their body fat is healthy, or at least not too unhealthy.

by a.saliga

People call me skinny all the time. At family functions I’m encouraged to eat more because of my “skinny” status and the chauvinistic idea that unless you eat until you are in pain when in public situations, you aren’t a real man. Women are supposed to eat one course, men are supposed eat until they rupture something.

by bayat

The reason that most people misjudge their fatness is because they judge their body fat levels by the levels of those around them, not by what is considered healthy. Men will compare themselves to that 55% of overweight or obese men and say “Well I’m not as bad as most of them so I’m ok”. No, you are not ok. You are not healthy merely because there are people who are fatter than you.

by Malingering

The recommended body fat percentage for men is 8–14% and for women is 20-25% (BMI 18.5-25 for both). If you exceed that you are overweight and are unhealthy. The ideal body fat is not arbitrarily selected because it sounds like a nice number. It’s based on statistical evidence. People who fall within the ideal range live the longest and have the least health problems. “But you need a certain amount of fat to be healthy!”. Yes, you need 2–5% for men or 12–15% for women. Chances are extremely good that you are well above that minimum.

by Kyle May

I have no illusions about my health and I don’t let people infer that just because I’m not gigantic, I’m inherently healthy. Despite many people saying so, I’m not skinny. Based on online tests, my body fat percentage is about 14% or a BMI of 23.1. That’s the high end of normal.

I’m not happy with where I am and so I’ve restarted an excercise regime that will get me closer to where I want to be. It’s not really hard, you just have to decide to do it and make the time. Not only does it improve your health and your self-image, but the increased endrophines improve your mood and energy as well. As always, I probably won’t maintain this level of activity forever, but 6 years ago I had a bodyfat of 23% and now I’m at 14%. Progress is slow because I’m not dedicated enough, but I’m moving in the right direction and every year I can say with confidence that I’m in the best shape of my life.

BMI Calculator
Body Fat Calculator

UPDATE: Torontoist covering the survey I mentioned. Link.

These are some of my own shots and the stories around them.

This is the Shed Cafe in Montreal. Steph and I went there for few days on vacation once. Fun times. I love the color in this one, it’s actually a 1.3 sec exposure with the camera resting on the back of the bench.

Candles on Kevin’s back porch. I try to shoot night shots without a flash wherever possible. Makes for better photos. The 1.8 setting on my 50mm lens makes this possible.

This is Snakey II and he is a Variable Bush Viper (Atheris squamiger) I kind of miss him. He was so cute and snappy. This shot during one of the brief moments he wasn’t attempting to envenomate me. So adorable. I was using a flourescent aquarium light for the lighting and shooting with the lens poking through a cardboard screen to prevent from being bitten. Don’t want to lose a finger and end up in the hospital for the sake of a photograph.

This is the Queen St. bridge over the DVP. I’m really happy with how this turned out (its better in large on black). I may go back to see if I can get a better angle, but it was about -15 Celsius at the time and I wasn’t eager to hang around without gloves or a toque.

The best of the very few B&W shots I’ve taken. It was at Labyrinth Lounge in the Annex. Left to right that’s Steph, Kevin, and Sam. Great expressions on all of them. I miss my photography-happy days. There was a time when I was taking 1000 photos a week. Now I’m lucky if I take 50 a month.

This one is just about the content, no artistry here. This is Hans’s hand after our trip to NYC. After watching Liam successfully open a beer with his Iron Ring, Hans tried it. The bottle exploded and because he was holding it so tight, and he mashed the pieces into his palm. 7 stitches later they left the hospital at 6am. Turns out you can’t go back to Canada to hide from a hospital bill, they find you.

Came home and the power was out throughout the entire distillery district, and surrounding area. Then the fire alarm went off. They used this shot in a Torontoist article. I’m internet-famous.

Mill St. Brewery in the Distillery District (where I live… the Distillery, not the bar). Took a bunch of these shots on a walkabout of the district. All of them were shot from the ground with a little portable tripod.

This is from when Kevin, Tony, Sam, and I went to visit Steph during her Katimavik stay near Quebec City. Just a cool expression.

Just like the lighting and texture in this one. It’s a fence near where I used to live in High Park.

My Dad was working on his Jaguar.

This one is just all about the subject matter. One of my baby Eyelash vipers eating a baby mouse. Tasty. It’s pretty much the most popular shot on my Flickr account. I was so happy when I got these guys to eat, they’re kinda finicky sometimes.

Liam, Hans, and I on a Subway platform in NYC (more shots here). That was a fun trip. I wasn’t going to go originally, but it turned out to be probably the best $500 I’ve ever spent. 4 days in Manhattan and finish it off with a Rage/Wu-Tang concert. Doesn’t get any better than that.

I have a few flower shots. I try to stay away from them because they are kinda cliche and there is no shortage of plant-related photography. But they just turn out so nice.

It makes me laugh ever time I look at it. Tony is actually looking at something beyond Stephanie’s butt. Or so he says!

The sunset at a cottage near Dwight, Ontario. Definitely in my top five ever.

All of these and many more can be found if you sort through my Flickr account. What’s really a shame is that I no longer have any of the originals for most of these, or almost any of the ones on Flickr. I lost almost everything in a hard drive crash, over 9000 photos gone. I had a backup system, but I found out after the crash that it hadn’t been backing up.

The moral of this story is, always backup, and make sure your backup works.