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TEDWomen Day 2 highlights: personal robots, breast cancer detection, and parenting taboos

Lisa Katayama — Thu, 09 Dec 2010 01:51:13 +0000

I departed TEDWomen feeling very inspired, happy, and exhausted. The event was amazing, though I do think they could have done a better job of bringing more smart women who can talk about traditionally non-women issues — math, sports, science not related to breasts or pregnancy — to the stage. (Hearing Danielle Fisher talk about how she felt when she became the youngest woman to climb the Seven Summits, for example, would have been more fulfilling to me than listening to a parade of political figureheads talk about what it was like to be both a grandmother and a leader.) I hope TEDWomen will catalyze bringing more women to main TED, and that we'll be able to dig deeper beyond the rhetoric female empowerment and gender disparity to stories about women who do really cool shit and don't necessarily have to frame it as a woman thing.

Here are some highlights from day two (see also: Session 1 highlights & Session 2 highlights.):

Cynthia Breazeal, founder of the Personal Robots Lab at MIT, talked about how personalized robots can be used to improve communication, health, and media. She's been fascinated with personal sidekick robots since watching Star Wars as a child and has expanded her research based on the idea that robots = social technology. "People respond to robots a lot like how they respond to people," she says — by how likable, engaging, and trustworthy they are.

Communication: Breazeal's parents hardly ever get to see their grandkids because they live thousands of miles away; what if grandma could appear in the kids' room as Grandma Bot and interact with the kids by playing with real world toys or reading books by the bedside?

Health: In an experiment conducted with a diet program in the Boston area, participants who had a robot displaying diet information on-screen had a much more interactive and trusting experience than those who had a computer screen displaying the same information. People named the robot, dressed it up, even said good bye to it when it returned to MIT at the end of the study. People did not say good bye to their computers.

Media: Breazeal is experimenting with new ways of coming up with children's media that fosters creativity and innovation. She showed a video of her kids playing with a little cubic robot that comes out of a giant screen and plays with them. Quote:

Robots touch something deeply human within us. Whether they make us feel more inovative and creative, more connected thru distance... or tells us more about ourselves, to me, robots are all about people.

Deborah Rhodes talked about the importance of individualizing breast cancer screening based on breast density. Dense breast tissue and tumors both appear white in a mammogram — it's not an effective detection method for some women. Rhodes is currently perfecting a new technology called molecular breast imaging (MBI) that offers a much more accurate tumor detection system for women with denser breasts.

MBI uses a gamma detector made of thin layer of semiconductor material to produce much clearer images that do not show breast density in white. The first prototype was made by putting together a grid of these gamma plates and attaching them to an old mammography machine with duct tape.

A mammogram relies on appearance of tissue, but MBI evaluates the molecular behavior of tumors and is impervious to density. Patients receive an injection of radio tracer; then the breast is placed between detectors and uses light, pain-free compression (if you've ever had a mammogram, you know that this step normally hurts like hell) to transmit the image to the computer. In 2004, Rhodes got a grant from the Susan G. Komen foundation to study a thousand women with dense breasts — digital mammography only found 25% of tumors, while MBI found 83%. The MBI has a radiation dose equivalent to radiation of one digital mammogram, about 1/5 the amount of most gamma technologies.

MBI is as accurate as MRI, far less complex to interpret, and a fraction of the cost. Rhodes also talked a little about the politics of breast cancer research — she had trouble getting it published because some journal owners had vested interest in other competing technologies. The manuscript will be published later this month in the journal Radiology.

Babble.com founders Rufus Griscom and Alisa Volkman — who are married to each other and have three boys — gave a funny talk about how speaking about parenting honestly and managing expectations can "bend the happiness baseline" while raising a family together. They presented their ideas as a list of four parenting taboos:

1. You can't say you didn't fall in love with your baby in the first minute: Griscom told a funny story about the overwhelm and intense emotions he felt the moment his first baby popped out — as exciting as it was, what he felt for the baby was more "very strong affection" than "the most love it's possible to feel." Volkman joked that, for the first few months after each of their children's births, Griscom is Uncle Rufus (i.e. not Dad).

2. You can't talk about how lonely having a baby can be: Right after the birth, Volkman said, "I felt like I was a vessel for the future of humanity." But when she got home, she felt disconnected/shut out/shut in. When she asked her sister why she hadn't warned her about this loneliness, the sister said: it's just not something you want to be telling a new mother. Volkman says we should talk about the difficult aspects of new motherhood with brutal honesty and candor. Less than 50% of Americans live near family members; in other cultures, expecting mothers move back in with their own mothers for the months immediately before and after childbirth.

3. You can't talk about your miscarriage: 15-20% of pregnancies end in miscarriage, yet there's no community around this "invisible loss." Volkman talked about her own miscarriage and showed the last ultrasound photo of what would have been her second soon. "I felt shame that I failed at something I'm genetically engineered to do."

4. You can't say that your average happiness has declined: Raising a child through the terrible twos and teenage angst is tough. And while it's full of more ups and downs that you might ever have in your lifetime, it's quite likely that your average happiness will decline compared to when you were young and single or after the kids leave the nest and you're free to do whatever you want.

Also....
*Heather Knight brought a robot on-stage to tell live jokes.
*National Geographic filmmakers Beverly and Derek Joubert showed amazing footage of lionesses attacking elephants and leopards nurturing baby baboons in Africa.
*Donna Karan talked about how how the death of her father, her boss Anne Klein, her mother, and her life partner were all also pivotal moments of birth in her career.
*Kiran Bedi, India's first female police officer and prison commissioner, gave the first and only parking ticket to an Indian prime minister and later introduced prayer and meditation to 1,000 prisoners.
*The Skoll Foundation's Sally Osberg stopped reading Cinderella stories at age 10 and instead read biographies about the early social entrepreneurs of America, like Florence Nightingale and Eleanor Roosevelt. "They were problem solvers who understood that ministering to the suffering and the inflicted was nice, but insufficient."
*20-year old Sejal Hathi talked about the power of community for girls — to date, her organization Girls Helping Girls has trained and mobilized over 30,000 young women who are creating microenterprises and sustainable initiatives in their communities.

Highlights from TEDWomen Session 2: Feministing.com, Sheryl Sandberg of Facebook, and A Call To Men

Lisa Katayama — Tue, 07 Dec 2010 15:43:42 +0000

There were three really amazing talks in the second session of TEDWomen this evening. (Highlights from session 1 are here.) Here's a quick summary:

Courtney E. Martin, the 30-year old co-editor of Feministing.com, gave an engaging and deeply moving talk at Session 2 of TEDWomen today about how her generation is re-imagining feminism. She explained it as three paradoxes:

1. Reclaiming the past and promptly forgetting it.
Martin, the daughter of liberals, grew up denying that she was a feminist until she saw Manifesta co-author Jennifer Baumgardner in fishnet stockings. Part of the challenge of feminism, she says, is to acknowledge that aesthetics, beauty, and fun do matter. "My feminism is very indebted to my mom's, but it's very different. [She] says patriarchy, I say intersectionality... she says protest march, I say online organizing... Feminist blogging is the 21st century version of consciousness raising." Feminism is no longer about man-hating and Birkenstocks.

2. Sobering up about our smallness and maintaining faith in our greatness.
Shortly after graduating from Barnard College in 2002, Martin became disillusioned by the lack of impact she felt she was having even though she worked at a non-profit and took part in volunteer protests. When she sat down to tell her family about it, her mom said to her: I won't stand for your desperation. Even if what you're doing feels small, you still have to have faith in the grandeur of it all.

3. Aiming to succeed wildly and being fulfilled by failing really well.
Martin quoted Parker Palmer, who said:

We are whiplashed between an arrogant overestimation of ourselves and a servile underestimation of ourselves.

After she picked herself up from her disillusion, Martin realized that life is not about glory or security; instead, you have to embrace the paradoxes, act in the face of overwhelm, and learn to love really well.

My favorite talk of the day was by Sheryl Sandberg, the COO of Facebook. We're lucky we live in a world where career choices for women are fairly unlimited, but the numbers at the top are still bleak. Of the 190 heads of state in the world, only 9 are women; only 13% of worldwide Parliamentarians are women; and corporations only have about 15% women at C-level jobs. Even non-profits only show a 20% female leadership.

We as women face much harder choices between professional success and personal fulfillment. So how do we keep women in the workforce? What kind of messages do we want to give to ourselves and our daughters? Sandberg admits even she doesn't have the answer, but provides three insights that really resonated with me:

1. Sit at the table.
When it comes to self-promotion and taking credit for good work, women often back off way earlier than men do. 57% of men after college negotiate for salaries; only 7% of women do. Men often attribute success to themselves ("Ask men and they'll say: I'm awesome") whereas women will usually say: someone helped me, I got lucky, I worked really hard. Quote:

Nobody gets to the corner office by sitting at the side of the table. No one gets a promotion if they don't understand or own their success. I wish I could tell that to my daughter, but it's not that simple.

Sandberg also points out that success and likability are positively correlated for men and negatively correlated for women. So when a woman is successful, people tend not to like her. This was proven in an experiment done with students, where the exact same example of a successful leader was given twice, one named Herbert and one named Heidi. Everyone loved Herbert; not that many people liked Heidi.

2. Make your partner a real partner.
When a male and female partner both work full time, the woman on average does twice the amount of housework and three times the childcare. So if one parent has to drop out of the workforce, it usually ends up being the woman. Households with equal responsibility have half the divorce rate and better intimacy; it's better all around if this was more the rule than the exception.

3. Don't leave before you leave.
A lot of women marginalize their work life if they think they're going to have kids in the near future, because they assume they will leave.

We're all busy. Everyone's busy. A woman is busy. She starts thinking about having a child... about making room for the child, and literally from that moment she doesn't raise her hand anymore. She doesn't take on promotions or look for new projects.
What happens when you start quietly leaning back? Once you have a child at home, your job better be really good to go back. It needs to be challenging and rewarding, and if two years ago you didn't take a promotion — if three years ago you didn't start looking for opportunities — you're going to be bored.
Stay in. Keep your foot on the gas pedal until the very day you need to leave to take a break for your child. Don't make decisions too far in advance.

Sandberg ended by saying that she hopes that things will change for future generations, and that one day, her daughter will not only succeed, but be liked while doing so. I strongly recommend that you watch this talk when it goes live on the TED web site.

One of the few men to speak today was Tony Porter, who runs an organized for men to end violence against women called A Call To Men. Porter was raised in Harlem and the Bronx, where men were raised to have no fear, no emotions except anger, to be dominant, in charge, superior, and strong. Women, on the other hand, are inferior, have less value, and are objectified. He calls this the collective socialization of men, or the "man box."

Porter makes a call to redefine manhood. Why can't boys cry if they're scared or sad? Why does a man have to apologize for crying at his own child's funeral? It if destroys a boy to be called a girl, then what are we teaching him about girls?

He ends by saying: "My liberation as a man is tied to your liberation as a woman."

Porter was amazing, but a few of us did find it odd that he and the one other man to go on stage during this session — a Maasai father who came full circle to accept his daughter back into his home after she ran away to escape female genital mutilation — were the only ones who got a standing ovation. Why do the few men on stage get applauded more loudly than the multitudes of women who have done amazing things?

Highlights from TEDWomen Session 1: finance in Iceland, Hans Rosling on washing machines, and how women + humor = change

Lisa Katayama — Tue, 07 Dec 2010 08:06:14 +0000

I'm at TEDWomen, which takes today and tomorrow at the International Trade Center in Washington, DC. The organizers have turned this venue into a wonderful little sanctuary with massage stations, a cartoon exhibit, and lots and lots of coffee — much needed after the red eye that brought me to the biting cold East Coast just this morning. Here are some highlights from the first session:

Hans Rosling gave a funny talk that posited economic development against the proliferation of the washing machine. When Rosling was seven, he watched his mother load a washing machine for the first time in his life. They invited his grandmother over to watch — she has been heating stoves on firewood to handwash clothes for seven children with her entire life — and the grandmother sat mesmerized in front of the contraption through the entire wash cycle. "To [her], the washing machine was a miracle."

It doesn't take much research to know that the bottom two billion people live on less than $2 a day — below the poverty line — and that one billion people spend more than $80 a day — above what he calls the "air" line. Rosling did some serious digging and number crunching to divvy up the economic scale by washing machine ownership. It turns out that an additional one billion people own washing machine, i.e. live above the "wash" line. These people spend about $40 a day. This means that, in a world with seven billion people, two billion have washing machines and the remaining five billion still wash their clothes by hand. This is a task that mainly falls on women, who spend hours every week performing this heavy-duty task by hand, often lugging water to their homes or their laundry to a water source far away. "They all want a washing machine. There's nothing different about their wish than my grandma's two generations ago in Sweden."

Rosling wrapped his talk with two important points: one, that as the population grows, the top consumers of money and energy need to spend less energy and transfer some of the current energy usage to green energy usage. Two, having a washing machine allowed him and his mother the time to enjoy things like reading books.

Halla Tomasdottir explained how her financial firm, Audur Capital, survived Iceland's 2007 economic collapse without any direct losses because she incorporated feminine values into her business:

1. Risk awareness: not investing in things she didn't understand. "It's not complicated, but there was a lot of reckless risk-taking in 2007."
2. Straight talking: using simple language that people understand.
3. Emotional capital: "We believe that doing emotional due diligence is just as important as financial due diligence. It's people that make and lose money, not Excel spreadsheets."
4. Profit with principles: looking beyond just economic profits in the next quarter to long-term financial, social, and environmental benefits.

Tomasdottir thinks pairing female values with sustainability practices will yield some of the most interesting investment opportunities in the years to come. A lot of people try to rebuild models that have failed over and over again, but a new way of thinking about consumerism and the balance between the men and women could lead good businesses to change the world.

Also...

* New Yorker cartoonist Liza Donnelly gave a hilarious illustrated short talk about the expectations girls grow up with (eat this, wear that, don't be like this); how her mother gave her a cartooning book instead of pushing these ideals on her; and how women + humor = change.

* Ted Turner showed up for a quick interview with organizer Pat Mitchell. He reiterated an idea presented in the past that, if only women held positions in elected office for the next 100 years, they would spent money on healthcare and education — not aircrafts and weapons — and end war. When asked what women have influenced him most, he said: "My mother, my last wife Jane Fonda, my daughters... and all the women I've loved before."

* In taped footage from a November TED event, Liberian president Ellen Johnson Sirleaf said this about being the "iron lady" of Africa: "Being a woman and going through what I went through set me apart and enabled me to achieve what I achieved. I've been a victor of circumstances."

The Last Hospice

Lisa Katayama — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 00:01:38 +0000

The Last Hospice

By Lisa Katayama

I'm a volunteer at Maitri, the only remaining AIDS hospice in San Francisco. Once a week, I hang out with its 15 residents, run errands for them, and — sometimes — sit at their bedsides as they go through the process of dying. I do it because I like to face my fears, and death is the one thing that I fear the most.

My relationship with Vinny began at a time when I was subconsciously distancing myself from Maitri. After the tragic deaths of a few long-term residents I had gotten very close to (two died of natural causes; one was brutally murdered while out with her abusive boyfriend; another bled too much from his dialysis tube), I was feeling depleted and scared to create new connections. I still came in for my weekly sessions, but I spent more time chatting with other volunteers and less time connecting with the residents themselves. It felt safer that way.

During a routine volunteer support group meeting, a woman named April mentioned that she wanted to make a book for Vinny. He had been showing her his poetry, and she thought it would be a good idea to get it published. But April is a self-proclaimed luddite and barely knows how to turn on a computer. So I offered to help.

On a foggy Wednesday afternoon several months ago, April introduced me to Vinny, a 54-year old man from Oakland. He's a dapper fellow in a wheelchair who wears black leather, lace, dangling cross necklaces, and thick metal bracelets. His room is colorful and full of life — a bright blue bedspread with tigers on it adorns his single bed, and an oversized dolphin tapestry hangs above the headboard. A thick black cross nests between two rainbow-colored butterfly-shaped cushions on his pillows. His closet is overflowing with one-of-a-kind outfits — a sleek leather Looney Tunes jacket, a blue silk robe, a purple Spiderman suit — that he picks up at the thrift store downstairs.

I sat in Vinny's room for hours as he showed us his writing and graciously answered our questions. In addition to publishing his poetry, we wanted to chronicle his life for posterity. Maybe posterity isn't the right word, because all five of his children are dead. (He won't tell me why.) Vinny's explanation is more blunt: he just doesn't want anyone else to make the same mistakes he did. I transcribed his every word on my MacBook as he spilled stories about his horrible childhood, his careers as a drug dealer and an airport hydraulics specialist, and the diagnosis that changed his life.

I remember a long time ago when I was a small child; in these days children were poor and abused by their elders. It was an every day thing. Every morning when my eyes opened they both had tears in them because I knew that day would bring pain, lots of pain. Black and blue marks across my face, and my hands crushed in car doors on purpose. I was forced to take pills that at the time had affects on me. I thought being raped was just part of my life. There were boys and little girls who knew this whole picture was wrong. But who would you tell at that time? Who would listen to what a kid had to say?
No one at all.

"Have you ever been hit on the head with a high heel shoe until you bled?" Vinny asked me. I stupidly shook my head no. "I was hit because she was so drunk and she would come in and beat me. She would call me names and take off her shoe and put holes in me. I was a tiny little kid and didn't know what to do. I needed an escape from my pain, to get out of that morbid, morbid world I was in." Other things "she" did included tying a rope around his neck and making him eat sauerkraut — his least favorite food in the world — on his hands and knees. He ran away from home when he was 6. He lost his virginity to his twenty-something year old baby sitter when he was 9. Her name is tattooed on his right arm.

Vinny spent his whole life trying to right the wrongs done to him as a child. He never beat his children. He got married and bought a house in San Bruno and held a proper job working on the hangars at San Francisco International Airport for over a decade. There was just one problem: the demons from his childhood. They followed him wherever he went. Sometimes they showed up by his bedside in the shape of a mythical alp. Other times, as vampires in his dreams.

It only takes one person to take you down that path of no return. I had a great job working at the San Francisco International Airport for over 17 years. But one day after work, my friend and I bought some speed. We only had one outfit, so we shared. He went first. I've known him and his wife for 15 years, so I knew he was clean — or so I thought.
One day, he got sick, so we took him to the hospital. He came back HIV positive. His wife and I cried and took the test too because we had shared his needle. Needless to say, mine came back positive as well.
The suicidal thoughts alone took me to places nightmares are made of.
He died three months later. I quit my job at the airport, paid off my house and gave it to my wife, whom I divorced because I was afraid she or someone in my world would contract my sickness.
I gave up my life and moved to San Francisco to die with the others who had AIDS. I've been around for a long time. I thought I was all this and that, Mr. Big Shit, but what I really was was stuck on stupid, just like everyone else who thought the easy way out was easy.

Vinny packed a few things in his truck, said good bye, and drove south. For the next two decades he lived peripatetically, camping with his dog and making the occasional trip up to San Francisco to sell drugs and buy anti-retrovirals. In other words, he became one of those people that society has written off. A failure. During his last few years on the streets, he became a licensed minister and offered services to friends who were dying. He came to Maitri as an end-of- life patient in April.

We all struggle to fit in, some of us more than others. Most of us figure it out somewhere down the road and find societies we feel like we belong to, or can at least pretend to belong to. And then there are the Vinnys of the world — they're born unlucky and stay that way. No matter how hard they try, they are unable to integrate. Many of the residents here suffered from extreme poverty, misfortune, and addictions in life. This beautiful zen-inspired space where they have come to die is more peaceful than other settings they've lived in — drug-infested SROs, crowded hospitals, the city streets. Even then, facing death is no easy feat.

Vinny's cancer is eating holes into his eye socket and his left cheek. The entire right side of his face has melted away; you can see that there's nothing underneath his tattooed skin. It hurts. He can barely sleep.

My friend who is a nurse once told me about her experiences of observing how families react to the death of a loved one at her hospital. Some try to fight it by telling the dying person not to go; some try to negotiate with it with medication, life support, oxygen; others put it on trial, finding someone to blame for what's happening to them. One of my favorite books in the world, The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, offers advice on how to not fear death and let loved ones die peacefully according to Tibetan Buddhist principles. I'm not a Tibetan Buddhist, but I'm going to take their advice on this one. Here's what author Sogyal Rinpoche suggests you say to someone who is dying:

I am here with you and I love you. You are dying, and that is completely natural; it happens to everyone. I wish you could stay here with me, but I don't want you to suffer anymore. The time we have had together has been enough, and I shall always cherish it. Please now don't hold onto life any longer. Let go. I give you my full and heartfelt permission to die. You are not alone, now or ever. You have all my love.

Vinny is getting weaker every day. When I saw him yesterday, he was so much worse off than he was a week ago. He can barely sit up but he refuses to lie down in his bed, maybe because he knows that's where he is expected to die. All I can do is sit by him and reassure him that he is not alone and that it's okay to be afraid.

You can buy a copy of Vinny's book here or donate directly to Maitri here. A very special thanks to Vinny for being brave enough to share his story with the world.

Update (Sept. 2, 2010): Vinny died at this morning at 8:35am.

Longshot Magazine's treasure map: follow it and win $750

Lisa Katayama — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 10:38:49 +0000

Over the weekend, the staff of Longshot Magazine (previously known as 48 Hour Magazine) hid $750 somewhere in San Francisco. Now they've revealed four clues on their web site — including this treasure map by Wendy MacNaughton — to help you find it. If you locate it, the cash is yours. So what are you waiting for?

The Great Longshot Treasure Hunt

Climb On!

Lisa Katayama — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 04:01:04 +0000

Climb On!

By Lisa Katayama

I want to entertain an offhand theory that I've had ever since I became obsessed with indoor rock climbing two and a half years ago: It's great for geeks, and we should all be doing it.

The concept is simple: you tie into a rope that hangs from the top of a wall and climb that wall according to color-coded fake rocks that are bolted into it. Within this simplicity lie some great life lessons that you can experience all while having an amazingly fun time: conquer your fears, solve puzzles, stay fit.

1. Conquer your fears: A lot of people are scared of heights. Most of us are scared of falling. None of us want to die. When you climb, you have to push these fears out of your head. It takes focus to be 40 feet high and pulling up on two fingers or balancing on your toes while trying to get higher up the wall; you have to use that focus to breathe through the climb and push past your fears.

2. Solve puzzles: There's a huge problem solving factor to climbing; it's like a giant physical algorithm or brain teaser that you solve by knowing how to use your body as your mathematical tool. "Climbing is like solving a giant dynamic first-person 3D puzzle," says Tantek Çelik, author of HTML5 Now: A Step-by-Step Video Tutorial for Getting Started Today and a competitive climber himself. "Your body is a flexible puzzle piece and the wall is a puzzle. You have to figure out how to fit your body into the wall, how to twist, turn, stretch, grab, hang, push to climb up the wall hold by hold. It takes spatial reasoning, body self-awareness, balance, and fine motor-control."

When I was a kid, I played a lot of sports. I also played a lot of Tetris. The two were always separate. Climbing feels like playing Tetris with my body. In other words, it's like being inside a video game. Kind of.

Some of the most badass rock climbers in the world are total geeks at heart. Matt Wilder, the guy in the photos, is a professional sponsored rock climber and the author of the most up-to-date guide book on bouldering in Yosemite. He's also a speed cubing geek who is currently doing a double degree in computer science and applied math. When he was in his early 20s, Wilder spent two summers hanging out at San Francisco's Pier 39, next to the silver Statue of Liberty guy, speed-cubing for tips. On a good day, he made $25 an hour; he saved up the cash and spent the rest of the year climbing in Yosemite or Tahoe. "Cubing is a good mix of dexterity, problem solving, and rapid thinking. In that way, it's a lot like climbing."

Image: Jason Kehl

Science has yet to prove the relationship between climbing and Tetris or the Rubik's Cube, but Berkeley neuroscientist Jack Gallant says there's a chance they could be linked. "Both rock climbing and cube solving require some form of spatial reasoning, so it isn't out of the question that they share some common neural substrates in the brain. The extent to which these tasks use overlapping versus distinct processing mechanisms simply isn't known at this point."

3. Stay fit: Climbing is a lot less strenuous than running on a treadmill or doing bicep curls. You never lift more than your own weight, and since you're using all your muscles at once, your body becomes strong and evenly toned. Depending on the route, it can be a total balancing act, a cardio-heavy endurance challenge, or a series of pull ups. Yoga is a great complement to climbing; I try to do one or the other at least every other day to keep my core strong, my breathing steady, and my strength and balance intact.

The trend is clear: geeks are climbing. Every other person I meet at my gym is a software engineer. At SXSW and at other tech events across the country, conference-goers gather together for Geeks Love Climbing, a regular indoor rock climbing outing that Çelik helped found a couple of years ago. "A climbing problem pushes all other thoughts and feelings out of your head," he says. "This is very similar to a tough programming problem." Çelik would know — he is, after all, one of the guys who led the creation of IE5 for Mac.

You don't need to be a natural athlete to be a good climber. You do need to be persistent, obsessive, and determined to solve problems. If you like programming, Tetris, or Rubik's Cube, there's a good chance you'll become as much of a climbing junkie as I am.

Here's what you'll need to start indoor rock climbing

1. Climbing shoes: Try La Sportiva's Katanas or a pair of custom-designed Evolvs for comfort, style, and performance.

2. A harness: I use the Black Diamond Lotus harness, it has lots of gear loops and fits swimmingly.

3. A belay lesson. You'll need to know how to tie a couple of basic knots and learn some safety measures. A seasoned friend could teach you in half an hour, or you could take a class at your local gym.

Watercolor painting depicting cell division

Lisa Katayama — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 10:45:12 +0000

Artist Michele Banks uses watercolor to depict natural, scientific, and medical phenomena. This one above shows cell divisions (note that it's not meant to be completely accurate); another one I like is a bright blue canvas with a single line showing someone's heart rate. Her work is available for sale in the Makers Market/Boing Boing Bazaar!

[via Try Handmade via Submitterator]

Japanese TV commercial for jock itch cream

Lisa Katayama — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 03:54:30 +0000

Check out this great Japanese TV commercial for Delicare M's, a jock itch cream. Tokyo gets really hot in the summer, and men still have to wear suits to work, so the idea of a refreshingly itch-less crotch is likely to appeal to many salarymen.

[via Spoon & Tamago via TokyoMango]

Octopuses? Octopi? Octopodes?

Lisa Katayama — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 08:14:03 +0000

What's the plural of octopus? Octopuses? Octopi? Octopodes? According to this video by Merriam Webster editor Kory Stamper, all three are technically correct. Video link.

(via Jen Phillips' Twitter)

August Titanic expedition will create 3D map of the wreckage

Lisa Katayama — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 07:49:00 +0000

On August 18th, an expedition team will be heading out to the Titanic site to create a 3D map of the wreckage 2.5 miles beneath the sea. 1,522 people died in the Titanic shipwreck in 1912; oceanographer Robert Ballard discovered the remains in 1985, and since then a bunch of different expeditions have headed out there in an attempt to salvage artifacts or take photos. But this one appears to be by far the most technologically intensive and expensive mission.

The "dream team" of archaeologists, oceanographers and other scientists want to get the best assessment yet on the two main sections of the ship, which have been subjected to fierce deep-ocean currents, salt water and intense pressure.
...The expedition will use imaging technology and sonar devices that never have been used before on the Titanic wreck and to probe nearly a century of sediment in the debris field to seek a full inventory of the ship's artifacts.

New Titanic expedition will create 3D map of wreck [SFGate]

My Fair Lady X zombies t-shirt

Lisa Katayama — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 05:52:05 +0000

This seems like the perfect shirt for those of you who are theater geeks and zombie geeks. Art by Kyle Strahm.

Product page (Thanks, SamCostello! via Submitterator)

Pen ad features intricately tattooed Lego characters

Lisa Katayama — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 04:37:01 +0000

Boing Boing developer Dean Putney found these great advertisements for Pilot's Extra-Fine ballpoint pens. They're so thin you can draw these intricate tattoos on Lego people!

[via Flavorwire]

Man finds Ansel Adams negatives, worth $200 million, at garage sale

Lisa Katayama — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 03:50:05 +0000

A garage sale enthusiast from Fresno, California scored big time when he bought two small boxes of glass plate negatives for $45 a decade ago. He has just confirmed that these belonged to the famous Yosemite photographer Ansel Adams, and are worth $200 million.

Clock shows world time as a spiraling line graph

Lisa Katayama — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 03:35:11 +0000

This is one of those design-y objects that is conceptually and visually neat but might be hard to justify in daily life. It shows world time via an arm that connects different time zones.

The Wrong Objects [via Dezeen]

Remix of scenes in Mad Men of people smoking cigarettes

Lisa Katayama — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 11:18:21 +0000

The latest creation from Joe Sabia is this video of people smoking cigarettes in Mad Men. They write:

This video will have one of two results. This repetitious, perfunctory and seemingly pointless act of inhaling smoke may turn you off to smoking cigarettes. Or, the fact that this repetitious, perfunctory, and seemingly pointless act is carried out by such debonair, dashing human beings will make you run to your corner store and chimney down a carton before dinner. Either way, advertising works.

Cigarettes or not, I just love the aesthetics of this show. And the music in the background.

Tickle me Melmo, foul-mouthed Mel Gibson-headed plush toy

Lisa Katayama — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 09:33:45 +0000

If Mel Gibson was a talking plush toy...

(Thanks, hyAnis! Via)

Arthur C. Clarke predicted satellite TV and GPS in the 40s and 50s

Lisa Katayama — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 08:59:28 +0000

Above, a letter written by Arthur C. Clarke in 1956 predicting, quite accurately, aspects of the future of communications.

Link [via Letters of Note via dvice]

5-year old girl accidentally kidnapped in carjacking

Lisa Katayama — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 08:42:51 +0000

A 5-year old girl was accidentally kidnapped this morning when someone carjacked her dad's Cadillac while he was paying for gas at a Richmond, CA gas station. The girl — and later the car — were found abandoned on two separate street corners nearby.

The neuroscience of break-ups: it's like craving cocaine!

Lisa Katayama — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 05:21:09 +0000

A study published in the July issue of the Journal of Neurophysiology found that romantic break-ups activate parts of the brain that are associated with addiction cravings:

"This brain imaging study of individuals who were still 'in love' with their rejecter supplies further evidence that the passion of 'romantic love' is a goal-oriented motivation state rather than a specific emotion" the researchers concluded, noting that brain imaging showed some similarities between romantic rejection and cocaine craving. "The findings are consistent with the hypothesis that romantic love is a specific form of addiction."
The study also helps to explain "why feelings and behaviors related to romantic rejection are difficult to control" and why extreme behaviors associated with romantic rejection such as stalking, homicide, suicide, and clinical depression occur in cultures all over the world, the researchers wrote.

I think most of us have experienced this feeling at one point in our lives, but it's interesting to know it can be backed up by science.

Anguish of romantic rejection may be linked to stimulation of areas of brain related to motivation, reward, and addiction [Science Daily]

The Birthing of Estee Longah

Lisa Katayama — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 15:07:16 +0000

The birthing of Estee Longah

By LISA KATAYAMA

I always thought my friend Alex would look pretty as a girl.

He has huge doe eyes, fair skin, and a dimpled smile that can charm the pants off of anyone, male or female. The first time I saw him dress in drag was at InTouch, a now-defunct gay Asian bar in the Tenderloin. He was wearing a blond wig and a black dress; he did a little Sex and the City number with three other guys on stage. That evening, he went by the name Scary Bradshaw.

Now, four years later, Alex has found a more permanent identity as Estee Longah, a fabulous vintage queen and founder of a semi-professional all-Asian drag troupe called the Rice Rockettes. Once every month or two, they put on lavish, highly sexualized performances at party venues like The Endup and AsiaSF. And they're empowering a population of gay men to experiment with a mode of self-expression that is often taboo and sometimes even non-existent in their own cultures.

On the Thursday before San Francisco's gay pride weekend, Alex invites me over to his office to watch his transformation into Estee. Getting dolled up usually takes three hours and the show is slated to start at seven thirty, but when I get there a bit past five he is still in his wife-beater and stone-washed jeans, looking like a dude, screwing the spotlight in place at center stage.

"We're on drag Asian time," he jokes as he finally plops down at his desk and rolls out a dozen or so makeup brushes.

For women, makeup is often a tool to boost confidence in our outward appearance — a little bit of mascara and liner makes me feel slightly prettier than when I go barefaced to the gym. For drag queens, it's a full on transformation, the adoption of a whole other identity. "As Alex, I don't feel like I'm talented enough or creative enough. But as Estee, I can be whoever I want to be."

Alex's workspace is a little corner cubicle — nothing fancy, just a desktop computer, a phone, and an empty cup of iced coffee from the neighborhood deli. Alex is a Filipino from the island of Guam. Both cultures, he tells me, have the perception that gay men are just effeminate men who want to be women. "This all plays into the stereotype that gay people are second class citizens, mentally disturbed individuals, and sinners. Since the ideal of the masculine man is the norm, a man would have to be crazy to want to look like a woman or do womanly things." Even in the US, "it's hard to recruit drag queens in the community. There's a lot of stigma around it. A lot of Asian men already feel hyper emasculated."

Alex decided to become a drag queen because he wanted a creative outlet for self expression, but also because he wanted to send the message to other gay Asian and Pacific Islander men that it's okay to be feminine. "In Asia, drag performances tend to focus more on gender illusion — pretty girls posing and being perfectly beautiful on stage. It can be very magical and appealing, especially for straight men who might not understand the difference. In the US, we tend to take the art of drag and create our own way of expressing ourselves, whether it's through spoken word, song, activism, or just being a hot mess on stage."

I think I know what he means by being a hot mess on stage. Last Christmas, when I went to see the Rice Rockettes perform at Octavia Lounge on Market Street, a drag queen named Doncha Vishyuwuzme wore a ball gown made with pink Chinese restaurant plastic bags and waved her arms to a romantic number while making slutty faces at the audience. I'm pretty sure I saw glimpses of her boxer briefs, fake boobs, and a dildo during her performance.

Alex lays three paper towels neatly in front of his computer, pours brush cleaner into a small spray bottle, and dutifully spritzes each brush. Once he's done, he smoothes shimmery body lotion on his arms and chest. He slathers orange paste — "It's a camouflage crème, or simply known as beard cover" — onto his stubble. "It's temporary art," he says. "Like an installation almost, you enjoy it for what it is and then you wipe it off."

He puts a layer of red lipstick on his lips. He pats some powder on top to set it; then adds another layer. "The key is to do three layers," he says. To finish off the look, he draws a thick exaggerated line of dark brown liner into the shape of a deliberate pout. He puckers his lips at the mirror and tilts his head with satisfaction.

Alex's knowledge of makeup is really quite impressive. "I usually do three colors of blush," he says. "Nars has the best brushes. For lipstick, Mac is good too, but I really like Makeup Forever. The pencil and the color, it's just really good. I'm really happy with it." Many drag queens by day are makeup artists, working the Mac booth at Macy's or prettying up brides at weddings. When Alex isn't at his day job as the men's health coordinator for the API Wellness Center, he sometimes does makeup for weddings and special events.

A handsome guy named Maveric shows up about half an hour into the "birthing" of Estee Longah. Maveric's alter-ego is a hard core club-going whore named Lychee Minelli, a self-proclaimed high class prostitute. Lychee is Estee's drag daughter — about six months ago, when Estee first met Maveric, she took her under her wing, gave her a drag name, and taught her how to be a fabulous queen.

Maveric has high cheekbones and the smoothest skin I've ever seen on a dude. "I was working at a newspaper at a podunk town in California, and the queer in me was dying. It was terrible. Low pay, crazy ass hours." So Lychee moved to San Francisco, got a marketing job, and joined the Rice Rockettes in January. He just happened to be at one of their performances when Alex invited him on stage. Ever since then, he's been a regular member of the troupe, gracing the stage with his raunchy, exaggerated, and incredibly sexy hip gyrations that most ordinary women wish they could pull off.

Alex is doing Lychee's makeup tonight, but normally, he encourages all his Rockettes to watch drag makeup tutorials on YouTube and master the trade themselves. "It's fun, but it's also a lot of work. It's not something you want to do every day."

It's almost 8pm; an event staffer drops by Alex's cubicle to get a status check. "The crowd is getting antsy," he says. Alex draws two moles on his face, one under his right eye, one under his left lip. He douses his face with fixing spray: "It's like hairspray for the face. The one at Kryolan is really good. It doesn't smear."

To witness the emergence of Estee is like watching a magic show. Alex has drawn a series of bold brown lines across his cheeks and forehead; between that and the orange chin, for the first hour of the transformation process, he looks more like a tiger than a woman. But when he starts to blend the colors into his face, Estee appears out of thin air. The only sound we hear is his fingers stroking the contours of his face and the soundtrack to Mommy Dearest — his number for the night — playing quietly out of his computer speakers. As he strokes the different colors briskly with his fingers, Alex's face fades out of view and a fair-skinned, exaggeratedly feminine visage emerges. It truly feels like I'm watching the birth of an adult woman out of thin air. Alex pops on an auburn wig and squeezes into a black fake-hip-hugging knee-lengthed dress. She has arrived. Estee Longah, a gorgeous, slightly androgynous Joan Fontaine-esque vintage pin-up girl straight out of a 1940s movie poster.

In the background, a drag queen named Vi is singing a Beyonce song. Rice Rockette members Chi-Chi Kago, Lychee Minelli, Marijoy Tabatsoy, and Saigon Dione are also in the wings getting ready for their numbers. Estee smoothes out her dress and shuffles out of Alex's cubicle towards the evening's limelight.

Tita Aida, a legendary transgender activist whom Estee considers her "drag mother", steps up to the stage and gives a brief introduction. "She is a mover and shaker on Polk Street," she announces, referring to San Francisco's historical transvestite prostitution district. "She came out with her own line of cosmetics for the new Tenderloin woman. Please welcome... Estee Longah!!"

Photos: Joshua Lim

Taste Test: Durian

Lisa Katayama — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 08:00:44 +0000

Durian. Its flesh is so stinky that it's banned from some restaurants and hotels. The fruit is native to southeast Asia and has been part of the regional diet since prehistory. It's rich in vitamin C, potassium, and good fats and proteins. In Java, durian is believed to be an aphrodisiac (if you're not sure about this, maybe try one of these durian-flavored condoms!).

19th century British naturalist Alfred Russell Wallace described the taste of durian as "a rich custard highly flavoured with almonds, but there are occasional wafts of flavour that call to mind cream cheese, onion sauce, sherry wine and other incongruous dishes." Delicious! But be careful not to eat too much durian at once — it is super high in calories and can cause adverse health effects. (Last week, one Malaysian Parliamentarian ate so much durian that he almost passed out at a banquet.)

I've never tried cooking with durian, but this recipe for Laotian sticky rice with durian looks delicious. Will someone try it and let me know how it turns out?

Every installment of Taste Test will explore recipes, the science, and some history behind a specific food item.

Image via Amani Hassan's Flickr

The Lives Our Mothers Leave Us, a book about mother-daughter relationships

Lisa Katayama — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 18:05:44 +0000

In between blogging and exercising this summer, I've been reading chapters from a book called The Lives Our Mothers Leave Us by Patti Davis, who is the daughter of Ronald and Nancy Reagan. The book is based on the idea that mothers and daughters are inextricably linked and that, around the age of 40, most daughters come full circle in accepting the parts of themselves that were formed by their moms. She explores this realization through the stories of two dozen women, mostly actors and authors, including Whoopi Goldberg, Alice Hoffman, Judy Garland's daughter Lorna Luft, and Anna Quindlen.

As daughters, we bounce off our mothers in ways that are both mysterious and ancient. Even in anger — maybe especially then — we're tethered to them. My mother and I have never been mild with one another. Whether we were miles apart and blaming each other or strongly and lovingly bonded together, our emotions burned up the color chart. Nothing was ever gray.

It's not the most well-written book in the world, but I have found these anecdotes of how these famous daughters dealt with their mothers' imperfections to be helpful benchmarks in observing my own relationship with my mother. Davis is neither preachy nor pedantic; she's simply giving us vignettes from different women's lives, and I like that.

The Lives Our Mothers Leave Us

Gangs of women in rural India fight abuse with bamboo sticks

Lisa Katayama — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 04:35:32 +0000

Slate has a fascinating story about gulabis — gangs of women in rural India who wear pink saris seeking justice for abused wives. 40-year old Sampat Pal Devi started the movement with a few friends in 2006. They began by visiting a few husbands who refused to stop beating their wives, intimidating them into changing their minds by brandishing bamboo sticks. The movement now has more than 200,000 members; Pal travels from village to village on a bicycle to keep the momentum going.

Pal has a long list of criminal charges against her, including unlawful assembly, rioting, attacking a government employee, and obstructing an officer in the discharge of duty, and she even had to go into hiding. Her feistiness has secured notable victories for the community, however. In 2008, the group ambushed the local electricity office, which was withholding electricity until members received bribes or sexual favors in return for flicking the switch back on. The stick-wielding gulabi stormed the company grounds and proceeded to rough up the staff inside the building. An hour later, the power was back on in the village.

As the article points out, women who suffered from human rights abuses like honor killings, infanticide, and child marriages would take their own lives to escape their fate. But recent progress in the political arena — like an affirmative action bill passed in March that would reserve 33% of parliamentary seats for woman — has made women realize that they can find power in numbers and fight back.

The silver lining here is that while Indian democracy is too weak to deliver on the gender equality that is inscribed in its constitution, it is strong enough not to crush movements like the pink gang. This is also thanks to the free media, which has boomed since the '90s and which glorifies the work of the gulabis.

The women's gangs of India [Slate]

The Bechdel Test for women in movies

Lisa Katayama — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 04:13:31 +0000

After watching the delightfully awkward new Duplass comedy Cyrus last night, a couple of friends and I started talking about the Bechdel Test for women in movies. The test, named after 80s lesbian cartoonist Alison Bechdel, asks three questions: 1. Are there two or more women in it that have names? 2. Do they talk to each other? 3. Do they talk to each other about something other than a man? As this video from feministfrequency.com points out, a LOT of popular movies fail miserably. "The entire industry is built upon creating films and movies that cater to and are about men," the woman in this video says. It's a really interesting observation that I hadn't given much thought to before.

(Thanks, Joe!)

99 cent store sued for raising prices to 99.99 cents

Lisa Katayama — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 13:39:28 +0000

The discount chain 99 Cent Only Stores is being sued by customers for raising their prices to 99.99 cents. "If they call themselves 99 Cents Only, it should be 99 cents," Orange County lawyer Dan Callahan told the LA Times.

Coffee table made from old computer parts

Lisa Katayama — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 13:28:54 +0000

This coffee table made from old computer parts is both pretty and geeky.

It's mainly made up of boards/drives from old Intergraph 6000 series machines built in the late 80s early 90s. They had nice big boards. It was a good way to keep around my first real computer after I could no longer find parts to keep it working, an Intergraph 6880 with Edge II graphics. I learned computer modeling, rendering and animation on it and think of it as a mentor. There are also old 2800 baud modem parts and other random parts collected over the years.
No real pattern other than just getting it all to fit together like a puzzle. The LED lights along the perimeter worked out better that I had hoped. I have it wired so it automatically goes on when it gets dark.

The News is Broken [via Make]

Sticker makes it look like you have lots of drugs in your suitcase

Lisa Katayama — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 12:25:05 +0000

TheCheeky.com sells these funny (or not so funny at all?) stickers for your suitcase.

[via NotCot]

A spelling bee for cheaters

Lisa Katayama — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 11:30:58 +0000

Dave Eggers' 826LA is hosting a fun event on August 14th — it's a spelling bee fundraiser that encourages cheating. The more money you raise, the more ways you'll be allowed to cheat. For example, $100 will get you a letter hint, but $1,000 will let you switch places with a team member when you're stuck in a rut.

The contest has some celebrities signed up, too, like Dianna Agron from Glee, John Krasinski from The Office, and Spike Jonze. Sounds like fun! Read the contest rules after the jump.

1. SIGN UP in teams of 2 or more.
2. In the days leading up to the tournament, raise money for your team
3. On game day, your team sends one representative to spell and use the funds you've raised to order from a menu of cheats:
• FREE to register*: Each team member must raise a minimum of $50 for the team to qualify to compete in the Spelling Bee. All participants who raise over $50 will get priority seating at the venue, receive a bag lunch, a copy of The Wild Things by Dave Eggers, and more. (*$25 general admission spectator tickets will be released based on availability on August 6th.)
• I before E? ($100): You may request one letter hint (limit 3 in a row).
• Ask your team ($250): Ask your team for their opinion. It's up to you whether you want to take their advice or not. Time spent consulting your team counts against your turn limit.
• Pick a new word ($500) Don't like the word you got, get a new word.
• Get a dictionary ($750): One speller may consult the dictionary before spelling the word. Time spent looking in the dictionary counts against your turn limit.
• Switch-a-Roo ($1,000): Swap places with another team member.
• Invent a word ($1,500): Spell whatever you like and, so long as you can pronounce and define it, your word advances you to the next round.
• Pass on a word, but stay in the round ($2,000): You don't even have to spell anything! You may skip to the next round.
• Automatically advance to the second round ($5,000): Any team that raises over $5,000 will automatically advance to the second round.
• Second Chance ($6,000): Spelled your word wrong? You're out! Not so fast! For $6,000 we'll let you slide one time. (For $12,000, we'll let you slide two times.)
• Immunity ($25,000): You're basically invincible! You raised $25,000!?!? You get double the cheats.

A Spelling Bee for Cheaters [826LA]

(Thanks, jlar!)

Flying donkey shocks Russians on vacation

Lisa Katayama — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 11:29:05 +0000

A flying donkey!

World Bank study shows that giving cash to girls may prevent spread of HIV in Africa

Lisa Katayama — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 11:06:43 +0000

At the International AIDS Conference in Vienna this past weekend, the World Bank announced the results of an unusual study on HIV/AIDS prevention — it gave cash to girls in Malawi just for staying in school. Girls between ages 13 and 22 in the southern district of Zomba were paid $15 a month for a year; their behaviors were compared to a control group that was not paid at all. Results showed that the girls who were paid to stay in school seemed to make wiser choices about when to have sex with and with whom:

18 months after the program began in January 2008, biomarker data show that HIV infection rates among girls who received cash was 1.2% versus the control group's 3%. This translates to 60% lower prevalence. Girls in the cash group also had a lower infection rate of herpes simplex virus type 2, the common cause of genital herpes (0.7% vs. 3%). Those findings hold even for a third group of girls who got cash without any schooling or other strings attached.
How did it happen? The key seems to be an "income effect" on the sexual behaviors of young women receiving cash payments. A year after the program started, girls who received payments not only had less sex, but when they did, they tended to choose safer partners, says Berk Ã–zler, a senior economist at the Development Research Group who conducted the study with Sarah Baird of George Washington University and Craig McIntosh at the University of California, San Diego. In fact, the infection rate among those partners is estimated to be half of that of partners of the control group.
The cash transfers may have led to a drop in the so-called "transactional sex." At the beginning of the study, a quarter of sexually-active participants said they started relationships because they "needed his assistance" or "wanted gifts/money." Meanwhile, among the sexually-active schoolgirls in the control group, 90% said they received an average of US$6.50 a month in gifts or cash from their partners. Such "gifts" are significant, given the country's GDP per capita was $287.5 in 2008.
After a year, schoolgirls receiving payments from the cash-transfer program seemed to avoid older men, who tend to be wealthier and are much more likely to be HIV positive than schoolboys. The sexual partners were two years older on average than the girls, compared with three years for the control group.

A similar study was conducted simultaneously in Tanzania, where young adult women were paid up to $60 a year for avoiding unsafe sex and tested against a control group for new STI infections.

Malawi and Tanzania research shows promise in preventing HIV and sexually transmitted infections [World Bank]