The New York Times > Opinion > Editorial: My Little Chickadee This is an interesting little piece...
My Little Chickadee
Published: March 3, 2005
Bird feeders across much of America are mobbed with black-capped chickadees at this time of year. Can you tell them apart, one by one? Probably not; it's hard enough to distinguish male from female in this species, let alone recognize individuals in a flock. But scientists are starting to suggest that if we look closely enough, we can distinguish birds of a single species by personality. A team of Dutch scientists, testing a European relative of the chickadee, has found that some birds are shy and others are bold, broad personality differences that have a genetic foundation. This finding doesn't erode the basic differences between Homo sapiens and Poecile atricapillus (the black-capped chickadee). But it substantially enlarges the similarities.
We take the range of personalities among individuals in our species for granted, yet it seems surprising to think of similar diversity in other species. Many people find the implications of that genuinely shocking. If bird personalities have a strong genetic and evolutionary basis, there is good reason to suspect that human personalities do, too.
Humans do not like to think of themselves as animals. Nor do they like to think that their behavior may have genetic or evolutionary roots. But the richer perspective - morally and intellectually - lies in examining and coming to terms with the kinship of all life. There's a certain tragic isolation in believing that humans stand apart in every way from the creatures that surround them, that the rest of creation was shaped exclusively for our use. The real fruit of that perspective is, in fact, tragic isolation on an earth that has been eroded by our moral assumptions. Science has something much wiser to tell us about who we are. So do the birds around us.
© Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
and another good one, about women & aging --
------------------------------------------------------------------
March 3, 2005
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Frozen Mermaids, Scary Sirens
By MAUREEN DOWD
Washington
I went to see Al Pacino's "Merchant of Venice" movie the other day.
It was funny to watch the climactic courtroom scene in which the cross-dressing Portia sets a dazzling legal trap for the cross Shylock.
The vengeful loan shark can take his pound of flesh from Antonio, she tells him, but it has to be exactly a pound. And if Antonio bleeds, the laws of Venice dictate that all of Shylock's lands and goods will be confiscated.
The 16th-century Shylock skulks off. A 21st-century Shylock would have had a solution: liposuction.
Shylock could have extracted his precise pound of flesh, and the fashionably epicene Antonio could have come out of it looking even sleeker.
Shakespeare wrote a lot about the power of beauty and the withering of beauty. As one pre-Botox sonnet went: "When forty winters shall besiege thy brow/And dig deep trenches in thy beauty's field,/Thy youth's proud livery, so gazed on now,/Will be a tattered weed of small worth held."
Shakespeare also wrote about narcissistic personalities and the treacheries of time. So I'm sure he would have been fascinated by the obsession of our modern culture with freezing the clock - and the face - with lifestyle drugs and medical treatments.
Cosmetic enhancements have become so common that you can now get "frequent flier" cards for wrinkles - racking up rewards every time a dermatologist or a plastic surgeon sticks a needle in your face.
The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday that, following up on Pfizer's success with Viagra "value cards," which offer repeat customers discounts, Medicis Pharmaceuticals, the maker of Restylane, an anti-wrinkle skin filler, is offering a rewards program "to encourage injections every six months by offering gifts that escalate in value with each subsequent appointment - adding up to $375 after the fourth follow-up visit."
A Restylane treatment is about $500 to $750 and lasts about six months, according to the article. So Medicis says it aims to keep customers on track to maintain their "corrected look."
You just get the Restylane syringe box top from your doctor and send it in, as you used to do with cereal boxes to get toys. And you can keep your "corrected look" going until you hit that "Alas, poor Yorick" phase.
What Shakespeare could have done with this material. And wouldn't you love to hear the Bard on the Oscars?
Others found the Oscars boring; I found the show slightly alarming.
I used to worry that women were heading toward one face. Sometimes in affluent settings, like the Oscars or the shoe department at Bergdorf's, you see a bunch of eerily similar women with oddly off-track features - Botox-smoothed Formica foreheads, collagen-protruding lips, surgically narrowed noses, taut jaws - who look like sisters from another planet.
It's like that futuristic Sylvester Stallone movie "Demolition Man," set in 2032, with Arnold Schwarzenegger as president and Taco Bell as the sole survivor of the Franchise Wars.
In the future, there will be only one face. And if the Oscars are predictive, there will be only one body - big chest, skinny body - and one style. It was bizarre how actress after actress came out in the same mermaid silhouette: a strapless sheath with a trumpet-flared or ruffled skirt.
Where are the good old wardrobe malfunctions of Cher and Barbra?
In decades past, each top glamour girl aimed for a signature face and measurements, a trademark voice, a unique walk. You never saw Katharine Hepburn and Ava Gardner showing up in the same dress, or Audrey Hepburn and Marilyn Monroe looking like a pair of matching candles.
In some wacky, self-defeating conspiracy, stylists have joined forces with surgeons to homogenize today's actresses so it's hard to tell one from another; the Oscars had a safe, boring, generic look. Top female stars who have had a lot of work done start looking like one another on magazine covers, and being confused for one another at publicity events.
Chris Rock was right: star power is in short supply in a town where women would rather be conventional than individual. It's the same problem Hollywood has making movies: too much cloning, not enough originality.
As Shakespeare wrote of the ultimate glamour girl, Cleopatra: "Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale her infinite variety."
Women have become so fixated on not withering, they've forgotten that there are infinite ways to be beautiful.
E-mail: liberties@nytimes.com
© Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
posted by decemberx 10:05 AM[edit]
02/11/2001 - 02/18/2001 02/18/2001 - 02/25/2001 02/25/2001 - 03/04/2001 06/17/2001 - 06/24/2001 09/30/2001 - 10/07/2001 10/14/2001 - 10/21/2001 01/20/2002 - 01/27/2002 10/06/2002 - 10/13/2002 10/12/2003 - 10/19/2003 10/26/2003 - 11/02/2003 02/15/2004 - 02/22/2004 04/04/2004 - 04/11/2004 10/03/2004 - 10/10/2004 10/10/2004 - 10/17/2004 10/17/2004 - 10/24/2004 10/24/2004 - 10/31/2004 10/31/2004 - 11/07/2004 11/07/2004 - 11/14/2004 11/14/2004 - 11/21/2004 11/21/2004 - 11/28/2004 11/28/2004 - 12/05/2004 12/05/2004 - 12/12/2004 12/12/2004 - 12/19/2004 12/19/2004 - 12/26/2004 12/26/2004 - 01/02/2005 01/02/2005 - 01/09/2005 01/09/2005 - 01/16/2005 01/16/2005 - 01/23/2005 01/23/2005 - 01/30/2005 01/30/2005 - 02/06/2005 02/06/2005 - 02/13/2005 02/13/2005 - 02/20/2005 02/20/2005 - 02/27/2005 02/27/2005 - 03/06/2005 03/06/2005 - 03/13/2005 03/13/2005 - 03/20/2005 03/20/2005 - 03/27/2005 04/17/2005 - 04/24/2005 04/24/2005 - 05/01/2005 05/01/2005 - 05/08/2005 05/08/2005 - 05/15/2005 05/15/2005 - 05/22/2005 05/22/2005 - 05/29/2005 06/05/2005 - 06/12/2005 06/12/2005 - 06/19/2005 06/19/2005 - 06/26/2005 06/26/2005 - 07/03/2005 07/03/2005 - 07/10/2005 07/10/2005 - 07/17/2005 07/17/2005 - 07/24/2005 07/24/2005 - 07/31/2005 07/31/2005 - 08/07/2005 08/07/2005 - 08/14/2005 08/14/2005 - 08/21/2005 09/04/2005 - 09/11/2005 09/11/2005 - 09/18/2005 09/18/2005 - 09/25/2005 09/25/2005 - 10/02/2005 10/02/2005 - 10/09/2005 10/09/2005 - 10/16/2005 10/16/2005 - 10/23/2005 10/30/2005 - 11/06/2005 11/06/2005 - 11/13/2005 11/13/2005 - 11/20/2005 12/04/2005 - 12/11/2005 12/11/2005 - 12/18/2005 01/15/2006 - 01/22/2006 01/22/2006 - 01/29/2006 01/29/2006 - 02/05/2006 02/05/2006 - 02/12/2006 02/12/2006 - 02/19/2006 02/19/2006 - 02/26/2006 02/26/2006 - 03/05/2006 03/05/2006 - 03/12/2006 03/12/2006 - 03/19/2006 03/19/2006 - 03/26/2006 03/26/2006 - 04/02/2006 04/02/2006 - 04/09/2006 04/09/2006 - 04/16/2006 04/16/2006 - 04/23/2006 04/30/2006 - 05/07/2006 08/13/2006 - 08/20/2006 08/20/2006 - 08/27/2006 09/03/2006 - 09/10/2006 09/24/2006 - 10/01/2006 10/15/2006 - 10/22/2006 02/11/2007 - 02/18/2007 02/18/2007 - 02/25/2007 02/25/2007 - 03/04/2007 03/11/2007 - 03/18/2007 06/15/2008 - 06/22/2008 06/22/2008 - 06/29/2008 07/13/2008 - 07/20/2008 08/03/2008 - 08/10/2008 04/19/2009 - 04/26/2009 03/14/2010 - 03/21/2010 07/15/2012 - 07/22/2012 11/24/2013 - 12/01/2013 05/31/2015 - 06/07/2015