Shared posts

19 Sep 01:25

Contrary to popular belief : Nature Biotechnology : Nature Publishing Group

19 Sep 01:25

RIP, American Dream? Why It's So Hard for the Poor to Get Ahead Today - Mat

17 Sep 13:48

It’s Not ‘Mess.’ It’s Creativity. - NYTimes.com

17 Sep 13:48

The Religious Right's Anti-Vaccine Hysteria Is Reviving Dead Diseases in Am

17 Sep 13:48

Untitled

17 Sep 13:48

Untitled

17 Sep 13:48

Untitled

17 Sep 13:47

wait but why: Why Generation Y Yuppies Are Unhappy

17 Sep 13:47

10 Things You Didn't Know About Food In The USA

15 Sep 18:56

Photo



12 Sep 23:20

The 1 percent’s Ivy League loophole - Salon.com

12 Sep 23:03

"Working" Star Trek teleporter blows U.K. mall shoppers' minds

by Rob Bricken

How do you promote Star Trek Into Darkness? Well, if you're the U.K. streaming service Blinkbox, and known for your impressive publicity stunts, you go to a British mall, set up a Trek-style teleporter, and hire illusionist Scott Penrose to help you start "beaming" people to the amazement of the masses.

Read more...


    






08 Sep 19:47

A guide to fallacious arguments, illustrated with funny animals

by Lauren Davis

A guide to fallacious arguments, illustrated with funny animals

The Book of Bad Arguments is a great primer for anyone looking to understand logical fallacies and become a better debater. It helps that each logical fallacy is accompanied by a comic featuring funny animals.

Read more...


    






07 Sep 18:31

10 Reasons Lawyers Say Florida's Law Enforcement Threw Away George Zimmerman's Case

10 Reasons Lawyers Say Florida's Law Enforcement Threw Away George Zimmerman's Case:

sourcedumal:

christel-thoughts:

thepoliticalfreakshow:

A growing chorus of attorneys and analysts say Zimmerman didn’t face anything like a serious trial.

Florida law enforcement, from the local police to the special prosecutor overseeing the Trayvon Martin case, did not want to see George Zimmerman convicted of murder and deliberately threw away the case, allowing their prosecution to crumble. A growing chorus of attorneys and analysts who know jury trials and courtroom procedure say this is the inescapable conclusion to be drawn from the parade of otherwise incoherent missteps by George Zimmerman’s prosecutors.

“I find it personally difficult to believe it was not thrown,” said Warren Ingber, a New York-based attorney who has practiced law for decades. “I am far from alone in this assessment, and it reveals even harder truth why this case was a miscarriage of justice.”

Ingber detailed his reasons in a letter sent to a NPR’s “Left, Right and Center”program after its liberal analysts would not touch that possibility. But there’s been a growing chorus saying the Zimmerman prosecution was not merely incompetent, but going through the motions and intentionally losing. This includes Florida talk radio host Randi Rhodes, who covered the trial daily, to New Orleans Times-Picayune editorial writer Jarvis DeBerry whose source canvassed 20 local prosecutors, to celebrity lawyers like Alan Dershowitz and other legal analysts, and longtime lawyers like Ingber who was indignant at NPR’s commentators ceding too much ground to right-wingers.

Here are 10 key points the lawyers in these reports cite behind this conclusion.

1. There was enough evidence to convict, despite biased police work.That assessment “is itself a miracle,” Ingber wrote, citing how the Sanford, Florida police handled the killing. “Martin’s body lay in the morgue as a John Doe for three days while his mother was asking for his whereabouts. His cell phone records indicated he was on the phone as he was being killed. The person he was on with had no idea where he was. Meanwhile his admitted killer was on the loose and allowed to produce exculpatory evidence while crime scene evidence was deteriorating. It appears from videos of Zimmerman ‘strolling’ into custody that he was not that badly hurt. But in Florida the right of self-defense includes, for whites, the freedom to exculpate oneself. And when that wasn’t enough, the police stepped in, as when the lead detective Chris Serino told Zimmerman the screams for help were his, not Martin’s, over his objection.”

2. The governor’s handpicked prosecutor enters with an agenda.“No account of this trial is complete if it does not start with how the deck was stacked before the trial took place,” Ingber said. “But it continues in the identity of the person that Florida’s [Republican] Gov. Rick Scott selected to prosecute the case: Angela Corey, the prosecutor who sentenced Marissa Alexander [a black woman] to 20 years for firing a gun into the air in her own garage in defense against a convicted abuser of women. I’ll leave it to Alan Dershowitz, who knows the law of defamation, to describe her professional lapses that ‘bordered on criminal conduct.’”

3. No change of venue was demanded.There were a series of decisions made by the prosecutors that incrementally lowered their chances of obtaining a conviction. The first concerned not seeking a jury trial in another county. The Seminole County district attorney and multiple judges recused themselves, “proof that the case was a political hot potato and that there was a fear that there would be negative political ramifications following a Zimmerman verdict,” Times-Picayune editorial writer Jarvis DeBerry wrote. But the state did not want to move the trial.

4. The early mishandling of the jury.Prosecutors meekly tried to remove two jurors with very strong pro-Zimmerman biases, but did not use more forceful “preemptory challenges,” DeBerry noted. “Juror B-37… should never have been let onto the jury after she said there were ‘riots’ in Sanford over this case,” Ingber added. “How was that allowed to occur? B-37’s interview is worth a listen.” She called Martin a “boy of color” (at 10.41) and mentioned “rioting” twice (12.12 and 14.32), calling it “organized” by Martin supporters and adding that she didn’t trust mainstream media.      

5. There were no men on the jury.DeBerry, citing a former prosecutor who “handled hundreds of homicide cases over his career,” said opposing an all-female jury was “prosecuting 101. In a fatal fight between men, you fight to get men on the jury. Men are more likely to convict.”

6. The jury was improperly sequestered.While talking about the jury—before turning to what the prosecution did and didn’t do with witnesses—it’s also important to note that the jury wasn’t properly kept away from interacting with the public. “Why wasn’t the jury properly sequestered?” Ingber said. “Why was it given time with family members, time enough for, oh, I don’t know, arranging a book deal?” (Juror B-37 signed a contract with a literary agent immediately after the trial ended.)

7. Missteps with the state’s witnesses.The prosecution failed to adequately prepare its witnesses, such as Rachel Jeantel, who was on the phone with Martin during the confrontation “and was the closest thing the state had to a star witness,” DeBerry wrote.

“Why was the jury’s prejudices given free rein to suppose, as the entire nation did, that Rachel Jeantel was stupid because of her speech when she has an underbite that will require surgery that she is putting off?” Ingber explained. “Why did even close observers of the trial learn this only afterward, from this supposedly stupid witness? Could the prosecution have been even stupider? Or is prosecution of a white man for killing a black man in the South just stupefying?”

Jeantel was hardly the state’s only bad witness. “What of the ill-prepared “I know nothing” state medical examiner, who changed his testimony in the course of his examination, including waffling on the absurd notion that marijuana might have made Martin aggressive?” he wrote. “Why did he ignore testimony that Zimmerman was the aggressor? One wonders who got to this man. Surely not those Sanford rioters!”

8. More missteps with Zimmerman’s witnesses.If your side’s witnesses are falling down, lawyers usually work even harder to undermine their opponent’s case. But exactly the opposite unfolded.“The defense witness that impressed B-37 the most was that friend of Zimmerman’s (whom she mistook for a doctor) who testified he knew it was Zimmerman’s voice based on a knack acquired in military service,” Ingber said. “He had been sitting in the courtroom throughout the trial before his testimony—undisguised and adjacent to the defense team—in flagrant violation of the witness sequestration rule. He should never have been permitted to testify. Where was the prosecution?”

He cited other examples: “How could the prosecutors have been so stupid as to allow Zimmerman to testify in his own defenseby admitting into evidence his Sean Hannity interview on Fox News for the ostensible reason of admitting a minor detail?” Inger said. “Could it have missed the predictable effect on the jury’s sympathies of the defendant appearing before a fake journalist on Fox? Could it not see this for a one-sided waiver of Zimmerman’s Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination? Without risking cross-examination?”

DeBerry’s ex-prosecutor source noted more examples. “A Sanford police officer who was asked if he believed Zimmerman’s story of self-defense was allowed to answer yes without the prosecution objecting,” he said. “Witnesses should not be permitted to offer an opinion on the credibility of other witnesses or other evidence. The next day prosecutors asked the judge to strike that portion of the investigator’s testimony, and she complied. But why did the prosecutors sit quietly as the question was asked and answered?”  

9. Florida’s abysmal laws compounded the botched prosecution.Many media outlets analyzed Zimmerman’s acquittal by saying that the state overcharged him—because second-degree murder has a higher standard of proof than the lesser charge of manslaughter. The lawyer-critics don’t buy that analysis, however.   

“All of the evidence is that Zimmerman was the aggressor,” Ingber said. “Jeantel testified that Martin was being stalked and that Martin’s cell phone was knocked out of his hand in real time and fell to wet grass just as the struggle—obviously self-defensive on Martin’s part—commenced. The tape of the 911 call is to the same effect. Zimmerman’s self-serving testimony, the coached evidence from the detective about whose voice it was—it’s all fluff. The two telephone calls set it all out. Who was on top for a moment means nothing. They rolled around. The injuries were not consistent with a ground-and-pound attack.

“But say they were. Is the explanation of the not-guilty verdict as to manslaughter that the jury thought it is legal for a man with a gun to initiate an altercation with an unarmed boy and shoot him dead if he starts to lose the fight and fears for his own?”

The Florida law deciding this case is abysmal, Ingber said, noting that this added to the jury’s confusion during deliberations, and  in getting the charge from the judge. “Try reading the instructions. Really try. I did,” he wrote. “I am an attorney and thought I knew what the elements of manslaughter were until I read this. Anyone who can parse this—in written form, never mind by ear—qualifies for a Supreme Court nomination.”

“But it’s even worse,” he continued, saying these were yet more prosecutorial blunders. “During deliberations the jury, having only the legal smarts of a mere circuit court judge, asked for clarification as to manslaughter but never received them. Why was that?”

10. Florida wanted to get rid of the case, not win it.The Times-Picayune’s DeBerry said his ex-prosecutor source “said he’s polled about 20 prosecutors in New Orleans, and though all aren’t sure that they would have been able to get Zimmerman convicted as charged, each of them is convinced that he or she could have gotten more than an acquittal. It was a clear case of tanking, he argued: ‘They didn’t want to win this case.’”  

There are political benefits to that outcome, Ingber said, explaining what would be the state’s motive for proceeding so sloppily and working not to get a conviction.

“Bear in mind how cost-free all of this shoddy prosecution is,” he said. “Once jeopardy attaches and a defendant is exonerated the prosecutor will suffer no judicial embarrassment because any further proceedings would be double jeopardy. Translation: Zimmerman can’t be retried and the prosecution also gets off the hook. So this could all be swept under the rug and Angela Corey and Rick Scott… can go their merry way.”

Who wins when the state deliberately loses?

It is clear that the details of the Trayvon Martin case will not be forgotten by people who watched the trial or heard it described in detail by radio hosts such as Randi Rhodes, who understand how Florida’s legal system can be stacked in favor of white defendants. The striking conclusion after listening to these lawyers is that even with all the state’s policing and courtroom errors, there was enough to obtain a conviction.    

“It takes no partisan slant to see the procedural injustice in this case,” Ingber said. “It is not hard to make the case that the evidence supported a manslaughter verdict beyond a reasonable doubt. This was another O.J. [Simpson] case, except this was not a case of jury nullification. It is to the Emmett Till case what modern-day voter suppression is to the poll tax. You need to drill down to see it for what it is.”

remember when i said they never intended to convict him?

Oop. Look at that….

05 Sep 15:36

TED: Kelly McGonigal: How to make stress your friend - Kelly McGonigal (2013)

Stress. It makes your heart pound, your breathing quicken and your forehead sweat. But while stress has been made into a public health enemy, new research suggests that stress may only be bad for you if you believe that to be the case. Psychologist Kelly McGonigal urges us to see stress as a positive, and introduces us to an unsung mechanism for stress reduction: reaching out to others.
05 Sep 13:23

Untitled

E.andres.holzertorres

Leslie, I think you'd enjoy this.

05 Sep 13:21

gdfalksen: Cookie Monster Learns a Lesson from Tom Hiddleston...



gdfalksen:

Cookie Monster Learns a Lesson from Tom Hiddleston (by PBS)

03 Sep 18:00

Untitled

03 Sep 14:04

Stardust Had Better Become a Fantasy Film Classic | Tor.com

29 Aug 23:03

"Well-run libraries are filled with people because what a good library offers cannot be easily found..."

“Well-run libraries are filled with people because what a good library offers cannot be easily found elsewhere: an indoor public space in which you do not have to buy anything in order to stay. In the modern state there are very few sites where this is possible. The only others that come readily to my mind require belief in an omnipotent creator as a condition for membership. It would seem the most obvious thing in the world to say that the reason why the market is not an efficient solution to libraries is because the market has no use for a library. But it seems we need, right now, to keep re-stating the obvious. There aren’t many institutions left that fit so precisely Keynes’ definition of things that no one else but the state is willing to take on. Nor can the experience of library life be recreated online. It’s not just a matter of free books. A library is a different kind of social reality (of the three dimensional kind), which by its very existence teaches a system of values beyond the fiscal.”

- Zadie Smith, in the New York Review of Books.  (via neverwinter-tiffaninny)
29 Aug 16:25

Daily Kos: America's 50 Worst Charities

29 Aug 16:25

Your Facebook Friends Could Soon Prevent You From Getting a Loan | Mother J

29 Aug 16:25

Study shows gender bias in science is real. Here’s why it matters. | Unoffi

26 Aug 21:18

To The Dudebro Who Thinks He’s Insulting Me by Calling Me a Feminist

by John Scalzi

Over the weekend, some dudebro with a history of shitting on women took this picture of me (which you may remember from here) and meme-ized it, with the intent, given his personal history and predilections, of mocking me — both for my views as regards women, and for wearing a dress.

Well, this dudebro clearly knows his way to this site, where the picture was originally posted, by me, so let me go ahead and address him directly.

Dudebro: Let me detail for you the various ways this picture has utterly failed you as an attempt to ridicule me.

One: This picture was taken as a result of a dare, to wit: if people on Twitter pledged $500 to the Clarion Foundation in a half hour, I would take a picture of myself in a regency dress, of which there just happened to be one in the house because my friend Mary Robinette Kowal, writer of a number of successful, award-nominated regency-era fantasies, was visiting and had one with her. Twitter came through with $600 in the allotted time, and, well, fair’s fair.

So when I see this picture, what I am reminded of is that I have the power, with just a simple, entirely mild instance of cross-dressing, to raise hundreds of dollars in minutes for a worthy charitable organization. If you had that power, would you not use it? Well, actually, I don’t imagine you would use it, since the idea of being a man in a dress apparently fills you with sniggering, confused terror. Fortunately for Clarion, I don’t have that problem. Which brings us to this:

Two: Mocking me as a feminist means you are mocking me for this:

Aw, SNAP, bro. Someone hand me the phone, because it looks like I just got TOLD.

Now, bear in mind that I know this isn’t what you mean by “feminist.” What you mean by “feminist” is GWAAAAARGH UGLY WOMEN WHO WON’T LET ME HAVE SEX WITH THEM AND THEIR COWERING MALE GAMMA SLAVES WHO HAVE COME TO SNATCH MY MANLY TESTICLES AND ROAST THEM OVER A BONFIRE OF HUSTLERS AND PORN BLU-RAYS AND THEN MAKE ME WATCH WITH ALL MY OTHER EMASCULATED DUDEBROS WHILE THEY FEAST ON OUR HOT BARBEQUED DUDE OYSTERS GWAAAAAAARGH, although I’m sure you have many layers of self-justifying verbiage that helps you avoid confronting this fundamental reduction of your views. Nevertheless, that’s not actually what “feminist” means.

Sorry. I know this hard for you to grasp. If you want to take a moment to process the news, we can pause for a few.

Ready? Okay, let’s move on.

Three: Let me draw your attention to something in this next image:

Now, I see you going “wha?” to this, so let me explain. When you use a picture to mock someone, the idea is that you show them as an object of ridicule — that your life, whatever else it is, is better than theirs in a fundamental way. But, here’s the thing. I may be a dirty dirty feminist, but I’m also a feminist with five acres of really awesome lawn, on which rests a lovely, large house, in which I have lots of very cool things. I got the lawn and house and things by being successful — that’s right! I am financially successful through work! It’s not like, say, I’ve generally failed at everything I’ve done and have wealth from living off family remittances. Nope, I worked for this stuff. Go me.

The point is that whether you processed this in your brain or not when you slapped up the picture, what you’ve ended up doing is showing me exhibiting some of the benefits of being who I am — and one of the things I am, as you maintain, is a feminist. I am not saying that being a feminist is sufficient for having a successful career, big house and a ridiculously large lawn that is the size of a New York City block — but on the other hand it certainly hasn’t hurt me in acquiring those things, has it. And as you clearly believe in correlation as causation — Because I am a feminist, I have worn a dress — then you should also believe that because I am a feminist, I have a nice lawn, a nice house and a nice career.

So, yes: this is what a feminist looks like: A successful man standing on the land he owns, enjoying his life and all the opportunities it affords him, including wearing a dress if he feels like it, which clearly he does. Mock away, chuckles.

Four: Which conveniently brings us to the next point:

Or, to put it another way, after some random dudebro has attempted to insult me on the Internet by taking a photo of me in a dress that I’ve already posted on my own site and slapping the word “feminist” on it, all I have to go back to is a successful career, a loving family, a circle of amazing friends and talented peers, and a social system whose systematic biases favor me in nearly all cases as a well-off straight white man. Even when I put on a dress.

I mean, I know that’s not much compared to the awesome power of a random Internet dudebro calling me a word I don’t find in the least bit insulting, but it will have to suffice. Somehow

It would be nice to live in a world in which any time a dudebro tried insulting someone else, that person had the same level of insulation from the effects of the attempted insult as I do — we don’t, and this dudebro is working hard to keep it that way. I know one of the reasons he’s working so hard on it is because even if we’re not there yet, we’re well on our way to it. Rear guard actions are always the most frantic.

Speaking of which:

Five: Seriously, now: “This is what a feminist looks like” qualifies as arch mockery in your world? Dudebro, please. This is so much more devastating:

Look, I don’t want to tell you your job, but you’ve got a slightly chubby, slightly balding middle-aged dude in a mint green regency dress here. There is so much to work with. That all you’ve managed is “Hurrrrr hurrrr feeeeeemineeeeeest hurrr” is not just disappointing, it’s a waste of awesomely good meme material. If you can’t do better, dude, you might as well turn in your Reddit membership right now.

But I know, little dudebro. I know. In your world, calling another dude a feminist is the worst possible thing you can do. So one more picture for you:

I mean, these are my choices, right? One or the other? Well, then, if these are my choices, I know which way I am going to go. Which, I suppose, means that by your definitions, this was right all along:

Yes. Yes it is.


26 Aug 12:52

Good to know.



Good to know.

24 Aug 13:04

slephoto: VERY important info.  May not apply outside the US.

















slephoto:

VERY important info.  May not apply outside the US.

22 Aug 18:34

A Convicted Murderer's Case for Gun Control - John Lennon - The Atlantic

20 Aug 13:05

David Berreby – The obesity era

17 Aug 21:27

How to Save Time Hunting for a Parking Spot, South Korea Edition

by Freakonomics

Our recent podcast “Parking Is Hell” explored the high costs of free parking. Transportation scholar Donald Shoup described one study, from L.A.:

We made 240 observations. When you add it up, the average time it took to space was only three minutes, that’s two and a half times around the block, which doesn’t seem like very much. It’s about half a mile hunting for parking. But when you add up all the people who are parking in Westwood Village, if they had the same average that we had, that adds up to 3,600 vehicle miles of travel a day. That’s the distance across the U.S., and that’s just in the 15-block area of Westwood. If you add it up for a year, that’s equal to 36 trips around the Earth or four trips to the moon hunting for underpriced curb parking in a little 15-block area. 

In South Korea, an oil company has started a campaign to reduce parking search time. The HERE campaign states that South Korean drivers wander 500 meters everyday for parking spots; by cleverly installing a balloon that indicates exactly where open spots are, it reduces search time for drivers. The balloon dips down when a car is parked, and floats back up when the spot is free. The video is worth watching:

(HT: Dan Gibson)

15 Aug 13:36

Elisabeth: How To Succeed At Online Dating

by Elisabeth

by Elisabeth Snell, Writing Intern

A few springs ago, some friends sat me down on their couch, ordered peanut noodles from our favorite Chinese restaurant, and co-opted the online dating profile that I had unceremoniously activated earlier that week. While I slurped dumplings, they methodically scrolled through all of the potential matches in the Tri-State Area, and wrote a list of usernames on the back of an envelope. We came up with ten people that looked intriguing or cute or exciting, people that I’d be interested in learning a little more about, and I agreed to email one a week. That’s it. No expectations, no Olympics of online dating, just an envelope that I shoved on my fridge later that night in between embarrassing clippings from my college newspaper and photo strips.

A friend once said woefully, “Dating feels like paying to interview for a job you aren’t even sure you want.” Okay, that can be true. But if you want to be in a relationship, you’re going to have to suck it up and get down to the business of finding someone you like enough to date. And online dating is an excellent way to do that, because chances are a hunky feminist is not actually going to show up at your door (unless you are seriously lucky, I suppose). Over half the people in my extended community, from cousins to best friends, have met serious partners online (with the exception of one notable couple who met over a plate of Munchkins at a lesbian speed dating event at the LGBT Center—come on that’s amazing).

Now, I realize that as a wedding and marriage website, APWers probably aren’t firing up their online dating profiles (unless you’ve negotiated some great open relationship rules, and I officially nominate YOU to write that post). But when I finished putting together this list of suggestions for acing online dating, I realized that I live by most of these mantras anyway in order to stay simultaneously grounded and open to taking the risks that seem like they’ll pay off. So here are my suggestions, ready to email to your sister or best friend, on how to dip a toe into the world of internet dating:

1. Change your attitude.
You’re online dating. Period, hard return. That’s it, that’s all! You’re neither desperate nor undatable. While you may feel like you are turning to online dating because you’ve dated everyone in Brooklyn, reframe your thinking. What you are, actually, is creative, curious, and a little tired of trying to meet people in bars because you go to bed early/are sober/can never hear in bars/all your friends are paired off and don’t go out anymore. By throwing a profile up online, all you’re doing is expanding your social circles. Not everyone who online dates is super extroverted and could talk to a wall; in fact, lots of them are as quiet as you and find the idea of sitting down with a total stranger as nerve-wracking as you do. But everyone was a stranger once, right?

2. Calm down, and don’t get carried away.
If you give good email, oh wow, can you woo me into taking off my pants without even thinking much about it. That’s why, after re-learning for the 39584th time that an entire future can be built via written prose before ever seeing words come out of each other’s mouths, I shut it down until I’ve met potential suitors in person. It’s not that I’m not hopeful and excited about you. I just prefer my online dating emails to stay on the succinct, mostly business side of things, so we can get to the good stuff and see if we have any chemistry, rather than sending each other tomes that hint at meaning behind every vulnerable yet confident sentence. Here, from the annals of my now-dormant online dating profile, are two real life succinct business-y examples:

You appear to like bourbon as much as I do. Have you tried Hudson Baby Bourbon, which is like a cool sip of spring water? Let me know if you want to meet up for one sometime.

Anyone who describes themselves as pretty much awesome and interested in seeing the hidden corners of Brooklyn is probably someone I should know. Sounds like you’re new in town, let me know if you’ve been to the Brooklyn Farmacy and if you want to try their pretzel straws.

(Um, re-reading those makes me want to date myself a tiny bit.)

Also! Please don’t g-chat me before we’ve met just because we’ve popped up in each other’s chat listing. That makes me uncomfortable and I have to immediately lie about a meeting and then block you. How inauspicious for our future!

3. Stay busy.*
I am, actually, one of those super-extroverts who can talk to a wall, but even I run out of things to say when it’s just you, me, and a three-course artisanal dinner. That’s when you and I are going to start having uncomfortable pauses and then circling around to talking about our cats, or worse, one of us is going to hit the zone of no return and over-share about our ex. So instead of staring at each other across a table, try activity dates instead of meals. And they don’t have to be a twofer for the Manhattan Trapeze School, either. A tour of Brooklyn Flea, a walk on the High Line, the Barge Museum, taking the East River Ferry to Brooklyn Bridge Park for an ice cream cone; all of these activities are mostly free, and it’s easier to talk about a shared experience, and bonus, I will enjoy them even if there’s no spark between us.

*I broke this rule almost immediately when I met K, because we met up for a drink and then there was a huge rainstorm so we were technically stuck at the restaurant until the rain passed, also because I wanted to kiss her on the mouth. So, there you go.

4. Your profile matters, but not that much.
This one is tricky, I think. Isn’t there some statistic that college admissions counselors spend something like two minutes on college applications? That means that everyone is spending .42 seconds on each other’s online profiles. So don’t get overly serious and pour yourself into your online profile to strike the perfect balance of quirky versus confident. Since it is the first thing potential daters see about you, just aim for authentic. Make an effort to show your real self. There’s a section on OK Cupid that asks what you think people notice about you right off the bat. After seeing dozens of profiles that detailed, “my eyes, which are like limpid pools,” I finally put down that I have a lot of plans. Yup, now and forever, that’s probably the first thing people notice about me. And it will either exhaust or excite you, so better that you know upfront that I have a lot of plans, ranging from dinner parties to decoupage to visiting the fjords of Newfoundland.

No matter what you decide to write, though, the business of writing about yourself in a public forum is an important, useful skill. What is your public personality? What do you notice that you’re putting out there, and what are you holding back? I think the stuff that people feel nervous about sharing makes for the best profiles.

5. Just because they’re the first doesn’t mean they’re the one.
Just because someone writes to you, or writes you back, or also wants to have children, or also likes cats and feminism and Pedro Almodovar, which after conducting a scientific study I believe at least eighty percent of online daters do, does not mean you should get seriously involved. I know this sounds obvious, but you may feel overwhelmed from all the possibilities you’re seeing. Or you may feel like you’ve hit upon someone who could be a good but not great lid for your pot. Or you may have found someone who is super into you. So why not stop here? No. Don’t do it. Don’t settle! Don’t stop until you find someone you’re really jazzed about. It’s okay to be picky, and you should not feel badly or obligated to continue corresponding with someone who’s not a match for you. If you realize someone’s not a match for you, be honest and kind so you can feel good if you bump into this person on the street: you’ve enjoyed your time together, you like them, and you do not see a romantic future.

For me, the key to all of this, to tackling any of the scary stuff, actually, is taking seemingly infinitesimal steps while not getting down about any perceived lack of progress, and staying grounded in realistic optimism. So that list of potential dates that my friends and I put together stayed on my fridge for a long time while I slowly followed through on my commitment to email them. Some never wrote back, I had fun first dates and not-so-good second dates with some of them, and then who do you think popped up as number seven? K, a recent transplant from New Orleans to Brooklyn who was not yet thirty (breaking my rule of not dating down), liked dogs (I am scared of dogs), and baked-in-shell eggs and had just finished conducting a personal historical study of Genghis Khan. Uh, weird. As it turned out, that was a pretty damn good risk to take.

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