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Quantified Self in the Washington Post: “In the discussion following my previous post about FlowingData’s self-surveillance contest, JAHKNOW kindly points us to a Washington Post article from yesterday about the quantified self, BB pal Gary Wolf’s notion that you can examine your own body through a data-driven scientific lens. The article mentions sites to help you track sex acts, menstruation, exercise, and a variety of other activities and functions. From the Washington Post:

Members (of the Bay Area ‘quantified self show and tell’ group) plan to meet monthly to share with one another the tools and sites they’ve found helpful on their individual paths to self-digitization. Topics include, according to the group invite: behavior monitoring, location tracking, digitizing body info and non-invasive probes.

‘Don’t you think it’s kind of obvious that if you step on a scale, there should be something that sends the information to your computer?’ asks Gary Wolf, a contributing editor at Wired magazine and one of Quantified Self’s co-founders. ‘Isn’t it ridiculous to think that blood pressure shouldn’t be measured at least once a day, if not several times a day?’

Wolf is a tracker whose particular interest is the secret workings of his own body.

You listen to his questions — posed energetically and frequently interrupted by excited laughter — and you think No, Gary, no!

Most of us would prefer our scale’s number never saw light of day, much less light of database.

At some level, Wolf knows this. He theorizes that the impulse to self-track is one part available technology, one part geeky, data-driven personality. So far, only 10 people have RSVP’d affirmatively to Quantified Self’s first meeting, which is scheduled to take place mid-September. ‘This is,’ Wolf says, ‘probably a very small subset of humanity.’

‘Bytes of Life’ (WashingtonPost.com)

Previously on BB:
• FlowingData’s personal viz contest winner
• Seth Roberts’ fascinating self-experiments

”

(Via Clippings.)

Can Science Justify Strange Flings?:

(Via 3quarksdaily.)

PROGENE MALE SUPPLEMENT: BUY IT, OR YOU’LL NEVER HAVE SEX AGAIN:

This commercial I recently saw on Comedy Central for Progene male enhancement supplement warns men who are ‘not 20 anymore’ that, without their product, they won’t be able to satisfy a woman.

Here’s a screenshot of a graph from the video which purports to show how men’s sexual performance declines with age:

Of course, we women ‘know it’s not your fault,’ ‘it’s natural.’

Obviously you could could use this for a discussion of the increasing scrutiny men’s bodies are put under (much as women’s long have). But it’s also a good example of the way sex is often discussed; the implication here is that the only way to satisfy a woman sexually is to be able to have sex like a 20-year-old man, and the emphasis is clearly on penile-vaginal intercourse as the main source of sexual pleasure (though it does come with the handy DVD about the female orgasm). I might also use it when I talk about the ways we construct biology and treat some ‘natural’ processes as inevitable and unalterable while attempting to change others.

(Via Sociological Images.)

Lou Gehrig’s Plaza:
(‘Representative path plots from one SOD1 rat and one control rat in the open-field arena. Image by Neri Kafkafi, et al.)

Research into Lou Gehrig’s disease has demonstrated that, at least in mice carrying the genetic mutation, it can spatially manifest itself as ‘very subtle’ but detectable behavioral patterns before the onset of symptoms.

Quoting at length a press release from the American Psychological Association:

Researchers led by Neri Kafkafi, PhD, of the Maryland Psychiatric Research Center, part of the University of Maryland’s School of Medicine, mathematically analyzed about 50,000 predetermined movement patterns that resulted when rats roamed freely, one by one, in a small arena. The software created an abstract space defined by combinations of behavior such as speed, acceleration and direction of movement. Mining the resulting behavioral data enabled researchers to test many more facets of behavior than they could analyze manually.

After videotaping the movement of two groups of rats – one type with the mutation that results in an ALS-type syndrome, the other type normal controls — the scientists used the computer to ‘pan’ for differences between groups and identified a unique motor pattern in mutant rats two months before disease onset (which would equate to roughly five to 10 years in humans).

Of the multitude of behavior patterns analyzed, the predefined ‘heavily braking while slightly turning away from the wall’ showed a group difference. In two independent data sets, rats with the ALS-type mutation were significantly less likely than controls to brake and turn from the arena wall as they approached.

The benefit of this study is that ‘by being able to predict more accurately which carriers may express the disease before they experience symptoms (the ‘premorbid’ state), researchers could test medicines that might prevent symptoms from emerging.’

(‘Three-dimensional attribute spaces. Attribute spaces for one SOD1 rat and one control rat, corresponding to the same sessions shown’ in the first image. Image by Neri Kafkafi, et al.)

One wonders whether this sort of research, somewhere down the line, will result in public places getting littered with CCTV cameras data mining for the tell-tale signs of genetic diseases affecting motor functions. Similarly when traffic cameras take a photo of your license plate when you go over the speed limit and then get your ticket in the mail a couple of days later, these outdoor medical scanners take a photo of your face, match it up to a database at the CDC and a couple of days later, you get a diagnosis in the mail.

There will be a specially outfitted plaza where those without health insurance can get their free check-ups. Those with no more sick days can simply walk pass through on their way to work or linger about during their lunch breaks. Hypochondriacs will come in droves and stay there, like skateboarders to a Brutalist plaza.

It’s landscape as a diagnostic tool.

(Spot the pedophiles and the terrorists. Photo courtesy of Barco. Source.)

If there is a predictive behavioral pattern to a pedophile’s movements within the spatial confines of playgrounds and park (that is, if children still go outdoors anymore) as well as the streets bordering schools, you get a court order to receive some psychiatric counseling.

Do terrorists have a genetic mutation that not only affect their cognitive reasoning but also their motor functions, the pattern array of which is so perceptibly different with that of non-terrorists that you can ‘spot’ them?

In the Archives:
The Alzheimer House
My Garden Is Telling Me That I’m Abusing My Kids

(Via Pruned.)

THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF RACE BY PLAYMOBIL:

Kirsten D. sent us this link to a series of Playmobil families.  She notes how the families are all racially marked (using racial categories like ‘Asian’ and ’African’ instead of nationality categories like ‘Japanese’ and ‘Somalian’).  The ‘Mediterranean/Hispanic’ category also points to the social construction of race and the way in which social construction varies across cultures (Playmobil are made in Germany).

They families are also racially homogeneous.  In the world of Playmobil (at least how it is sold, though not necessarily how it is played with) there are no interracial families and, therefore, no bi- or multi-racial people.  In this way the toys reify racial categories and naturalize racial matching in relationships.

African/African American Family:

Mediterranean/Hispanic Family:

Asian Family:

Native American Family:

Notice also that all of the families are in contemporary clothes except for the Native American family.  Ethnicized groups are often represented in ‘native’ costume, but this is especially true for American Indians (at least in the U.S.).  It is as if, in the popular imagination, American Indians are extinct; as if there are no American Indians alive today walking around in Nikes (there are).

So, in the world of Playmobil, American Indians are, like Romans, a historical artifact:

Also, because it warrants pointing out, all the female and male children all have gender stereotypical toys.

(Via Sociological Images.)