Article: Divorce for Men

Link to article

"When a marriage ends, you learn this: Nobody sees things quite the way you do, and nobody cares about you quite the way you care about yourself.
But you can't help telling yourself: Maybe someday I'll find someone who will."

Read more: http://www.esquire.com/features/marriage-guide/divorce-for-men-0511#ixzz1LztDPl84

Article: The Neuroscience of the Gut

Interesting article in Scientific American about how scientists believe that the brain is shaped by bacteria in the digestive tract.

This makes total sense to me, and makes me think about Mac (my eight-year old with ASD).  On top of having numerous food allergies (eggs, dairy, shellfish, nuts), he also has bad problems with food digestion.  We supplement his diet with good digestive bacteria, but if he skips a day or two, look out.  Apparently this is very common in people with ASD.

"In autism and other pervasive developmental disorders, there are reports that the specific bacterial species present in the gut are altered and that gastrointestinal problems exacerbate behavioral symptoms. A newly developed biochemical test for autism is based, in part, upon the end products of bacterial metabolism. "

By the way, how's this for a mind blowing quote - there are approximately 30,000 human genes in the average human compared to 3 million bacterial genes inhabiting us, leading scientists to conclude that "we are at most one percent human."  Did your universe just implode like mine did?

Scientific American

Article: The Best Questions to Ask on a First Date

Link to article here.  OkTrends once again datamines their customers to come up with some interesting conclusions.  For example, if you'd like to know if someone is likely to have sex on the first date, the best indicator is their answer to the question "do you like the taste of beer."  Men and women who answer "yes" to this question are 60% more likely to have sex on the first date.

Article: The Death of the Family Dinner

Nice analysis over at Retrospace about why families no longer eat at the dinner table together.   Because of schedules, my kids and I rarely eat dinner together.

Interview: Mary-Louise Parker - What I've Learned

"You meet a woman who's clumsy and doesn't read, and because of that it won't work. But then you meet a woman who's clumsy and won't read, but she's just right for you. The two can have the same failures, but some ineffable alchemy allows you to forgive the right one anything."

"My kids have taught me that I'm not as good a person as I like to think I am, and that I'm not as bad a person as I sometimes think I am."

Amen, sister.  I think she's one of the sexiest things on two legs.

Full article here at Esquire.com

Article: Randy and Evi Quaid Interview with Esquire

"If the killers really are as smart as they seem, they will use Randy and Evi's love for each other against them.  It's the kind of love that can be made to look like whatever it is you want to see."

Full article here.

This has got to be drugs, right?  This is going to end badly.

Article: Spaulding Gray's Son

A new documentary by Steven Soderbergh (And Everything is Going Fine) about the life of Spaulding Gray is coming out on December 10.  The final song in the movie was composed by his now 18 year old son Forrest.

Spaulding was one of my favorite artists.  I was lucky enough to see him perform his monologue Monster in a Box live at UCLA.  I believe it was his last monologue.  I remember at the time, he seemed to be doing so well.  He was, for Spaulding, unusually optimistic and upbeat.  This was before the accident in 2001 that gave him a brain injury, left him in such pain and plunged him into such a deep and chronic depression.  On January 10, 2004 he went missing.  His body was found in the East River months later.  His death was determined most likely to have been suicide.

Link to article

Article: Out of 20 Countries, U.S. Women Rank Nearly Dead Last for Flirting

Article here.

"What the study measured, in particular, was how many women initiate contact with men. The site analyzed 90 million contacts between women and men in the different countries below to arrive at the final rankings."

""This study focused on who makes the first move," Lloyd Price, Badoo's Director of Marketing told Lemondrop. "What it shows is simply that American women are less likely than those in most other countries -- and much less likely than Spanish and most Latin women -- to be the one initiating something online with a man."

The author of this article suggests that the reason U.S. women are like this is because of notions of puritanical virtue.  I think it has more to do with fear.  There seems to be a general culture of fear in the U.S., specifically a fear of each other.  Every man a woman sees on the street is a potential psycho.  Every man or woman a parent sees is a potential child molester.  The list goes on and on.  I've noticed in particular that in L.A. when women are out and about, if they are alone, they are either talking on their smartphones, texting, reading - anything to be taken out of their present environment so they don't have to engage.  It is very difficult to make any kind of connections with strangers these days.

Article: How to Plan a Road Trip by Erica Sackin

"There are two types of road trip people. The kind that are focused on getting from point A to point B as fast as possible; usually folks who are either moving to a new state, travelling with a dog or are deathly afraid of flying. They take no joy in the eccentricities of America, such as Hooper, Colorado's Alien Watchtower, or The World’s Tallest Uncrucified Christ located in Eureka Springs, Arkansas. They’ll also usually end up dragging you by your hair out of the Stax Museum of Soul in Memphis, should you take too long staring at the album art on the first release of “Do The Funky Chicken.”"

How to Plan a Road Trip by Erica Sackin

I am positively itching to do a road trip.  I don't have that much time, though, so I'm thinking about maybe just heading up to Santa Cruz for a weekend.