This is a great joke a friend of mine sent me recently. Thought you might enjoy it…
At the National Art Gallery in Dublin, a husband and wife were staring at a portrait that had them completely confused.
The painting depicted three black men totally naked sitting on a park bench. Two of the figures had black willies, but the one in the middle had a pink Willie.
The curator of the gallery realized that they were having trouble interpreting the painting and offered his assessment. He went on for over half an hour explaining how it depicted the sexual emasculation of blackmen in a predominately white, patriarchal society.
“In fact, “he pointed out, “some serious crtics believe that the pink willie also reflects the cultural and sociological oppression experienced by gay men in contemporary society.”
After the curator left, an Irishman, approached the couple and said, “Would you like to know what the painting is really about?”
“Now why would you claim to be more of an expert than the curator of the gallery?” asked the couple.
“Because I’m the guy who painted it,” he replied.
“In fact, there are no black men depicted at all. They’re just three Irish coal miners. The guy in the middle went home for lunch.”
I just found this great blog post about the “Monkeysphere.” In his “Pointless Waste of Time” blog, David Wong talks about our incapacity to think of other humans beyond our direct sphere of 150 people. Based on Darwinian biology, humans are incapable of thinking of other people as individuals beyond the 150 or so people we know directly. That’s how we can say things like, “Man, I really hate that group of people (insert derogatory term of your choice).”
Basically, the post is a call to stop thinking of people in terms of stereotypes, and try to bring our thinking of people beyond our spheres of influence as individuals. I’m sure there are plenty of people who think I’m a jerk, but I’ve caught myself ranting about some faceless driver on the highway in a way that I would never even consider if I was sitting across a table from them.
Andy Grant from afgrant.com sent me a link to a video about Photosynth - a new tool from Microsoft’s Blaise Aguera y Arcas - that hyperlinks photos from across the Internet to allow virtual tours with rich relevance for different places. Sounds confusing, but think of it this way…
This software will search photo sharing sites for photos tagged with the same place names. For example, in this YouTube video, it pastes together a bunch of photos of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome to give a virtual tour of the site from a ton of different angles and perspectives. Check out the video first:
Next, here’s a link to Blaise speaking at the TED conference on the same software. This video is a bit longer, but it has some very interesting ideas on how this could be used for advertising or marketing.
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