Alexia Golez

Finding it hard to focus as it’s oh so sunny outside.

Public interview with Shane Black and Kiss Kiss Bang Bang screening.

Gourmet site Gastronom.ie has Lindt prizes for your 50s.

Via James, how to make window boxes out of election posters.

T writes a yuppie essay. Kid has talent. Hope he remembers us after he sells 1m books.

Love the work of Beniot P. Scary tattoo hand.

Via Nylon, sustainable sneakers made of recycled bottles and tyres with Joe Curran photos printed on them.

Map of country codes.

The old don’t return to Facebook?  A pity.

Been thinking lately of organising a CampCamp. A CampCamp could have talks on load of different things, its mission statement, like Alien, is propagate more camps.

A CampCamp might have talks on:

• Ways to abuse Social Media
• How to talk to the Yoof like they are “You People”
• How to use Moodle/Django/Ruby on Rails/…
• How to organise camps
• Best way to coordinate Post-It colours
• How to attract the same old faces
• How to use jargon and busy status updates to confuse the masses

Simon reflects on the liveblogging phenomenon.

Trouble in the Houses of Porsche and VW?

The case for working with your hands.

A Case of a Picnic.

Bus graveyard.

TopGear animal testing.

Sharon Van Etten ‘For You’. Via See What You Hear.

Photo owned by Kevin N. Murphy (cc)

It’s an old saying, gentlemen prefer blondes. Last Friday I came to the stark conclusion, gentlemen would never prefer me. As a blonde. Carla’s hands belied her disgust. “That colour is doing you no favours.” “Let’s go warm” “I’m afraid that’s going to mean two layers” “A squillion dollars please” Well, not quite the last one but you get the idea. They say that you should go blonde once. As Carla flick through the colour catalogue, that day was swallowed by a black hole.

Dyeing one’s hair blonde extends back millennia. Ancient civilisations all dabbled in hair colouring. Roman prostitutes were bound by law to dye their hair blonde. And of course, fashion being fashion, it jumped from the sex trade to the IT crowd. For the Romans, the fascination sprouting from the pale complexion of the peoples of Gaul and of Teutonic tribes (whose warriors actually dyed their own hair to ensure uniform appearance).

That Northern European look was always something to emulate. The faulty gene that gives blonde hair is reputed to have propagated widely throughout the human race some 11,000 years ago when the few men that survived tundra hunts after the Ice Age could afford to be pickier about the women they mated with. Even just after the Ice Age, gentlemen preferred blondes.

Anecdotally, researchers believe that the attractiveness of the blonde hair has more to do with the perception that the owner of said mane is young and fertile. The perception of youth was an important factor in a selecting a mate in tribal times. Given that infant mortality was so high, it’s natural to believe that psychological hook. Interesting to see how genetic mutations jump into our psychosis as special cases that need to be cherished.

The pale complexion of the Nordic peoples is a demonstration of the adaptability of the human body to the extremes of Nature. As Scandinavian countries sit that bit close to the polar region, genetics has found a way of maximizing the demand to synthesise Vitamin D from in low light conditions. The less pigment in genes, the more reactive the body to sunlight. Add mass movements of population during the Age of Discovery and the propensity for sunlight to naturally bleach the hair of fair-haired people that select Nordic cache of genetic mutants spread across the globe.

Come the Reformation, the schism of Catholic and Protestant doctrines and later the Humanist leanings of the Renaissance, the hunger to pursue blonde as fashion trend sat squarely on the religious seesaw. Although, it’s interesting to note, those classical Raphaelite nymphs were more decidedly auburn than fair harlot.

We have to go all the way to the nineteenth Century with the finding of hydrogen peroxide to see the popularization of blonde as a style staple. In 1818, Louis Jacques Thénard synthesised hydrogen peroxide by accident by burning barium salts to create barium peroxide and then adding nitric acid. Hydrogen peroxide is a very pale blue liquid whose weak acidic composition makes it a powerful bleaching agent. Hydrogen peroxide occurs naturally in every hair cuticle and how it contributes to the greying of hair still remains a mystery to scientists.

The first mass market commercial product to capitalise on Thénard’s discovery came almost fifty years later with the Paris Exposition of 1867. London perfumer, E.H. Theillay and a Parisian hairdresser, Leon Hugo were just one of the 50,000 exhibitors, but theirs was the first modern hair colorant. Wonderfully titled “Eau de Fontaine de Jouvence Golden” or “Water of Fountain of Youth Golden Delicious”, its shoes are still leave big footprints, even today, almost one hundred and fifty years later.

Skipping ahead through those pop culture references – Harlow, Davis, Monroe, Fawcett, Anderson – the modern blonde bears as much ridicule as much as her Ice Age progenitor was hallowed as a Baby-Machine.

For those of us of a pale but waxy complexion that dual mandate of a dumb, baby machine sits that bit further from our fingers. Who knows? Maybe we should invest in Fake Bake and boob jobs, the rest is just colouring in.

Suzy has written a piece on the adoption of MiCandidate data by media organisations in the run up to the June 5th elections. Go, take a read!