Parting OutI had occasion to mess about with one of the shiny new iMacs recently (a friend was gracious enough to leave one lying around). Heavens, it's pleasant. It's quiet! If the optical drive isn't churning away at speed, it only makes a blissful hush. It's terribly shiny.
I got the chance to play with the new-fangled media applications that came with the thing; it would work admirably as a TV/PVR/DVD Player/MM Server/PBX/whatnot. One particularly interesting one was the photobooth app, which, as part of its work, cranks the brightness of the screen right before the shot. The thing also flips the images it takes, so that the visage one gets of one's self is the familiar one from the mirror, not the other one that everyone else sees.
I read a (probably suspect) paper sometime ago on the psychology of this. It turns out that there are perceptual trends associated with haircuts: the sloppy, non-scientific summary of it all was something along the lines of "parting your hair on the left makes you look like a dork." The problem is that a good looking part in the mirror will translate badly for those whom one might meet. The advice follows: make sure you look like a dork in the mirror!
But really, is it better to project a more pleasing image to strangers, or one's self? Should we all carry mirrors with us for those momentary chats on the way to the bakery in the mornings? And what are the social niceties of that? Whose mirror to use? And forfend if your mirror isn't clean...
My solution to this is to give ever less of a damn about my hair. And mirrors were probably a bad idea in general.
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