Wasn't Aware of a Problem!

I saw this on the 6:00 news tonight, then went to the NYTimes for confirmation. Seems that Barbie and Ken broke up a couple of years ago. She dumped him for an Austrailian srufer named Blaine. The picture on the right near is of the interloper. And they wonder why the sales of the dolls are going down: Barbie and BLAINE? Please. It's Barbie andKEN. Always has been, always will be.

Unless it was all an excuse to give Ken a makeover. As dolls go, he hasn't really moved with the times. But still. BLAINE?

Anyway, there is to be a new Ken and I wasn't even aware that there was a problem with the old one. And I don't care what the new Ken looks like, either. Although I am glad they've updated him a bit. By the way, I'm not posting a pic of the new Ken. If you want to see it, click on the article link. They've got a picture and a description of Ken's lifestyle changes. Seems he's no longer a surfer, but a cutting-edge guy who looks cool, cooks, and is in touch with his feelings. Personally, I think that's a lot to expect from a doll.

When I was a kid I had a Malibu Ken. He came with a bathing suit and towel, so he was ready for fun on the beach. And my extra outfit for Ken, because sometimes he and Barbie would go out, was a pale blue leisure suit. It was the '70's and Ken was very stylish. Or as stylish as you can get with plastic hair. That's him up there on the right. I couldn't find any pictures of the leisure suit.

Anyway, I'm glad Barbie and Ken have decided to work things out.

UPDATE: The layout I originally set didn't quite publish properly. Anyway, the 1970's Malibu Ken is the one with the bitchin tan. The one with the bad rug is that Blaine.

The Science of Art, or the Art of Science

Seems as though Einstein saw parallels, at least according to this article in last Tuesday's NY Times. The article discusses Einstein's love of the music of Mozart, and how it impacted his research.

This really isn't new. I'm not going to dig out my grad school reading as to creative process, or creative personality, but suffice it to say that there is a lot on the common personality traits of innovative creative geniuses, such as Einstein and Mozart. Ironically,while there is a lot of research about personality and process, art tends to get taken for granted in a lot of the creativity literature.. and film really isn't there at all. Interesting, that. (And I'm going to say now that I'm aware that this is a bit of a rambling brain dump.. I woke up at an ungodly hour of the "morning" and felt the need to blog anyway.)

Anyway, the article got me thinking about my experiences in undergrad as a painting major. What that meant was I spent an enormous amount of time in the studio and not really participating in campus events unless they were specific to art. It tends to be isolating because students in the other majors simply don't get the time commitment and you get percieved as being anti-social or whatever. Except for the science majors. They weren't seen a lot on campus either, but the science building was the only one besides the art building where there were ALWAYS students working and the science students were the only ones besides the art students who would get upset when you couldn't get into the building at 3am to work.

One of the coolest thing in my grad work was seeing that I was percieving something that turns out to be pretty true in the research: artists (all kinds) and scientists have a lot in common. Actually any "creative" person is going to be like that with the dedication and occaisional tunnel-vision when you're "on to something". (Read "Flow" by Csikszentmihalyi, he discusses this really well and he actually "get's" the artists in a way a lot of other creativity researchers don't.) But I've always gotten along with scientists.. the researchers anyway.

This is the end of my rambling essay on I'm not really sure what... Except that the article is really interesting and it's getting me thinking about getting a doctorate again...