The Dos Equis “Most Interesting Man in the World” ad campaign should enlist a new man: Dale Begg-Smith, the Olympic silver medalist in men’s moguls. Begg-Smith is movie-star handsome, a world-class athlete, and a self-made millionaire—women of the world are begging for mercy! OK, apparently his business is spam and malware, but some of us can’t help but be attracted to a man with a little malware in his heart. Maybe the next time you get a message suggesting you can increase the "garth of your pecnis," it won’t be so annoying if it brings up visions of Begg-Smith. I admit he perhaps takes the smirking sang-froid a bit too far, but there is something irresistible about an athlete who disdains all the hoopla and self-congratulations and instead is a gorgeous enigma.

Tags: Dale Begg-Smith, olympics

In the last issue of New York magazine, Sam Anderson takes an incisive look at ChatRoulette, an increasingly popular Web site that links two strangers by random chance to a one-on-one video chat on a simple interface. There's no sign-up—you go to the site, click "Play," and within seconds you're connected with a stranger. You can stay and chat, or click "Next" and up comes another stranger. The objective, at once simple and wholly fascinating: a bottomless barrel of no-repeat interactions with random, potentially entertaining oddballs. The not-surprising news, though, is that chatters see an unfortunate amount of man-with-penis-in-hand during chats. (Instant video-conferencing with no "back" button is a pervert's dream, for obvious reasons). Just yesterday Mindy Kaling tweeted, "Chat Roulette is horrifying. We just used it in our writers room. It was naked guys or guys in Jigsaw masks." And a pervert's wet dream is a parent's nightmare. The New York Times' tech blog warned last week: "Parents, keep your children, far, far, away."

The jury's still out on whether the ChatRoulette has real staying power. Most everyone who's written about it so far has expressed some degree of repulsion. (Among the descriptors used in various reviews: nauseating, repulsive, socially depraved.) And Omegle, a random chat site that essentially works just like ChatRoulette sans video, garnered a fair amount of attention last year when it launched and has now nearly faded from the spotlight entirely. I was intrigued by Anderson's vision of a more controlled, but still random version of ChatRoulette:

I found myself fantasizing about a curated version of ChatRoulette—powered maybe by Google’s massive server farms—that would allow users to set all kinds of filters: age, interest, language, location. One afternoon I might choose to be thrown randomly into a pool of English-speaking thirtysomething non-masturbators who like to read poetry. Another night I might want to talk to Jets fans. Another night I might want to just strip away all the filters and see what happens. The site could even keep stats, like YouTube, so you could see the most popular chatters in any given demographic. I could get very happily addicted to a site like that.

I have a hard time, though, believing that random video-chat will ever move that far past the "Flash your tits!" imperative.

Tags: Chatroulette, internet, new york magazine

After a long weekend of yet more media coverage of the anti-obesity campaign, I’m struck by a promising force at work fueling interest in this crusade: not fear of fatness, but fascination with food. There’s Mark Bittman tackling the subject in the New York Times' Week in Review section: Can’t miss a favorite food writer! And hey, even an Outlook piece in the Washington Post about school lunches can suck me in, and not because I’m expecting mouth-watering fare. In fact, reading about gross stuff can arguably pack more of a punch than yet another article about working in gardens. Or so it occurred to me as I read the behind-the-scenes tour of the “fresh-cooked” innovations in the D.C. public schools, complete with big bags of " 'beef crumbles,’ grayish-brown bits of extruded meat and soy protein.” Yuck, but I didn’t put it down.

As smart pieces—like this one in Slate—also proliferate, pointing out the problems with calorie-counting as a solution, I wonder if there’s a lesson here worth considering. All those numbers can be pretty abstract. Starting with soda (Mark Bittman’s topic), which everybody surely should cut back on, why fuss about the confusing figures—recalibrating serving sizes, noting calories on the front of cans? Instead, let’s get graphic, in good foodie-style: What if every Coke can had to advertise prominently that it contained the “equivalent of nine teaspoons of sugar”? Or maybe it’s 10. That’s an attention-grabber to turn your stomach.

Tags: anti-obesity campaign, calorie-counting

As Heather Boushey and Joan C. Williams put it in their new report, "The Three Faces of Work-Family Conflict" [PDF], this issue is "remarkably democratic." Women from all three levels of income—categorized by Boushey and Williams as professionals (median family income of $148,000 a year), the "missing middle" (median family income of $64,000 a year), and the poor (median family income of $19,000 a year)—are unhappy about the number of hours they're working and the lack of flexibility in their professional lives.

Everything is the worst for the poor—they have jobs with the least flexibility and their financial status can be completely derailed by a sick child or elderly parent. Boushey and Williams open their report with a truly awful story of McDonald's cashier Kim Braithwaite, whose baby sitter was late one night. Braithwaite knew that if she were tardy to her job, she would lose it. So she left her two children, ages 9 and 1, at home, assuming the babysitter would show up shortly after she left. Instead, a fire broke out in Braithwaite's apartment building, killing both her children.

Of course Braithwaite's story is an extreme example. But the systemic issues behind her tragedy are spread across all classes. Lisa Belkin says, in her post about the study on the New York Times blog Motherlode, "[I]t is no more or less important for professional parents to feel secure about who takes care of their children while they work as it is for poor parents." Boushey and Williams offer up concrete policy suggestions for the government and corporations in four areas, Belkin notes: workplace flexibility; short-term, episodic, and extended time off; child care, after-school care, and adult care; and addressing family-responsibilities discrimination. Since today is a snow day for many school-age kids, issues of emergency child care are particularly on the minds of many parents today. How are you coping? And what about your particular situation could be improved?

Tags: center for american progress, heather boushey, joan c. williams, work-family balance

NBC Olympics host Bob Costas is about to turn 58, yet his face is as smooth as an ice rink that has just had the Zamboni machine run over it. Even watching in hi-def, he is without a line or wrinkle, a sag, or a bag. It’s hard to keep focused while watching “sliding sports,” so I admit my mind wanders to how Bob Costas manages to look 20 years younger than he is. Is it a facelift, laser treatment, Botox, filler? All of the above? Bob, no one cares about curling, we just want to know how you do it.

Tags: Bob Costas, olympics, plastic surgery

The BBC reported on a dismaying survey on rape demonstrating that three-quarters of female respondents believe a woman is to blame if a man rapes her after she gets in bed with him, and a third of female respondents blame the victim for a man's choice to rape if she wore something "provocative" or had a drink with the guy. All this is interesting, but probably less surprising information than the finding that women were significantly likelier to blame rape victims than men—71 percent of women versus 57 percent of men. Surprising to most people, but not to anyone who deals with the legal system's response to rape. There, it's been common knowledge for a long time that female-heavy juries often let the rapist go because they believe the victim had it coming.

This tendency of so many women to judge rape victims harshly and blame them doesn't seem to make sense. The behaviors that get you judged harshly are so common that many of the women saying you asked for it have themselves performed those behaviors. Dressing to attract male attention, flirting with men, going to bed with men, having a drink with a man? If women who blamed women for rape were consistent, they'd believe they themselves deserve to get raped.

What's going on, as far as I can tell, is the classic rationale of, "But in my case, it's different." People tend to whip this out in touchy situations in general, but when it comes to women and sex, the tendency to judge harshly in others while forgiving yourself and those you love is extreme indeed. When a stranger dresses for men, flirts with men, has a drink with a man, etc., she's a huge slut. When we do it, it's just dating. Abortion clinic workers have darkly joked about this tendency in their anti-abortion patients for a long time—that anti-choicers make exceptions for "rape, incest, and me." Women are often tasked in our society with the job of Slut Police, determining who is a naughty girl who deserves to be punished with rape or forced childbirth, and we're also expected to live our lives and have sex ourselves. So a lot of women cope by eagerly denouncing strangers while making exceptions for themselves.

That men are more likely to be consistent—thinking well of sexually active women while partaking of the benefits of sexual liberation—is something of a puzzle. Part of it may be that many men know damn well that you don't have to rape a woman just because she had a drink with you or even crawled in to bed with you, and so when other men pretend they were helpless in the face of a woman forcing them to rape her, they see that lie for what it is. But even then, only 43 percent of men surveyed were willing to admit there's no excuse for raping a woman.

Tags: Rape, sexual assault, victim-blaming

According to a survey of 1,000 people in London, nearly three-quarters of women think a rape victim should accept some responsibility for the attack if she got into bed with the assailant first. [BBC News]

Osama Bin Laden's No. 2, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, was captured in a raid by Pakistani and U.S. intelligence forces. [Huffington Post]

One in four British women over 35 never have sex. [The Independent]

A new Web site, IJustMadeLove.com, lets you alert the world when you have sex with GPS and Google maps technology. [The Daily Beast]

Playing sports has long-term benefits for a girl's health, education and job success. [Well Blog]