A comfortable high heel is not rocket science, it’s much more complicated.

Dolly Singh of Thesis Couture and a former engineer from Elon Musk’s Space X Found the whole thing was much more complicated than she first anticipated. “I came from rockets and VR,” she notes. “I thought that six months after I started this project, I’d have the most amazing shoes that the planet has ever seen. And here I am, three years later—and I’m almost finished.”

The people Singh recruited, from SpaceX and elsewhere, to advise Thesis Couture in doing that work included Hans Koenigsmann, the (yes) rocket scientist. And Garrett Reisman, the (yes) former astronaut. And Matt Thomas, the former director of mechanical engineering at Oculus VR, the (now-Facebook-owned) virtual reality firm. And Andy Goldberg, an orthopedic surgeon. And Francis Bitonti, a clothing designer—he created that iconic, 3-D-printed gown for the burlesque star Dita Von Teese—who has become an expert at using algorithms to ensure garments’ fit. Singh also brought on Amanda Parkes, a fashion technologist, to ensure that the shoes the company created would be stylish as well as comfortable. Not running shoe-comfortable, to be extra-clear, but for-a-high heel-comfortable. “What we’re fundamentally trying to do,” Singh explains, “is make a stiletto that feels like a wedge.”

A François Pinet boot for women, French, dating from the late 1870s to the early 1880s (image © 2015 Bata Shoe Museum, Toronto, Canada (photo: Ron Wood))

“You never find wonderful and great things on the ground, but instead placed on high, to fill others with wonder and reverence,” Arcangela Tarabotti, a Venetian nun, argued in the 17th century. She was defending a very early version of the stiletto.

My 5’11” (180.4cm) daughter likes to wear very high heels.

Unlike many of the women discussed in this article, she has no need to wear them to look males straight in their eyes. She doesn’t wear them to work anyway.
She inherited her mother’s great legs and certainly doesn’t need to stand on tiptoe to exaggerate their shape.
But she has told me that she likes wearing them when she gets dressed up, likes how it makes her feel.

She’s a professional and an adult and I admire that she has become so comfortable with her stature that she stands proud of it. But I am fully aware of the long term impact on women’s feet of wearing them and hope that she lets them stay (for the most part anyway) in the back of her closet gathering dust.

If you’re interested, Thesis Couture plans to include just 1,500 pairs of shoes—retail price: $925 each—in its inaugural line, coming this fall. At a recent soft-launch event, in New York, Singh announced to the assembled crowd that they could add their names to the waiting list of people who have expressed advance interest in purchasing one of those pairs. The list, Singh told me, currently has more than 10,000 names.

Source: The Feminist Stiletto? The History, and the Future, of the High-Heeled Shoe – The Atlantic

And to go with this excellent article is a look at some odd and unusual foot and leg wear:

In the midst of a troublesome return from AT&T Park that involved the pedal crank breaking off my bicycle I came across this soccer ball in the Panhandle of GGPark.

A Rec & Park person and an SFPD officer told me it was unowned and to take it if I wanted. I figured that if it was still there after I dropped my bike at Freewheel Cyclery I’d grab it for one of the neighborhood kids.

It was and when I picked it up I found that it had a 415 phone number. So I called it and told the guy who answered that I had his soccer ball. He was surprised when I told him where I was since he had ‘lost’ it (or had it borrowed) out at SF State 2 weeks ago!

So this Saturday Jamal is coming by to get his ball. If he asks I’ll tell him the only reward I want is for him to pay it forward.

(and oh yeah, credit unions rule, banks suck!)

May 9th is always a tough day for me. It’s the anniversary of the day my mother died on Mother’s Day. I was 25, she was 59.

The header picture on my blog today might contain her too. Perhaps the girl under the sign who appears to be about to flash her breasts at the news photographer.

She had always boasted about being the first person to be arrested for wearing a two-piece bathing suit on Miami Beach and that might be her.

Fortunately, in a letter sent a few months before she died, I had told my mom how much I admired her, how well she had done her job, and how well her kids turned out.
Basically, what every parent wants to hear from their kids.
So, while it was horribly sad (and still hurts), it was not as devastating as it might have been had these things been left unsaid.

So, if you like who you are, think your parents did a decent job, and can see them in what you do and how you act, make sure you let them know. Even if they’re not elderly or sick, just let them know.

Before it’s too late.

Step aside Monsieur Verne, science is our guide in this very cool online journey to the center of the Earth.

As you scroll through the layers, each offering articles about it, a counter in the upper right corner counts out your depth and your the ambient temperature there:

To the very center:

(which, for fans of Verne, is disappointingly bereft of dinosaurs and Morlocks)

Drill deep into the mysteries of our home planet, from the surface all the way down to the core.

Here’s 3 of the 27 articles:

Visit a Vertical Underwater Cave in Belize

Largest Asteroid Crater Ever Discovered Underground in Australia

Happy Birthday to Inge Lehmann, the Woman Who Discovered Earth’s Inner Core

Source: Journey to the Center of Earth | Science | Smithsonian

I regularly collect and share with various friends and associates who work in the field articles about research developments in the neuropsychiatric science and have decided to post those articles here as well.
This week’s:

Study shows how memories can be intentionally forgotten

And, to go with that, here’s some light-hearted looks at the therapeutic world:

Another excellent photoplasty collection by Cracked readers. They’re all good but here are a few of my favorites.

by ShortUsername01

by ShortUsername01

By shortusername01

           By Bonsai Elephant

Good marketing can make any shitty business look good. How do we know? Because it’s pretty much guaranteed that you love one, a few, or all of the companies on this list.

Source: How 22 Companies Screw Their Customers (In Just 6 Words)

            By Opus52

Mya Le Thai holds her invention. (Steve Zylius, UC Irvine)

Since most household electronics have life spans limited by factors besides battery life, a battery that lasts for a decade or two could easily outlive the device it powers.

“If you could get 100,000 cycles out of a lithium ion battery it might mean you never need to buy two of them,” Penner says. “We’re talking about a lifetime of 20 years, maybe even longer than that.”

Source: Did Scientists Stumble on a Battery that Lasts Forever? | Innovation | Smithsonian