Barbie Gone Wild?

I've been so distracted by minor but flashy news stories this year like the NCAA Finals, the nation's finances, and the new Obama administration, I missed the big story of 2009: to help celebrate Barbie's 50th birthday, Mattel came out with "Totally Stylin' Tattoo Barbie." She comes with a set of tattoos that kids can place on that iconic body. The doll also comes with a tattoo gun so children can stamp these washable stickers on themselves. Barbie with tattoos? I know what you're thinking: what's next? "Hooker Barbie?" "Pothead Barbie?" "Premarital Sex Barbie?"

Many parents had exactly this reaction when the doll came out a few months ago. They felt this would encourage kids to think prematurely about getting real tattoos for their real bodies. They thought that Barbie with tats was too slutty for their children. They were outraged that a "role model" like Barbie had sunk so low. Meanwhile, it became a big seller.

This wasn't the first time that some adults have objected to Barbie. Some have felt that her unrealistic figure has made young girls yearn for an unrealistic figure of their own. Some parents believe that tattoos for Barbie continues this obsession with one's body rather than other more important characteristics of a woman.

If you go to the archives of some universities, I'm sure you'll find more than one Ph.D. thesis called something like, "Barbie and Body Image: The Downfall of American Womanhood." I admit I was somewhat shocked when I heard about Barbie and body art. My first reaction was, "Now parents of seven-year-olds are going to have to deal with them wanting tattoos."

But then I did something uncharacteristic for me: I started thinking. Maybe anti-Barbie papers aren't the only theses in those dusty university archives. Maybe there are some with titles like, "Relax, Folks. Barbie Isn't a Role Model. It's Just a Toy." Or if there aren't any, there should be.

When you were a kid, weren't you able to tell the difference between a toy and something real? When you played "war" with a friend, didn't you know you were just playing? And did your putting on temporary tattoos make you get real ones? Besides, isn't it a bit ironic that the anti-Barbie-ites who feel that the doll puts too much emphasis on appearance are concerned with the appearance of tattoos?

So it's possible that the actual reason that Tattoo Barbie has some parents' (old-fashioned) underwear in a bunch is because this kind of thing wasn't around when they were kids. Maybe it's like adults in the '50's who were shocked by Elvis and convinced he would destroy our civilization. Or maybe they're like parents like me who, in the '90's, thought video and computer games would ruin children forever. (I'm still not sure I was wrong about that one).

Tattoos don't have the same connotations today that they had when I was a kid. Back then, it seemed like only sailors, truck drivers, and other "tough guys" had tattoos. Certainly, we never saw a woman with one. Today, your doctor or your kid's teacher is more likely to wear a tattoo than a hat.

I confess that I'm still getting used to looking at tattoos without making any kind of knee-jerk judgment about the wearer. Whenever I go on vacation where there's a swimming pool, I'm still a little surprised by the fact that the nice couple we sat next to at dinner the night before has more tattoos than a basketball team. And guess what? Barbie's the same age as that couple. She's fifty now. She might not look like it, but many 50-year-old women don't look their age these days. So maybe it's fitting that 50-year-old Barbie has broken out the tattoos.

I also realized that mothers who have real tattoos might be embracing Tattoo Barbie. Maybe the doll helps their children understand that their mother is someone who just found a way to express herself rather than someone who hangs out with a gang during their naptime.

As a fuddy-duddy, it's not easy for me to accept change, but I do -- eventually. I accept texting, cars that talk, and milk in cartons. So I can certainly accept Barbie wearing tattoos. But I do think you have to draw the line. Where? I'll tell you where, and this is a warning to the people at Mattel: Don't even think about making a Ken doll with pierced nipples.

Computers in Jeopardy?

I read the other day that IBM plans on having a computer compete against human contestants on the TV show, "Jeopardy!" The claim is that if the computer beats people, it will be a big leap forward in the field of artificial intelligence. It doesn't sound like a leap to me. We already know that computers can be faster than humans and that their "brains" can contain more information. So what's the big deal? However, the people at IBM are quite excited about this. I assume "quite excited" translates at IBM to mean that some of the folks there are actually considering loosening their ties.

If IBM (or one of its clones) were announcing that it had finally made a computer that will last longer than a ballpoint pen, then I might be excited. If they had come up with a computer that doesn't crash the night before something important is due, I'd put on a tie and loosen it. I'd be impressed if they were demonstrating a new program that could tell the difference between e-mail from my mother and spam from "Swedish Porn And Farm Supplies." But a computer that's good at playing a game? Big whoop.

So I wasn't all that impressed when I first read about this, but then I started thinking that maybe I was being too quick to judge. Maybe I'll consider this computer amazing when I actually see it on the show. Once they put it on the set, sandwiched between a male and a female contestant, maybe it will do things besides just answer questions. Maybe the computer will be better dressed than the human contestants. Maybe it won't make dumb wagers. Maybe it will be impressive during what the show's producers refer to as the "interview portion" of the program and what we at home call, "the bathroom break." That's the time when the contestants tell "fascinating" stories about themselves like, "One time I had a flat tire." Maybe the geniuses at IBM will have programmed the computer to tell an anecdote that's actually interesting, like a story about the time the computer was caught in a motel room fooling around with a DVD player.

One of the quirks of "Jeopardy!" is that the contestant is actually given the "answer," and he or she must supply the "question." For example, the "answer" might be "Claimed She Could See Russia From Her House," so the correct "question" would be, "Who is Sarah Palin?" A response that would be technically correct, but not what they're looking for would be, "Who is Mrs. Putin?"

I guess this kind of subtlety about giving an answer that is factually correct but obviously not what they're looking for is one of the things that make it difficult for a computer to play the game. Understanding the vernacular of the show and the strange categories that sometimes appear are all things that aren't easy for computers. It would be a slam-dunk if the show just asked questions like, "What's the square root of the year President Obama was born, multiplied by the number of cosmetic surgeries that Joan Rivers has had?"

The computer that they'll use isn't like the one I'm using right now. It's going to be a Blue Gene supercomputer, whatever that is. Most people will probably be rooting for the people against the computer. That's just human nature. We often hate machines, hate talking to them on the phone, and hate having to deal with them when we forget our stupid passwords.

We love stories about a guy who can do math faster on his abacus than some computer. We shake our heads sadly when computers replace people at work. We shrug knowingly when we hear about a major computer mess-up like when students are told they've been admitted to a university that they aren't even qualified to visit. So I predict that the audience will be cheering if that librarian from Omaha kicks the computer's hard drive.

Gary Johnson, "Jeopardy!" Head Writer, said he wasn't worried about the computer challenging "Jeopardy's" human contestants until he read the last sentence in the news article about the challenge. That's where computer scientitst, Eric Nyberg said that he and his colleagues sit around after work and talk about ideas while "having beers." Johnson's response was a big "uh-oh," because "that's exactly what we do around here after work."