“We’re better off without record shops.” Your thoughts? I mean, assuming you remember record shops.

I don’t think we’re going to see a more enjoyable headline today than, “Dogs watch how people treat others to work out who to approach for food, scientists claim.” Anyway, take a look at the video. They really do!

“Sailors and cats have a special relationship that dates back thousands of years.”
 — Hello, THE BEST THING ON THE INTERNET THIS WEEK: historical pictures of sailors and cats.

While I am indisputably correct on most matters of men’s office fashion, I have a somewhat minority opinion on ties. Among them: I do not believe that men need very many, nor need those ties be very elaborate. Most men can get by with maybe three or four great ties: one fun, one somber and one a nice solid blue. Those who wear ties to the office each day can get by with just seven to ten, if they wish, though it’s more fun to have a hundred. And most of us can leave brown dotted ties against gingham to the professionals, as displayed in the Tom Ford Spring/Summer ’11 picture here. I also have been a long-time half-Windsor enthusiast, and that may not be right for you. (And that is what counts!)

But let’s stop here to go back in time and make fun of the guys who knot their ties all wrong — such as in the infamous “Matrix” or “Merovingian” manner. Oh my, it is like getting a Dungeons and Dragons twelve-sided die tattooed on your face.

Technically, this is a highly modified (and reversed) “Atlantic” knot!

Oh yes.

You guys. The shame. I mean, you may tie your tie in this manner! You had better be already married, for starters, and you should definitely work at home. In a room with no mirrors. In that case, knock yourself out!

Also? If you’re going to do that, get a nice tie maybe? Nobody wants to see that Men’s Wearhouse label exposed.

What’s nice for men now is that ties don’t convey too much meaning. In The Olden Days, there were things like club ties and rep ties and school ties, where patterns represented anything from military service to sports fandom to levels of poshitude. (Also, for a period, red ties were gay signaling code.) Those membership codes may exist to some extent in the U.K. now, but it’s hardly present in America at all. What do we know? We’re free from history!

But there is conveyance of meaning in ties still. The most notable thing you can easily convey is that you are a slob.

WHAT NOT TO DO

• Fraying, spotting and damage. Guess what? If your tie isn’t fresh-looking, it should be destroyed. Yup! Give it up. Get that gross old rag off your neck.

• Length. These days, barring some eccentric fashion statement (the short, skinny tie, as promoted by various designers, is fine if you are wearing your high-water Thom Browne suit, I suppose, which probably means you work in a fancy publicist’s office), the tip of your tie should just tap your belt buckle. A little leeway either direction is given! But not that much!

• Pattern. Your paisley tie — with a few high-end exceptions! — is most likely hideous and off-putting.

• Where it doesn’t go. As a general rule of thumb, if you are tucking your tie into anything — your shirt, your pants, a tie bar or clip or anything else — you look like a tool, a fashion victim or a waiter. Hello, you can eat soup in a tie without getting anything on it if you sit up straight and bring the soup to your mouth instead of bringing your mouth to the bowl.

WHAT TO DO

• Ties are where guys most get to be themselves — at least in office life. (See also: shoes, belts, watches, cufflinks.) You should buy ties that you find attractive, and that you feel comfortable wearing. Ties are like dogs and cats: they have to call you. Look deep inside yourself! How do you really feel? Do you look great in green? Awesome! Buy green ties! Red and blue are fine but you’re probably not running for Senate.

• Are you overwhelmed about ties? You should go on a little expedition — for instance, to the ground floor of Bergdorf Men’s, in New York City. There you will see a vast array of ties! There are some ties that you will find outrageously expensive (Kiton, my goodness) and some that you will just find outrageous (Tom Ford — these big burly mothers are only for the skilled tie-wearing pro, although if you care for a bowtie, that is the place to go) but you will also find a wealth of just good plain old ties, sorted by brand and then by color and often season. Just go to look if you want! There are linen ties for summer, wool ties for winter, silk ties, knit ties and ties of every hue and pattern. All of them can be yours, if they call your name.

• And then there’s knots. There may be 85 ways to tie a tie, but that’s not much concern to us.

There are so many wonderful cheesy videos that explain tie-tying, but I love this one, that explains the basic knot (four in hand). This was an out-of-vogue method for quite a while, but you know what? It looks good. It makes a very slender and subtle knot, and it’s handsome! What’s wrong with simplicity?

Here’s a very useful demonstration of the half-Windsor, a knot to which I’ve been devoted for much of my life. I was afraid of simplicity, I’m prepared to admit now. The half-Windsor is not over complicated, but it does make a slightly thicker and quite nice knot. And it doesn’t make you look like a self-serious schmuck, like a full Windsor can.

There are technically two ways to execute a half-Windsor, by the way! But there’s only one way to pull off a full-Merovingian, thank God.

Sponsored posts are purely editorial content that we are pleased to have presented by a participating sponsor, advertisers do not produce the content. This series/post is brought to you by Gillette. Learn more about Gillette and its products at Gillette.com.

Conservation International’s Rapid Assessment Program Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop Finding And Documenting Rare And Amazing Animal Species

I feel like my imaginary girlfriend Jennifer Viegas is baiting me with this one. (Viegas is not imaginary; she’s an animal life reporter for Discovery News. But the part about how she’s my girlfriend is — as is the thought that she knows who I am.) A rap song produced by a conservationist group that starts off with the lyrics “Finding crazy geckos/That look like Satan…”? Are you kidding me? What am I supposed to do with that? I’m paralyzed by simultaneous revulsion and adoration.

Adoration wins. Mostly because of the photos. The biodiversity-protection organization Conservation International marks the 20th anniversary of their Rapid Assessment Program (or “R.A.P.,” which explains the choice in musical genre) by putting together a list, and slideshow, of the top 20 the most “biologically surprising, unique, or threatened” species its zoologists have discovered or assessed in their work in threatened tropical regions since 1991. Or, as MC Yusef Harden puts it (sounding not entirely unlike Wiz Khalifa), “A science S.W.A.T. team with the opposite objective/We aim to find and show it to the world and protect it…”

The creatures they’ve found are awesome. Check out the “Satanic Leaf-tailed Gecko” from Madagascar, or the “Yoda Bat” of Papa New Guinea. Or the emperor scorpion. (Here he is!) Or the “Tigris Ant.” Or even the less-excitingly named “large green tree frog.”

The work these people do is important and, I think, mind-blowing. Viegas writes (sort of flirtatiously, I thought):

“Did you know, for example, that there are approximately 1.9 million documented species of animals, but it’s estimated that up to 30 million species of organisms are yet to be discovered and scientifically described? Many disappear before scientists ever have the chance to discover and study them. This unfortunate process is known as Centinelan extinction.”

Here’s the Jungle Brothers’ 1988 “Straight Out the Jungle.”

“Almost half of the meat and poultry sold at U.S. supermarkets and grocery stores contains a type of bacteria that is potentially harmful to humans, a new study estimates.”

by Lizzie Skurnick

Immediately after my mother gave birth to my brother, the legend goes, she demanded three things of my father: a crate of avocados, a six-pack of beer and an entire chocolate cake, which last she devoured entirely, bed-bound, before moving on the rest.

I believe and like this baby story, because, unlike so much of today’s newborn lore, it is neither self-congratulatory nor solicitous of sympathy. (Unless one feels for the prospect of my father trying to locate a crate of avocados at 7 a.m. in the Bronx.) I also like it because it involves beer, and chocolate cake, two things that have historically gone great with baby.

Until now! Witness:

This is only one example of the newly ubiquitous, guilelessly documented Gender Cake Party, in which a couple hands over the obstetrician’s report to the local bakery, then receives the news in a manner they firmly refuse to acknowledge as symbolic: from a newly sliced, triangle-shaped wound of tender flesh.

As a preemptive strike against being invited to any such party, and in the service of uterine cultural deconstructionists and cake-eating baby-related activists everywhere, I will herein lay out some official objections before retiring to watch these again and again.

The Butcher
Here’s what passes for common sense around my parts: You don’t want whip out the words “cut” and “gender” and “baby” unless you’re actually planning to do something about it. I mean, them’s fightin’ words. Along the same lines, you also don’t want to hand just anyone standing in the proximity of a very pregnant woman, in the service of discovering the gender of her baby, a knife.

And, MOST important, you don’t want to give the pregnant woman a knife and act like it’s not some serious performance art if, pre-pregnancy, she has to slice a gaping red maw into a convex mound. Not unless you’re going to follow up with some blue-tinged, sagging Twinkies we all get to bite in half, you jerk.

The Baker
Why cake? That’s a question. I’m going to ask it again — why cake?¹

Think about it. First, desserts have a poor history in the announcement game in general. (HOW many beveled settings have to lose in the parfait game?) A cake is a poor vehicle for revelation unless someone’s jumping out of it. Otherwise, its only surprise is its own flavor, which is always almond when you don’t want it to be.

Second, cakes and babies have a terrible history in literature, as readers of Raymond Carver’s “A Small, Good Thing” and Gordon Lish’s mastercut “Bath” well know. In both versions, EVEN THE “CUT” ONE, a cake is prepared for a child, who then immediately dies, driving a baker around the bend. Don’t even get me started on Little Jack Horner, whose delusion still reigns over decades of innocents.

Third, as any woman who has ever sat in stirrups in a gyno’s office desperate for reading material can tell you, there is way too much food in fetal analogs as it is. You know what your baby looks like at 15 weeks? A navel orange. Not a Spaldeen. A navel orange. Sometimes I like to eat a navel orange. You know what I don’t like to eat? Babies. But it doesn’t matter, because my baby was made with “baby batter,” I “cooked” my baby, and now I’m silencing it with some “baby bubbly.” I hope my baby tastes great braised in butter, with a little shallot.

The Candlestick Maker
Why cake? I know I just asked that, but now I mean it because I think this is happening because CAKE IS WHAT WE USE ON A BIRTHDAY. This is lame! Why not an envelope that releases a stream of urine into the air if it’s a boy; a devastatingly cruel giggle if it’s a girl? Why not have the audience place bets, so that one partner can forever feel betrayed by the heretofore unacknowledged but distinct preference for what cannot be? (“We just want it to be healthy.” HA HA HA!) Why not make your living child announce the gender, so he can get it wrong deliberately and fool everyone? (Oh, someone actually did this. Okay.)

Why not just invite someone dressed as Jonathan Swift to sit in the corner and sneer out how little he’s been referenced, then fold his arms and eat the announcement?

Or you could use an actual suggestion by a kindly message-boardist to a mother afraid she would be stepping on the toes of another Gender-caker:

Now, the other mothers she’s invited can comment how the noise and presence of BPA will cause irreparable harm to the fetus! THIS is a party.

Knaves All Three
You know I love you guys, right? But I sat and listened to the breathless story of how you met each other. I stayed up late to talk both sides of you through the breakup, then tried to make you forget what I said when I told you it was for the best that you broke up. I came to your engagement party, your wedding shower, your wedding, your baby shower, your baby’s first birthday, and I stood over the crib and made faces a lot. I LOVE your baby and I love you. I’m like IN DEBT FROM MY LOVE.² And you know what I know? There’s only two bad things that could happen here: You could have a baby that was neither male nor female, or you could make me come to another party celebrating the progress of you.³

Why not instead emulate this efficient couple, who have saved everyone a Sunday and are not ashamed to show it?

¹ Right. There IS already a party in which you find a baby in a cake. It’s a King Cake party for Mardi Gras, and it is awesome. This has NOTHING to do with King Cake or Mardis Gras and is therefore inherently bunk.
² You can bring me a 32-pack of condoms and a case of Aia Vecchia Toscana Lagone and we’re square.
³ Doesn’t apply to anyone who came to my book party.

Lizzie Skurnick is the author of Shelf Discovery, a memoir of teen reading. She lives in Jersey City. You can follow her on Twitter.

Dot Records founder Randolph Clay Wood died Saturday at his home in San Diego after a fall. Wood turned a Gallatin, Tennessee radio station into one of the most successful music labels in the world in the 1950s by hiring white singers to record cover versions of songs by black artists. Some people thought this was great, others thought it was not so great. Dot Records made stars out of folks like Gale Storm, The Fontane Sisters, and Pat Boone — to whom Wood suggested changing the words of Fats Domino’s “Ain’t That a Shame” to “Isn’t That a Shame.” Which, looking back, would have been perhaps more fitting. Let’s compare.

Fats Domino wrote “Ain’t That a Shame” in New Orleans, in 1955, with his frequent collaborator, Dave Bartholomew. Another song that Bartholomew co-wrote (this time with Pearl King), “I Hear You Knocking,” became a big hit for Dot Records when Gale Storm sing it in 1956.

“I Hear You Knocking” was originally a R&B; hit for Smiley Lewis the year before.

The Fontane Sisters were a trio from Millford, New Jersey, who signed to Dot Records and hit the top of the pop charts with a song called “Hearts Made of Stone.”

Which had been a hit on the R&B; charts for the Cincinnati doo-wop group Otis Williams and the Charms earlier that year:

Though it was written and first recorded by Johnny Torrence and the Jewels, from San Bernadino, California.

The city of London, which is the capital of a country called England and also of a semi-unified archipelago called the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, is located on an island called Great Britain, and is in the grip of a gay panic. Earlier this week, two hot guys in glasses were bounced from a pub, the John Snow, for kissing, and now the pub is beset by both controversy and more kissing gays. And a Guardian liveblog! The “MASSIVE SAME-SEX SNOGATHON” begins in a few hours. It’s all so very 80s! And so two boys (Jonathan Williams and his buddy have a first date that goes down in… well, “history” would be a little extreme, but. Good news, too! They’ve elected to go on a second date. (Would be awkward otherwise, right?) Judging by the Facebook RSVP list, this is going to be a terrific place to meet boys. And also probably a great place to get glassed.

Did you know about the greatest media scandal of the year? It’s pretty great: VegNews, the magazine for vegan eating (vegans don’t actually eat the magazine, though yes, they might as well; it has recipes of “actual” food), has been Photoshopping stock photos of real meat dishes as illustration, by removing the meaty bits or just straight up using real meat. Can you imagine the betrayal? It’s a little like Out putting straight people on the cover. (Oh, wait, they do that all the time.) It’d be like Forbes putting poor people on the cover! Or Tikkun profiling David Duke! Or Time choosing someone interesting! (Kidding!) But seriously, if I were a vegan, I’d be really totally skeeved out. Reading through the comment thread on the big reveal (which is an incredible document) actually shows not just straight outrage but also a number of people that are upset but wanting to be supportive of the magazine, which issued a really bad apology, in which they note they have more than 1 million readers a month but claiming that it’s “industry standard to use stock photography in magazines.” (No, it isn’t actually?) Unfortunately, a former employee claims that the letter “is filled with outright lies.” (via)