Take some trading cards picturing a disgraced NFL superstar. Add some dog slobber and teethmarks. What do you get? The most valuable Michael Vick cards — by far — on eBay, that's what.
Collector Rochelle Steffen of Cape Girardeau, Mo., gave every Vick card she owned to her dogs and let them go to town on the images of the Atlanta Falcons quarterback who is scheduled to plead guilty to a federal dogfighting charge Monday.
Once Monte, her 6-year-old Weimaraner, and Roxie, her Great Dane puppy, were done worrying them, nearly two dozen $1-$10 cards were crumpled, crimped, chewed, torn and generally in a sorry state. Some even had corners missing.
As of Thursday evening, the highest bid on the lot of 22 cards had risen to $455 and more than 2,000 people had viewed the posting. Seventy-seven people already have bid on the auction, which ends Sunday.
The next-most expensive Vick cards — well-preserved specimens from his rookie year — were going for less than half the price of the gnawed ones.
"If I would have had some of his super-duper ones, they would have been right in the mix too," Steffen said Thursday.
She plans to donate the winning bid money to the humane society of the bidder's choice.
Since Vick was indicted on federal dogfighting charges last month, former fans have donated Vick jerseys to dog shelters, while others have tried to cash in by selling Vick T-shirts and chew toys for dogs.
"I'm not angry toward him; my anger is toward anyone who would do this to animals," said Steffen, a college student and artist who wrote a note accompanying her auction to explain it was artistic expression.
"I mean no harm to anyone involved with this auction," she wrote.
Vick said through a lawyer this week he will plead guilty to a federal charge of conspiracy to travel in interstate commerce in aid of unlawful activities and conspiracy to sponsor a dog in an animal fighting venture.
Steffen's cards join a collection of newly released items on sale. T-shirts are being sold online with slogans that say "Ignorance Breeds Ignorance. Neuter Mike Vick," and "ConVICKt" and others that show dogs urinating on footballs and jerseys.
A few fans also have released "Free Vick" shirts.
The St. Paul Saints, a minor league baseball team known for campy promotions, gave out Vick chew toys Tuesday to the first 15,000 fans with some game proceeds going to the Humane Society. Fans got the St. Paul pig mascot with a No. 7 printed on the back and a tag around its neck with Vick's picture.
The Atlanta Humane Society also has reported former Vick fans mailing in jerseys — often accompanied by financial contributions and letters of outrage over the charges. Those former fans have suggested the Falcons jerseys become animal bedding or rags to help scrub up the messes that dogs leave behind. Other branches of the Humane Society have said they'll take donated Vick items to resell on eBay.
Steffen said she hopes to bring more attention to the abuse of animals involved in dogfighting activities.
"The money donated to local shelters makes this whole idea of selling the cards worthwhile," she said.
Showing posts with label Entertainment. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Entertainment. Show all posts
Friday, August 24, 2007
CHICKS LOVE CAVEMEN 8-24-07
Guys with bulldog-like faces have been chick magnets throughout human evolutionary history.
A recent study of the skulls of human ancestors and modern humans finds that women, and thereby, evolution, selected for males with relatively short upper faces. The region between the brow and the upper-lip is scrunched proportionately to the overall size of their heads.
Among the men who fit the bill: Will Smith and Brad Pitt.
In a past study, researchers found a similar facial pattern in chimpanzees, with males having relatively shorter and broader faces compared with females, controlling for body size.
Men with "mini mugs" might have been most attractive to the opposite sex and thus most likely to attract mates for reproduction, passing along the striking features to the next generation and so forth, said lead study author Eleanor Weston, a paleontologist at the Natural History Museum in London.
"The evolution of facial appearance is central to understanding what makes men and women attractive to each other," Weston said. "We have found the distance between the lip and brow was probably immensely important to what made us attractive in the past, as it does now."
Whereas past studies have suggested facial symmetry and facial masculinity play roles in this game of desire, none have provided evidence of an evolutionary shaping of male and female faces.
"I think it's a very nice approach," said Randy Thornhill, an evolutionary psychologist at the University of New Mexico, referring to the study. Though not involved in it, Thornhill agrees with the finding that certain facial features evolved due to sexual selection.
Facial coordinates
The researchers calculated certain facial coordinates on 68 males and 53 female skulls from a contemporary native southern Africa population ranging in age from infant to 30 years old. Measurements included distances between the point between the eye brows and upper lip and from cheekbone to cheekbone.
Weston and her colleagues also examined facial data from fossil hominin skulls dating back to 2.6 million years ago, unearthed in Kenyan deposits as part of the Koobi Fora Research Project IV. These skulls represented five species: Homo erectus, Homo ergaster, Paranthropus boisei, Australopithecus africanus and Paranthropus robustus. These facial coordinates were then compared with the contemporary coordinates.
In spite of their bulkier bodies (about 15 percent more massive than women's bodies), and similarly broader faces, men have upper faces similar in height to women's faces, the scientists found. But compared with the rest of the head, a guy's mid-face is compressed. The differences held throughout human history.
A simple ratio of upper face length to broadness could serve as a proxy for facial attractiveness, the scientists say in a report on their research published in the online journal PLoS ONE.
Masculine appeal
The scientists are not certain why today's distinctive male face and its proportions evolved.
"A shorter upper face does serve to exaggerate the size of other face features such as the flare of the cheeks and the size of the jaw, but this might not be why it developed," Weston told LiveScience. "Rather the shorter [and] broader the male face the more ‘masculine’ and the less ‘feminine'—based on biological face changes that take place during growth and development—the individual becomes," she said.
Also, this facial development was accompanied by a shrinking of guys' canine teeth, so men appeared less threatening to competitors, yet attractive to mates.
While the scientists who authored the current study examined skulls and did not specifically study how modern faces fit the findings, the Natural History Museum press officers applied Weston's findings to a "quick and dirty" survey of photos of celebrities.
They came up with a list of stars with masculine faces, listing them from most to least masculine according to facial dimensions: Will Smith, Peter Andre, Justin Timberlake, Thierry Henry, Brad Pitt, David Beckham, Johnny Depp and Kanye West
A recent study of the skulls of human ancestors and modern humans finds that women, and thereby, evolution, selected for males with relatively short upper faces. The region between the brow and the upper-lip is scrunched proportionately to the overall size of their heads.
Among the men who fit the bill: Will Smith and Brad Pitt.
In a past study, researchers found a similar facial pattern in chimpanzees, with males having relatively shorter and broader faces compared with females, controlling for body size.
Men with "mini mugs" might have been most attractive to the opposite sex and thus most likely to attract mates for reproduction, passing along the striking features to the next generation and so forth, said lead study author Eleanor Weston, a paleontologist at the Natural History Museum in London.
"The evolution of facial appearance is central to understanding what makes men and women attractive to each other," Weston said. "We have found the distance between the lip and brow was probably immensely important to what made us attractive in the past, as it does now."
Whereas past studies have suggested facial symmetry and facial masculinity play roles in this game of desire, none have provided evidence of an evolutionary shaping of male and female faces.
"I think it's a very nice approach," said Randy Thornhill, an evolutionary psychologist at the University of New Mexico, referring to the study. Though not involved in it, Thornhill agrees with the finding that certain facial features evolved due to sexual selection.
Facial coordinates
The researchers calculated certain facial coordinates on 68 males and 53 female skulls from a contemporary native southern Africa population ranging in age from infant to 30 years old. Measurements included distances between the point between the eye brows and upper lip and from cheekbone to cheekbone.
Weston and her colleagues also examined facial data from fossil hominin skulls dating back to 2.6 million years ago, unearthed in Kenyan deposits as part of the Koobi Fora Research Project IV. These skulls represented five species: Homo erectus, Homo ergaster, Paranthropus boisei, Australopithecus africanus and Paranthropus robustus. These facial coordinates were then compared with the contemporary coordinates.
In spite of their bulkier bodies (about 15 percent more massive than women's bodies), and similarly broader faces, men have upper faces similar in height to women's faces, the scientists found. But compared with the rest of the head, a guy's mid-face is compressed. The differences held throughout human history.
A simple ratio of upper face length to broadness could serve as a proxy for facial attractiveness, the scientists say in a report on their research published in the online journal PLoS ONE.
Masculine appeal
The scientists are not certain why today's distinctive male face and its proportions evolved.
"A shorter upper face does serve to exaggerate the size of other face features such as the flare of the cheeks and the size of the jaw, but this might not be why it developed," Weston told LiveScience. "Rather the shorter [and] broader the male face the more ‘masculine’ and the less ‘feminine'—based on biological face changes that take place during growth and development—the individual becomes," she said.
Also, this facial development was accompanied by a shrinking of guys' canine teeth, so men appeared less threatening to competitors, yet attractive to mates.
While the scientists who authored the current study examined skulls and did not specifically study how modern faces fit the findings, the Natural History Museum press officers applied Weston's findings to a "quick and dirty" survey of photos of celebrities.
They came up with a list of stars with masculine faces, listing them from most to least masculine according to facial dimensions: Will Smith, Peter Andre, Justin Timberlake, Thierry Henry, Brad Pitt, David Beckham, Johnny Depp and Kanye West
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
