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Two things I was fairly certain I would never do: say "You should all read this thing in Marie Claire!" and comment on the death of Don Cornelius. Having already done the former this week, let's go ahead and knock out the latter.

The famous Soul Train host died on Wednesday, leading to many topical Facebook posts and shared video clips. I remember the show well from childhood – it followed Saturday morning cartoons and was also popular on Sunday evenings – but it is hardly an integral part of my life or memories. It has been a good 25 years since I watched or thought about it. But this clip, of the much-loved "line dance" portion of the show, caught my eye:

A lot of things have changed in 30-plus years, obviously, but it is striking how much different these people look than the ones we see on TV today (or would see if Soul Train was still on the air). They look like real people. No fake hair, fake boobs, fake nails, fake collagen-pumped lips, fake eyelashes, or fake smiles. The women don't look like porn stars and the men don't look like steroid addled He-Men with abs like cheese graters and zeppelin arms. They're all dressed loudly but quite differently. And they look like they're having actual fun rather than wearing fake, practiced personalities for the camera.

Nothing's easier than idealizing the past – usually unjustifiably – so I'm trying to tread lightly here. It's just surprising to me in a way that has probably already occurred to older readers to see how the idealized image of cool people listening to cool music has become so overwhelmingly fake and detached from reality in a relatively short period of time. Would any of these women make it on an MTV-type program today without a boob job and/or lipo? Would any of those guys be trying to make it in Hollywood today without hitting the gym until they looked like UFC fighters? And we wonder why kids transition to adulthood with such horribly distorted self images these days. I'm sure the pressure to be thin and pretty has been around forever, but it would be nice if Hollywood suggested that you could look like an actual human being and still be cool.

I have no logical way to connect these things by way of an introduction, but this has been a banner week for discovering aesthetically pleasing things that you should waste your Friday afternoon perusing at work. Click any image to embiggen:

1. Graphic artist Mike Joyce has put together a gallery of dozens of old rock & punk show flyers re-done in the International Modernist style. It works eerily well for reasons I can't pinpoint.

As an added bonus, maybe some of you old bastards actually went to one of these shows.

2. For the comic book nerd dwelling deep inside of you (or perhaps right on the surface) here is Marko Manev's gallery of "minimalist designs" for superheroes.

Something tells me that if they actually existed and needed to advertise, this is how they'd do it.

3. Photographer and artist Lilly McElroy has a series entitled "I Throw Myself At Men" wherein she would find men through Craigslist, meet them in some public place, and proceed to literally throw herself at them (while what I assume is a colleague of hers took photos in mid-throw). The reactions of her unsuspecting (victims? dates?) are priceless.

4. You've probably seen this one already; NASA released a 21st Century version of its famous Apollo 17 "Blue Marble" photo courtesy the Suomi (Finland?) satellite. The original resolution (8000 x 8000!) makes it the most detailed picture of the entire planet ever taken. That's stretching the truth, though, since this is actually a composite image that, as is the case with so much photography of natural phenomena, is probably "enhanced" and Photoshopped in a dozen different ways. Still, this is pretty amazing. Zoom in on a few different spots to get the full effect. The amazing level of detail reminds me of my favorite Earth-from-above photo, of Sicily's Mt. Etna volcano erupting in 1999.

Kodak declared bankruptcy on Thursday, which is interesting to me inasmuch as I've spent the week sick, mostly at home, and obsessively looking through NASA's newly released, true color, hi-res scans of the photographs from the Gemini missions (pre-Apollo). Incredible is an understatement. I'm not a photographer and I don't know much about the technical aspects of it, but I do know that nothing coming out of a digital camera looks quite like Kodakchrome (which they stopped making in 2009, incidentally) and other kinds of film.

Yes, I understand why film has gone the way of the dodo. It makes perfect sense. From an aesthetic perspective, however, it's sad. There's something about the way things are captured on film that all the Photoshop filters in the world can't reproduce. Besides, in fifty years I doubt we'll get the same kick out of looking through a flash drive full of cellphone camera pics as we do from flipping through an old box of pictures.

Bonus: If space isn't interesting to you, take a look through one of my other favorites, the Prokudin-Gorsky color photographs taken in Russia between 1900 and 1910. Or learn more about the pioneer of color photography here. It's pretty difficult to convince your brain that this photo was taken in 1905, isn't it?

Popular music is one of the more common ways to depict generational divides for a good reason. Very little music is timeless; the vast majority has a shelf life of a few years at best and tends to be aimed at whoever happens to be in high school at any given point in time. So nothing is more familiar to the point of being cliched than the image of parents listening to their children's music with a sense of bewilderment about how one could listen to such crap. Indeed, being unable to understand or tolerate what The Kids are listening to these days is one of the first and most reliable indicators that you're getting old.

Currently an alarming number of the teens and tweens are listening to this type of thing:

OK.

I'm 33 years old. This music is not aimed at me or people in my demographic, so it goes without saying that I'm not going to like it. But Jesus Harold Christ the Third, this shit is just unlistenable. Does every generation of old people say that? Of course. Your parents told you that your (Elvis Presley / Chuck Berry / Beatles / Led Zeppelin / Sex Pistols / Devo / Black Flag / Public Enemy / Nirvana) was godawful racket, "just noise", and the definition of headache-inducing unlistenability. It would be ridiculous for people who are old now to say "Well our parents were wrong, but we're right: this crunk / autotune /screamo / electronic shit is not even music" without being both hypocritical and wrong.

Let's say it anyway. I think old people are finally right. Half of this stuff isn't even music. Now that making music no longer requires being able to play an instrument (ProTools), sing (AutoTune), or even how to program (hundreds of idiotproof software packages for churning out mediocre electronic music), it shouldn't surprise us that the resulting product isn't music. And having grown up on Disney Pop, The Kids These Days^tm think that music has always sort of sounded like a Mountain Dew commercial.

See? I'm old now. This both puzzles and horrifies me. Do young people actually pay to see this live? Are high school boys making mixes full of this cacophony for high school girls they have crushes on? What are kids singing along to in the car? What about this music is there to connect with listeners on an emotional or personal level? Is "Brokencyde" going to announce a reunion tour in 20 years to joyous applause? Is this going to be on "Oldies" playlists in 2030? Sure, musical fads never age well but there is at least SOME level on which people can still enjoy Disco today (i.e., dancing and enjoying kitsch).

This stuff is popular and, I'm sorry, that's terrifying. I don't mean to go all Andy Rooney or full-on Grandpa here, but these "artists" blow on a level that our parents never had to try to comprehend. Of course not everyone in the current target demographic likes it, but the fact that anyone does is just another reason that I'm terrified for the future.

Oh, and before you type out your scolding comment, listen to as much of this as you can:

Crunk indeed, folks. Crunk. Indeed.

During World War I, the British experimented with something called dazzle camouflage, a manner of painting ships so that they might be more difficult for German u-boats to torpedo or otherwise molest. The theory behind it was quite simple: when the image of a ship set against a featureless background like the open ocean is broken up by random, jagged lines, it becomes difficult or impossible for the human eye to determine the ship's size, direction of travel, and orientation. This example (HMS Argus, 1917) shows that the technique didn't exactly make a ship less visible, but imagine watching it through a periscope from a great distance and the effect becomes clear.

"Schiesse! Das crazyboot!"

While I've always found it interesting and with a strange kind of aesthetic appeal, dazzle paint disappeared with the development of things like radar and long range aircraft. But apparently there is a new application for this very old idea: dazzle makeup as a means of subverting that incredibly creepy facial recognition software that is quickly and quietly becoming omnipresent. Artist Adam Harvey's project, CV Dazzle, is more interested in making an artistic statement than a political one, but the practical application of this kind of personal fashion is obvious.

Do they look a tad silly? Of course. It is the concept that is compelling, though, not necessarily the fashion-forwardness of the results. Facial recognition relies on concepts like symmetry and ratios among features, and without these even sophisticated technology is of limited effectiveness at identifying faces.

So, if we all break up our faces with bizarre hair and makeup tricks, that should buy us a couple more years until SkyNet's capabilities are updated to defeat our attempts to deceive it.

I'm not the world's biggest college football fan. Not only does the NCAA steadfastly refuse to institute a simple playoff system, but they even managed to butcher the nonsensical Bowl game system that they use in its place. The Bowls all used to be on New Years Eve or New Years Day, which made them an annual tradition for hungover Americans. Now they're scattered all the hell over the place between Thanksgiving and January 10, with hardly any games of significance held on the traditional date. This scheduling change is due in part to the fact that there are now dozens of Bowls – 35, to be exact, meaning that a whopping 70 of the 119 FBS (I-A) teams go to a Bowl. How else will the nation be treated to epic tilts like 6-6 Illinois vs. 6-7 UCLA? How else will the timeless rivalry between San Diego State and Louisiana-Lafayette be resolved?

Colleges love going to Bowl games; it's a nice payday. Big time, major games like the Rose or Orange Bowls have payouts well into eight figures. It's also a mark of prestige for the program. In theory. I mean, it's pretty cool to describe your team with the phrase "Sugar Bowl champions." Unfortunately some of the "bowls" to which we are now subjected make that difficult. It's pretty hard to get excited about going to, or even winning, a game with a ridiculous name. Here's a quick breakdown of the least-bragworthy Bowl games of this year and years past:

1. Bowls named after depressing geographic locations: Admit it, you were all jazzed to see Temple clash with Wyoming in the New Mexico Bowl, right? How about the Mobile Alabama Bowl, the Fort Worth Bowl, the St. Petersburg Bowl, or the ever-popular Seattle Bowl?

2. Bowls named after bizarre, obscure corporate sponsors: This category brings us classics like the BBVA Compass Bowl (formerly the equally lame Birmingham Bowl), the Poulan Weed-Eater Independence Bowl, the galleryfurniture.com Bowl, the TicketCity Bowl (new for 2011!), the EagleBank Bowl, or the Insight.com Bowl.

3. Bowls with just plain stupid names: There exists a game called the "Beef O'Brady's Bowl St. Petersburg." This not only fails the most basic naming convention – ending in "Bowl" – but it names the game after a seriously disgusting regional fast food chain that is unknown to most of the country. Is the Famous Idaho Potato Bowl (formerly the MPC Computers Bowl) a real thing? Honorable mention: the defunct "Gaylord Hotels Music City Bowl Presented by Bridgestone."

4. Established Bowls we still laugh at: Even though it has a long history, does anyone say San Diego County Credit Union Poinsettia Bowl without laughing? The Meineke Car Care Bowl of Texas (formerly the EV1.net Houston Bowl) seems like it has been around for a while, only if one confuses it with the former Meineke Car Care Bowl, which is now the Belk Bowl (after the Southern department store where old people pass the time waiting to die). Does a team even accept the trophy from something called the "Meineke Car Care Bowl" or is it best to forget the whole thing happened? What university wouldn't be proud to say it won the GoDaddy.com Bowl (formerly the housing crisis-inducing "GMAC Bowl")?

5. Honorable Mention, Wussy-Sounding Names Division: It's hard to tell if the Kraft Fight Hunger Bowl or the Roady's Truck Stops Humanitarian Bowl are charity events, 5k fun-runs, or football games. And just wait until you see the shitstorm of pink that will be the forthcoming (2012-13) Susan G. Komen For the Cure Bowl, hopefully featuring a halftime show by a Cure cover band made up of breast cancer survivors. Let's not forget the defunct Charity Bowl, Bluebonnet Bowl, Mercy Bowl, and the eminently fragile Glass Bowl.

Seriously, NCAA: enough. Knock it off. An eight team playoff will take all of three weeks. For the love of the Little Caesars Pizza Bowl, stop all of this insanity.

Prior to the Moon landing itself (Apollo 11), the most watched event in the history of television was the Christmas Eve broadcast from Apollo 8 in 1968. That crew was the first to actually leave the gravitational pull of Earth and visit the Moon, orbiting it several times but obviously not landing.

The video shows a very low-resolution but clearly desolate image of the lunar surface out of a tiny window on the command module, which put the three astronauts – Lovell, Borman, and Anders – in a reflective state of mind. Lovell, later of Apollo 13 fame, said: "The vast loneliness is awe-inspiring and it makes you realize just what you have back there on Earth."

Borman: "And from the crew of Apollo 8, we close with good night, good luck, a Merry Christmas, and God bless all of you – all of you on the good Earth."

Couldn't have said it better, Frank.

I'm going to ask that contrary to the usual NPF-about-sports rules, you do NOT skip this one just because you hate sports.

So. TebowMania^tm has taken America by storm. Tebow, a highly successful college athlete, is now having a run of success with the Denver Broncos and the media are absolutely enamored with him. Among the general public he's a more polarizing figure though. Many people see him as too much of a goody-goody to root for. Imagine Ned Flanders playing quarterback, constantly reminding everyone about his celibacy and teetotaling and abiding love for Christ. There's something off-putting, at least to some portion of the population, about a guy who starts out every single interview he's ever done with "First I would like to thank my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ." But at the same time this is decidedly NOT off-putting to a lot of people as well. They think he's the bee's knees: clean cut, patriotic, religious, and good at football. That's like the perfect person to a lot of Americans.

Anyway, in the spirit of that wonderful "What if the Tea Party was black?" piece from a few months ago I was planning on doing a "What if Tebow was a Muslim?" thing. Of course Americans would still love him if he was celibate, clean cut, patriotic, good at football, and began every interview with "First I would like to thank Allah and his one true prophet, Mohammed." Right? Yeah, of course they would. In any case, someone beat me to it (and did a great job with it).

But let's take it in another direction. Would we even be having this conversation if Tebow was black? Football fans out there, answer me a question: What becomes of college quarterbacks who arrive in the NFL wearing adjectives like "athletic" and "physical"? Who are known for their running skills and strong arm but lack sufficient accuracy to hit the broad side of a barn from 20 yards? Who have big physiques usually associated with positions like wide receiver or running back? I think you get my drift. If Tebow was Black Tebow, would the world have accommodated his demand to keep playing QB rather than change positions?

In my mind this is another tire to throw on the fire if you hate Tebow. If his overbearing Ned Flanders-ness and mediocre passing ability aren't enough, you can fixate on how he represents the racial double standards that permeate American sports. If only someone had moved Tebow to RB, so we could laud him as a "throwback" or "a real gamer" with "a lot of heart" and all the other stock plaudits for white skill position players. Maybe we could even compare him to Mike Alstott! That would be novel.

(I guess this was Sorta Politics Friday. But Tebow! Also Tebow.)

There was a time not too long ago when people – from small children to adults – could look at some celebrities and public figures as role models. Or they could simply be awed by the power, fame, wealth, and talents of various celebrities. Someone like Babe Ruth or The Beatles were, like, not even human. They were gods living on a separate plane of existence above mere mortals. Rock stars, Hollywood icons, powerful elected officials, titans of industry, professional athletes…all of these people formed an elite to which us common people implicitly understood we did not belong. They were special.

Then someone invented Twitter. And now we know exactly how banal, ordinary, and flat-out stupid most of these people are.

Twitter has eliminated the wall between the famous and the ordinary, allowing anyone with an internet connection to broadcast their unfiltered thoughts to anyone interested in reading them. The results are occasionally interesting but more often (and more predictably) a train wreck. Aside from the fact that most of them sound quite shallow and dumb, these social networking tools give us a glimpse of just how boring and unexciting the daily lives of the rich and famous are. Oh, look, LeBron James is tweeting about going shopping. Can you imagine Mickey Mantle going shopping? Mickey Mantle doesn't shop! He's Mickey Fucking Mantle! He hits home runs and does things no mortal can do! He probably fell to Earth during a meteor shower or something!

Of course the lives of Mr. Mantle and his fellow celebrities were every bit as dull then as they are today. The only difference is that fifty years ago you didn't hear, read about, or see Mickey Mantle going to a grocery store. You didn't get hourly updates from John Wayne as he waited around in airports. You didn't realize that Greta Garbo was a horrible person who bitched all day about how much her domestic servants suck. An individual could plausibly make these celebrities seem special, unique, and exciting. It allowed us to make role models or idols out of lousy people. I doubt that's a good thing, but there is something lamentable about the fact that Twitter has ruined the idea of the aloof, glamorous celebrity. It was nice when people could choose to pretend, if so inclined, that their favorite athletes and movie stars were special people or role models. Now we are constantly smacked in the face, 140 characters at a time, with the undeniable realization that they're mostly dolts with remarkably mundane lives who write at approximately a 4th grade proficiency level.

Without making a positive value judgment on the concept of celebrity, I don't think this is a positive. Suffice it to say that many of you who were young in the 1960s would probably have felt differently about The Beatles if, like today's musicians, they posted 15 daily updates for public consumption about how they're chilling in the studio and playing some PS3. Maybe there is some minute value in preventing reality from intruding on everything.

(PS: this site has a running gallery of ridiculous things that famous people tweet and the delightfully smart-assed responses.)