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My High School CS Homework Is the Centerfold
theodp writes: To paraphrase the J. Geils Band, Maddie Zug's high school computer science homework is the centerfold. In a Washington Post op-ed, Zug, a student at the top-ranked Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, argues that a centerfold does not belong in the classroom. "I first saw a picture of Playboy magazine's Miss November 1972 a year ago as a junior at TJ," Zug explains. "My artificial intelligence teacher told our class to search Google for Lena Soderberg (not the full image, though!) and use her picture to test our latest coding assignment...Soderberg has a history with computer science. In the 1970s, male programmers at the University of Southern California needed to test their image-processing algorithm. They scanned what they had handy: the centerfold of a Playboy magazine. Before long, the image became a convention in industry and academia."
(Wikipedia has a nice background, too.)
We demand that you CHANGE EVERYTHING! Everywhere! In every thing that you enjoy or spend time doing, you must alter it for our benefit! Fuck you and fuck your history and fuck your interests!
This is dumb. Lena headshot is the standard image for virtually every image processing publication in the past 25 years. It's just a headshot for crap's sake.
Some people just like to complain.
Grow up.
Its a woman face and she's very proud of her picture. If there is anything about the image and the way its being used that bothers you, YOU have a problem and need to shut your uppity ass up.
You will not survive in the world if you unable to look at the face of a smiling woman in a photograph. You need to be evaluated. You aren't principled you're an uppity drama queen that no one is going to give a shit about in 2-4 years.
To take that a step further, if the naked female form bothers you in general, you also have serious issues and one has to wonder how you managed to cope with yourself this long in life? Or is it just jealousy?
Theres pretty much no way you come out of this without making it clear that your just being an uppity cunt. I presume the statue david and Venus shouldn't be in your lesson plan either?
If this post offends you, then it also applies to you, so just consider that when replying.
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No she doesn't. ITS A FACE, not a nude body.
The picture used WAS JUST HER FACE, if you want to see the full image you don't get it from the first Google search with Safe search on. You have to go out of your way to see nudity, and if they want to see nudity on the Internet, she's pretty fucking low quality nudity. A much less targeted Google search will yeild 18 year old boys HUNDREDS OF FREE PORN SITES ...
They don't give a flying fuck about Lena.
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I say this as someone with a daughter in STEM.
It's a portrait. A head shot. Not a Playboy pinup. Now if the centerfold was actually pinned up in the classroom I'd have some serious objections.
What would you rather use? The whole point was to use a human image instead of a test pattern.
If we've gotten to the point that refusing to use a face because the person is naked out of the shot we're so far down the rabbit hole it's ridiculous. With that theory, we can't ever use any picture of anyone in any circumstances because they're - GASP - naked under their clothes.
The only argument she has is that they were told to search for the image, which inevitably would result in them finding the naked image. The instructor should have given them that image along with a few others to use.
We're a sexual species. If we can't ever talk about sex while we preen ourselves to look good no wonder we're so screwed up.
Agreed. There are a bazillion more suitable images one should use nowadays for *technical* reasons to legitimately test compression and processing algorithms. Yes, I'm aware of the history. Not all traditions are worthy of being preserved. Let's move on, and leave it as an interesting historical footnote.
Are people too easily offended by this? Absolutely. After all, the top half of the image is no more risqué than many covers on modern fashion magazine. Some people just don't like the fact that it was an image from a men's magazine, which is naturally associated with a female-hostile work environment. But why go out of your way to offend people when it's really not necessary, and a complete distraction from what you're trying to do anyhow?
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
So, full disclosure, I am gay guy and most of my friends are women. They (we) ogle pictures of sexy guys in magazines and post them on message boards etc. all the time.
The problem here is not female nudity.
The problem is not nudity.
The problem is a RELIGIOUS legacy of people being ashamed of their bodies. Women, especially, are taught to feel ashamed of their bodies.
Note that the complaint isn't from the subject, or the photographer, or the publisher.
It is from women who have been taught to be so ashamed of their own bodies that they have to project that shame on other women who are more proud of their bodies.
These are the same women who tell a plus-size (that's "chubby") semi-pro model friend of mine to stop posting pictures of her in sexy clothing all over her Facebook feed, because there's something wrong with being proud of your body and ugh it's disgusting and blah blah all sorts of bullshit which comes down to, "My daddy/mommy told me this was bad so I'd feel bad doing it so you can't do it either."
Grow the fuck up.
And guys who think that such images are an excuse to objectify women are behaving equally awfully, but this is not the problem right here.
. But why go out of your way to offend people when it's really not necessary, and a complete distraction from what you're trying to do anyhow?
The problem with that is *something* is *always* offensive to someone. No matter what.
If I pick a male face it's offensive because I underrepresent women. If I pick a black face it's offensive because I'm a racist. If I pick an Asian female I'm sexualizing. If I pick a cute animal I'm promoting abuse. And so on and so forth.
Whatever.
If we have to limit our actions to what doesn't offend anyone at any time for any reason under any conceivable circumstances we can't ever do anything.
Dear diary, today I learned that a completely ordinary photo of a woman is a cause of a hostile work environment for women. Truly, living in the USA in the year 2015 must be a life of suffering. I don't even want to imagine what other horrors women must endure. Maybe, occasionally, someone even dares suggest that the world does not revolve around each of those super unique snowflakes!
My problem with the Lena image has nothing to do with the context. It has to do with the fact that it is an entirely outdated test image with poor properties to visually assess the effects of image processing algorithms. It wasn't chosen carefully (as the historical background indicates) with this purpose in mind. Retrospectively, a variety of academics have justified its suitability (e.g., the fine detail of the feathers, the texture of the hat, contrasted with the smooth skin tone; as well as the uniquely human ability to perceive minute aberrations in facial structure), but this is really a post-hoc rationalization not supported in the face of such facts as the image as it is frequently used is not even color balanced.
I'm well aware that researchers want a way to be able to compare their results with published papers from decades ago, and Lena provides an easy way to do that. But let's be honest here: it's lazy. To truly make reasonable comparisons, you'll invariably need to test algorithms against each other over a wide variety of inputs, not just a single input; therefore, the real work of implementing earlier (even if known to be relatively inefficient, outdated, or poorly performing) algorithms is a necessary part of making those comparisons.
As for the context...honestly, if you don't know what it's like to be a woman living in a male-dominated world, it's not really your place to be able to say "it's just a face" or complain about how "feminazis make a shitshow out of everything." I don't personally object to the image's content. But I absolutely understand why others would. And that's what makes the difference in maturity level.
Hi.
Computer vision scientist here.Yes, I've taught such a practical as a postdoc, so no I had no control over the content. Yes Lena was used. Sooner or later someone figures out where the image is from and everyone, well the guys, all have a good laugh.
So yes it does create a hostile environment. I'm afraid that your armchair logic and reasoning are going to come in second to those who have not only witnessed it, but been a part of the whole thing first hand.
The new guy who took over thankfully changed the images because he rightly realised that Lena was in poor taste and was inviting problems that are very easy to avoid.
I look forward to receiving replies on how my actual real personal experience was somehow wrong.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Are people too easily offended by this? Absolutely. After all, the top half of the image is no more risqué than many covers on modern fashion magazine.
If I were a K-12 teacher, I wouldn't even use a model from a magazine at the grocery store checkout. Doing so would suggest that I endorse the look of the model, as an authority figure, which I don't. The model's look is is usually the latest lame culture fad. This affects young girls more than you know, so why even bring that shit to the classroom when there are zillions of easily available appropriate alternatives.
You must have conniption fits when you go to the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art. Or the Los Angeles County Art Museum's Egyptian section. Think of the children (TM)....Er... no, if you think of the children, you're a pervert.
Join the real world, please.
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> teenage girls are not the biggest fans of pornography sites
Shows how much you know.
What the devil do you want, an image of Golda Meir? Lena is looking over her bare shoulder at the camera. She looks healthy and attractive. She's even wearing a hat!
Her mouth isn't open, her tongue isn't visible, her eyes aren't half-closed, she's not gesturing "come hither" with her finger, etc., etc.
If that image is sexually suggestive to you, the problem is squarely between your ears.
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That same bullshit happens no matter what you're looking at. They're teenagers. They'll see genitalia anywhere they look for more than 10 minutes.
You'll note I left gender off of that... because gender doesn't matter much, here.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
But teenage girls are not the biggest fans of pornography sites
This Victorian attitude that centers on the idea that women don't like sex just needs to die. Teenage humans are fans of pornography sites. Different strokes for different folks, of course. When a man and a woman both get drunk enough to lower their standards enough to actually get laid, this is not "rape culture", dammit, because men and women both are interested in sex. It's not "lie back and think of Britain" for fuck's sake.
Only from TFS did I learn where this image came from: having first seen it in an age where 16-bit (and even 8-bit) color palettes were the norm, I just assumed it was chosen for the purple feather, the details of feather and hatband and hair (which emphasize compression artifacts) and the human face, which we're very good at seeing distortions in. It just seemed like a challenging photo to compress in the days when jpg was too heavyweight for most PCs.
Still seems like a perfectly reasonable test image.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
The problem with that is *something* is *always* offensive to someone.
Except that pornography is offensive to about 50% of the human race.
If you think that, you really need to start meeting actually women instead of fantazing about them.
Well at some point these girls will have to learn those hard lessons that reality doesn't nor shouldn't revolve around them.
Yes, at some point they will learn that. But high school CS class is not the appropriate place. The instructor should focus on image processing algorithms, not teaching the (few) girls that, hey, the world is sexist and they should just get used to it.
If someone finds a picture of a face offensive or threatening, then they've got problems no amount of preaching is going to fix.
Maxim: People cannot follow directions.
Increases in truth directly with the length of time spent explaining them
Computer vision scientist here.Yes, I've taught such a practical as a postdoc, so no I had no control over the content. Yes Lena was used. Sooner or later someone figures out where the image is from and everyone, well the guys, all have a good laugh.
So yes it does create a hostile environment. [...] I look forward to receiving replies on how my actual real personal experience was somehow wrong.
Not wrong, you just leapt to the wrong conclusion. It's not the picture that creates a hostile environment. It's bullshit puritan attitudes towards sexuality that you, right now, are helping to promote.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
She's going to faint once she sees some of the images in her art history class.
Q: What does the "B." in Benoit B. Mandelbrot stand for? A: Benoit B. Mandelbrot
Is everything black or white for you, no intermediate shades?
The slippery slope is not a fallacy, it's a real thing and once you slide down one, it's a long trip back up.
However, it is easy to see how a sexualized image sends a certain message to men and women in an STEM environment.
Yeah, and that message is "sex is not evil, contrary to what your child-raping priest may have said"
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
How exactly does it create a hostile environment?
For bonus points, explain how nudity in classic art (paintings, sculptures, etc) does not create a hostile environment in the classroom.
I'm seeing the context of the "Lena" image as being a standard test for image processing.
There's no technical reason for that to be true. It's just a tradition and not a particularly proud one since it implies the field was started by guys reading porn magazines, its continued usage suggests that hasn't really changed. I don't think that's a message you want to send about a technical field.
As for art, a lot of it appears to have a sexualized component when it was created (some of it very explicit), but in the context of a class, it's being studied for its place in art history.
That's art, the sexualized component is part of the statement, a certain degree of controversy, offense, or shock actually adds to the artistic value.
I don't think the standard computer vision test image should be making provocative artistic statements.
So what am I missing? Tell me how a cropped Lena picture is any worse than (say) Goya's The Nude Maja, which Wikipedia notes was probably created to hang in a private collection, and whose subject, just like the Lena photograph, looks directly at the viewer (and unlike the Lena photograph, "Nude Maja" tends not to be cropped).
It's not any worse. But neither image should be used as a standard test image.
I stole this Sig
What do you think is the probability, that because an image associated with pornography was used, that the (few) girls in the class were subjected by their male classmates to jokes about tits, asses, pussies, etc? My guess is about 100%.
What is the probability that you are just making shit up that has no bearing on reality? My guess is about 100%. The subject of naked women came up a few times while I was in school, but not once do I recall anyone reacting by pouncing on the nearest female and suggesting she has nice tits too (or whatever.) I'm sure it has happened somewhere, sometime, but to claim this is a universal reaction among is worryingly delusional. I heard many more jokes about the size of male penises in classical art, coming from the females slightly more than the males.
This exact same line of reasoning is being used at this very moment to remove all pictures and mentions of pigs in children's stories and textbooks in the United Kingdom because some Muslims might be offended.
Yeah, it's "no big deal" to change this stuff, but it's a worrying precedent. Some of us are of the opinion that, while Muslims and anti-pornography feminists and others are fully entitled to their beliefs, we shouldn't be wasting ANY of our time, money and energy kowtowing to their taboos.
Look up the phrase "paternalistic". What you're saying is that women are so weak, so feckless, so lacking in agency and personal strength, that they can't handle their own media/em made by women, marketed to women, and consumed by women.
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
Women currently have a 2:1 advantage in STEM fields, are nearly 2/3rds of college graduates and even more than that in some STEM disciplines, utterly dominate virtually every measure of academic success and achievement we have at pretty much every level, and are on average only a third or less of the homeless, and are virtually none of workplace fatalities.
If we live in a "male dominated world" men are doing a really shitty job of oppressing women.
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."