Sideswipe: September 21: Family Portrait

In 1973, Dutch photographer Hans Wijkelboom rang the doorbells of strangers’ houses for a series entitled “With My Family” after seeing husbands going to work. He would then convince their wives of it
posing with him in the father’s place in a family portrait. ⁣⁣⁣⁣Another title for this series might as well be “Portrait of women who don’t listen to true crime podcasts.”⁣⁣

Fake it ’til you make it

Don’t feel good about interviews but really want that job? This could be for you. Companies that work remotely a lot, hire employees via online interviews, or have jobs abroad encounter proxies. These are people pretending to be the actual applicants. Such applicants can pay up to $150 an hour to masquerade as the applicants and bluff their way through interviews. This is particularly common among knowledge workers, such as in information technology.

irony in action

Three car convoy declared

A reader on the Waikato Expressway noticed two police cars with a van between them pulling at 70 mph with only a car length between them and wondered what was going on. Clive suggested that police would escort prisoners from Auckland courts to Meremere Prison, but Graham Worner has a fuller explanation: “This is the typical way of moving the occupants of the central vehicle safely, securely and generally quickly.” , he says. “While driving in very close formation, the driver of the lead vehicle is in control of the convoy and is in constant radio communication with the two following vehicles. The lead driver determines the speed of the convoy and when to overtake other vehicles, turn or stop… This is to ensure the safety of the central vehicle as the close following distances prevent other vehicles from passing and getting between the convoy vehicles and potentially stopping them force or that the convoy be split up traffic lights etc. Remember that in 2004 Helen Clark drove through the South Island in one such motorcade at speeds of up to 172 km/h – however she had to attend an All Blacks game that night.

Identify strange research

duckling physics. Two groups shared the Ig Nobel Prize in Physics for research showing ducklings swim in single file to conserve energy and surf in their mother’s wake. “It has everything to do with the flow that occurs behind that lead organism and the way that moving in formation can actually be an energetic benefit,” Frank Fish of Pennsylvania’s West Chester University tells the AP.