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Computers Are For Girls, Too
I remember three things about my first computer science class in college. First, improbably, the professor was named Ramm, as in "random access memory." Second, the class was about processors, and I only had a vague idea what a processor was. Third, it was the last computer science class for most of my female classmates, who quickly decided they'd rather major in something else.

I never would have guessed that my time as a computer science student would turn out to be pretty much the high water mark for women in the field. The percentage of computer science majors who are women has gone down from 37 percent in 1984 to just 18 percent today. In other words, on average my daughters are half as likely to major in computer science as I was 30 years ago.

My daughters are half as likely to major in computer science as I was 30 years ago.

But the young women in this video are defying these odds -- they're pursuing careers in computer science and dismantling stereotypes about the field. I love hearing them talk about the sense of empowerment and joy that coding brings them. Kimberly got a standing ovation from her high school English classmates when she demonstrated a book review app she made. Kayla is preserving and sharing the rich history of her community with an app that customizes multimedia walking tours. Courtney helped design the landing legs on a rocket when she interned at SpaceX!

The gross underrepresentation of women in computer science is not just a problem for the girls who are left out. It's a problem for all of us, because we're not benefitting from the creativity girls have to offer. There's a mountain of research showing that diversity makes for better companies and better products -- that we're more innovative when we work in teams with different kinds of people -- yet the gender diversity in tech has been getting worse for decades.

One reason why is that somewhere along the way, society decided that computers are for boys. Or, as Aishwarya says, "guys in hoodies." And this toxic stereotype becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, virtually guaranteeing that computer science is indeed a male-dominated field.

First, since girls aren't supposed to be into computers, they aren't exposed to computer science when they're young, and even if they are, they often aren't encouraged to pursue their interests in the field. That helps explain why only 22 percent of the high school students who take the AP computer science exam today are girls. Kayla didn't know she wanted to be a computer scientist until she'd already started a totally different career, in library science. It was only when she started training staff to use the library's software that she realized she might be interested in making software herself, so she went back to college for a second time to be a computer scientist. Kimberly had never heard of computer science until she saw it was one of the classes she could take at her local community college.

The gross underrepresentation of women in computer science is... a problem for all of us.

The idea that computers are for boys doesn't just keep girls out of the field, though. It also drives women out. A host of implicit biases affect the way tech companies recruit, train, and promote--and make it easier for men to get ahead.

Luckily, there are great organizations like the National Center for Women and Information Technology (NCWIT), whose mission is to increase the number of girls and women in tech. NCWIT and groups like it aim to make it easier for girls to discover that they love computers--and make it easier for women who love computer science to make a career in it. Eventually, as more and more girls choose this path, it won't seem like computer science is just for boys.

Aishwarya, Courtney, Kayla, and Kimberly all talk about the excitement of using code to turn an idea into a piece of software that can change the world, of creating something important from nothing. Let me tell you, it is a terrific feeling. Kayla says it makes her feel like "superwoman." I hope everyone gets the opportunity to feel that way.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

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r0B0t: Artificial Intelligence-Enabled Cleaning Machines Might be the Future, if the Unions Allow it

This post originally appeared on Inc.

In September, San Diego robotics startup Brain Corporation will introduce artificial intelligence software that allows giant commercial floor-cleaning machines to navigate autonomously. The follow-up offering it wants to develop may be even more forward-looking: A training and certification program for janitors to operate the machines.

The program, still in early stages of planning, is aimed at helping janitors maximize efficiency and establishing standards and best practices for the use of robots in janitorial work, according to Brain Corporation. The company says it is not aware any other such training program exists.

There's additional incentive for Brain Corp. to offer training options. Buzz around artificial intelligence and robotics technologies has caused concerns about jobs being automated out of existence. It's prudent for Brain Corp. to frame its machine as non-threatening in the eyes of organized labor groups.

“Getting unions on board is essential,” says Brain Corp. vice president of marketing Phil Duffy. “The second you try and cut the union reps out, it's doomed to fail.” The company is not currently speaking with unions directly, however. Instead, customers that contract with union workers are relaying to Brain Corp. how unions may react to the technology and what practices they prefer.

Brain Corp., which started as a research and development contractor for Qualcomm in 2009, installs intelligent systems on existing machines. Its first “autonomy as a service” product is navigation software known as EMMA, for “Enabling Mobile Machine Automation.” Brain Corp plans to expand into automation modules for other devices including additional floor care machines, mobile medical equipment, and industrial forklift trucks.

The EMMA brain module is installed during manufacturing on products built by the startup's manufacturing partners. EMMA will first be in International Cleaning Equipment's RS26 floor scrubber. In addition to guiding movement of the machine, EMMA is designed to learn when to turn the scrubber on and off. Improvements in perception and navigation by EMMA are distributed to all machines that use the module.

CEO Eugene Izhikevich says teaching robots enabled with Brain Corp's AI technology “is like teaching an animal or teaching a child by giving instructions, but very instinctive, very intuitive.” Because it's so intuitive, those training the machines do not necessarily need engineering backgrounds, he says.

In the case of robotics technology geared toward commercial cleaning jobs, Brain Corp. would be wise to try to appeal to two million-member union Service Employees International Union (SEIU), which represents employees in a variety of labor fields, including janitorial services.

Andrew Stern, former president of SEIU, says the cost of disruption to a business from a union opposing the implementation of automation technology could outweigh benefits such as cost savings. Janitorial services, while critical to maintenance of buildings such as hospitals and apartment buildings, amount to only a small portion of overall operating costs, so possible savings from automation could be fractional, he says.

Stern says there are some U.S. markets where SEIU doesn't have much of a presence. Malls and warehouses in these regions may be ideal places to try out automated floor scrubbers and other robotic equipment without concern for union reaction.

SEIU declined to comment for this story.

Stern notes that Brain Corp. also can benefit from partnering with unions like SEIU because they have training facilities and practices in place that would help with scaling a training program.

While unions tend to be hesitant about automation, they are eager for training programs that can help advance their members' skills, says Daniel Wagner, the director of education, standards, and training for the International Sanitary Supply Association (ISSA), which reviews and validates training programs. ISSA has been in communication with Brain Corp. about a potential partnership.

“There is always the possibility that we could ask Brain to develop a program for ISSA to administer and manage, but we are not at that point yet,” Wagner says.

In a statement, Brain Corp. said it is also testing its technology at its development partner sites. The trials “will ultimately enable us to develop the best program for integration with the janitorial industry. We plan to launch the training program by mid-2017.”

"Getting unions on board is essential," says Brain Corp. vice president of marketing Phil Duffy. "The second you try and cut the union reps out, it's doomed to fail." The company is not currently speaking with unions directly, however. Instead, customers that contract with union workers are relaying to Brain Corp. how unions may react to the technology and what practices they prefer.

Brain Corp., which started as a research and development contractor for Qualcomm in 2009, installs intelligent systems on existing machines. Its first "autonomy as a service" product is navigation software known as EMMA, for "Enabling Mobile Machine Automation." Brain Corp plans to expand into automation modules for other devices including additional floor care machines, mobile medical equipment, and industrial forklift trucks.

CEO Eugene Izhikevich says teaching robots enabled with Brain Corp's AI technology "is like teaching an animal or teaching a child by giving instructions, but very instinctive, very intuitive." Because it's so intuitive, those training the machines do not necessarily need engineering backgrounds, he says.

Developing a training program

SEIU declined to comment for this story.

Stern notes that Brain Corp. also can benefit from partnering with unions like SEIU because they have training facilities and practices in place that would help with scaling a training program.

"There is always the possibility that we could ask Brain to develop a program for ISSA to administer and manage, but we are not at that point yet," Wagner says.

In a statement, Brain Corp. said it is also testing its technology at its development partner sites. The trials "will ultimately enable us to develop the best program for integration with the janitorial industry. We plan to launch the training program by mid-2017."

Developing a training program

SEIU declined to comment for this story.

Stern notes that Brain Corp. also can benefit from partnering with unions like SEIU because they have training facilities and practices in place that would help with scaling a training program.

"There is always the possibility that we could ask Brain to develop a program for ISSA to administer and manage, but we are not at that point yet," Wagner says.

Developing a training program

SEIU declined to comment for this story.

Stern notes that Brain Corp. also can benefit from partnering with unions like SEIU because they have training facilities and practices in place that would help with scaling a training program.

"There is always the possibility that we could ask Brain to develop a program for ISSA to administer and manage, but we are not at that point yet," Wagner says.

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r0B0t: Read the Original 32-Page Program for Fritz Lang's Metropolis (1927)

One of the very first feature-length sci-fi films ever made, Fritz Lang's Metropolis took a daring visual approach for its time, incorporating Bauhaus and Futurist influences in thrillingly designed sets and costumes. Lang's visual language resonated strongly in later decades. The film's rather stunning alchemical-electric transference of a woman's physical traits onto the body of a destructive android—the so-called Maschinenmensch—for example, began a very long trend of female robots in film and television, most of them as dangerous and inscrutable as Lang's. And yet, for all its many imitators, Metropolis continues to deliver surprises. Here, we bring you a new find: a 32-page program distributed at the film's 1927 premier in London and recently re-discovered.

In addition to underwriting almost one hundred years of science fiction film and television tropes, Metropolis has had a very long life in other ways: Inspiring an all-star soundtrack produced by Giorgio Moroder in 1984,with Freddie Mercury, Loverboy, and Adam Ant, and a Kraftwerk album. In 2001, a reconstructed version received a screening at the Berlin Film Festival, and UNESCO's Memory of the World Register added it to their roster. 2002 saw the release of an exceptional Metropolis-inspired anime with the same title. And in 2010 an almost fully restored print of the long-incomplete film—recut from footage found in Argentina in 2008—appeared, adding a little more sophistication and coherence to the simplistic story line.

Even at the film's initial reception, without any missing footage, critics did not warm to its story. For all its intense visual futurism, it has always seemed like a very quaint, naïve tale, struck through with earnest religiosity and inexplicable archaisms. Contemporary reviewers found its narrative of generational and class conflict unconvincing. H.G. Wells—“something of an authority on science fiction”—pronounced it “the silliest film” full of “every possible foolishness, cliché, platitude, and muddlement about mechanical progress and progress in general served up with a sauce of sentimentality that is all its own.” Few were kinder when it came to the story, and despite its overt religious themes, many saw it as Communist propaganda.

Viewed after subsequent events in 20th century Germany, many of the film's scenes appear “disturbingly prescient,” writes the Unaffiliated Critic, such as the vision of a huge industrial machine as Moloch, in which “bald, underfed humans are led in chains to a furnace.” Lang and his wife Thea von Harbau—who wrote the novel, then screenplay—were of course commenting on industrialization, labor conditions, and poverty in Weimar Germany. Metropolis‘s “clear message of classism,” as io9 writes, comes through most clearly in its arresting imagery, like that horrifying, monstrous furnace and the “looming symbol of wealth in the Tower of Babel.”

The visual effects and spectacular set pieces have worked their magic on almost everyone (Wells excluded) who has seen Metropolis. And they remain, for all its silliness, the primary reason for the movie's cultural prevalence. Wired calls it “probably the most influential sci-fi movie in history,” remarking that “a single movie poster from the original release sold for $690,000 seven years ago, and is expected to fetch even more at an auction later this year.”

We now have another artifact from the movie's premiere, this 32-page program, appropriately called “Metropolis” Magazine, that offers a rich feast for audiences, and text at times more interesting than the film's script. (You can view the program in full here.) One imagines had they possessed backlit smart phones, those early moviegoers might have found themselves struggling not to browse their programs while the film screened. But, of course, Metropolis's visual excesses would hold their attention as they still do ours. Its scenes of a futuristic city have always enthralled viewers, filmmakers, and (most) critics, such that Roger Ebert could write of “vast futuristic cities” as a staple of some of the best science fiction in his review of the 21st-century animated Metropolis—“visions… goofy and yet at the same time exhilarating.”

The program really is an astonishing document, a treasure for fans of the film and for scholars. Full of production stills, behind-the-scenes articles and photos, technical minutiae, short columns by the actors, a bio of Thea von Harbau, the “authoress,” excerpts from her novel and screenplay placed side-by-side, and a short article by her. There's a page called “Figures that Speak” that tallies the production costs and cast and crew numbers (including very crude drawings and numbers of “Negroes” and “Chinese”). Lang himself weighs in, laconically, with a breezy introduction followed by a classic silent-era line: “if I cannot succeed in finding expression on the picture, I certainly cannot find it in speech.” Film history agrees, Lang found his expression “on the picture.”

“Only three surviving copies of this program are known to exist,” writes Wired, and one of them, from which these pages come, has gone on sale at the Peter Harrington rare book shop for 2,750 pounds ($4,244)—which seems rather low, given what an original Metropolis poster went for. But markets are fickle, and whatever its current or future price, ”Metropolis” Magazine is invaluable to cineastes. See all 32 pages of the program at Peter Harrington's website.

via Wired

Fritz Lang Tells the Riveting Story of the Day He Met Joseph Goebbels and Then High-Tailed It Out of Germany

Metropolis II: Discover the Amazing, Fritz Lang-Inspired Kinetic Sculpture by Chris Burden

Josh Jones is a writer and musician based in Durham, NC. Follow him at @jdmagness

Read the Original 32-Page Program for Fritz Lang's Metropolis (1927) is a post from: Open Culture. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus, or get our Daily Email. And don't miss our big collections of Free Online Courses, Free Online Movies, Free eBooks, Free Audio Books, Free Foreign Language Lessons, and MOOCs.

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r0B0t: Morris From America

“We're the only two brothers in Heidelberg, man,” Curtis Gentry (Craig Robinson) reminds his 13-year-old son Morris (Markees Christmas) in writer-director Chad Hartigan's Morris From America. “We've gotta stick together, you know what I'm saying?” Morris From America is a foul-mouthed, but gentle-souled, coming-of-age comedy that follows the Gentrys' struggle to stick together as father and son—even as they adjust to their strange new lives as conspicuously black American expatriates in a provincial German town where the prevailing skin tone is not just white but marzipan-pig pink.

Curtis and Morris, we soon realize, are also mourning a beloved wife and mother who's referred to only obliquely, as if any more concrete evocation of her (a photo, a flashback) would be too much for even the camera to bear. The audience never learns precisely what sequence of events landed the Bronx-born Curtis—a former soccer player who now works on the coaching staff of a less-than-successful German team—and his shy, chubby son in this unlikely place. But this very absence of information works on the film's behalf, leaving the viewer as disoriented as the two shell-shocked protagonists.

Hartigan is at his most adept and original in the scenes involving this fractured two-person family, embodied to perfection by Robinson and then16-year-old newcomer Markees Christmas, a nonprofessional the director first spotted in a series of homemade comedy videos on YouTube, causing him to rewrite his script-in-progress around a character based on the boy.

A second plot, in which Morris falls head over heels for the 15-year-old school beauty, Katrin (Lina Keller), and subjects himself to a series of humiliations in an attempt to impress her, felt more overfamiliar from other teen coming-of-age movies. For example, the sporadic appearance of the blonde and beatific Keller (a ringer for a teenage Julie Delpy) in backlit, super-slo-mo fantasy sequences brought to mind the camera-as-horny-teenager move in such high-school classics as Fast Times at Ridgemont High and Risky Business. In fact, Hartigan (whose last film was 2013's This Is Martin Bonner) has spoken of his love for the 1998 romantic comedy Can't Hardly Wait, a movie that takes two decades of high-school movie clichés and whirs them merrily in a blender before serving them up sweeter than they already were.

Morris From America is both more nuanced and less sunny in its view of interteen relations. The interest that Katrin and, most especially, her bullying pack of pals take in Morris is initially motivated by the kind of racism-via-exoticization often experienced by blacks in Europe. Morris is constantly asked by his new schoolmates to demonstrate his authenticity: placed on the spot to prove his worth as a rapper, a player, or a gangster rather than as the quiet, awkward, secretly lonely 13-year-old kid he really is.

Gradually, Morris and Katrin develop something like a real friendship, maybe even—or is that only in Morris' dreams?—something more. The look of the fantasy-like party scenes is bold and jubilant, with the young characters (sometimes high on drugs, sometimes not) picked out in silhouette against backgrounds of pulsing color. But however lively the filmmaking got, whenever Craig Robinson wasn't around some part of me was just waiting for him to come back.

Robinson, best known as a comic sidekick in movies like Hot Tub Time Machine and Pineapple Express, and for TV roles on The Office and Mr. Robot, hasn't been given many big-screen chances to showcase his dramatic gifts, which come as this slight but easy-to-love movie's richest and most rewarding surprise. In one scene, the embattled Curtis tries to draw out his sullen son during a long car ride by telling a tale from his early courtship of Morris' mother. The speech that follows is a tour de force and serious acting challenge: the kind of lengthy parental soliloquy, delivered to a dead-silent and inexpressive audience, that requires both an ironclad ego and a healthy sense of one's own inherent ridiculousness.

Robinson invests that moment, and everything he does as this conflicted but loving dad, with so much brain and heart you find yourself hoping there are scripts with meaty dramatic parts stacking up even now on the comedian's front porch. I wish there were more films every year like Morris From America, the kind that surprise you by revealing a hidden side of something—an actor, a genre, a situation—you thought you had figured out.

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Why Eye Exams Are the Future of Alzheimer's Screening

Getting screened for Alzheimer's disease could soon mean taking a trip to the eye doctor. Decreased retinal thickness, the presence of abnormal proteins, and changes in how the retinal blood vessels respond to light all appear to be signs of neurodegenerative disease, according to researchers who spoke at the recent Alzheimer's Association International Conference (AAIC 2016) in Toronto.

All of these could be detected with non-invasive eye exams, which would represent a huge leap forward for patients and Alzheimer's researchers alike.

Alzheimer's is the most common cause of dementia, and it's irreversible. It affects an estimated 5 million Americans, and the numbers are growing. But right now, there's no perfect way to diagnose it: Doctors perform memory tests on their patients, or take a detailed family history, which means the disease sometimes isn't caught until it's progressed. A definitive diagnosis generally can't be done until after the patient's death, when clusters of abnormal proteins called amyloid plaques (a hallmark of the disease) can be found in brain tissue samples.

Earlier detection would mean that patients and their families could plan ahead, and that researchers could better study the disease. Improved screening methods would enable doctors to identify who's at risk, maybe even before their symptoms start to show.

The eyes are attracting attention as a portal to what's happening in the brain. At a session at the AAIC 2016, researchers focused on the retina, which sits in the back of the eye and is made up of nerve tissue. The eyes are like windows into the brain, said Melanie Campbell, professor of optometry and vision science at the University of Waterloo. She told Motherboard in an interview that amyloid plaques can appear in the back of the eyes on the retina.

It's possible amyloids leak into the vitreous fluid of the eye from the cerebrospinal fluid, Campbell said. Researchers also hypothesize that amyloid proteins are synthesized by neural cells within the eye, a similar process to what happens in the brains of Alzheimer's patients, appearing in both the retina and the vitreous fluid.

Image: The University of Waterloo

Right now, in the lab, amyloids can be detected on retinas using rather complicated and expensive eye-imaging techniques. But Campbell and colleagues developed a prototype device that does the job more easily and cheaply. This new technology, called polarimetry, uses polarized light.

“It turns out amyloids show up very clearly under polarized light,” she said.

Image: The University of Waterloo

She presented results of a series of proof-of-concept scans done on human and canine retinas. The scans were conducted on a series of cadaver retinas from the Eye Bank of Canada (20 from people who had Alzheimer's, and 22 controls), as well on living and postmortem canine retinas.

The researchers found that amyloid deposits were not only easy to detect with this new technology, but it was relatively easy to count them, and to measure their size—something other imaging techniques can't do. The next step will be testing the device clinically on patients with Alzheimer's disease, Campbell said. However, the presence of amyloids isn't a guaranteed way to diagnose it; they show risk so this would be for screening.

Image: The University of Waterloo

Another clue of the disease is thin retinal nerve fiber layers (RNFL). In fact, the thinner RNFLs are, the poorer the cognition levels of subjects, according to Fang Ko, clinical associate professor of ophthalmology, Florida State University and Moorfields Eye Hospital in the UK, who also spoke at the conference.

Here, researchers used data from the UK Biobank, which included medical and health details of 500,000 volunteers aged between 40 to 69 years from across England. Of these, 67,000 underwent eye exams, which included retinal imaging. Many were ultimately excluded (including those with diabetes or other conditions that affect the retina), leaving about 32,000 subjects. They completed four different cognitive tests. Of those, a total of 1,251 participants went on to repeat the cognitive tests after three years.

Image: Fang Ko et al

Researchers found that people with thinner RNFLs performed worse on each of the cognitive tests than those whose RNFLs were thicker. And those who started the study with thinner RNFL had greater cognitive decline at the three year follow-up than those who had thicker ones.

It may be possible to use thin RNFL as a predictor of cognitive decline, she said, but it isn't a surefire method: diseases like glaucoma can also affect its thickness, so once again, this could be a useful tool for screening rather than diagnosis.

A third technique, using a flickering light exam of the retinal blood vessels, could also help screen for Alzheimer's, according to Konstantin Kotliar, a biomedical engineer at the Aachen University of Applied Sciences in Germany.

In healthy eyes, a flickering light shone on the retina causes immediate dilation of both retinal arteries and veins. “In people with Alzheimer's disease, retinal arteries and veins have a delayed reaction to a flickering light test,” he said. But, they undergo greater dilation than in people without the disease. (Diminished and sometimes delayed dilation is also seen in eye diseases like glaucoma, he said.)

At the conference, Kotliar presented a study (unpublished as of yet) measuring and comparing retinal vessel reactions to flickering light in patients aged 60 to 79. Fifteen had mild-to-moderate dementia due to Alzheimer's; 24 had mild cognitive impairment, also from Alzheimer's, and 15 were healthy controls with no cognitive impairment. Retinal artery and vein reactions to 20-second-long flicker stimulation were measured.

Both arteries and veins dilated more in people with mild to moderate Alzheimer's than in controls. Also, the start of dilation in the retinal arteries took longer in people with Alzheimer's than in controls—though the delay wasn't as pronounced in the veins. How the retinal vessels behaved in Alzheimer's patients was a surprise, and this might contribute to another screening test, he said.

Finding new ways to screen for Alzheimer's has never been more important: with the number of patients expected to balloon in years to come, so finding new ways to detect it will crucial.

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On the Poetics—and Elusive Subtext—of Kanye West's Poem About French Fries

Who knew that Kanye West's feelings about McDonald's French fries were so complicated they could only be expressed in verse? Over the weekend, West published a poem in Frank Ocean's zine Boys Don't Cry, which came out in conjunction with Ocean's new album, Blonde. The magazine is 360 pages long, flush with interviews and photography and poetry, but West's stanzas are what push it to the edge of sanity. They are great, in their way. They go like this:

McDonalds Man McDonalds Man
The french fries had a plan
The french fries had a plan
The salad bar and the ketchup made a band
Cus the french fries had a plan
The french fries had a plan

McDonalds Man
McDonalds
I know them french fries have a plan
I know them french fries have a plan
The cheeseburger and the shakes formed a band
To overthrow the french fries plan
I always knew them french fries was evil man
Smelling all good and shit
I don't trust no food that smells that good man
I don't trust it
I just can't

McDonalds Man
McDonalds Man
McDonalds, damn
Them french fries look good tho
I knew the Diet Coke was jealous of the fries
I knew the McNuggets was jealous of the fries
Even the McRib was jealous of the fries
I could see it through his artificial meat eyes
And he only be there some of the time
Everybody was jealous of them french fries
Except for that one special guy
That smooth apple pie

This is some artfully artless jibber-jabber, with irregular rhymes and no consistent meter I could figure out (despite a strong rhythm helped by repetition). The lines are end-stopped—no enjambment—so you don't get the feeling of thoughts twisting, turning, or gathering steam (though in reading the piece aromatic steam is never far from your mind).

The speaker's observations announce themselves in the same flatly gleaming monochrome as a McDonald's logo. Few clauses, no real argument. Unlike the fries, this guy doesn't appear to have a plan. But that declarative simplicity belies a frightening instability.

The speaker himself fails to show up as a character until the middle of the poem—why the secrecy, and then the egoistic interruption? This West mouthpiece is dealing in certainties: “I know” the French fries are planning something, he says, and “I knew” other menu items envied the fries. But how does he know? Did the taters tell him? That would be problematic, because the “evil” golden spuds smell too delicious to “trust.” We already suspect our speaker may not have the firmest grasp on reality. (Since when does McDonald's have a “salad bar”?) Could it be that the speaker is, in fact, jealous of the fries and projecting that onto the McNuggets? And why is he constitutionally incapable of trusting something that smells good? (“I just can't.”)

Toward the end, the speaker seems so bedeviled by his simultaneous attraction to and skepticism of the fries (they “look good tho,” he reminds us wistfully) that he loses the thread. He must retreat into Zen mantras: “McDonalds Man,” he mumbles, “McDonalds Man.” But is the speaker the same person or someone different entirely from this titular “McDonalds Man,” who in the body of the poem registers less as a mysterious entity than as an interjection: “McDonald's, man”?

The real coup in this mystifying work of surrealist darkness is the ninth-inning entrance of its two most vivid and enigmatic characters. “Even” the McRib, who appears and disappears according to a logic the other foodstuffs cannot understand, covets the fries' tempting fragrance, their plots. And he is a single Rib, separated from his fellows. The oven-crisped taters are a brotherhood. The McRib has presumably not been invited to conspire with the ketchup, the shakes, or the cheeseburger, despite his familial relationship with the third. And yet in a transcendental leap, the speaker is able to peer through the McRib's artificial meat eyes, like Emerson through his transparent eyeball, and to perceive a deep, existential angst that transcends the food-human divide.

Then, the masterstroke. Like a dessert after the cognitive and sensory meal this elusive poem proffers, we have “that one special guy,” that “smooth apple pie.” He is the single item on the menu who does not envy the fries, who floats coolly above all the plotting and counterplotting of his fellow lunch options. This mysterious, debonair treat is the poem's twist ending, heralding … well, we are not sure. But he resembles an important piece of West's personal iconography—the “damn croissants” that will not be rushed. He gives those unflappable buttery pastries of 2013 an American spin, one infused with our native fruit, and with all of the hard-won experiential knowledge apples have suggested since the fall of man. In a universe of loneliness, ambition, and epistemological confusion, what precious truth, veiled to the rest of the fast food ecosystem, does this “special guy” know?

The poem won't answer these questions. And yet a pale, speculative allegory emerges from McDonald's' bill of edible fare. You can be the conniving fries, West seems to say, or you can be the sad haters who want to be the fries, squinting out at them with your artificial eyes. (Fries, as potatoes, once had eyes, but no longer do. Their pandering to commercial tastes has corrupted their vision, perhaps.) The fries may smell good and have a lot of fans, but they aren't the real thing.

Only a very few special guys can be the apple pies: self-possessed, secretive, genius. The apple pie is who the speaker ultimately wants to emulate, if he can shake off the hollow, glamorous value system of the fries. He yearns to, but those fries look good. McDonalds, damn.

cogdis

Developing a training program

Developing a training program

Developing a training program

Workers of the world, you have nothing to lose but your train seats