One of the niceties of being a half-Canadian, half-American couple: two Thanksgivings!
Earlier this evening, I enjoyed a very lovely dinner, much of which was comprised of food that after all these years, I still find a little bit exotic: turkey, mashed potatoes, pumpkin bread and stuffing. Of course, what I think of as comfort food — adobo, pancit, lumpia — a lot of people might call exotic.
(My parents didn’t acquire a taste for turkey until recent years, and Mom doesn’t like the texture of mashed potatoes; they remind her too much of baby food. For the longest time, Thanksgiving at our house was rock cornish hens and wild rice, which are nothing to complain about.)
This was a particularly special Thanksgiving, as we were celebrating the Wendy’s brother’s engagement with him and his fiancee. Congrats, guys, and welcome to the family, Sue! (It’s hard to believe that two Thanksgivings ago, we were celebrating my engagement to Wendy. How time flies.)
Also joining us was J, who worked at Harvard with Wendy and whom I met at the Berkman Center’s blog group and over my many visits to Boston. It was good seeing you again, J!
As you might expect, posting’s going to be a little spotty until the end of the week. In the meantime, I’ll leave you with the best Thanksgiving segment on a sitcom ever, the WKRP turkey debacle:
If you read this blog last week, you might have seen the article titled Why Asian Kids are Good at Math. I put out a call for translations, and someone came forward in the comments! Here’s it is:
The top part:
Let’s assume that from the top part of the skirt to where the thighs meet is vertically 4cm. Also assume that from the end of the skirt to the point we are interested in viewing is horizontally 12cm. Looking from the side, the point of interest and the edge of the skirt form a triangle ABC.
The bottom part:
Extending BC we reach our ideal observation point E where we our point of interest comes into view. blah blah explanation of where ABCDE is we come to the conclusion that DE must be 53.3cm in order to achieve the optimum viewing angle. Assuming an average height of 170cm and seating height of 70cm the observer must bluntly lean over and reduce his viewing height by 17cm to see the inside of her thighs. I don’t think she would mind so much. Go for it.
I think the last two sentences — “I don’t think she would mind so much. Go for it.” — are actually editorial on the commenter’s part, but the rest of the translation seems to be legit.
Can you imagine the furor that would arise if this was presented as a math lesson here? Perhaps it might be good material for a “Borat” skit.
Whither Now Yahoo!? “First, you get the direct fallout from the Wall Street Journal’s story covering “the Peanut Butter Manifesto.” Then you get the secondary analysis of just what ails the world’s most popular network of web properties. Finally, Yahoo! announces a deal with a clutch of newspaper chains. What’s it all mean, and what’s the relationship between these stories?”
Comedy is Tragedy + YouTube (With a Dash of Legal Stupidity). “This story starts out with video of a tragically bad corporate reinterpretation of U2’s “One” (commissioned to commemorate the union of Bank of America and MBNA’s credit card businesses). It was so painful, it became something of an internet comedy senation. The New York Times, however, notes that the tale has turned tragically stupid…”
This past weekend provided local pranksters Ben Lovatt and Victor Moukhortov — the “Smash Our Stuff” guys — with a two-fer, thanks to the near-simultaneous release of Sony’s PlayStation 3 and Nintendo’s Wii consoles. In case you’re not familiar with the concept, Ben and Victor are well-known in the gadget-o-phile community as those guys who videotape themselves going to electronic stores on the release date of some must-have item, purchasing said item and then smashing it just outside the store.
Below is the video in which they smash a PlayStation 3 that they purchased at the new Best Buy across the street from the Eaton Centre. Considering that the PlayStation 3 is being released in very limited quantities, is the most expensive console today (CDN$549 for the 20GB model and CDN$659 for the 60GB model at Best Buy) and is being resold on eBay for an average price of US$2600, one might think that they were risking being beaten up by the people in line — at least until you considered the fact that you’d lose their place in line if you leapt to the defense of the hapless PlayStation 3.
They followed up later that weekend by doing the same thing to a newly-purchased Nintendo Wii outside the Future Shop near Yonge and Sheppard. The onlookers seemed to take it better than those lining up for the PlayStation 3. There are a number of possible reasons for this: the Wii isn’t being released in such limited quantities, doesn’t cost as much (CDN$279.99 at Future Shop), the Nintendo hype isn’t anywhere as intense or perhaps Nintendo people are just more chilled out:
In case you were wondering about the song that they like to use as background music for their videos, the one with these lyrics…
Keep in mind that these guys are going to recoup the money they spent on these smashed devices — they might even make a decent profit — quite easily. They run Google ads on their site, and it would appear that they get a decent amount of traffic.
They refer to what they do as “social experiments” and imply that they’re challenging consumer culture. I’m more inclined to think of them as a couple bored smartasses looking to entertain themselves and get a little fame through shock value. What do you think?
The Japanese are Weird, chapter 832: Here in North America, when one thinks of “gangster cars”, images of black Lincoln Town Cars with tinted windows, Escalades with spinning rims and riced-up Hondas come to mind. In each case, the car exudes serious macho.
Things are different over in the Land of the Rising Cuteness, where the gangster cars exude more Hello Kitty or Pokemon. Consider the van below. In Japan, this car says “Caution: Members of a speed tribe inside!”. Here in North America, this says “Caution: Even the cast of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy found this vehicle too campy!”
