Super Size Me

I finally got around to seeing this unusual documentary
about a guy who eats nothing but McDonald’s for 30 days.

Ever since a kid I have been a sucker for McD’s, especially the fries. Everytime I walk by a McD - even until this day - I am very tempted to buy a pack of fries to munch on. It’s that smell - many think that it’s some addictive ingredient in the oil they use - that weaken my resolve to stop eating those fatty carbo monsters.

Until I was 14 or 15 I ate McD’s regularly - two or three times a week - and loved it. But after that what happened? My body wanted Chinese food instead. You see, when I was a kid my main diet at home was Chinese food and even though my mind favored McD’s, my body gradually told me that it was not right to eat that. So one fine day in my mid-teens something drastically changed: I could never eat McD’s more than once a day, or two days in a row without feeling sick to my bones.

Seeing all those fellow fat and unhealthy Americans in the documentary really made me sick again. I realize I am lucky to have had Chinese food mix into my diet since I was a kid. Because of that, my body knew that there was a healthier choice and it steered me to it. I am not sure most Americans have this choice; if they don’t eat McDs chances are they are stuck with other equally high-fat unhealthy diets such as pizzas, pseudo-Italian or pseudo-Mexican that are present in many strip malls around the country. If not, then there are crazy diet fads - to me anyway - such as Atkins that forces many believers in our country to play unnecessary Russian Roulette games with their own health.

The documentary is a wake up call, as with the book “Fast Food Nation”; too bad many still will fail to heed their advice.

And it is true: you are what you eat.

Family-centered home offices?

Traditionally, the idea of a “home office” or “study”, as we used to call it, is a room that is located in a relatively secluded area of the house, and sometimes heavily fortified to keep out noises of young, screaming miscreants so that a parent may concentrate on his or her work.

Here is a report from Canada about the rising popularity of home offices being placed close to the living room so that a parent can be more receptive to one’s kids while working at home. The trend is about creating an open office that keeps a parent connected physically and spiritually to the rest of family, even at “peak” working hours.

I just don’t know about this… Having just fathered a kid, I don’t think this new trend of home offices is such a good idea especially if the kids are young. I live in a one bedroom apartment so our living room is also my study. My kid - who just turned one - is starting to yank cables that hang from my desk, because there is no door to stop him from doing so. He particularly enjoys watching the mouse fly over his head and crash onto the hardwood floor.

90 seconds

asahi.com raised raised an interesting question regarding last week’s train accident in Western Japan (article in Japanese): is the Japanese culture too obsessed with being on time? The train accident may have been caused by the driver who had done excessive speeding to make up for being just 90 seconds off schedule. In the article, asahi.com points out that in the N.Y., a subway train is only considered late if it is 5 minutes over its schedule when it reaches its terminal station, and in England, 4 minutes. Did JR’s (and on a broader scale, Japan’s) obsession with time indirectly caused the driver to speed up, which in turn caused the accident?

Having seen how the Japanese train system works in big cities I don’t think there is an easy answer to that one. Millions of people depend on the system every day and a late train could mean loss of productivity for thousands of companies, not to mention affecting the schedule of later trains. There is really no other way to run the system except to keep every train on time to the very minute. Having said all that, all train operators should remember that nothing is above the safety of the passengers, even if that means one might lose his job for being late.

But back to Japanese puntuality: most of my Japanese friends would go through all the trouble to synchronize their car clocks to a radio station’s hourly chime, instead of just looking at the watch and adjust the car clock to some time that is close enough. So many times riding in their respective cars, I have always gotten a kick out of watching the minutes of the clock turn :00 at the same time the radio station emits the hourly chime.

And once I asked a Japanese friend why don’t people in Japan set their watches five or ten minutes ahead of the standard time so that they give themselves a cushion to get to work or school a bit early. I remember my Japanese friend replied that after a while he would probably forget that it was set early and think that it was the standard time. (Isn’t that the point though?)

Yonfan: Color Blossoms

I have heard of Yonfan the photographer, but I didn’t know he has been making art housey movies. His latest is called “Color Blossoms”.

An excerpt from IHT’s article on Yonfan:
“Hong Kong doesn’t want movies anymore,” he said, “people want DVDs. I belong to the big screen.” He paused, leaned back into a silk-covered cushion and put on his best Gloria Swanson gaze: “It is the movies that got smaller.”

www.sorryeverybody.com

Check out this site containing a gallery of captioned photo shots submitted by random Americans who apologize to the world for the election results.

For the other side, there is also
werenotsorry.com.

However, I have to say, the sorry people are much funnier.

UPDATE: After going through ten or twenty pages in the gallery, I must add that this site is incredible in the sense that how many Americans actually feel the same way about George Bush, and they actually take their time to write and take a picture for submission. As my friend Eddy puts it, “there’s hope” in USA after all. Equally touching are the “you are forgiven” photos from non-Americans. Bravo!

Copyright = artistic repression?

Here is a good article by a J.D. Lasica on how too much copyright - as lobbied by media moguls in the US at Congress - can limit and suppress the creativity of the people.

“The Killing Fields” Copyright Law and its Challengers [Mindjack]

Lessig’s Free Culture book

Prof. Lawrence Lessig’s Free Culture book is out. I haven’t read the book yet, but supposedly it looks into how these days, big corporations are stifling innovation by influencing govt. to rewrite copyright laws in the internet age, limiting the flow of ideas into the public domain. In a world where we have been building new ideas upon old ones for thousands of years, this could spell trouble.

True to its title, it is free for download under the Creative Commons License here. Or you can buy it from your favorite book store.

Do you feel bad about your poor memory?

Well, here is an article to make you feel even worse. Wired News.

But the article includes tips from Scott Hagwood, memory champion of the U.S. (I made the term up, but there is indeed such a championship) on how to improve your memory:

… Hagwood, who gives seminars on how to improve memory skills, advises people to use their non-dominant hand in daily chores, do crosswords and puzzles, play chess, take a different route on your daily commute, learn to tango, play an instrument and speak another language.

But one thing is true: I have met a lot of successful people (let me define that to be people who make a good living doing what they love best) and almost every one of them has an excellent memory.

Samba and Carnival in Brazil: History and Today

(Update: For a first-hand report on Rio, samba and the carnival, please check out my Brazil travelogue under Pages: Rio Part I, Rio Part II and Rio Part III.)

History
When the Portuguese colonized Brazil, they brought over a medieval tradition called entrudo where people threw eggs and water at each other on the streets just before Lent. Over the years as these Portuguese settlers celebrated entrudo, black people - originally brought over to Brazil from Africa as slaves - also started dancing in the streets simultaneously. However, the conservative whites did not approve of the blacks’ dances because of their sexual overtones.

The dance that the blacks were doing was the precursor to samba. The accompanying musicians played drums and whistles, and by the late 19th century, the dancing and the music became more ritualized, and more accepted by the Brazilian society. Dance clubs were formed, especially in Rio. Today, the dance clubs have evolved into escola de samba (samba schools), which are featured in carnival parades with elaborate costumes, music and percussion band serving the school-chosen theme every year.

What’s wrong with the Oscars?

What’s wrong with the Oscars?.  [Salon.com]  The show is just a pointless popularity contest where the “best-anything” awards are voted by a confined bunch of people whose tastes are probably never the same as yours. Best-by-voting is way overrated; it’s the best-for-you that counts.