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What do you think about the Spanish national basketball team posing for a picture while using their fingers to make their eyes look slanted “like Chinese people”?  While I don’t think they had bad intentions, it’s still an incredibly ignorant thing to do.  Calderon even referred to China as the “Far East”, I guess that’s how they still think of us.  I guess we still sport Fu Manchu moustaches, queues down our backs and smoke opium all day.

What do you think about the Spanish national basketball team posing for a picture while using their fingers to make their eyes look slanted “like Chinese people”?  While I don’t think they had bad intentions, it’s still an incredibly ignorant thing to do.  Calderon even referred to China as the “Far East”, I guess that’s how they still think of us.  I guess we still sport Fu Manchu moustaches, queues down our backs and smoke opium all day.

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While watching the extravagence of the Beijing Olympics opening ceremonies on Friday, I joked that the money spent on fireworks alone was probably more than the GDP of several participating countries.  There were 29,000 fireworks shells used at the opening ceremonies…I wonder how much each shell costs?While costs for the opening ceremonies have been kept a secret, estimates place the final cost as high as $300MM US.  By comparison, here are the 2007 GDPs of some of the participating countries: Guinea-Bissau $295MSolomon Islands $286MDominica $279MTonga $244MMicronesia $232MCook Islands $183MPalau $145MMarshall Islands $144MTuvalu $14M China also used 15,000 performers at the opening ceremonies (9,000 of which were on loan from the army).  By comparison: Total number of athletes at the Olympics: 16,000Population of the British Virgin Islands: 23,000Population of Palau: 20,000Population of Tuvalu: 11,000 Does anyone else think that all the extravagence is a little ridiculous and over-the-top?  The Chinese government has given about $1.5 billion in domestic aid to the victims of the Sichuan earthquake since May.  The money spent on the opening ceremonies represented about 1/5 of that.

While watching the extravagence of the Beijing Olympics opening ceremonies on Friday, I joked that the money spent on fireworks alone was probably more than the GDP of several participating countries.  There were 29,000 fireworks shells used at the opening ceremonies…I wonder how much each shell costs?

While costs for the opening ceremonies have been kept a secret, estimates place the final cost as high as $300MM US.  By comparison, here are the 2007 GDPs of some of the participating countries:

Guinea-Bissau $295M
Solomon Islands $286M
Dominica $279M
Tonga $244M
Micronesia $232M
Cook Islands $183M
Palau $145M
Marshall Islands $144M
Tuvalu $14M

China also used 15,000 performers at the opening ceremonies (9,000 of which were on loan from the army).  By comparison:

Total number of athletes at the Olympics: 16,000
Population of the British Virgin Islands: 23,000
Population of Palau: 20,000
Population of Tuvalu: 11,000

Does anyone else think that all the extravagence is a little ridiculous and over-the-top?  The Chinese government has given about $1.5 billion in domestic aid to the victims of the Sichuan earthquake since May.  The money spent on the opening ceremonies represented about 1/5 of that.

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I read about graphic designer Shepard Fairey in June’s issue of Esquire — he’s done work for Nike, Zeppelin, Barack Obama and Guitar Hero, but he’s also recently done some work on branding America’s national ideals, like capitalism, nationalism, militarism, etc. His stuff is pretty cool and pretty tongue-in-cheek in his criticism of some of our ideals. Pictured is Fairey’s poster on police brutality. Here’s another one for war-torn Iraq.

I read about graphic designer Shepard Fairey in June’s issue of Esquire — he’s done work for Nike, Zeppelin, Barack Obama and Guitar Hero, but he’s also recently done some work on branding America’s national ideals, like capitalism, nationalism, militarism, etc. His stuff is pretty cool and pretty tongue-in-cheek in his criticism of some of our ideals.

Pictured is Fairey’s poster on police brutality.

Here’s another one for war-torn Iraq.

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The mind-control Wii headset also reminded me of this game I played when I was at the Tom Tits Experiment (an Exploratorium-type place) in Sweden.  In the picture, you see my brother-in-law John taking on my niece Kelli.  You basically strap these brainwave-sensing head straps on and then try to move the little ball over to your opponent’s end.  The ball will move faster when you have LESS brain waves, i.e. when you’re not thinking about anything. I was pretty good at this game, which means I’m exceptionally good at blanking/spacing out. That said, I’d love to see Professor X take on Jean Grey in a game like this.  Who would win?  I’d say Jean takes it provided that she exposes a little cleavage to throw the old man off.

The mind-control Wii headset also reminded me of this game I played when I was at the Tom Tits Experiment (an Exploratorium-type place) in Sweden.  In the picture, you see my brother-in-law John taking on my niece Kelli.  You basically strap these brainwave-sensing head straps on and then try to move the little ball over to your opponent’s end.  The ball will move faster when you have LESS brain waves, i.e. when you’re not thinking about anything.

I was pretty good at this game, which means I’m exceptionally good at blanking/spacing out.

That said, I’d love to see Professor X take on Jean Grey in a game like this.  Who would win?  I’d say Jean takes it provided that she exposes a little cleavage to throw the old man off.

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I was flipping through a T3 magazine yesterday and there was an interesting article about a mind-control headset being featured with the Nintendo Wii 2. And while the consensus on the web is that although Nintendo is not said to be actually developing this headset for the next-generation Wii (these pics are artist renditions), the technology for this already exists. The idea is that the frontal lobes will sense your brain waves, which can then make a ball or character move on the screen. The remote would feature only one button, and you’d have to “think” — and send to the remote — what action you want the button to carry out, whether it’s jump, kick, punch or whatever. The magazine suggests that 2010 is around the time that technology like this could hit the gaming world. And while I’d be shocked if Nintendo made a leap like this for its next console, it got me thinking — would we be ready for something like this? Here’s a slightly more suggestive picture of the artist-rendered Wii-mote.

I was flipping through a T3 magazine yesterday and there was an interesting article about a mind-control headset being featured with the Nintendo Wii 2. And while the consensus on the web is that although Nintendo is not said to be actually developing this headset for the next-generation Wii (these pics are artist renditions), the technology for this already exists.

The idea is that the frontal lobes will sense your brain waves, which can then make a ball or character move on the screen. The remote would feature only one button, and you’d have to “think” — and send to the remote — what action you want the button to carry out, whether it’s jump, kick, punch or whatever.

The magazine suggests that 2010 is around the time that technology like this could hit the gaming world. And while I’d be shocked if Nintendo made a leap like this for its next console, it got me thinking — would we be ready for something like this?

Here’s a slightly more suggestive picture of the artist-rendered Wii-mote.

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I was thinking about using this picture for my next album cover. Due in stores in September.

I was thinking about using this picture for my next album cover. Due in stores in September.

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Being Tired Is Not a Status Symbol

One of the favorite past-times of my friends and I is sharing notes on stupid things people say at work. “Hey big guy, how’s it goin’?” “Let’s be sure to pick the low-hanging fruit.” Vet. Circle back. Bandwidth. Corporate speak is overused, obnoxious and it’s annoying.

Recently Details Magazine published a great article about another annoying workplace habit. The people who constantly complain about being tired. “I’m exhausted, man.” Or, for that matter, the people who complain about being WAY TOO BUSY to have time for anything. “MAN, I’m completely SLAMMED.” I’m swaaaaaaamped. Nobody wants to hear about it. The people who really ARE working their asses off 18 hours a day and twice on the weekends are easy to recognize. Everyone else is just complaining.

Text

Junk text message on my cell phone.

Larry’s blog entry reminded me that I got a junk text a couple of weeks ago from 011639179043672 that read:

Nabengi daka pa balak ausan Indline oneng pota agising kula d lotlot

WTF?!? At least I got a laugh out of it!

larrychi:

Fuck! I don’t know how it happened, but it better stop.

Hey, I got your number from a friend of mine, but I bet you can’t guess who I am! My username’s star_chicksta, if you wanna come see if you recognize me online, at star_chicksta.match-pit.org. Well, hope to see you soon!

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