Yes, MSG, the Secret Behind the Savor - Today’s fun fact: MSG was invented 100 years ago at the University of Tokyo.
Author Archive for bennymoto
My favorite football player for the past 14 years, Brett Favre, has retired.
Tyler or the Field - Fantastic coverage of a competitive crossword competition.
A new show on Nick Jr. that is to Chinese what Dora the Explorer is to Spanish. Check it out, the show is pretty darn cute.
I’ve read around and it seems like pre-schoolers really love the show. Check out the pictures of the kids who’ve made Chinese lanterns for Kai-lan.
The show’s website is pretty direct in the lessons it wants to teach kids:
The show will familiarize the viewing audience with elements of Chinese and Chinese American cultures to promote multicultural understanding in the next generation and goes beyond featuring “culture” as only ethnic food and festivals. Instead, it celebrates growing up in an intergenerational family, having friends from diverse backgrounds, and “habits of the heart” that are Chinese American. These values include:
Mind-body connection Typically, television portrays excitement as the good emotion to feel. In many Chinese-American communities, the good thing to feel is often calmness and contentment. Feeling excited and feeling calm can both be happy feelings, but they differ in how aroused the body is.
Perspective-taking In many Chinese and other East Asian families, children are encouraged to take the perspective of others to maintain harmony in relationships with other people.
Being a good member of the group Ni Hao, Kai-lan also emphasizes the Chinese and Chinese American value of being a good member of a group.
Social & Emotional Goals Highlight cause-and-effect thinking about social and emotional issues germane to preschoolers and to support preschooler’s social and emotional development.
Wow who knew that Chinese-Americans had so many family values! Four of them! Judging by the Kai-lan gallery, it would seem there’s a good mix of kids amongst the show’s fans. Asian kids would probably enjoy seeing familiar cultural activities on mainstream television. There’s probably not much of that going around. What I think would be really interesting is finding out how the show might affect non-Asian American kids who would grow up hopefully with a bit more exposure to Chinese culture outside say Kung Fu movies and Manchu Wok fine Asian dining.
Also, the cute tiny monkey’s name is Hoho! “At 3-years-old, Hoho the monkey is the youngest of Kai-lan’s friends. He’s full of boundless energy, he’s super good at jumping, and loves to DJ. He is also an amazing at it. Nothing makes Hoho happier than being the center of attention. He also has a problem being patient.”
Finally, kai-lan is also Chinese broccoli.
Ni-hao, Kai-lan! - nickjr.com
Cartoons With Heart … and a Little Mandarin - nytimes.com
Cheap salt outweighs green concerns - The Star on why Toronto still uses salt even though it can be toxic for trees and fish and pretty much anything else alive around these parts. One of the reasons: Torontonians would hate not being able to get around town if we used something less effective or more expensive.
Buffett’s State of the World: There’s Folly in Wonderland - Warren Buffett, the world’s third-richest, writes a letter to Berkshire Hathaway’s shareholders each year. Buffett discusses Berkshire Hathaway’s investments as well as what he believes the future holds for the financial world. His company has averages over 25% return to its investors for the past 25 years, so it’s not so stupid to giv’r a listen.
You can read the actual letters here.
Online Scrabble Craze Leaves Game Sellers at Loss for Words - NYTimes on the unprecedented popularity of Scrabulous, and the rights holders attempts to deal with it. bennymoto view - Isn’t it weird that Literati has been around for years and Mattel and Hasboro have totally missed out on creating a fun way to play Scrabble with friends online.
I don’t know what it is about me, but whenever it’s mosquito season, or I travel to somewhere tropical, the mosquitos devour my skinny-ass ALIVE! In Beijing a few years ago I remember counting 24 bites in 3 days. I thought that was a lot.
I just returned from a three-week backpacking trip to South America. After my first week in Peru I counted at least 30 mosquito bites. Yikes! I am usually pretty good about ignoring the pain of mosquito bites. But oh dear me 30 bites is a whole other story.
But it doesn’t end there! Two more weeks along the west coast of South America brought a couple dozen more bites. And on my last day there, 20 more bites! Through my pants! All on the right side of my body!
Oh man the last 2 weeks has been really uncomfortable. Also, it’s winter and the air here is dry has heck. So i’m painfully itchy and have dry cracking skin all over my body. Hooray!
Protip: eat less bananas… makes you doubly tasty to the mosquitos…
Photo via
70 year old Mr. Tortoise tries to eat the three of us. As he’s making his vicious lunge towards us, I get a peek down his throat which is this slimy light pink.
Fun tortoise fact! Tortoises can live up to a year without food or water. That’s why pirate ships used to stop at the galapagos in the 15th century and pick up 200 tortoises at a time for food for the long Pacific journey. It’s estimated that 200,000 tortoises were eaten for sailors over a few decades.
I’m not sure how many of you have ever watched Lost. Basically the show is about the survivors of Oceanic flight 815 that crash lands on a mysterious island. As the dozen or so survivors get to know each other and work on finding food, shelter and a way off the island, you learn that the survivors aren’t quite who they seem and that the island has really bizarre properties (why was there a polar bear in the middle of the Pacific Ocean?!).
I remember thinking that the first season of the show was really amazing. The show set up some really mind-boggling scenarios and I kept watching each episode with greater anticipation for the answers to all the mysteries of the islands and an unnatural set of coincidences which somehow connected these strangers. Then of course the show got crazy. The stories got more and more unbelievable (giant mechanical monsters made of… smoke? wth?!) and there was no viewer satisfaction that any questions were getting answered.
Well, that’s why i sort of gave up the show a year or two ago. Flash forward to season 4 and I’m all caught up after a couple weekends of some intense internet viewing. I’m probably even more confused about what’s going on in the show as ever, but I think all the fun of Lost are the random theories that try oh-so-hard to rationalize the events of the show and explain what the heck is happening.
So I’m going to break a long silence on refusing to talk about Lost. Every now and then I’m going to ask a random question about the show that is completely mind-boggling but can never have a believable answer.
Who the hell is Jacob? Seriously! When we first met him, I was just about ready to throw my computer away. He has an imaginary shack that no one can see, except sometimes when everyone can see it. Don’t show him a flashlight or he’ll cause an earthquake. He has some weird painting on the shack wall which i’m convinced has some hidden meaning which we’re never meant to find out. Also, you can’t see him… because he’s imaginary. Unless he’s not, in which case you need to be shot where your kidney is missing.
Buh?!
It’s tax time and RRSP season! Hurrah!
If you’ve graduated and are thinking about going back to school, you can withdraw up to $20,000 over 4 years from your RRSP tax-free via the Lifelong Learning Plan.
The caveats:
1) You need to be enrolled full-time in a qualifying program
2) The amount needs to be paid back within 10 years of you leaving school
3) You can only withdraw funds that were in an RRSP for 90 days or more
2007 was for the first year that I was employed for the entire year. I’ve already exhausted all my tuition credits that piled up over the years and so the tax I need to pay this year is significant. Since there is an 8% chance I’ll be going to school later this year, I’m dumping money into my RRSP upto my limit just in case!
Doing the Deal and Dishing the Dirt - Mark Cuban on making the pesky Kidd deal happen.
Does Obama Have an Asian Problem? Time Magazine on why Hilary receives a disproportionate percentage of the Asian-American vote.
What Would Obama Say? On Barack Obama’s 26 year-old speechwriter.
I pretty much have to post this. It’s 3 short computer animated videos featuring Iron Man on marvelkids.com. The clips are pretty awesome and put virtually all other Marvel animations to shame. Iron Man suiting up is particularly cool.
It’s going to be a big year for Tony Stark!
I will be out of the office for three weeks. I’ll be going on vacation to Peru and Ecuador where I will be hiking to Machu Picchu, visiting some wild Catholic churches, riding on dangerous 20 hour bus rides, lounging on Pacific Ocean beaches, meeting komono dragons and climbing volcanoes.
Will bring back endangered turtles for everyone!
Braille Graffiti - I know you are wondering what graf for the blind looks like. But what does it _feel_ like?!