I know it is not nice to laugh at the misfortune of others. But when people bring misfortune upon themselves by showering themselves with boiling water in a cack-handed attempt to emulate demonstrations by television weather reporters, and their tribulations are documented in a series of videos on YouTube, I think we are all absolved from blame:
The brilliant, highly addictive online comic theoatmeal.com has has a great take on the difference between Asian food in large cities and small towns:
Image from theoatmeal.comImage from theoatmeal.com
Yeeeeah. I have lived in world cities, and Lord knows I know all about small towns as well, and with but a few honourable exceptions, this is a pretty fair representation of each.
Man, I love London. If for no other reason than the fact that I am within very short traveling distance of this excellent restaurant.
Today’s Best Thing Of The Day was brought to my attention by my wife, from a rather unusual source (at least in terms of this blog) – the bitingly funny celebrity gossip website dlisted.com.
Dlisted have a regular, self explanatory feature called Hot Slut Of The Day, which honours the recipient for their unique, unabashed awesomeness, or for otherwise being noteworthy in the world of celebrity gossip. Tuesday’s joint recipients were an elephant and dog duo from the United States. The blog’s author, Michael K, writes in his inimitable style:
Bubbles was brought to the US and adopted in 1983 by the Myrtle Beach Safari in South Carolina after her family was killed for their tusks by poachers in Africa. 24 years later, Bella was abandoned at Myrtle Beach Safari by a contractor hired to build Bubbles a pool. Bubbles was an orphan, Bella was an orphan and it was love at first sight. They bonded over their love of the water and immediately became the Oprah and Gayle of the Myrtle Beach Safari. If Bella ever gets on Bubbles’ last elephant nerve by using her head as a diving board for the 6,834,678th time, Bubbles could easily squash that bitch, but she doesn’t, because her heart spits out love for that dog. They love each other all the way and are always together, so of course lesbian rumors surround them. They refused to respond to the rumor that one of the gossiping tigers saw Bella hump on Bubbles’ trunk.
The award for Best Thing Of The Day on this Tuesday, 17th September goes to a television commercial from Thailand that is sure to bring a lump to the throat:
The organisation Americans Against The Tea Party (AATTP), whose political outlook and objectives are clearly not naturally aligned to my own, but on whose website I happened to stumble upon this video, described it thus:
Sometimes you don’t need a two or three-hour movie to tell a story, make a statement and move people. Sometimes you can do it in three minutes with little dialog and a minuscule budget. Sometimes simple imagery does it better than any special effects or big production pieces. Sometimes you find such artistry in the most unexpected places – you know – like maybe within a television commercial.
In a three-minute commercial called “Giving True,” a Thai telecom company does just that and, while it may seem to be a bit crass to put the company out there as some major philanthropic organization, the end product is an excellent morality tale.
It tells the story of a man who does a good deed with no expectation of repayment and, who many years later, is repaid many times over for his kindness. In three minutes this mini movie tells a touching story and elicits a strong emotional response. If it does not move you and, at the very least, bring a lump to the throat then there is something wrong . . . you have no heart.
Those tearjerker commercials will get you every time, though I can’t help thinking that True Move, the company behind the ad, has certainly set the bar very high for themselves in terms of their own behaviour, corporate governance and customer service!
If you have not already discovered TED Talks, the online channel featuring short, insightful lectures by prominent people from all fields and walks of life about topics that interest them, I highly encourage you to take a visit, either to their YouTube channel or their homepage.
For those who don’t know: With the slogan “Ideas Worth Spreading”, TED began as a conference for people from the worlds of technology, entertainment and design (hence the acronym), but has since expanded to cover just about every conceivable topic. One of the principle outputs from the TED conferences, which take place in cities all over the globe, are the TED Talks, in which an expert in their given field must give an informative, entertaining talk in eighteen minutes or less.
Which brings me to this excellent example from Japanese architect Shigeru Ban, whose work is notable for using sustainable building materials such as cardboard tubes and paper. As well as their obvious usefulness in terms of providing temporary shelter and accommodation during humanitarian disasters, these principles can also be applied to longer term constructions, as Ban’s talk demonstrates:
I had no idea that it was conceivably possible to construct multi-story structures out of such materials, and much as I love watching the rise of the new steel and glass skyscrapers in my home city of London, it is wonderful to appreciate these radically different, more natural structures too.
Pushing the boundaries of possibility even further in another TED Talk, architect Michael Green proposes building safe, multi-purpose structures such as skyscrapers out of wood:
As Green says (and I am in no position to refute despite my love of the steel frame skyscraper):
“Every time I go into my buildings that are wood, I notice that [people] react completely differently. I’ve never seen anybody walk into one of my buildings and hug a steel or a concrete column, but I’ve actually seen that in a wood building, I’ve seen how people touch the wood. And I think there’s a reason for it. Just like snowflakes, no two pieces of wood can ever be the same, anywhere on Earth. That’s a wonderful thing.”
Semi-Partisan Politics 