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Okay, so not a huge flub. However, this does come from the same guys that 35 years later, still cannot figure out how to profitably run Amtrak or the USPS. It should be fun watching them manage the banking system and domestic auto firms — plus the internets.

Speaking of which, Congressional Motors:

And to be even handed, it’s not like there were mobs of taxpayers, armed with pitchforks descending to fight the bailout last month:

Via TechCrunch

Popular Jay Chou song out here (saw it at a KTV last weekend):

I think it roughly transliterates into the 1986 classic from Boy’s Don’t Cry:

So it’s hard to find anyone that dislikes Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana. Arguably the most famous and popular is the O Fortuna stanza.

Here is a bastardization of it:

Looking back, I think it was the old Quake-based Team Fortress that introduced me to Orff’s opus (Ecce Gratum):

Via Bad Astronomy

This is perhaps the dorkiest post I’ve ever made. I came across a Big Bird special filmed about 30 years ago in China. It is unsurprisingly called Big Bird in China.

Yea, and I watched it. So you can take away my adult card now.

Anyways, what was funny to me is seeing how the producers basically just rolled film and didn’t seal off the locations. As a consequence, you can visibly see the reactions elicited by ordinary Chinese people. And how would you react if you saw a catoony yellow bird walking downtown?

While much has changed in terms of urban development and standard of living, many Chinese people in smaller cities still have never seen a foreigner and react similarly when they see individuals like me (with different color eyes and hair). Note: I think it was filmed in 1979 but it could be as late as 1983 (so just after Deng opened up China).

Part A:

Here is B C D E F G H

I guarantee you’ll learn something from it, at least language wise. And while the segment filmed in the Master of the Nets Garden looks similar to court scenery I took of Nanjing last month, it is actually “down the road” in Suzhou.

Other places in the show: Ming Dynasty Tombs :: Suzhou :: Guilin :: Empress Feng :: Great Wall :: Mao’s Mausoleum :: Fenghuang :: Monkey King :: Peking Opera (who the King probably trained with)

One last note. As child-friendly as it may be, I really think stuff like Sesame Street probably is the easiest way to learn a language. I’ve had to use a slew of different materials to teach from at the various schools and language centers I have worked at. Bar none the best resources to teach beginners in my opinion are simple, caricatures that convey ideas in the fewest possible words. But that’s a subject for another time.

Oh and apparently Big Bird also went to Japan. I haven’t watched them, but here are the parts: A B C D E F

So I was showing my friends the city I lived in China with Google Maps (the satellite feature is neato). Boats, people, cars, trees. Carbon-based life.

Anyways, while I’ll keep my bat cave secret for now, I would like to show you Pyongyang.

In the words of my friend Ray, “it’s the worlds largest ghost town.”

Seriously, where are the people? And how many cars can you count?

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Contrast that with Seoul:

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So while Yahoo IM and MSN IM are fairly popular over here, far and away the most-used IM is QQ. My Chinese friends convinced me to start using it a month back and today I woke up and found out I have to verify that I’m a human.

The funny thing about this Turing test is that well, my computer keyboard has Latin and Korean characters. So I’m SOL, right?

Fortunately there is nciku, which has a neat little AJAX handwriting tablet.

Be sure to also watch the Google Talk from Luis von Ahn.

Ever been evicted before?

Adult Swim. Classic stuff.

Via Ray Daugherty

Step 4 will be hitting the hip hop scene any day now:

General Ripper accidentally drank fluoridated water:

Hemlock from Tyson Ibele on Vimeo.

Via BoingBoing

It’s part of the monthly quota to offend any of the XX chromosomes reading this:

And Dave Chappelle (warning: language):