Maunderings for May 22, 2013

As Moore, Oklahoma continues to clean up after last weekend's disastrous tornado, the Atlantic has put together way more than you really need to know about tornadoes in America.  The short version: the May 20th Moore tornado was bad, but not the worst; and no, tornadoes are not increasing in frequency or severity.  The long version is still worth a look and is notable for its level-headed thoroughness.

Scientific American takes the recent Dove soap adverts to task and concludes that you really aren't as beautiful as you think.  They call it the "above average effects", but I prefer the "Lake Wobegon effect".  (You know, "where the women are strong, the men are good looking, and all the children are above average.")  But either way, a little bit of thinking you're awesome can probably help in real life situations that benefit from self-confidence.  Just don't let it go to your head.  ;)

And if you're like most residents of mainland China and are tired of Hong Kong's "two-tin" limit on imports of powdered baby formula, maybe you should go to New Zealand and start buying up all of theirs instead.  Or maybe Chinese companies could stop poisoning their own citizens (and everyone else's pets) and put some of their vast resources into producing safe products for domestic consumption.  Right after they start enforcing their own constitution.  :/

Maunderings for May 21, 2013

This is a little behind the times, but apparently Jon Stewart is has recently become big in China. ...And not just because he's tall. (Couldn't resist, sorry.) The New Yorker wrote up an interesting little piece, and you should probably watch the video clip they link to in the second (and 6th) line. Also, Jon Stewart is called Jiong Situ, a.k.a. 囧司徒 in Chinese. I like the Jiong character - 囧.

Even though you've probably been working out like a MoFo for a while now, it only takes about a week to loose your new-found cardiovascular adaptations.  Luckily, a couple of intense max-interval workouts a week will at least help the maintenance.  

In more recent, but basically worthless news, foreign fashion models who want to work in the U.S. are in the same skilled worker category as actual skilled workers.  Since the overall cap is so low, that's causing some grief for the less beautiful I.T. workers, even though only 250 of the 65,000 H-1B visas went to models.  There was legislation introduced in 2008 to reclassify the models out of the H-1B pool, sponsored by Anthony Weiner (insert lewd joke here), but it never made it to the floor.