Archive → November, 2009
Super Secret Hoo Hoo Smelling Samurai death blow
I love sushi, you love sushi, we love sushi. We also love to travel to places like New York, Denver and Houston (well maybe not Denver …… but the rest …….) and once we get there we all tend to go for something exciting, novel and a wee bit different …… namely sushi.
But what do they put in it? It all tastes the same …… a bit smelly while going in but finishes off quiet nicely I think we could all agree ……
Does that yellow tail, nigri rolled, sumomaki ridden tuna actually contain tuna or is it the McDonald’s version of the real thing filled with tons of corn starch and what not……
Although many people would probably try and find out online or by simply asking the chef, very few people could actually come up with a clear cut litmus test to find out where their sushi comes from, you’d think that scientists would have the answer, but the PhD toting crowd are probably far too busy schlepping their secretaries while thinking about their students ………
But thanks to the genius of two girls trying to think of a final year school project we finally have the answer.All they did was order sushi from every where they could, take a sample of the tuna used in making it and send it to the international barcode of life consortium (or IBOL) ( a group of people who will trace any given tissue sample back to it’s species origin and tell what it came from (e.g. saliva that came from a specific dog bite etc) the consortium was originally founded to help track things like the trafficking of endangered species, but their technology can be easily used to trace back any raw meat anywhere in the world ……. kind of like a biological GPS).
It took these two 19 year olds (Kate Stoeckle (left) and Louisa Strauss (Right) to tell all you people that you’ve been eating killer fishies …..
The people at iBol then analysed the alleged Tuna and came up with some rather erm …… interesting findings; for one thing …..almost 30% of the sushi places that were sent off for analysis didn’t use ANY tuna and used everything from makerel, to endangered species (T. maccoyii) (so basically you and your girlfriend or for the more lonely of us, fat ugly porker of a friend were munching on the marine equivalent of a baby seal paw) and even fish that have been banned for being toxic (they were even banned in south american countries where cocaine comes in regular or lemon scented varieties) and potentially fatal.
What’s alarming is that the two girls weren’t allowed to submitted as their end of year school project and were told that it “lacked and form of logic” and did not fulfill the assignment ……. which sound a wee bit like the attitude people havein good old K-town, namely, if it isn’t something I would do or think then you’re wrong ……. now go back to twiddling your thumbs and let me gawk at the hot patients ………
But forTUNAtely (hehe ,,,,,, tuna ….. hehe) people far smarter than their school teachers managed to recognize their talent. The two 19 year old girls were recently accepted at Johns Hopkins and are due to start their legal drinking, pot smoking, jello shot infested college lives very soon.
The motto of the story is that rocket scientists aren’t the be all and end all of discovery and innovation. Most of the people reading this are probably very well educated, highly knowledgeable and have probably made numerous attempts at fixing things where they work …… but the problem lies in trying to recognise talent as opposed to degrees or senriorty because when talent is put in the right place and given the right tools that’s when you get innovation and that’s when you’ll stop hearing about people needing to spend 3 days waiting on a slip of paper from a ministry or crazy doctors who know nothing better than to prescribe adol an a weeks worth of Heroes and How I met Your Mother.
At the same time it’s also very hard for me to imagine any Kuwaiti hospital without at least one or two people who seem to have a slew of degrees and became heads of departments then sat back and let the whole place turn into that scene from Gangs of New York.
….. and here it is to refresh you memories …….
The Boys and The Girls
We’ve all been there, seen it or done it ….. Barbies …….. we’ve all heard of, seen, or owned a barbie doll at some point …….. this fact might be embarrassing to about half the people reading this right now. You see for girls this was the ultimate in awesome ….. the best-est thing ever. Most boys however, would be embarrassed by the fact that they like barbie dolls at the age of four, or harboured a secret collection of barbies dating back to the 80′s but what does it really mean?
If you ask people of our generation (well at least the more liberal folk) they’ll usually tell you it means nothing and that there’s nothing wrong with it; probably a “stage” the person you’re going through. However, those of us born in the 60′s, 50′s and 40′s would probably see it as blasphemy of some sort or other (yes, I am referring to the Kuwaiti population as opposed to the population in general and I know I might be over generalising …… but I can …. so live with it)
But is there really nothing wrong with it? Is it really just a toy or is there a difference between boys and girls and the way they see perceive toys? It’s very hard to pin point, in fact it would be damn near impossible if it weren’t for the magic of google ……
Using googles eye-tracking tech psychologists at Texas A & M took a group of 30 toddlers (3-8 month old boys and girls) and put a doll and a toy truck in front of them then gawked at them. The results of this admittedly less than scientific test are rather interesting.
For one thing most of the girls went for the doll and kept staring at the doll (particularly the face) and really wanted it where are boys just couldn’t decide, half of them went for the doll while the other half went for the truck, worst still …… the boys took longer to make their decision (about 25% longer) which means that we are probably born thicker than the girls are …….
But seriously, what could we gain from such an arbitrary study? Should we assume that we’re born liking trucks or dolls? Or that boys like both while girls like one or the other? That a girl is born a girl while boys might be open to gender identity disorder?
The authors of the study claim that it mirrors other such as the one of monkeys, the one where they compared pink and blue preference, in that it proves that gender identity dictates preference (boy like cars because boys are meant to, girls like dolls because they are meant to). I think they are wrong and am arrogant enough to say so.
The study could mean that girls like things that look like humans because they like role play (every girls fantasy is being the bell of the ball/princess/all dressed in white or something to do with role play), boys tend to enjoy playing, messing around etc …… even into adulthood. But that’s probably wrong too.
I think it illustrates a far more boring and mundane point; we are influenced easily by social interactions with our parents as kids. We don’t know what we want, but we know what our parents want us to want because of clues they give us. If my father plays with the toy truck while I’m around him and encourages me to do the same while he tends to ignore me when I play with the barbie doll or even take it away from me then chances are I’m going to go with the truck because I want human interaction. If my mother buys me a toy truck and smiles when she sees me playing with it and does the same when my sister plays with her dolls then it must mean that I’m meant to have the truck while my sister is meant to have the doll regardless of my gender and if my truck has brighter colors than chances are it will seem more interesting to me as a toddler, especially when compared with a texture less doll.
Now the naysayers and firm believers among us would counter that my argument doesn’t explain why boys took longer to decide than girls. The answer lies in how easily influenced we are as kids by our parents, boys may not understand social cues as well as girls do or they may not even get the same amount of attention which is why they tend to take longer to decide, just look at how much women say when they gawk at each other at the local Starbucks for gods sake …. isnt that proof enough ……
Still whether you’re with me or with the original authors you can let them know what you think by emailing them
Deep Blue Something – Breakfast at Tiffanys
Loved this song, still do. Very well produced by the band themselves.
Only thing is they were a bit of a one hit wonder. They all had excellent production skills especially when you consider the fact that they always made their albums under budget; but never could promote themselves back in 1994.
Still two of them managed to be record producers of the highest calibre, one is now responsible for the best of no doubts catalogue and one became a school teacher at Faith Christian School in Texas.
At least we have a good song to show for it ……. cheers boys ……
Kovas – Double Whammy
Dear 99.7 …. I get it ….. rock is violent and kills people ,,,, it also spells DEVIL when spelt backwards but you play some hip-hop crap ….. why not play good hip hop crap ……
Intoducing Kovas, the man has written and produced tracks for shakira, Justin Timberlake and a whole gaggle of people you tend to play over ….. and over ….. and over …..
oh and no “party” is complete without this number :
Hustle and Flow – Soundtrack of the Awesome
When I first watched this movie I was in awe …… best hip hop score (if you don’t count all those hip hop mogul guru types who make movies on the side about how they grew up poor selling their urine on the street trying to get rich).
Thom Yorke – All the Best
The radiohead frontman gets me everytime, from being the only celebrity known for his honesty (he’s been known to walk up to other celebrities and simply tell them that they were “twats”) to the fact that he never really stopped being a solo artist and really does have his own sound when not playing with the band.
Tee Hee – Keep Running you Dumb Dumb Sheep
I’ve finally given up …… sod it ….. I spent the summer trying to give my self buns of steel and pecks that scream ‘SPARTAAAAAAAAAN!’ and I’ve spent Ramadan running on a goddamn treadmill or cycling in one place like a fucking idiot and what do I have to show for it …… fuck all …… Not only has my largess not changed but I’ve managed to make myself even more revolting to the opposite sex the sweat marks that grow as you walk/jog/have a heart attack along the local walkway/mamsha/
And after all my hard work and the hard work of countless 13-60 somethings running around at the local walkways (mamsha) science has only just found out that exercise doesn’t really do anything for you whieght. A recent study published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine revealed that if you take 50-odd people of varying age who are over weight (BMI of 30 ish) and put them on a strict (witnessed by study organisers) aerobic/cardio exercise plan for 12 weeks, you’ll be lucky if they don’t gain 3 KG, in-fact the only weight loss that was noted came from about 5 people who lost between 2 and 3.5 KG then gained it back the week that they stopped. This means that our worst nightmares have come true …… we could have been watching family guy enjoying machboos diyay and instead have been running around like headless chickens……. damn you science …… damn you to hell ……
Having said that the study does advocate exercise for the overall health benefits and there have been other studies that say that although you won’t loose any weight when you exercise; you may find it easier to keep the whieght off if you do. So the trick is to starve your self, while watching family guy, loose the weight, then go buy yourself a treadmill and never use it.
Then there’s the other rocket scientists trying to figure out why we never loose weight no matter how far we run, or how fast we go. Apparently, it has alot to do with your energy balance (and I don’t mean karmically, although having said that, Karma may explain why my love handles have grown a second set of love handles …….) meaning the amount and type of food you eat BEFORE you use the treadmill for the first time and end up falling flat on your face snapping you nose runnig to the poly clinic (this is where the exercise come in), Where the doctor will refer you to the local casualty, who will do an X-ray and won’t know how to read it and refer you on to an ENT doctor at Al Sabah Hospital who will tell you to comeback and see him at his private clinic when the swelling goes down ……
Having said that ,there is a rather robust study that seems to support the fat burning role of exercise, the man even devised formulas to calculate how much you’re expected to loose ….. so perhaps there is some hope for the running, walking and cycling masses …… ‘course the only problem is that he only did it on healthy runners who’s metabolism is geared towards fat burning …… fucking pullock …….
Archive – Fuckyou Anyway
Not exactly a well known band despite being around since 1994. Archive is probably one of the most influential trip hop bands in a while. Their new album controlling crowds – part IV is probably one of the their best produced. I think they’re probably best described as the Massive Attack that never was.
A Perfect Circle- Passive
Taken from wikipedia:
A Perfect Circle was conceived by Billy Howerdel, a former guitar technician for Nine Inch Nails, The Smashing Pumpkins, Fishbone and Tool. Howerdel met singer Maynard James Keenan in 1992 when Fishbone was opening for Tool, and the two became friends. Three years later, Keenan offered Howerdel, who was looking for lodging, a room in his North Hollywood home. This provided Howerdel the opportunity to play demos of his music for Keenan. Pleased with what he heard, Keenan remarked, “I can hear myself singing [those songs].” Although he originally desired a female vocalist, Howerdel agreed that Keenan would be a good fit, and A Perfect Circle was formed a short time later. They were then joined by bassist and violinist Paz Lenchantin, former Failure guitarist Troy Van Leeuwen, and the previous drummer for Primus, Tim Alexander. The band played their first show at LA’s Viper Club Reception on August 15, 1999. After playing shows in L.A., the band entered the studio to begin work on their first album.Alexander was soon replaced with session drummer and member of The Vandals, Josh Freese, but Alexander’s performance can still be heard on the album version of the song “The Hollow”.
So basically they are a super progressive rock group born of what was left over from the 90′s. Since then they’ve been going pretty strong. I chose this song mainly because it’s probably theur most underrated and was used in one of the most underrated comic book movies of all time (constantine).
Robbie Williams-Bodies
Okay, so it’s pop but he’s actually pretty good. He knows how to pick producers and writers that make the music sound right plus the lyrics on this one are pretty good and who can forget his cover of let me entertain you.
Robbie Williams …….despite the fact that i detest pop music you get my half held thumbs up ……
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