False Friends

Swedish speakers leave the room, this is not for you.

Browsing through The Local, an English-language Swedish news site I ran across an article covering a viral video that provides a brief and humorous introduction to Swedish for English speakers. (Don't ask me why I was browsing a Swedish news site, it's just what I do, okay?)

Warning: the language is a little coarse, so if you are easily offended you probably shouldn't play it.

My favorite little phrase from the article is: It’s not the fart that kills, it’s the smäll. For those of you who don't speak Swedish (and that should be all of you because I sent the Swedish speakers out of the room), this is funny because it combines two Swedish/English false friends* to make a reasonably meaningful sentence. The word "fart" in Swedish means "speed", and "smäll" (pronounced like the English "smell"), means impact. So if you translate the words, the sentence becomes "It's not the speed that kills, it's the impact," which still makes sense. I think it's a nifty little double meaning for those in the know (which now includes you - welcome to the club).

Other Swedish/English false friends include:

bra - fine, well, good
ful - ugly
full - drunk
kissa - to pee
hamstring - hoarding

Notice how much funnier false friends are when they mistakenly include scatological and anatomically sensitive terms. Somehow it seems a part of us will always be stuck in third grade.

The BBC website has several false friend examples for English (if you can really call British English "English") and other languages. There are also several websites for false friends, just search for "false friend" plus the language pair you're looking for ("false friend English Spanish").

A classic for written French is chat, which means to talk in English, but means "cat" in French, and in spoken French the English word "shovel" can easily be confused with "cheval", the French word for horse. With a little work you can find French/English false friends that don't involve French animal names.

And for those of you who like word play, here is an old Two Ronnies sketch about learning Swedish, except that there's no Swedish involved and Corbett is dressed in German lederhosen.

 *a false friend is a word that sounds like a word in another language but has a different meaning. I thought that's what false cognates were, but in reading about such word pairs today I have become enlightened. Shame, really, because I always felt that saying "false cognate" made me look taller.

Sources:
The Local
BBC
Transparent Language
Spidra

Promotion Fail

You make it all the way through Friday the 13th and then this crap happens.

"Mailorama va distribuer des dizaines de milliers d'Euros en cash dans les rues de Paris," claims the Mailorama.fr website - at least for the moment. For the monolithically English speaking, that roughly translates to "Mailorama will distribute tens of thousands of euros in cash in the streets of Paris." Didn't work out that way.

Mailorama, an email marketing website in France, set out to promote their service by having a drive-by-giveaway, tossing envelopes of cash to people from a van as it passed the Eiffel Tower. However when an unexpectedly large crowd estimated at 5000 showed up, blocking traffic and causing safety concerns, police and  Mailorama agreed to call off the publicity stunt.

The disappointed crowd overturned a car. At least 10 people were arrested.

The Mailorama fiasco is right up there with other great promotional disasters. My favorites are the (real) Disco Demolition night and the (fake) WKRP Thanksgiving Giveaway.

Disco Demolition night took place in Chicago in 1979. Disco music, the signature music of the 70's, had divided the nation into those who could do The Hustle and those who couldn't. A growing rejection of what had become the Disco norm was spawning the New Wave and Punk movements, and in Chicago a disc jockey expressed his disdain for Disco by destroying Disco records by any means possible. His claim to fame came when he was scheduled to blow up boxes of LPs between games of a Chicago White Sox double-header.

The White Sox were owned by Bill Veeck, a shameless promoter who had once sent midget Eddie Gaedel up to bat in a major league baseball game. For him the Disco Demolition night was a no-brainer.

The demolition took place, but then, as with the Mailorama crowd, the scene turned ugly with hundreds of people coming onto the field and starting a bonfire in center field. The second game of the double header was cancelled (the White Sox ultimately forfeited the game - the last time an American League game was forfeited).

Still, IMHO, the best promotion failure was from the fictional WKRP radio station from the TV series of the same name. If you know the story it needs no explanation, and if you haven't, well, I won't spoil it for you, just watch the clip (sorry, can't find an embeddable version).

Sources:
CBS News
Mailorama

Mathmagic Land

When I was in elementary school the things I looked forward to were recess and lunch (which was really just recess with food, and the food was optional). We filled our days playing Red Rover, Dodgeball, and Slaughter the Pig, which are all far too violent to be allowed on today's playgrounds.

Inside the classroom we maintained the high energy level, and I know we wore out our teachers from time to time. For some reason there is nothing like a dark room to slow down elementary school students (fear of ghosts, fear of sharp table corners, fear of accidentally touching a girl, who knows?), and our instructors clearly used that knowledge to their advantage. We didn't have computers, and televisions had to be wheeled in from the almost mythical A/V room. VCRs had not yet been invented, so the best you (and your teacher) could hope for was a film strip or maybe, just maybe and educational movie.

Filmstrips, for the uninitiated, were in fact, strips of 35mm film, like a whole roll of Kodachrome that had been developed but not cut into separate slides. These were fed into a projector and a searingly hot light would project the images onto a screen at the front of the room. Usually the strips came with an audio recording of some sort (tape? LP? memory fails me), that would narrate the film strip and beep on occasion indicating the film should be advanced to the next frame. It was always fun to prompt the camera operator (teacher or student) when the film got out of sync with the narration - extra points were awarded if you could imitate the beep well enough to prompt them to go to the next frame too soon. It was even more fun when the heat from the bulb melted the film.

The filmstrip experience was memorable, but the strips themselves failed to make a lasting impression. Not so with the educational films. And they really were films. They came on big old reels (sometimes more than one!). Nothing raised the excitement level in the classroom like metal film containers stacked on the teacher's desk.

Really, though, one film stood out from all the others. I anticipated its annual viewing with even more excitement than I had for The Wizard of Oz. The film was the Disney short, Donald in Mathmagic Land. It's Donald Duck! It's math! And - until the Disney lawyers get their copyright threats in order - you can find it on YouTube (in three parts). Sit back and enjoy!



Sources:
Droppin Science (via MMD Newswire) (photo)
Wikipedia
IMDB

RIP Vic MIzzy

The composer of the Addams Family TV show theme song has died. Vic Mizzy, passed away from heart failure in his Bel Air, California home last Saturday. He was 93.

Mizzy started writing songs in his early teens with his childhood buddy, Irving Taylor, with whom he won The Fred Allen Collegiate Amateur Hour (they got $100 and a week long booking at The Roxy), and continued to work with through the end of World War II. Mizzy continued to write popular songs until the early 60's when he started writing for TV, writing for such "memorable" shows as Kentucky Jones, and Hank.

Then in 1964 he wrote his signature piece, the theme song for the Addams Family television show. Because the production company wouldn't pay for singers, Mizzy sang the theme song himself, overdubbing three times to give the impression of multiple vocalists (long before those punk kids used overdubbing to create Sergeant Pepper).

The next year he went on to write Green Acres, another classic 60's tv theme.

Asked last year how he felt about being remembered for a single little ditty like the Addams Family out of decades worth of work, he replied, "That's why I'm living in Bel-Air: Two finger snaps and you live in Bel-Air."

Funeral services are today at 11:00, at Eden Memorial Park, 11500 Sepulveda Blvd., Mission Hills, CA.

Sources:
World News Australia
Los Angeles Times
Vic Mizzy (photo)
IMDB

Bamboozled

Two Japanese executives have been arrested for claiming their Chinese bamboo shoots were Japanese.

China is the largest exporter of bamboo shoots, and production is declining in Japan. However the Japanese shoots command a much higher price. Teruyoshi Kanbara and his brother Yoshiaki of Shinsei Foods in Anan, Tokushima Prefecture, are accused of selling at least 19 tons of falsely labelled shoots for ¥10 million in the second half of 2008. The 19 tons were part of 90 tons sold to two Japanese companies.

Bamboo shoots may either be fresh (pictured) or canned, with the canned being less expensive.The fresh shoots are seasonal, with the Japanese production season limited to March through July.

Bamboo shoots are used in many Asian dishes including chicken, smoky bacon and bamboo shoot stir-fry (mmmm: bacon). Other examples can be seen in the Iron Chef Japan Bamboo Shoot Battle episode.

Sources:
The Japan Times
CQ University Centre for Plant and Water Science
Wikipedia (photo)
Daily Mail

20th Anniversary of The Big One

Today is the 20th anniversary of the Loma Prieta earthquake in and around the San Francisco Bay Area. It is a significant quake for two reasons: first, it was the day my daughter was born (Happy Birthday, Lainie!), and second it was during the World Series so there was gobs of national sports media coverage.

As tragic an event as it was, in the list of deadly United States earthquakes its death toll ranks only 6th for the 20th century. and worldwide there have been 8 deadlier quakes just since 1990. At 6.9 it was a serious earthquake, but not a whole lot stronger than the 6.8 Nisqually quake here in Seattle in 2001, though the Loma Prieta quake caused significantly more damage.

For San Franciscans this is a reason to party. The mayor's office has organized a weeks worth of events under the tagline The Big Rumble, events including:

• Disaster Preparedness Information and Resources
• Children's Activities
• Giveaways
• Entertainment

There is even a 30 page Block Party Host Toolkit for those who want to host their own shindig.

There is lots of great footage of quake coverage available on You Tube. This is nifty playlist compiling a lot of the coverage; my favorites are the ones closest to the time the quake occurred because they show the uncertainty of the whole situation at the time (and the occasional aftershock). Al Michaels saying "I'll tell you what, we're having an earth..." and then losing power is pretty dramatic.

Michaels had worked in the Bay Area before as a broadcaster for the San Francisco Giants (he and Lon Simmons were the best broadcast team ever), and this was not his first quake, but several of the sportscasters were from out of the area and it was their first time. I maintain to this day that Tim McCarver was a fine broadcaster before the quake, but since then...well, I leave you to make your own judgement. Here is video from one of the earthquake virgins.

But my favorite coverage was by Entertainment Tonight the next night, possibly because John Tesh did not utter the phrase "Belarusian Swan", not even once.

Sources:
New York Times
The Big Rumble
Bay Area Earthquake Alliance
USGS (photo)

Electronic Newspaper circa 1981

I try to explain it to my kids: no, everyone did not have a computer when I went to college. In fact, almost no one had computers when this news report was filed in 1981.

Of the estimated two to three thousand home computer owners in the Bay Area...

Wow: sometimes even I forget how dark the dark ages were. There are probably more than 100 computers on the little street I live on, not counting iPods, cellphones, Priuses and other specialized computing devices.

I do wonder how the newspaper street vendor at the end of the piece is doing these days, though.

Sources:
Weird News Files

The World Accordion to Garp

Nothing but accordion videos for your auditory and visual pleasures.

For you classical accordionophiles we have the kid on the right. Viral internet stuff.

And below we have the first of Weird Al's polka medleys from back when I was a lad. Happy Friday!

Sources

The Fine Art of Eccentricity

The Fun Theory

What do you get when you combine fahrvergnügen with the movie Big? Why, a full size keyboard coming out of the Odenplan subway station, that's what.

The stunt is an advertising campaign called "rolighets teorin" (or "The Fun Theory" in English), by DDB of Stockholm for Volkswagen. The idea behind the ads is to show how you can encourage people to behave more responsibly if you make it fun for them to do so. Really, though, what they show is that you can change people's behavior by making it fun - the behaving responsibly part doesn't enter into the people's thinking at all, which is the point, I suppose, isn't it?

Yes, the piano really plays, just watch the video (left). They also have an experiment with the world's deepest garbage can (below).


Sources
TecheBlog (via Fark) (Photo)
Creativity Online
The Fun Theory
DDB
Wikipedia
IMDB

Miruko Robotic Eye

Teachers used to have eyes in the back of their heads, now they can wear them on their arms as well.

This is really cool in a scary futuristic sort of way - though I guess the future is now. Taking advantage of face recognition technology similar to the way the Sony Party Shot does (thanks Mr. Chadwick), the Miruko wearable robotic eye is more portable, more sci-fi, and definitely more creepy.

It's a mutant fashion statement.

As you can see from the video you wear it on your arm. While you walk around it watches things you can't (or your significant other won't allow you to) look at. It can track faces in general, or look for a particular face, as it does with the iPod game in the video. I'm sure it can be trained to look for other things as well.

The implications of the technology are terrifying, of course, but we old people terrify easily. Airport security checks are an obvious use, but you've got to think spies and assassins, and gang members, and your mother getting hold of the technology, don't you? Throw in a little software that age-adjusts an old photo and you got yourself a nasty little machine for recognizing anyone you have a picture of. (BTW: I claim copyright on all story plots having to do with robots, eyes, aging, spies, and terrified old people. They are all my idea. MINE MINE MINE.)

And I'm sure the young and libidinous can come up with all sorts of beach-time applications.

So what can we curmudgeons do to stop the march of progress? Nothing. But at least now our paranoia is justified.



Sources:
Boing Boing
Pink Tentacle (photo)
YouTube
Info Scotland (via Business Week)

Pokémon Maxi Pad

Words fail me. A pikachu reusable maxi pad? I suppose it is environmentally friendly...

But, you ask, how will Hello, Kitty respond to this marketing onslaught? Like any good kid-friendly cartoon character: with weapons.



Sources:
Etsy via
The Zeray Gazette via
Neatorama
Associated Content
Ms. Pink
Jim's Gun Supply

Sumo Suit Athletics World Championships

It is a day for world championship stories, isn't it? First the Gurning World Championships, now this - though I have to point out that the Sumo Suit Athletics World Championships took place in July and I didn't start blogging till August. Still, I would be remiss if I didn't write something about it.

Taking place on the Battersea Track (home to the Serpintine Running Club - "possibly the largest running and triathlon club in Britain"), the second annual Sumo Suit Championships are traditional track and field events performed while wearing a sumo suit. Competitors vie for victory in the 100m and 400m runs, the long jump, high jump, and shot put. Not surprisingly (since it was only the second championship), several world records were set this year, in fact - due to a change to smaller suits for the women this year - world records were set in all the women's events.

Words really can't do this event justice, so here is video of Sky News' coverage of the event.



Sources:
Neatorama
Telegraph (photo)
Sumo Suit Athletics
Sky News (via YouTube)
Serpintine Running Club

Movie Pre-makes

What if Forrest Gump had been made in 1949? Indiana Jones in 1951? Or Ghostbusters in 1954? YouTube member whoiseyevan has cobbled together old movies to make what-if trailers for these movies, what he calls pre-makes. Forrest Gump stars Jimmy Stewart as Forrest, Charlton Heston plays Indie, and Bob Hope, Dean Martin, and Fred MacMurray are the ghostbusting trio. He also has side-by-side making of versions so you can see the modern films compared directly to the vintage films he uses to make the trailers. Here is the trailer and the making-of for Indiana Jones.

Click through to his YouTube site to see the whole bunch.

Watch 'em. Like 'em.

Sources:
Neatorama
YouTube

Killer Rabbits of Cairns Backyard

Things seem to be taking a nasty turn in the serpent community lately. Normally docile animals are taking up arms (which, frankly, snakes have no way of doing) and fighting back. First the squirrels started attacking, and now its rabbits.

Not since the vicious attack on President Carter, or possibly even since the murderous attack on King Arthur has the world seen such lagomorphic violence as is becoming commonplace around the world.

From Australia comes a report of a menacing pair of rabbits that are taking out snakes near Cairns. The rabbits' victims, a king brown and a brown tree (both deceased) are pictured. Armando del Manso thought the snakes were being killed by his dog, but then one night he was watching from the veranda: “The snake was raised up in the air in the striking position and the two rabbits worked their way around him and killed him in two minutes.”

Two days later Del Manso was bitten by a python in his house. "We are absolutely inundated with snakes," he said. The rabbits, each about the size of a housecat, live under a pile of wood in the backyard with their two baby bunnies.

Although many were incredulous, here is a video (purportedly from Texas), of a rabbit treeing a snake (albeit an inexperienced, domesticated snake - but the rabbit didn't know that).

Zeesh.

You know, it used to be that I saw coyotes around my house, and as the summer progressed I would see fewer and fewer rabbits. Now I still see the rabbits, but the coyotes are nowhere to be found. Makes ya think.

I think I'd sleep better at night if only I had the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch.

Sources:
Cairns (and again)

No Dogies Allowed

The cattle drive through the streets of Puyallup, Washington, took an odd turn when a couple of cows broke free of the pack and walked into a mini-mart and wandered around until a cowboy rode in and herded them out.

Puyallup (pronounced pew-all-up), built on the lahar deposits of nearby Mt. Rainier, held its first fair in October 1900. The 17 day event has grown to be one of the largest fairs in the United States.

The cattle drive, introduced in 2000, and the Rodeo Parade that follows it traditionally open the fair festivities.

Animals often wander off the parade route, according to police spokesman Dave McDonald, but this is the first time he can remember them entering a building.

Hokey local news coverage video below.



Sources:
Metro.co.uk (photo)
Wikipedia
The News Tribune
The Fair
KOMO (video)

Victoria's Oldest Hoon

New word! New word! Language is fun, isn't, it? The word for today is the Australian term hoon. Thought to originally be a contraction of Houyhnhnm, the race of horses from Gulliver's Travels, at the start of the 20th it was associated with purveyors of ill-repute, but has recently taken on a legally sanctioned definition that can be summarized as vehicular hooliganism: excessive speeding, burning doughnuts, loud noise or other anti-social vehicular behavior.

Starting in 2006, several jurisdictions across Australia have passed rather draconian laws to deal with the hoon problem. In Victoria, for example, the punishment for the first offense is having the car impounded for two days, second offense up to three months, and third offense can result in permanent loss of the vehicle. You can even be charged if you are a passenger. Punishment is obviously severe, but the really draconian part of it is that the charges are at the discretion of the police officer and there is no appeal. Wow. Once a penal colony, always a penal colony, I suppose.

The oldest hoon nabbed so far is an un-named 79 year old caught doing 160 kph (100 mph) in a 100km zone in July (car pictured). The previous oldest was a 78 year old who was caught doing 170 kph. On the other end of the spectrum, the youngest person so far charged was 5 year old Laney Franklin, who had her motorbike impounded for riding around a park (news coverage video below - and, yes, I think it's odd that the adults are not named, but the minor is).

Three months after the hoon laws took affect in Victoria, there had been an average of 4 cars impounded per day with 99% (437 out of 441) being male, 49% (217) were by drivers 18-21. And after 2 years, the Victoria police say that, surprisingly, only 39% of the perps were speeding, while more than 48% were charged with the incredibly vague "improper use of motor vehicle" - basically, they lost their cars (without appeal) because they were annoying. And the rate of impounding has climbed from 4 to 10 cars per day (I suppose kids are just more annoying these days - and stay off my lawn!).

I guess the really interesting thing I found was the incredible disconnect between the bloggers and the mainstream press. There is a lot of hoon law discussion, but about all the newspapers write about are "est" stories: oldest, youngest, fastest. Nowhere in the mainstream media is there a discussion of rights or due process or anything similar, but there are lots of blog posts about it.

If this were going on in the United States I'd say the terrorists had won, but I don't know of any terrorism going on in Australia. Their tragedy here is that they are choosing to erode their own freedoms for no particular reason. It is like they are doing a slow legal devo out of boredom.



Sources:
World News Australia
Wikipedia
Victoria Police
Victoria Police (again)
Car Advice
Herald Sun
3AW (via The Newspaper)
ABC News
Herald Sun (again)
Auto Blog

Original Short Film '9' From 2005

The film '9' opened yesterday (on 9/9/09, of course). This is the original Oscar-nominated short film from 2005 by Shane Acker. I hadn't seen it before, nor have I seen the film - but after seeing the short I want to see the longer version.

I have no idea how much of this is in the full-length film, but if you don't wanna know, don't play the vid.

(via Blue Eyed Daizy)

Toilets Lock After 5 Minutes

I just can't get enough public toilet stories. There was Seattle selling its fancy public toilets on eBay (at a 99.75% loss). There are the Paris public toilets that open after 15 minutes, whether you're finished or not. Now comes the story out of Klaipeda, Lithuania of their new toilet systems.

Vandalism is always a problem with public toilets, of course. To combat the vandalism problem, the Klaipeda Mayor's Office has set up the toilets to lock after 5 minutes.

After the toilet door locks, the only way to get out is to call a specialist who will detain the occupant while he examines the facilities for vandalism.

Brilliant.

And (talk about serendipity), when looking up other toilet-related stories I found one other reference to Klaipeda. In the July 20 archive of Neatorama there were two stories, one about Science Fiction Toilets, and another, remarkably, about the CATcerto, performed by the Klaipeda Chamber Orchestra, which is a concerto with Nora the Piano Playing Cat at the keyboard (yet another cat video below).

Toilets that lock after 5 minutes and piano playing cats: Klaipeda may want to work on improving its image.



Sources:
Seattle Times
Europe for Visitors
All Voices
Google Maps
MSO News (via FolkD)
Neatorama
CATcerto
Wikipedia

Not Another Cat Video

Animals, music, and video. But unlike the Jarbas Agnelli video this time instead of humans being inspired to music by animals, we have the animals performing the music. No, it's not another cat video. I know it looks like a cat video. Okay, there is a cat in it, but it's not a cute cat.

Just watch it.

For your viewing and listening pleasure, I present to you Beethoven's Für Elise arranged for loon, owls, cat, and wood stork.

Something about today being 9/9/09, I guess.

Sources:
SwitchZoo (via Neatorama)

Car Stories

First we take you to the most visual story. A broken water main caused flooding in Los Angeles. The fire truck responding to the problem was swallowed up by a sinkhole created by the broken main. None of the firefighters on the truck was injured. More pictures here.

Second, we have the story of 40 year old Allen Schroeder of Topeka, Kansas, who while crossing the US24 bridge over Soldier Creek hit the guardrail (not pictured), over-compensated, crossed over the highway and through the guardrail (pictured), became airborne, but didn't quite clear the guardrail on the bridge carrying traffic the other direction (27 feet away), but did hit it hard enough to expose the rebar, then fell 39 feet into Soldier Creek which is 10 to 15 feet deep at that point. Surviving all this, Schroeder then climbed out of the sinking van and swam to shore. The sum of his injuries: some shoulder pain. Kind of reminiscent of The Stunt Man, a movie which I bet none of you have seen.

And finally we have the only death of this post, that of 90 year old Lonnie Holloway of Saluda, South Carolina, who was buried in his car along with several rifles and six handguns. I include this story mostly because I've never seen a video of an auto burial before. BTW: for safety's sake, Holloway was buckled up when he was buried.

Sources:
9 News (via Fark)
USA Today
CJOnline
IMDB
Augusta Chronicle