February 11, 2014
A woonerf [voh-nairf] is a living street where pedestrians and cyclists have legal priority over motorists as implemented in the Netherlands and in Flanders. Techniques include shared space, traffic calming, and low speed limits. Under Article 44 of the Dutch traffic code, motorized traffic in a woonerf or ‘recreation area’ is restricted to walking pace.
The word literally translates as ‘living yard.’ In 1999 the Netherlands had over 6000 woonerven. Today around 2 million Dutch people are living in woonerven. The benefits of the woonerf are promoted by woonERFgoed, a network of professionals and residents. In the UK these are called ‘home zones.’ In the US ‘complete streets’ are a similar concept where equal priority is given to all modes of transportation including automobiles, bicycles, and pedestrians.
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January 30, 2014
The spread of metrication [me-tri-key-shuhn] around the world in the last two centuries has been met with both support and opposition. All countries except Myanmar, Liberia, and the US have officially adopted the metric system. It has been partially adopted in the UK and Canada.
One argument used by opponents of the metric system is that traditional systems of measurement were developed organically from actual use. Early measures were human in scale. The prevalence in English of expressions such as a stone’s throw, within earshot, a cartload, or a handful illustrates both the intuitive accessibility and the inherently imprecise nature of analogous measurements and their units.
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January 29, 2014
Swords to plowshares is a concept in which military weapons or technologies are converted for peaceful civilian applications. An expression of this concept can be seen a bronze statue in the United Nations garden called ‘Let Us Beat Swords into Plowshares,’ a gift from the Soviet Union sculpted by Evgeniy Vuchetich, representing the figure of a man hammering a sword into the shape of a plowshare.
The phrase originates from the Book of Isaiah: ‘And many people shall go and say, Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; and He will teach us of His ways, and we will walk in His paths: for out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. And He shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people: and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.
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January 28, 2014
Marcel Lazăr Lehel (b. 1974) is a Romanian hacker known as Guccifer, who was responsible for a number of high-level security breaches involving both current and former members of the United States government. He was arrested in early 2014 by Romanian authorities. The hacker first appeared in news media in 2013 after ‘The Smoking Gun’ reported he was responsible for hacking the AOL account of Dorothy Bush Koch, sister of former president George W. Bush.
Family photos of former president George H. W. Bush, who was in the hospital at the time, were circulated to the internet. He also circulated a self-portrait painted by George W. Bush, depicting the former president taking a shower. Guccifer went on to hack a number of AOL, Yahoo, Flickr and Facebook accounts, giving him access to information about current and former high-level government officials.
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January 13, 2014
Kehinde [keh-hin-day] Wiley (b. 1977) is a New York-based portrait painter, who is known for his highly naturalistic paintings of people with black and brown skin in heroic poses. His portraits are based on photographs of young men who Wiley sees on the street. He painted men from Harlem’s 125th Street, then South Central neighborhood where he was born.
Dressed in street clothes, his models were asked to assume poses from the paintings of Renaissance masters, such as Tiziano Vecellio and Giovanni Battista Tiepolo. The artist describes his approach as ‘interrogating the notion of the master painter, at once critical and complicit.’ His figurative paintings ‘quote historical sources and position young black men within that field of power.’
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December 12, 2013
Macaroni and cheese, called ‘mac and cheese’ (US, Canada, Australia), ‘macaroni pie’ (Caribbean), or ‘macaroni cheese’ (UK, New Zealand) is a dish consisting of cooked macaroni (durum wheat pasta) and cheese, though it can also incorporate other ingredients, such as bread crumbs, Worcestershire sauce, and a roux (a thickening agent created by cooking wheat flour and fat) such as a bechamel (butter and flour cooked in milk).
It is possible to make the dish with actual cheese rather than a cheese sauce. It has been suggested that pasta rigati or some other small shell macaroni is an excellent choice for the pasta ingredient due to its ‘pocket’ to hold cheese.
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December 6, 2013
Black Pete (‘Zwarte Piet‘) is the companion of Saint Nicholas (‘Sinterklaas,’ from which the English term ‘Santa Claus’ is derived) in the folklore of the Low Countries (primarily Belgium and the Netherlands). Like Santa Claus, Zwarte Piet is a hybrid stock character of pagan origin.
The characters of Zwarte Pieten appear only in the weeks before Saint Nicholas’s feast, first when the saint is welcomed with a parade as he arrives in the country (generally by boat, having traveled from Madrid, Spain). The tasks of the Zwarte Pieten are mostly to amuse children, and to scatter pepernoten, kruidnoten and strooigoed (special sinterklaas candies) for those who come to meet the saint as he visits stores, schools, and other places.
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November 23, 2013
Soju (lit. ‘burned liquor’) is a distilled beverage native to Korea, typically 20% alcohol by volume. Jinro and Lotte soju are the first and third top selling alcohol brands in the world. It is usually consumed neat. It is traditionally made from rice, wheat, barley, but modern producers of soju use supplements or even replace rice with other starches, such as potatoes, sweet potatoes, or tapioca.
Alcohol etiquette is tied to South Korea’s strict culture of respect, particular for elders. When accepting a glass from an older person, the recipient must hold the glass with two hands (left palm on the bottom, right hand holding the side) and bow the head slightly. When drinking the younger person must turn away from the elder and cover their mouth and glass with their hands. There are a few rules unique to Soju: never pour your own glass, and don’t refill your glass until it’s empty.
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November 22, 2013
‘The Fifth Element‘ (‘Le Cinquième Élément’) is a 1997 English-language French science fiction film directed, co-written, and based on a story by Luc Besson. The film stars Bruce Willis, Gary Oldman, and Milla Jovovich.
Mostly set during the twenty-third century, the plot involves the survival of planet Earth, which becomes the duty of Korben Dallas, a taxicab driver and former special forces Major, when a young woman falls into his taxicab. Upon learning about her significance, Dallas must join forces with her to recover four mystical stones essential to defending Earth from an impending attack.
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November 20, 2013
‘Gundam Rock‘ is a cover album by Andrew W.K., released in 2009 only in Japan. The album consists of covered music from the ‘Gundam’ series to celebrate its 30th Anniversary (the franchize is is a space opera anime created by Sunrise studios that features giant wearable robots called ‘Mobile Suits’; usually the protagonist’s suit will carry the name ‘Gundam’).
The front cover artwork features an original illustration by respected Gundam and Capcom artist, Akira Yasuda (also known as ‘Akiman’). The image depicts Andrew W.K. floating in space next to the Mobile Suit Gundam in similar fashion to frequent ‘Gundam’ protaganst Amuro Ray in the poster of the ‘Char’s Counterattack’ movie, the first theatrical ‘Gundam’ release in 1988.
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November 10, 2013
Jiro [jee-roh] Ono is an 85-year-old sushi master and owner of Sukiyabashi Jiro, a 3 Michelin star sushi restaurant in Tokyo. He was the subject of a 2011 documentary, ‘Jiro Dreams of Sushi.’ The film also profiles Jiro’s two sons, both of whom are also sushi chefs.
The younger son, Takashi, left Sukiyabashi Jiro to open a mirror image of his father’s restaurant in Roppongi Hills. The 50-year-old elder son, Yoshikazu, obligated to succeed his father, still works for Jiro and is faced with the prospect of one day taking over the flagship restaurant.
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November 8, 2013
Cherchez la femme [sher-shey la-fam] is a French phrase which literally means ‘look for the woman.’ The implication is that a man behaves out of character or in an otherwise inexplicable manner because he is trying to cover up an affair with a woman, or trying to impress or gain favor with a woman. The expression comes from the 1854 novel ‘The Mohicans of Paris’ by Alexandre Dumas. In his 1864 theatrical adaptation the expression translates as: ‘There is a woman in every case; as soon as they bring me a report, I say, ‘Look for the woman!”
The phrase embodies a cliché of detective pulp fiction: no matter what the problem, a woman is often the root cause. It has come to refer to explanations that automatically find the same root cause, no matter the specifics of the problem.
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