A fun way to explore Wikipedia: The Wiki Game. Click article links to navigate from one article to another. It’s timed and scored like golf.
Category: Pop Culture
Popular culture, culture that seems to spread beyond more than three people
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Red envelopes for Lunar New Year
Here’s some good background on those red envelopes, Hongbao, shared on Lunar New Year
The modern concept of hongbao emerged in early 20th-century China. Elders would give money wrapped in red paper to children during the Lunar New Year as a talisman against evil spirits, known as sui (祟).
But the gift giving traditions go back to about 200 BCE, way before Santa flew across the world.
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Do dogs watch TV? Yes, but…
From Sian Cain in The Guardian, You’ve always wondered, here’s the answer: do dogs actually watch TV?
“We watch TV for enjoyment, for emotional realism, for whatever personal preferences we have,” Mowat says. “I think dogs watch TV because they’re checking if it is real.
“There’s a reason why dogs go over and sniff the butts of the animals on the screen – they’re looking for the realism and wondering whether it’s worth paying attention to.”
Get your dog a Letterboxd account.
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Quantifying baseball caps in Justin Bieber videos
Craig Robertson of Flip Flop Fly Ball, noticed something interesting in Justin Bieber music videos–the Biebs wore different baseball caps in different videos. Craig meticulously watched the videos, took notes and made an information visualization of his findings of baseball caps in Justin Bieber videos. Screenshots included!
Interesting: 20% of MLB teams (that’s 6 teams) are featured in the videos. Craig notes he didn’t include shorter, promotional trailer videos in his sample. The numbers would increase quite a bit if he had.
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Jimmy Fallon and Jeremy Lin
“Bank this off the back booooooaarrrrd”
I love this. Being a Pearl Jam fan, any reference to the band in pop culture is amusing. Jimmy Fallon takes the tune of Jeremy, changes the lyrics to reference Knicks star Jeremy Lin, complete with Eddie Vedder’s Jeremy video look and spooky lighting and does a good job.
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I’ll see your truth and raise you satire
Too often, we’re sensitive to truth and doing the right thing, or in the case of the New York Times, forget our purpose.
I’m looking for reader input on whether and when New York Times news reporters should challenge “facts†that are asserted by newsmakers they write about.
Vanity Fair’s Juli Weiner eloquently, in her best Jonathan Swift form, states, “no shit”.
…we here at V.F. are looking for reader input on whether and whenVanity Fair should spell “words†correctly in the stories we publish.
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This post is full of awesome
The word awesome seems to have become the go to word to describe anything as remotely delightfully cool. In fact, there’s even an Awesome Foundation.
In naming the Awesome Foundation, Hwang said the word captured the organization’s aims perfectly. “Awesome conveys surprise and delight, and that’s at the core of what we’re trying to do. Awesome isn’t necessarily frivolous, but it does convey a sense of fun.†Awesome also co-opts all dissenters. “The good thing is that you can’t really be against the Awesome Foundation, because then you’d be not awesome, and no one wants that,†said Hwang. The foundation’s Toronto chapter had 250 applications for grants in its first month. And two new Awesome Foundation chapters have just started in Beirut and Sri Lanka.
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To cull or to surrender
In an insightful piece of enjoying and consuming art (of all kinds), Linda Holmes discusses the sad, beautiful fact that we’re all going to miss almost everything.
Culling is easy; it implies a huge amount of control and mastery. Surrender, on the other hand, is a little sad. That’s the moment you realize you’re separated from so much. That’s your moment of understanding that you’ll miss most of the music and the dancing and the art and the books and the films that there have ever been and ever will be, and right now, there’s something being performed somewhere in the world that you’re not seeing that you would love.
I’ve learned to stop reading books that I don’t like, skip songs on cds that aren’t interesting me, to stop watching tv shows that aren’t engaging. I’ve also learned to take risks with movies and music and books in order to discover something wonderful.
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SNL Celebrity Jeopardy, a history
See how SNL’s Celebrity Jeopardy evolved from a means for Norm MacDonald to act out his Burt Reynolds impression to the hilariously absurd Connery-Trebek duels. Videos included of all 14 skits.
The first Celebrity Jeopardy sketch aired on December 7, 1996 with Will Ferrell as Alex Trebek, Norm MacDonald as Burt Reynolds, Darrell Hammond as Sean Connery, and host Martin Short as Jerry Lewis. The categories weren’t as absurdly juvenile as the later sketches (“Potent Potables,†“Movies,†“U.S. History,†“Popular Musicâ€) and Hammond’s Sean Connery was cooperative and inoffensive. Norm MacDonald’s 70’s-era Burt Reynolds is the star here, and after all, MacDonald has admitted to creating the sketch simply to get his Reynolds impression on the show.
