Vancouver Facts

is the largest film production center in North-America after Los Angeles and New York City.

attracts 15 million tourists every year and that is one of the biggest tourist attractions in British Columbia.

is only 125 years old.

is one of the few cities where you can ski and swim on the same day.

residents are called Vancouverities.

has more than 200 parks and that Stanley Park is the city’s first park.

is ranked the number 1 most livable cities in the world. (2009)

is ranked as one of the 10 cleanest cities in the world.

is the largest port in Canada.

hosts a fireworks competition every year.

is the largest metropolitan area in Western Canada.

hosts one of the country's largest annual gay pride parades.

 

 

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Scifi of the Day

Blade Runner (1982)

Influenced stylistically by Alphaville, Blade Runner is about a detective who chases down “replicants,” or genetically engineered superhumans, who have gone rogue. Based very loosely on the work of Philip K. Dick, it was the first mainstream example of the cyberpunk style that took 1980s and 90s science fiction by storm. It’s also a profoundly moving film about remaining human in a world where everything — including humanity itself — is owned by corporations.

 

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Fact of the Day

Casablanca had its world premiere on November 26, 1942 at the Hollywood Theatre in New York.

 

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Fact of the Day

Women now attend college at rates higher than the male population and are the primary breadwinners for 60% of all families.

 

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Fact of the Day

I love teaching Poe. One of my great joys as a HS english teacher was introducing my students to him. One of the first things we would read was "The Masque of Red Death."

Here's where the inspiration came from:

It’s fairly well known that Poe married his cousin Virginia and that her subsequent illness inspired much of his work, but perhaps one of the most direct correlations to his work came with the first signs of her tuberculosis. While singing for the family, Virginia’s lungs hemorrhaged and she began bleeding from the mouth. Soon after, in a deep denial about the severity of her illness, Poe wrote the tale of decadent Prince Prospero, locked in his castle and trying, in vain, to keep the specter of pestilence, disease and injury from his doorstep.

 

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Fact of the Day

The United States gained control of Puerto Rico in 1898, following the Spanish-American War. Puerto Rico set up its own government in 1952, and its residents do not pay federal income taxes to Washington on their local earnings. Nonetheless, it is still effectively a colony: boricuas are subject to American law even though they cannot vote for president or Congress.

 

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Fact of the Day

Puerto Rico has been a territory for 114 years and its people have been US citizens since 1917. Residents of the island cannot vote in the US presidential election, have no representation in the Senate and only limited representation in the House of Representatives.

 

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Pre-Christian influences in Halloween

 

The Halloween holiday is commonly thought to have pagan roots, even though the etymology of the word is Christian. Historian Nicholas Rogers, exploring the origins of Halloween, notes that while "some folklorists have detected its origins in the Roman feast of Pomona, the goddess of fruits and seeds, or in the festival of the dead called Parentalia, it is more typically linked to the Celtic festival of Samhain, derived from the Old Irish Samuin meaning "summer's end". Samhain was the first and the most important of the four quarter days in the medieval Irish and Scottish calendar and, falling on the last day of autumn, it was a time for stock-taking and preparation for the cold winter months ahead. There was also a sense that this was the time of year when the physical and supernatural worlds were closest and magical things could happen. The souls of the dead were supposed to revisit their homes on Samhain eve. To ward off these spirits, the Gaels built huge, symbolically regenerative bonfires and invoked the help of the gods through animal and perhaps even human sacrifice. In the Western Isles of Scotland the Sluagh, or fairy host was regarded as composed of the souls of the dead flying through the air, and the feast of the dead at Hallowe'en was likewise the festival of the fairies.

 

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Christianity and Halloween

 

Christian attitudes towards Halloween are diverse. In the Anglican Church, some dioceses have chosen to emphasize the Christian traditions associated with All Hallow's Eve. Some of these practises include praying, fasting and attending worship services.

Father, All-Powerful and Ever-Living God, today we rejoice in the holy men and women of every time and place. May their prayers bring us your forgiveness and love. We ask this through Christ our Lord. Amen. —All Hallow's Eve Prayer from the Liturgy of the Hours

Other Protestant Christians also celebrate the holiday as Reformation Day, a day to remember the Protestant Reformation, alongside All Hallow's Eve or independently from it. Often, "Harvest Festivals" or "Reformation Festivals" are held, in which children dress up as Bible characters or Reformers.

Father Gabriele Amorth, a Vatican-appointed exorcist in Rome, has said, "if English and American children like to dress up as witches and devils on one night of the year that is not a problem. If it is just a game, there is no harm in that." In more recent years, the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston has organized a "Saint Fest" on the holiday.

Similarly, many contemporary Protestant churches view Halloween as a fun event for children, holding events in their churches where children and their parents can dress up, play games, and get candy for free. Many Christians ascribe no negative significance to Halloween, treating it as a purely cultural holiday devoted to celebrating "imaginary spooks" and handing out candy. To these Christians, Halloween holds no threat to the spiritual lives of children: being taught about death and mortality, and the ways of the Celtic ancestors actually being a valuable life lesson and a part of many of their parishioners' heritage. In the Roman Catholic Church, Halloween's Christian connection is sometimes cited, and Halloween celebrations are common in Catholic parochial schools throughout North America and in Ireland. Nevertheless, the Vatican has strongly condemned the traditions popularly associated with Halloween as being "pagan" and "anti-Christian".

Some Christians feel concerned about the modern celebration of Halloween, and reject the holiday because they feel it trivializes – or celebrates – paganism, the occult, or other practices and cultural phenomena deemed incompatible with their beliefs. A response among some fundamentalist and conservative evangelical churches in recent years has been the use of "Hell houses", themed pamphlets, or comic-style tracts such as those created by Jack T. Chick in order to make use of Halloween's popularity as an opportunity for evangelism. Some consider Halloween to be completely incompatible with the Christian faith, believing it to have originated as a pagan "Festival of the Dead".

 

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Bed Bugs and Travelling

 

In any race, there’s a loser as well as a winner, and Philadelphia tops this year’s list of the most bed bug-infested cities in the U.S. Terminix, the world’s largest pest control company, annually ranks major cities based on the number of infestations confirmed by their staff. This year’s rankings have Cincinnati coming in second and New York City — the most-infested city for the past two years — coming in third. Cleveland, Miami, Houston, Indianapolis and New Haven joined the top 15 this year.

Bed bugs (Cimex lectularius L.) are parasites that feed on human blood and prefer to live in beds or other household furniture. Victims are often attacked in their sleep, unaware that they are being bitten.

Symptoms of bed bug attacks include itchy red welts on the skin and, for some patients, allergic reactions triggered by the insects’ saliva. Because the bites remove some of the victim’s blood, prolonged exposure can in rare cases lead to anemic conditions.

Terminix warns that the national bed bug epidemic, which began a few years ago, will likely spread to more cities as pests hitch rides with unknowing summer travelers. To be on guard against the pests, the company advises travelers to check hotel mattresses, headboards and box springs for bugs, bug exoskeletons and dark blood spots. To avoid picking up the parasites, you should hang all your clothing — don’t store any items in drawers or lay them out on the bed or furniture. Luggage should be kept on the luggage rack or as far away from the floor as possible.

To avoid spreading the bugs after a possible exposure, travelers should immediately vacuum their suitcases and wash their clothing in hot water upon returning home. In neighborhoods already known to be infested, it might be advisable to take even more defensive measures, such as covering mattresses and box springs with a bug-proof plastic cover.

 

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Who Speaks English?

Who speaks English?

The Economist

Apr 5th 2011, 15:51 by R.L.G. | NEW YORK

EVERYONE knows the stereotypes about foreigners speaking English: Scandinavians are shockingly fluent, while the Japanese lag despite years and billions of yen spent trying. Now a big new study confirms some of those stereotypes. But it holds some surprises as well.

EF Education First, an English-teaching company, compiled the biggest ever internationally comparable sample of English learners: some 2m people took identical tests online in 44 countries. The top five performers were Norway, the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden and Finland. The bottom five were Panama, Colombia, Thailand, Turkey and Kazakhstan. Among regions, Latin America fared worst. (No African country had enough takers to make the lists’s threshold for the minimum number of participants.)

This was not a statistically controlled study: the subjects took a free test online and of their own accord. They were by definition connected to the internet and interested in testing their English; they will also be younger and more urban than the population at large. But Philip Hult, the boss of EF, says that his sample shows results similar to a more scientifically controlled but smaller study by the British Council.

Several factors correlate with English ability. Wealthy countries do better overall. But smaller wealthy countries do better still: the larger the number of speakers of a country’s main language, the worse that country tends to be at English. This is one reason Scandinavians do so well: what use is Swedish outside Sweden? It may also explain why Spain was the worst performer in western Europe, and why Latin America was the worst-performing region: Spanish’s role as an international language in a big region dampens incentives to learn English.

Export dependency is another correlate with English. Countries that export more are better at English (though it’s not clear which factor causes which). Malaysia, the best English-performer in Asia, is also the sixth-most export-dependent country in the world. (Singapore was too small to make the list, or it probably would have ranked similarly.) This is perhaps surprising, given a recent trend towards anti-colonial and anti-Western sentiment in Malaysia’s politics. The study’s authors surmise that English has become seen as a mere tool, divorced in many minds from its associations with Britain and America.

Teaching plays a role, too. Starting young, while it seems a good idea, may not pay off: children between eight and 12 learn foreign languages faster than younger ones, so each class hour on English is better spent on a 10-year-old than on a six-year-old. Between 1984 and 2000, the study's authors say, the Netherlands and Denmark began English-teaching between 10 and 12, while Spain and Italy began between eight and 11, with considerably worse results. Mr Hult reckons that poor methods, particularly the rote learning he sees in Japan, can be responsible for poor results despite strenuous efforts. (He would say that, as his company sells English-teaching, but it rings true.)

Finally, one surprising result is that China and India are next to each other (29th and 30th of 44) in the rankings, despite India’s reputation as more Anglophone. Mr Hult says that the Chinese have made a broad push for English (they're "practically obsessed with it”). But efforts like this take time to marinade through entire economies, and so may have avoided notice by outsiders. India, by contrast, has long had well-known Anglophone elites, but this is a narrow slice of the population in a country considerably poorer and less educated than China. English has helped India out-compete China in services, while China has excelled in manufacturing. But if China keeps up the push for English, the subcontinental neighbour's advantage may not last.

 

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Catching Up on Homeland

Homeland's surprise sweep of the Emmys last Sunday has people lining up to check out the Claire Danes/Damian Lewis/Mandy Patinkin-starring suspense saga’s season premiere last Sunday.

That makes this the perfect time to catch up on Season One’s major players, plot twists and unsolved mysteries with our Homeland cheat sheet. Consider this your intelligence briefing.

 

WARNING: Many Season One spoilers ahead....

Sgt. Nicholas Brody is a terrorist …

Captured in Iraq and held prisoner by al Qaeda torturers for eight years, Marine sniper Nick Brody (Damian Lewis) was presumed dead until he was “rescued” by American forces and brought home at last. But it was all an elaborate al Qaeda scheme to use Brody, whom they’d successfully turned against the U.S. while he was in captivity, as a sleeper agent. In fact, the single biggest surprise of Homeland Season One was how quickly it confirmed Brody’s shady status. Sure, they faked us out about his potential innocence now and then, but instead of some big is-he-or-isn’t-he mystery, they made Brody’s true allegiance clear before the pilot’s closing credits rolled.

… a politically well-connected terrorist …

As a returning war hero with a photogenic family, Brody’s a media darling, and he’s been used to help sell the ongoing War on Terror since his first day back. The ambitious, amoral vice president, William Walden, even hand-picked Brody to replace a disgraced congressman in the House of Representatives. This gives Brody the perfect opportunity to get close to political, intelligence and military movers and shakers – an opportunity his al Qaeda minders take advantage of when they send him to blow up the VP and his team with a suicide vest.

… and an actually-not-a-horrible-guy-kinda terrorist.

But as you can tell by the fact that he’s, y’know, alive for Season Two, Brody didn’t go through with it – in part because the bomb malfunctioned, but mostly because he couldn’t bear breaking his family’s hearts or taking innocent lives. His whole motive for joining al Qaeda in the first place was his disgust with the “collateral damage” America’s wars have produced. And in his (unreleased, obviously) video suicide note, he says he set out to kill the vice president not because he hates America, but because he loves it too much to let guys like the VP destroy its honor. He ends the season by rejecting terrorist mastermind Abu Nazir’s violent ways and insisting he can change America’s destructive policies from the inside.

Carrie Mathison spent months trying to stop him …

One woman came closer than anyone else to catching Brody: CIA analyst Carrie Mathison (Claire Danes), who works to protect the country with a white-hot intensity any terrorist would envy. Tipped off about a flipped American POW by a terrorist-turned-informant long before Brody resurfaced, she was a lone voice calling for surveillance of the homecoming hero – surveillance she ended up setting up illegally with help from her ex-spook buddy Virgil (David Marciano) when her requests were denied. No matter how many times he seemed to establish his innocence, Carrie invariably found the one crack in his excuses and alibis.

… and also falling in love with him …

Oh, right – she slept with him, too. We’d already gotten hints that she could be dangerously reckless, but after the Agency pulls the plug on her surveillance program, she decides to keep an eye on Brody by making contact outside of work. Estranged from his wife due to his PTSD, Brody ends up conducting a whirlwind weekend-long affair with Carrie, before breaking it off when he realizes she suspects him of being a sleeper agent. At first it seems like Carrie did this just to try to trip him up, but by season’s end it’s clear she actually does love him, even though she believes he’s guilty as sin. The heart wants what it wants, man.

… and she was right, but no one believed it …

Time and again, circumstances made Brody look innocent. That flipped POW that Carrie was warned about? Turns out Brody’s sniper partner Tom Walker, whom Brody thought he’d beaten to death at his captors’ gunpoint, was still alive and working for al Qaeda as well. The captured terrorist who committed suicide with a smuggled razor blade after a visit from Brody? Turns out there’s a mole inside the Homeland Security apparatus who could have gotten it to him instead. The fact that he’s covering up his encounters in captivity with Nazir, or killing Walker, or converting to Islam and praying behind the closed doors of his garage? Maybe he’s just ashamed of how his captors broke him, or afraid of how his family would react. The suicide bombing Carrie was so convinced Brody was about to commit? Never happened. By that point she may as well have been ranting about Bigfoot.

… and she doesn’t believe it either, because she’s bipolar.

After getting caught in an explosion targeting a member of Brody’s support network who’d outlived his usefulness, Carrie cracks. Her psychiatrist sister has been medicating her for bipolar disorder for years, keeping it a secret from the CIA so she wouldn’t lose security clearance, and the blast sends her into the mother of all manic episodes, during which she loses her job when Brody rats out their affair to the Agency. She becomes so fixated on Brody’s guilt that she shows up at his house, confronting his wife and daughter about the husband and father they love. When the bomb doesn’t blow, she believes she was wrong about everything, and signs up for electroconvulsive therapy in hopes that shock treatment will stop her mania from recurring. Unfortunately, this also wipes out her knowledge of a clue that more or less proves Brody’s guilt.

Abu Nazir is a terrorist mastermind …

The head of al Qaeda in Iraq and Brody’s personal overseer, Abu Nazir (Naveed Nagahban) is the world’s most wanted terrorist. He flipped both Brody and his partner – whom he orders Brody to kill following the failed suicide bombing, in order to prove his continued loyalty – maintains a support network throughout the U.S. and remains in periodic contact with Brody, encouraging him to remember his mission. We’ve heard some pretty sinister things about what happens to the families of people who don’t.

… and Vice President William Walden is pretty much just as bad.

That mission would never have taken place without the actions of Vice President Walden (Jamey Sheridan), who ordered a drone strike on a school in hopes that it’d hit Nazir and ended up killing 82 children, including one very close to both Nazir and Brody. Walden’s now running for president, and he’s accepted Brody into his inner circle in hopes that some of that war-hero glamor will rub off, but he remains committed to the warmongering policies that spurred Nazir and Brody’s quest for vengeance in the first place.

Saul Berenson is the best in the biz …

Saul (Mandy Patinkin) is Carrie’s bushy-bearded, soft-spoken mentor, one of the few people in the Agency who not only recognizes her brilliance – everyone does – but also has found a way to put up with all the impulsivity and intensity that goes with it. Saul may be even smarter than Carrie: His knack for winning the trust of the people he interrogates and his ability to put together a big picture from small details helped him nab several of Nazir’s accomplices. Unfortunately, his workaholism cost him his marriage.

… and David Estes is a tool …

The consummate company man, Estes (David Harewood) was part of Vice President Walden’s inner circle when the order to blow up the school was given, and he helped cover it up even when Carrie and Saul were looking for the reason why Nazir was so active again after months off the radar. He’s very much a political creature, which has made him the Agency’s go-between for Walden and Brody, enabling them to get too close to CIA decision-making for anyone’s good. He was Carrie’s boss, before he fired her over her affair with Brody, her illegal surveillance operation and her bipolar disorder – and oh yeah, he used to date her, which cost him his marriage.

… and any of them could be an al Qaeda mole.

Nazir has someone on the inside, feeding him information and tipping off his minions when the CIA is on their trail, leading to escapes, suicides and even a bombing in the middle of downtown D.C. It could be Saul, who initially failed a polygraph test asking about the smuggled razor blade an al Qaeda prisoner used to kill himself. It could be Galvez (Hrach Titizian), Saul and Carrie’s go-to guy for delicate and demanding operations they can’t pull off themselves, who’s secretly spying on Carrie for Estes. It’sprobably not Estes or Walden, since Brody nearly blew them up, but who knows?

It’s really all about a kid named Issa …

The most important character on Homeland has been dead for three years. When Abu Nazir took Brody out of isolation and gave him limited freedom to win him over, he also “hired” the Marine to teach English to his adorable son Issa (Rohan Chand). The kid learned quickly, and before long the two of them were playing soccer and singing “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” – Brody was the loving father Nazir could never be, and Issa was the young son Brody’s captivity had robbed him of raising back home. Then Issa and 81 of his classmates died in the vice president’s drone strike, driving Nazir and Brody to plan revenge. Years later Brody would scream Issa’s name while sleeping next to Carrie; when she and Saul uncovered the covered-up drone strike she realized who he was talking about, but seconds later a jolt of ECT wiped the clue from her brain.

… and a teenager named Dana.

Like Carrie, Brody’s teenage daughter Dana (Morgan Saylor) both loves her dad, and suspects him. She’s the one who’s most upset that her mother Jessica (Morena Baccarin) kept her relationship with Brody’s Marine buddy Mike (Diego Klattenhoff) a secret when Brody came back from the dead. She’s the one who catches Brody praying to Allah and keeps the secret of his conversion to Islam out of respect. She’s the one who notices something is wrong in the days leading up to the suicide bombing attempt. And she’s the one who realizes there may be some truth to Carrie’s manic rantings and calls her dad up at the last minute, convincing him not to go through with it without ever fully realizing he was up to anything in the first place.

 

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Rules for Stress Free Air Travel

# 11 Undress For Success

 

Before you leave for the airport, put everything metallic you’re taking with you—watch, keys, coins, jewelry, pens, chains, et al—in ziplock plastic bags and pack them in your carry-on. Dress on the other side of security, please! This will save five minutes per passenger. Do the math: It makes so much sense.

 

Why Do They Call It...British Columbia?

As a shout out to my gf's home province of BC, Canada. Here's something that's been interesting me for a few months...

The name refers to the Columbia District, the British name for the territory drained by the Columbia River. Queen Victoria specified that the area be called British Columbia to distinguish the British section of the District from that which belonged to the United States (which became the Oregon Territory). The river, in turn, took its name from the Columbia Rediviva (formerly the Columbia; the Latin rediviva, or “revived,” was added to the name after the ship’s 1787 rebuilding), a privately owned ship that was the first American ship to circumnavigate the globe and was used extensively in the Pacific Northwest maritime fur trade.

 

What is Cinco de Mayo?

Cinco de Mayo, contrary to popular belief, is not Mexico’s Independence Day. That occurs on Sept. 16., or el dieciseis de septiembre, si hablas español.

 

Cinco de Mayo, in actuality, marks a major victory for the Mexican Army on May 5, 1862, when 4,000 Mexican troops defeated 8,000 French troops at the Battle of Puebla. The French had decided to attack Mexico after it stopped making interest payments toward a major debt, but a devastating military defeat forever changed the fate of France in the Americas.