東北有三寶。。。

東北有三寶，人蔘，貂皮，烏拉草。

台灣有三寶，檳榔，辣妹，無患子。

美國有三寶，麥粉，當鋪，墨外勞。 （麥當勞？）

The first paragraph of this page contains an explanation for the first line in this post, but the other two lines are whimsical paraphrases, arguably very un-PC, of my own making.

I'm watching the movie…

…but I've never known anything about the series before. An interesting tidbit from the Wikipedia entry on "The Green Hornet":

He would be accompanied by his similarly masked chauffeur/bodyguard/enforcer, who was also Reid's valet, Kato, initially described as Japanese, and by 1939 as Filipino of Japanese descent.[4] Following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, references to a Japanese heritage were dropped.[5]

Specifically, in and up to 1939, in the series' opening narration, Kato was called Britt Reid's "Japanese valet" and from 1940 to '45 he was Reid's "faithful valet." However, by at least the June 1941 episode "Walkout for Profit," about 14 minutes into the episode, Reid specifically noted Kato having a Philippine origin and thus he became Reid's "Filipino valet" as of that point.[6] When the characters were used in the first of a pair of movie serials, the producers had Kato's nationality given as Korean.

Children vs. children…

In I Corinthians 7, St Paul teaches that it is better to marry and raise children than to burn with lust, whereas modern culture teaches that it is better to remain like children and burn with lust than to marry.

Granted, Jesus teaches that we must enter the Kingdom as children, but something tells me He didn't mean giant-sized children with credit lines and scrupulously well fed sex lives.

By hook or by crook…

From "When Booze Was Banned But Pot Was Not" by Jacob Sullum, Reason
Posted on January 14, 2011, Printed on January 23, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/story/149535/

Entrepreneurs taking advantage of legal loopholes included operators of “booze cruises” to international waters, travel agents selling trips to Cuba (which became a popular tourist destination on the strength of its proximity and wetness), “medicinal” alcohol distributors whose brochures (“for physician permittees only”) resembled bar menus, priests and rabbis who obtained allegedly sacramental wine for their congregations (which grew dramatically after Prohibition was enacted), breweries that turned to selling “malt syrup” for home beer production, vintners who delivered fermentable juice directly into San Francisco cellars through chutes connected to grape-crushing trucks, and the marketers of the Vino-Sano Grape Brick, which “came in a printed wrapper instructing the purchaser to add water to make grape juice, but to be sure not to add yeast or sugar, or leave it in a dark place, or let it sit too long before drinking it because ‘it might ferment and become wine.’ ”

An open letter to my cat…

Dear Cheetoh,

Sometimes you remind me of the Warren Zevon song "Excitable Boy". That's not a compliment. For one thing, you're not a boy. If you must keep whining, please learn to speak Spanish, Chinese, German or English, so I can undestand what you keep going on about. I might like to sleep, you know?

But… it is impressive that you like to sleep on top of my boxed set of Feynman's Lectures on Physics. You can stay.

Sincerely,

E.

The cyantific maythid…

Science is humankind's best tool for gaining cognitive access to the real world. Only what can be measured empirically under repeatable conditions can be said to exist in a cognitively relevant way. This is the stepwise victory of science. However, the present moment cannot be quantified, nor measured repeatedly: there is no objectively repeatable way to verify the nature of "now". Therefore the present moment does not exist in a scientifically meaningful way. "Now" is scientifically, and therefore almost certainly, meaningless for human existence.

Discuss.