My Postprandial Thanksgiving Quiz - 2012

For the last few years I’ve tried to entertain our Thanksgiving guests with a quiz of my own devising. I wait until the guests have eaten their fill, such that their near-comatose state forbids them an easy escape. Here is this year’s quiz. Ten questions, three points per question. Answers are at the bottom.

The Quiz

1) Like everything that is good in the world, Thanksgiving in America has it’s roots in English traditions. As part of the reformation, Church holidays in England were meant to be replaced with ‘Days of Fasting’ or ‘Days of Thanksgiving’ to mark events that Puritans regarded as having special providence. In January 1606, the English Parliament passed the Observance of 5th November Act 1605, commonly known as the “Thanksgiving Act”. What event did this act recognize?

2) In the US, Thanksgiving falls on the 4th Thursday of November. When does Thanksgiving occur in Canada?

3) The West Indian island of Grenada also has a Thanksgiving Day, but it has nothing to do with the American Thanksgiving. What does their Thanksgiving Day celebrate? Choose one of the following:

• a) As the worlds second largest producer of nutmeg, they give thanks for a successful nutmeg growing season
• b) They give thanks to their 1974 independence from their former colonial overlords, the United Kingdom
• c) They give thanks for being invaded in 1983 by the United States military

4) Thanksgiving parades are a famous part of the Thanksgiving Day tradition, with Macy’s parade in New York City among the most famous. Can you match the following Thanksgiving Day parades with the cities where they occur?

• a) McDonald’s Thanksgiving Parade
• b) 6abc Dunkin Donuts Thanksgiving Parade
• c) America’s Hometown Thanksgiving Parade

5) Thanksgiving Thursday leads to Black Friday (not to mention Cyber Monday). But there is another commerce-related day that occurs on Friday, a day that started in Mexico 1992, but is now an international day of protest recognized by many. What is it?

6) The world championships of which ‘sport’ are televised each year on Thanksgiving Day on the Science Channel?

7) Turkeys are perhaps the most famous food associated with Thanksgiving, but Turduckens (a chicken stuffed inside a duck inside a turkey) are growing in popularity. Turduckens however are not the only way you can stuff one animal into another to make it into a tasty dinnertime treat. The dish known as ‘Pandora’s cushion’ is a goose stuffed with three other avian species. What are they?

8) Another way by which Turkeys are associated with Thanksgiving is the National Thanksgiving Turkey Presentation, where the President pardons a live turkey that is presented to him. According to the Eisenhower presidential library, President Eisenhower is said to have done what to the turkeys that he pardoned?

9) Turkey facts. True or false?

• a) It is forbidden to sell a turkey (the bird) in Turkey (the country)
• b) Turkeys can die of heart attacks brought on by stress
• c) in 1982, a home-reared turkey in Alexandria, Louisiana was caught eating the family’s pet chihuahua dog

10) The Daily Press, a newspaper serving Hampton, Virginia has compiled a list of ‘Top 10 Thanksgiving Foods’. We ate six of these top ten items today (Turkey, Stuffing, Mashed potatoes, Cranberry Sauce, Green bean casserole, and pumpkin pie ). What did we miss? Pick three of the remaining food items.

Scroll down to see the answers.

The Answers

1) 3 points for ‘Guy Fawkes day’ or ‘Gunpowder Plot’, 2 points for ‘Bonfire Night’ and 1 point for anything related to fireworks

2) 2nd Monday in October (1 point for each correct part of the answer)

3) All of the answers are factually correct, but the one which caused them to create a Thanksgiving day is the invasion of their country by the United States. (3 points for correct answer)

4) 1 point for each correct answer + McDonald’s Thanksgiving Parade (Chicago) + 6abc Dunkin Donuts Thanksgiving Parade (Philadelphia) + America’s Hometown Thanksgiving Parade (Plymouth, MA)

5) Buy Nothing Day (3 points), any recognition of boycotting commerce (1 point)

6) Pumpkin Chunking/Punkin Chunking (3 points), pumpkin throwing/tossing/catapults etc (2 points), anything pumpkin-related (1 point)

7) Goose -> Chicken -> Pheasant -> Quail (1 point for each of the 3 birds)

8) Ate them (3 points), cooked them (1 point)

9) 1 point for each: a) False b) True c) False

10) 1 point for each of the remaining items from the top 10 list (3 points max)

1. 2. 3. 4. Ham 5. 6. 7. Bread rolls 8. Sweet potatoes 9. 10. Turducken

My memories of Simon Chan

I still feel in a complete state of shock that Simon Chan, my friend and colleague, is no longer with us. For most of the last four years I’ve been collaborating with Simon and his lab on a number of research projects and I came to know him well. What started as a professional relationship, developed into a friendship, and I would always look forward to our regular weekly meeting with Simon. It seems so hard to believe that these meetings will never happen again.

Over the last few days I have been humbled and amazed by the realization of just how many other people have been touched by Simon’s kindness, warmth, and by his inspirational personality. At the time of writing, there have now been 146 comments left behind on this blog post, which first announced the tragic news of Simon’s passing. Without exception, every single comment reveals a story of someone who’s life has been made better from having met Simon. These are not just comments from people who have known Simon for a long time. In many instances, people have shared their experience of meeting Simon just once, but revealing how strong an impact he still managed to have on them. A second memorial page adds another fifty or so comments that shed more light on what an amazing person Simon was.

Much has already been said about Simon’s scientific achievements, about his sweet and kind personality, and about his infectious positive energy which always left you coming out of meetings with him in a ‘we can do this!’ frame of mind. In this blog post, I wanted to briefly touch on two of his other qualities: his love of music, and his love of food.

Music

From our last practice session together, Dec 16 2010

I didn’t know Simon very well until he was invited to join the band that I was in (a UC Davis-based band that would play infrequent gigs at work-related functions). Simon could play saxophone, ukulele, and bass guitar and was very talented at all three instruments. It was the last of these instruments, the bass, that he played in our band. I’ve played in a few other bands and you sometimes play with musicians who, when learning songs for the first time, need to see the printed music in order to read every bar of every chord. More commonly, you’ll play with people who at least need to glance at the chord changes from time to time, or at the very least have to ask what key a song is in. Simon was not one of these people. He had a fantastic ear for music and could easily pick up any song and jam along effortlessly as soon as he heard a few notes. Whenever we’d have to stop playing mid-practice because one of us had screwed things up, you can bet that it was never Simon.

This was not the only reason why it was great to play alongside Simon in the band. He really loved to play music and was comfortable playing just about any genre of music. The majority of our band’s output mostly consisted of rock-based cover songs from the 50’s through to the 80’s. But Simon was just as happy when playing on some of our more jazz-inspired numbers as he was when playing on some of the grungier rock songs in our repertoire.

Within the band, we were all huge aficionados of the ‘mockumentary’ film This is Spinal Tap and given any chance at all, we would happily spend a lot of our practice time quoting from the film (what we would call STRs: Spinal Tap References). When Simon first joined, I knew he was a huge fan of jazz and wasn’t sure whether he would be irritated by our devotion to Spinal Tap and to the many, many STRs. I was overjoyed to discover that he loved the film too and was just as happy making people laugh with a well-timed STR.

From our last gig together, Dec 17 2010

Food

To say that Simon loved food, and loved trying new food, is something of a huge understatement. Simon lived for new culinary experiences. After being able to explore the gastronomic diversity of a city like Los Angeles (where he did his post-doc) he must have found Davis somewhat limiting. But that did not stop himself from trying just about everything that Davis, and the surrounding region, had to offer.

There were many conversations between us that would begin with me asking him ‘Have you tried new restaurant ‘X’ in Davis?’ and the answer was invariably ‘yes’. Occasionally I would try a new place in Davis in the week that it had opened, and this would give me the false confidence that I could approach Simon to tell him of a place that he had not yet tried. Invariably, however, he would have already been there and would be able to offer thoughtful commentary on their menu. If you ever ate with Simon at a place that he liked (e.g. Hometown Chinese in Davis), then it was common to realize that he was on first name terms with the owners. I can only imagine that Simon has made firm friendships with restauranteurs around the world.

For my 40th birthday I organized a quiz which Simon attended. One of the questions was based on guessing how many different eateries in Davis I had frequented (researched using the Davis Wiki restaurants page). The day after my birthday, Simon sent me an email to reveal that he had eaten at 97 of the 126 Davis restaurants on the list, with the exceptions — mostly chain fast-food restaurants — being through choice. The same email went on to reveal the total number of restaurants that Simon had eaten at since he first started logging such activities (I think this may have begun while he was in Los Angeles). Simon’s list featured a jaw-dropping 1,338 different restaurants! This was a man that loved his food.

As soon as Simon heard that I had to go to Vancouver to renew a visa, his first piece of advice was to check out a particular restaurant in China Town for their braised pork in soy sauce. When Simon recommends a place, you can’t really ignore that advice. I found the restaurant, ordered the pork, and it was indeed excellent.

Simon didn’t just love trying out new restaurants, he loved trying out different and unusual ingredients. He once shared details with me of The Omnivores Hundred: a list of one hundred different items that “every good omnivore should have tried at least once in their life”. This list includes relatively benign items such as ‘Eggs benedict’ and ‘Polenta’, but also includes such…shall we say interesting, delicacies as Brawn, Sweetbreads, and Roadkill. As of April 2009, Simon had tried 81 things off of this list, and I imagine he ticked off a few more in the years since then.

I once remarked to Simon that my wife and I often tried to host a traditional Burns Night Supper in Davis, but that it was really hard to find Haggis here. The next time I saw Simon, he produced a tin of haggis for me which he had found for us somewhere in the Bay Area. That was exactly the sort of person Simon was: always generous, always thinking of others…and probably always thinking of food!

Goodbye

Simon has been taken from us all far too soon and it still doesn’t seem real that he won’t be around to tell us of amazing new eateries he’s discovered, or regale us with tales of strange foods from far away lands. I’d like to extend my sincerest condolences to Simon’s family. At the same time, I’d like to thank them all for helping make Simon the wonderful person that he was. Like so many others, my life has been enriched for knowing Simon and I will treasure the memories that I have of him.

Farewell Simon. In music, in food, and in life, you always went up to 11 (STR).

Simon Chan 1974-2012

The strangest use of glamour in an advertising campaign?

Caution: contains words and images that some readers might find offensive

Luxury products merit luxurious advertising campaigns. I completely understand this concept and 99% of the time it makes sense to glamorize your high-end product as much as possible. However, I feel that some products just don’t merit this treatment, and by ‘some products’ I’m really talking about toilets.

Sure, you can make toilets look high-tech, maybe even sophisticated, but please whatever you do, don’t make toilets sexy. Because they are not and never will be. However, this is exactly what Kohler are trying to do. Their top of the range toilet is the numi and for a jaw-dropping list price of $6,390 you can buy a toilet which:

• has a motion activated lid and seat
• includes a heated seat (naturally), but also includes a feet warmer!
• features an integrated bidet, air dryer, and deodorizer
• incorporates illuminated panels for ‘ambient lighting’
• comes with a touch-screen remote device for full control
• remote control has a magnetic docking/charging station
• can store ‘user presets’ for your preferred flushing/cleaning routine
• has built in speakers and FM radio, with audio input jack to connect a MP3 player

Clearly this is a toilet that does the business with your business. It wouldn’t surprise me if there is an iPhone app to log your ‘activity’ (see how I refrained from making a ‘logs your logs’ joke there…oh wait).

I don’t have any problems with this as a product and I congratulate Kohler for taking toilet technology to a new level. What I do have a problem with is the use of the promotional material that Kohler puts on their website to advertise this toilet.

Exhibit A:

The toilet is first introduced by showing a sexy young couple — let’s call them Tom and Katie — in a swanky penthouse-style apartment. In the background we see the toilet positioned immediately adjacent to clear glass walls! This is not a bathroom, this is a toilet that’s been deliberately positioned in the corner of their living room. “Oh yeah, I decided to get rid of the television and replace it with this toilet”. The background of the photo reveals a hillside full of apartment blocks and housing. Was this listed as a feature when the apartment was sold: ‘Property comes complete with a maximum exposure toilet facility’?

Exhibit B:

The second promotional photo pans back to show us the exterior of this luxury department and look, there’s a swimming pool. Let’s invite some friends over for a pool party and let everyone watch each other as they pee! Tom and Katie have changed outfits and are looking both sexy and enigmatic. Katie tugs at her hair avoiding eye contact with Tom, possibly contemplating whether a relationship based on a desire for communal bodily expulsions can really last.

We also see that this the toilet is definitely in a living room and not a bathroom. There are some armchairs and what looks like a decanter of whiskey or brandy. On what planet are these people living on? “Excuse me darling, would you mind pouring me a wee dram of the good stuff, I’m just going to settle down for a nice long crap”.

Exhibit C:

Another costume change and again our Tom and Katie just want to hang out by the toilet, but once again can’t quite bring themselves to look at each other. Their relationship is probably on the rocks at this point. Maybe Katie is only staying with him for the sake of the toilet?

Exhibit D:

If you want to see the toilet in action, and catch a few more glimpses — albeit fleeting — of our our glamorous friends, there is also a sassy video which shows the toilet in all its high-tech glory.

Questions

1. Did anyone at Kohler think this advertising campaign was a good idea?
2. Did they actually install this toilet in an apartment somewhere?
3. The models who appear in the photos…do they list this job on their resume, and if so, how? “Experience with toilet glamour shots” ???

Happy to announce that our Unix & Perl book is finally on sale!

Unix and Perl to the RESCUE! A field-guide for life scientists (and other data-rich pursuits)

At least in the UK. It will take a few weeks for US warehouses to receive stock, and we have still not received our own copies, but at least the book is out there (somewhere). Amazon is discounting the book which puts it into a more affordable price range.

It will be very strange the first time I spot it 'in the wild' by chance. If I spot someone reading it on a bus/train/plane, I wonder whether I will be tempted to say anything.

My Life Revisited — Part 4: 1979

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1979.jpg.scaled.1000.jpg

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it’s SuperNod! Brandon Routh eat your heart out. One year after my last primary school fancy dress contest (when I entered as a matchbox), it was time to go for something a little more dramatic. My mum did great work in stitching together a very impressive Superman logo and making a cape. The rest of the costume was as follows:

1. Blue polo neck top (turtle neck if you are of a USA persuasion). These seemed to be a lot more popular when I was younger. Can’t remember the last time I wore one.
2. A pair of blue girls tights (I felt very awkward about wearing these)
3. Red swimming trunks
4. Red wellies (or rain boots if you prefer). These were borrowed from my neighbour’s sister as I recall

I remember that I kept the cape for several years after this which was great for an instant Superman effect. The Man of Steel was very popular around that time (the original Christopher Reeve Superman film had come out the previous summer), and such popularity ensured there was another Superman entrant in the fancy dress contest. I think I won a prize for my costume, though I think that they were fairly generous in giving out lots of prizes. I don't think you actually received anything at all, just the honour of being chosen as a winner.

My hair was still quite blonde at the time, and I would still be sporting the ‘pudding bowl’ haircut style for a few more years to come. Note that I'm standing on our 'crazy paving' patio. This seemed to be all the rage in the 70's though it's not particularly crazy by most definitions of the word. I bet it was invented by people who realised that there was a market for people who couldn't afford to buy paving stones that are all the same shape. And speaking of irregularly shaped, cheaper versions of things...do people remember buying bags of broken biscuits at the supermarket?

My Life Revisited — Part 3: 1978

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This picture might look a bit strange so I’ll explain as best I can. The picture was taken during a birthday party at my house. It would have been my 7th birthday. Check out the lovely patterned curtains, and the general overpowering presence of the colour brown in the furniture and carpet. Brown was big in the 70’s!

I’m sitting on the far end of the couch, wearing the green safari outfit which I just loved (this wasn’t a fancy dress costume by the way). The dapper looking gentleman on my left was my neighbour — and is still my good friend —Tony. He doesn’t wear the tie so much these days though. The next guy has faded from my memory and I would be pushed to even hazard a guess at his name. Sititng next to him is Mark who lived a few doors down the road from me. He had also made an effort to smarten up for the party, well at least he had shiny brown shoes on. The kid nearest to the camera is another old friend, Kevin. We were best buddies for quite a few years and used to both be hugely into Star Wars (well wasn’t everyone back then?).

The strange facial expressions that we all seem to be adopting in the picture is because there was, off to the right of the picture, a magician! It was unbelievably cool to have my very own magician perform for me at my party. I think he was getting us all to blow at something that he was holding. I could be completely wrong, he may have just asked us to make silly faces for his own amusement.

Every seven year old should have a magician perform at a birthday party. You’re at the age where it is easy to be astounded by relatively simple acts of magic. I was very into magic for the next 10 years or so of my life, probably because of this birthday party

My Life Revisited — Part 2: 1978

This is me, in my back garden...in a matchbox. While I was at primary school, there used to be a summer fete held every year, and for at least some of those years they held a fancy dress competition as part of the fete. These fancy dress competitions were not so much for the kids...they were for the parents.

I have to applaud the inventiveness and technical abilities of my mum and dad as they did all the work. As I was only six at the time, I doubt that I personally suggested going as a matchbox, and I further doubt that I had much involvement in the construction process. When anyone goes to a fancy dress party today, it seems that people most likely will just hire or buy their costumes. But in 1978, costume hire was not really an option (at least not in Haverhill, Suffolk) and so there was a need for ingenuity and considerable amounts of glue and tape.

I think that the bulk of this ‘costume’ was fashioned from the cardboard packaging of some self-assemble furniture. There was a quite a bit of attention to detail in that there was - at least as I recall - an inner box that could slide within the outer container. The detail on the front of the box is a fairly good (hand painted) replica of an actual brand of matches that you could buy in 1978 (for just three pence).

My parents also gave me a red swimming cap that I was meant to put on my head so that I would physically resemble a matchstick in the matchbox, though somehow I think I opted to not wear that on the day of the competition. I don’t recall winning the contest, but I do remember there being more than one prize so I may have won something (best costume in the ‘Smoker’s accessories’ category?). As I recall, there were lots of entrants in these contests...but there was only ever one matchbox!

My Life Revisited — Part 1: 1977

This is the first of a short blog series featuring some old pictures of me from the distant past, along with some commentary on my memories of life at that time. Let's start by seeing how my youthful visage looked back in 1977:

This school photo was taken when I was five or six years old, it’s hard to be sure because the photo would have been taken near to the start of the new school year which was also near to my birthday.

At this point in time, I had just started my second year of ‘primary’ school. Different regions in the UK have different systems for schooling. In Suffolk, there were (or still are) primary, secondary, and upper schools. The primary school I went to had an optional ‘nursery’ year (like kindergarten in the US I guess), which I also attended. So technically, this was my third year at the school. My teacher that year was Mrs Jackson and my main memories of her — well my only memories really — were that she seemed very tall and that she wore jeans a lot.

At that time, we were learning to read and write English, but not the form of English that most people would recognize. Our school embraced what seemed to be a widespread (at least in the UK) experimental way of learning English. The system was called the Initial Teaching Alphabet (ITA) and looking back, it was a very strange system, not least because the alphabet has 42 letters! Still, I can’t say that it has caused me any long-term damage in my subsequent education. 

One of my main memories from that year at school was that one pupil — a certain Mr. Todd if memory serves me correctly — was keen to demonstrate to the class that he could generate a cool and somewhat mysterious sound simply by the act of walking around. The teacher allowed him to demonstrate this to the entire class and so he proudly strode up and down the room. Sure enough, as he marched back and forth, we could hear a faint noise that appeared to originate from his lower torso. The teacher then calmly explained to him that this noise was simply due to the fabric of his extensively flared trousers rubbing together as his legs passed each other (

everyone

 wore

flares

back then). I think this factual explanation left him feeling very deflated as he was pinning his hopes on more of a magical reason for his trouser-based emanations.

Sometimes you remember uplifting, or life-changing events from your distant past. Me? I remember noisy trousers.

A new home

Moving home is listed among the most stressful events that one can experience in a lifetime. I wonder if 'moving blogs' should be included in that list too?

My first forays into blogging were around the time that Apple had just launched a set of tools under the '.Mac' umbrella. These tools were a successor to an earlier suite called 'iTools' and were in turn succeeded by the ill-fated MobileMe service (Dan Moren provides a good overview of these early transitions).

Under iTools and .Mac, Apple provided a web-based tool called HomePage that allowed you to create simple websites. As I recall, it was painfully slow to use and not very flexible. In 2006, things improved somewhat as Apple released iWeb, a desktop application that was part of the iLife suite of tools and which let you create websites that could be hosted on your iDisk (though you could also publish to other hosts).

The iWeb application made it relatively easy to create various different styles of website, and included a dedicated template for blogs. I used iWeb for a long time — hosting several different blogs, and my own personal website — before realizing that there were many things you couldn't easily do with the service. Support for iDisk-hosted websites continued as Apple transitioned to MobileMe, but the life-support cable for this service is about to yanked out, with Apple wanting people to migrate to its free — but iWeb-incompatible — iCloud service. Support for any iDisk-hosted sites will expire on June 30th and presumably these sites — along with any other files you may still have on your iDisk — will simply disappear.

Even before Apple announced iCloud, I had already been looking around for a alternative service to use for simple blogging and had started to use Posterous. Late last year, Posterous undertook some rebranding and became 'Posterous Spaces' with more of an emphasis on sharing and becoming a social network in its own right. This concerned me a little bit as I felt that Posterous's strength was in its simplicity, and Posterous Spaces seemed to suffer from a lack of focus. Further alarm bells rang earlier this year Posterous announced that they had been bought by Twitter. Although they claim that the service will "remain up and running", I'm now concerned that I can't count on Posterous as a long-term blogging solution.

All of which brings me — the writer — and you — the reader — to Squarespace. I've been hearing a lot about this company from many of the 5by5 podcasts that I listen to. For a low monthly fee, Squarespace will let you build beautiful websites to meet any need you have. So I'm now using Squarespace to host both my main website and my blog. It's been a useful opportunity to remove a lot of old content and try to give my website a much cleaner look. I'm still debating whether I should let all of my earlier blog posts remain on Posterous, or whether I should try to migrate them all to this site. In any case I'm really happy with the Squarespace service and hope to stay here for many years to come.