TV advertisements may be in a state of flux nowadays, but that does not mean TV ads are getting less interesting:

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Google got tricked again today first with Google Suggest, then with Google Trends (more or less inter-related) with the phrase, “I am extremely terrified of Chinese people,” first broken here:

At one point the phrase got up to position 24 with 10% of the searches coming from Providence, Rhode Island (#1 by cities).

These phrases show up in the hot trends when a group uses their network of people to search for the phrase, and if it is interesting enough, more people will type out the phrase themselves, snowballing the effect (aka: going viral).

Oh, and the page that comes up is NSFW, so I would advise not going there.

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The Worldmapper has some unique views of mapping data and probably the most interesting one to me was through international power usage by type. The data is based back in 2002 or 2001, but still interesting to note the differences between hydroelectic power, oil power, gas power, coal power, and nuclear power:

Hydroelectric

Oil

Gas

Coal

Nuclear

Fascinating to see which countries rely on only one major source of power such as South Africa on coal or how the United States consumes every type available for power generation. I am surprised at the amoung of oil power Japan uses as I had thought Japan had reduced a lot of their reliance on oil to focus more on nuclear power. South America heavily uses hydroelectric power, but am unsure as to whether that is due to low power usage or millions of dams along the many rivers snaking through the Amazon.

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TED, as usual, has the most amazing videos on any kind of topic possible that should become a daily watch for anyone interesting in… well, everything.

The title of the video below is “Who is General Tso and why are we eating his chicken?” by Jennifer Lee. I highly recommend watching the video, but here are some snippets that should entice you to watch.

• Beef with Broccoli (西兰牛肉): The common theme of what you see with broccoli is actually from Italy–Chinese brocooli is completely different and was not combined with beef.
• Fortune Cookies (财富曲奇 [not sure this is correct]): I even knew this was not a Chinese thing, but had thought this was created within the United States. Turns out this was actually first invented in Japan!
• General Tso’s Chicken (左宗棠鸡 [not sure this is correct]): If it’s boneless, sweet, and fried–you can pretty much guarantee this was not the original dish.
• Chop Suey (杂碎 [not sure this is correct]): This one was created a very long time ago in the US.

Another one that was missing from the presentation was Mushu, but truth be told, Kung Pao Chicken (宫炮鸡丁) is a real Chinese dish, just not with cashews.

If you know of any other dishes claiming to be Chinese send them my way!

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Want this ability:

This would make my job more interesting:

The U.S. Army is developing a technology known as synthetic telepathy that would allow someone to create email or voice mail and send it by thought alone. The concept is based on reading electrical activity in the brain using an electroencephalograph, or EEG…

Just remember to stay sober, ok?

Mind-writing, would make a lot of lives easier when it comes to trying to write out the ideas or phrases in my head when I try to [poorly] blog.

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Facebook has come up with what I believe is a very creative way to get more information about their ads by allowing Facebook users to judge their own Facebook ads. They use thumbs up and thumbs down at the bottom of the ad, and then lets you provide a reason for your vote with options. Here is one example of what this new ad looks like:

When you thumb down, you get the following options:

• Misleading
• Offensive
• Pornographic
• Uninteresting
• Irrelevant
• Repetitive
• Other

When you thumb up, you get these options:

• Interesting
• Relevant to me
• Good offer
• Other

If Facebook has not patented these ad styles, I highly expect to see this style of ad feedback coming to many ads in the near future, and thereby rendering them useless as people begin to ignore them as they become too common.

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Metabetable at Mark’s China Blog posts some interesting examples of the literal meaning of some Chinese words:

Here are some of my favorite examples of what I’m talking about:
电脑
Chinese Pronunciation: dian nao
Literal Translation from Chinese to English: Electric brain
English meaning: Computer

[...]

同意
Chinese pronunciation: tong yi
Literal Translation from Chinese to English: Together meaning
English meaning: To agree

手机
Chinese pronunciation: shou ji
Literal Translation from Chinese to English: Hand machine
English meaning: Cellular phone

And I have to agree that those are definitely interesting ones, and before I suggest some other fascinating Chinese words, I have to correct his translation on this one:

老外
Chinese pronunciation: lao wai
Literal Translation from Chinese to English: Old outside
English meaning: Derogatory name for foreigners

老外 is not a derogatory name for foreigners, it is in fact the complete opposite! 老外 means respected foreigner (remember that calling someone old there is a respectful gesture). The actual derogatory name for foreigners can vary, but one is 鬼了 (literally: ghost) meaning foreign devil.

The ones I personally think are fascinating: (more…)

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The more I think about it, the more I’m surprised that Google, Yahoo, or MSN doesn’t do this more often… really shows how out of touch the search engines are, how much they hold back innovation, or how pointless Baidu can be with this. David Temple at Multilingual Search notes the current people:

Baidu does a new take on the Google logos. It’s the person(s) of the month which started in November with a Mr. Xu Sandou, a famous soap opera star in China. This month features Yao Ming and Yi Jianlian, two Chinese basketball players that have made it into the National Basketball Association (NBA) in the US. Clicking on the logo leads you to a website that details the person(s) of the month.

Still, I personally think it’s a good idea, although it definitely can be tweaked so as not to always have stupid Britney at the top every month (and maybe it could knock out Hollywood celebrities altogether to give a really interesting perspective on who people search on).

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