When I get lazy with blogging, I just post links to some neat stuff around the web:
- Among this rumination about Yellow Fever is this choice quote:
Gwen Stefani used Asians to underscore and dress up her solo career. While promoting her Love, Angel, Music, Baby album, she was attended constantly by four mute Japanese schoolgirls she re-named “Love,” “Angel,” “Music” and “Baby.” Stefani called them her Harajuku girls, taking that name from a particularly hip and fashionable Tokyo district.
Think if she had done the same with other ethnic groups—four African American girls barefoot and dressed in dashikis. Or four Latinas in sombreros and mariachi outfits. Jesse Jackson, the NAACP and the world in general, I’d like to think, would have gone out of their heads. Any other ethnicity and a hit would have been taken out on Stefani, or at least her recording career. But for some reason, if it’s Asians—cute, little Asians—we let it slide. Which explains why Stefani’s use of human accessories has been barely criticized, objections limited to the occasional irate blogger.
- We’ve all come across the ‘most livable cities in the world’ charts, and this article argues that even though they may be the “most livable”, they are not the most desirable places to live in
Vancouver’s boringly consistent topping of the polls underlines the fundamental fault that lies at the heart of the idea of measuring cities by their “liveability”. The most recent surveys, from Monocle magazine, Forbes, Mercer and The Economist, concur: Vancouver, Vienna, Zurich, Geneva, Copenhagen and Munich dominate the top. What, you might ask, no New York? No London? No LA or HK? None of the cities that people seem to actually want to emigrate to, to set up businesses in? To be in? None of the wealthiest, flashiest, fastest or most beautiful cities? Nope. Americans in particular seem to get wound up by the lack of US cities in the top tier. The one that does make it is Pittsburgh. Which winds them up even more.
Having been to Vancouver, Zurich, Geneva and Pittsburgh – I would agree that I would much rather live in Toronto, NYC or London.
- Sticking with Vancouver, here’s a story about a couple of Vancouverites and their adventure to go down to San Jose to watch game 4 of the Western Conference finals.
Hi! and welcome to the eclectic personal blog of Kevin Quan. Come in, stay awhile, peek into the nooks & crannies, and learn a bit about me and my interests.