America, where we turn into pants-wetting milksops based on anonymous threats with little credibility. Cowardly U.S. theaters refuse to show 'The Interview' after free speech threats - Boing Boing: "The Department of Homeland Security says the threat is not backed up by "credible intelligence," but the Sony Pictures breach and related matters are reportedly being investigated "not just as a criminal cyber matter but as a national security matter by the nation's law enforcement and intelligence agencies." Man, this never happened when "Team America" was released ten years ago. If it's North Korea behind the hacks, as many suspect, they sure have stepped up their game. Bear in mind, however, that it's entirely possible that the breach was an inside job."
"America isn't easy. America is advanced citizenship. You gotta want it bad, 'cause it's gonna put up a fight. It's gonna say 'You want free speech? Let's see you acknowledge a man whose words make your blood boil, who's standing center stage and advocating at the top of his lungs that which you would spend a lifetime opposing at the top of yours. You want to claim this land as the land of the free? Then the symbol of your country can't just be a flag; the symbol also has to be one of its citizens exercising his right to burn that flag in protest. Show me that, defend that, celebrate that in your classrooms. Then, you can stand up and sing about the land of the free." - The American President
But I repeat myself.
Comics are the best.
'For a friend.' We've all been there. No charges for Japanese man who dumped a quarter-ton of porn in a park - Boing Boing: "70 year old Hideaki Adachi said he was disposing of the porn for a sick friend, and he assumed that the park's population of homeless people (with whom he volunteers) would arrange for its disposal."
Japan Wins. Japan's Beloved Christmas Cake Isn't About Christmas At All : The Salt : NPR: "...And so Japan embraced the trappings of a picture-perfect, American-style Christmas — including Santa Claus, an ornament-bedecked tree and a sugar-filled cake. As David Plath, a renowned Japan scholar, writes in a paper on the popularity of Christmas festivities in Japan, "Family Christmas gatherings do not center around dinner, as in the American ideal, but rather upon mutual partaking of a Christmas cake." So why cake? Well, sponge cake had been available in Japan since the 17th century, but several of the items needed to make this version of it — sugar, milk and butter — were rarities on the island nation, so the cake was a luxury reserved for the elite. After World War II, Japan's economy rebounded, the ingredients became more widely available, and Japan's newly formed middle class adopted this once-exclusive dessert as a symbol that it had finally made it. i Japanese Christmas cake: It's even in your smartphone, on the emoji keyboard. NPR And so, inspired by America, a wholly Japanese tradition was born. "The Christmas cake became a center of attention in the whole festival [of Christmas]," writes Konagaya.
...However, while the cake has become firmly entrenched in Japanese culture, Christmas itself hasn't — it's not a national holiday in Japan. In fact, it's celebrated more like Valentine's Day is in America, and it's often thought of as a day for romantic couples to share. Says Ashkenazi: "This [cake] is part of a whole complex of things that the Japanese adopted from the West, modified to their own needs, and have completely different meaning and different implications for Japanese society than from whatever host society they borrowed it from.""
Japan Wins II: Winning Harder. Why Japan is Obsessed with Kentucky Fried Chicken on Christmas | Arts & Culture | Smithsonian: "It’s Christmas Eve in Japan. Little boys and girls pull on their coats, the twinkle of anticipation in their eyes. Keeping the tradition alive, they will trek with their families to feast at … the popular American fast food chain KFC. Christmas isn’t a national holiday in Japan—only one percent of the Japanese population is estimated to be Christian—yet a bucket of “Christmas Chicken” (the next best thing to turkey—a meat you can’t find anywhere in Japan) is the go-to meal on the big day. And it’s all thanks to the insanely successful “Kurisumasu ni wa kentakkii!” (Kentucky for Christmas!) marketing campaign in 1974. When a group of foreigners couldn’t find turkey on Christmas day and opted for fried chicken instead, the company saw this as a prime commercial opportunity and launched its first Christmas meal that year: Chicken and wine for 834 2,920 yen($10)—pretty pricey for the mid-seventies. Today the christmas chicken dinner (which now boasts cake and champagne) goes for about 3,336 yen ($40). And the people come in droves. Many order their boxes of ”finger lickin’” holiday cheer months in advance to avoid the lines—some as long as two hours."
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