Famous. And Other Stuff.

Previously posted on my Facebook Page.

FAMOUS SPORTS EVENTS. The Soviet Union beat the U.S. by 1 point, 51-50, in the 1972 Olympic men's basketball final in Munich, Germany. A controversial event in Olympic history. Team USA was then represented by college standouts. It was the first ever loss by the U.S. in the event. The final three seconds were played three times. Ivan Edeshko made the pass to Alexander Belov who made the basket. In 1992, NBA stars started to represent the U.S. in the Olympics. 🇺🇸🏀🇷🇺

GLOBAL HOLIDAYS. Christmas is an annual festival commemorating the birth of Jesus Christ, observed on December 25 as a religious and cultural celebration around the world. A feast central to the Christian liturgical year, it follows the season of Advent (which begins four Sundays before) or the Nativity Fast, and initiates the season, which historically in the West lasts twelve days and culminates on Twelfth Night. Christmas Day is a public holiday in many countries. 🎁✝️🎊

FAMOUS PLACES. Baguio City is an urbanized city in the Philippines. Second home of my family. During American colonial years, Baguio was selected as summer capital, owing to its cool climate, located 4,810 feet above sea level. In 1901, the U.S. government expropriated lands in Baguio owned by the Ibalois, who were forced to sell their lands. When I was in grade school, we were fined 5-centavos for every Ilocano or Tagalog word we uttered; had to be in English. 🌄🇵🇭🌲

INTERESTING EVENTS. Zombie Bike Ride, a celebration of the bicycle in late October in Key West, Florida. Rock and roll, zombie bikes and costumes of all types and a one-mile leisurely ride along the Atlantic Ocean. The first event was created in 2009 by the local bike shop owners Marky Pierson, Evan Haskell, and Chris Needham. Participants wear everything from dead-like face and body-paint and gory zombie costumes to lively "walking dead" garb. 🧟‍♀️🧟🧟‍♂️

FAMOUS PUBLICATIONS. Life, published from 1883. I was addicted to it as a boy. During Life’s golden age in my youth, it was a wide-ranging weekly general-interest magazine known for the quality of its photography. As one of America’s most popular magazines, Life regularly reached one-quarter of the population. The magazine has been consigned as a mere online supplement in 2008. Life is currently owned by Dotdash Meredith, which owns Time Inc., among others. 📰🗞📰

FUN STUFF. People can’t get enough of Mariah Carey’s 1994 hit “All I Want for Christmas is You.” It still dominates the holiday charts. If anything about Ms Carey’s holiday hit song annoys you, best to avoid shopping malls now. Or the radio. Maybe music altogether, for that matter. The Christmas anthem has reached #1 on Billboard’s Hot 100 chart the past four years in a row, and one expert predicts it will soon exceed $100 million in earnings. So calm down, okay. 🎁👩‍🎤🎊

FUN EVENTS. Dog Shows: The National Dog Show, AKC National Championship, and the Westminster Dog Show. All-breed benched conformation shows. A bench show is a show which requires dogs to be on display in an assigned location during the entirety of the show except when being shown in the ring, groomed for showing. The purpose is for spectators and breeders to have an opportunity to see all the entered dogs. Benched or unbenched, it’s all good. I love dogs! 🐕🐩🐕‍🦺

CULTURAL FESTIVALS. Hmong Spiritual New Year, mostly celebrated in November and December, recalls ancestral spirits while teaching traditions to new generations. Shamans send off their spirit guides to regenerate their energy for another season of healing. The Hmong people are an ethnic group believed to have come from the Yangtze river basin area in southern China. There are about 18 Hmong clans that are known in Laos and Thailand. 🏵🎎🏵

INTERESTING LAWS. Personhood is the status of being a person. Defining personhood is a controversial topic in philosophy and law and is closely tied with legal and political concepts of citizenship, equality, and liberty. Corporations have the same rights as a natural person to hold property, enter into contracts, and to sue or be sued. The animal rights movement seeks animal personhood, as well. Ecuador and Bolivia are the only countries that mandate rights for nature. 🐘👩‍🦱🪴

MYSTERIES of LIFE. Black hole is a region of spacetime where gravity is so strong that nothing, including light and other electromagnetic waves, has enough energy to escape it. The oldest black hole discovered dates back 470 million years after the Big Bang. Findings and theories suggest that supermassive black holes existed at the dawn of the universe. Given the universe is 13.7 billion years old, that puts the age of the first known black hole at 13.2 billion years. 🪐😞💫

Photo credits: Marca. Slate.

AGAIN, The Chinese.

Previously posted on my Facebook page. Or written years ago, unedited/not updated.

THE Chinese work ethic and business sense continually mystifies me. They've been in the Philippines long before the Spaniards and Americans did. Although the old Astronesian natives have long traded business with China, the one Chinese dude that registered in Filipinos' psyche was a pirate named Lim Ah Hong. Probably Senor Espanol and Mr Smith thought it convenient to create a “pirate” image of the Chinese to sort of lessen competition? 

       Not sure... 

       But what's sure is, the Chinese have long upended the Spaniards and Americans in the Philippines even before Beijing entered WTO in early 90s, and evolved into the unparalleled manufacturing titan of global business.

       Historically, the Chinese work silently, yet effectively. They worked in railroad construction under the Vanderbilts, they sold silk and flip-flops in every little corner of any city in every little corner of the world, and they had pretty cool lo meins at Lim Ho Fook, as well, so says Warren Zevon, right? There was this barbershop banter in regards to Chinese business camaraderie that always fascinated me. 

       They say that when a diner goes to a Chinese restaurant and asks for a dish that happens to be missing in the menu folder, the waiter will say, “We have that, Sir!” and then he runs out by the backdoor and goes to another Chinese restaurant where the owner willingly gives him what the customer is asking. There! They collared a client, that's the bottomline.

       The Chinese don't compete with each other, they actually support each other. When they entered WTO and got factory deals from the West, the big boss Chinese dude gave out capital to smaller entrepreneurs in the provinces so they'd get all the job orders from the US and Europe and elsewhere. 

       Yup, the Chinese work ethic and business sense are very mystifying—and effective. 👲🇨🇳👩‍🦰

RECOMMENDED: Movie Collection. “Matrix Trilogy.”

“Matrix Trilogy.” The Matrix, 1999; The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions, both 2003. I am not interested with 2001’s The Matrix Resurrections. The first three were written and directed by The Wachowskis or the trans women sisters Lana Wachowski and Lilly Wachowski. (“Resurrections” was directed by Lana.)

       “The Matrix” is a cyberpunk story of the technological fall of humanity, in which the creation of artificial intelligence led the way to a race of self-aware machines that imprisoned mankind in a virtual reality system to be farmed as a power source. The VR system is The Matrix.

       Year 2003 seems like three years ago but that’d be almost two decades ago. And so The Matrix’s truths has evolved really big time, and how! The resounding impact of comp tech to humanity (in the present time) amplifies the credence or veracity of Alvin Toffler’s words in 1970: “The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.” How true?

       These Matrix guys have become more real: Neo (Keanu Reeves), Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss), and Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne) who battled odds to free humanity from its self-induced idiocy, LOL! Now we know who Agent Smith is, or the Agent Smiths. Though we can’t really tell if they are Left or Right, or just heckling. 

       Meanwhile, beyond ruminations on philosophy, religion, mythology, and spirituality, “The Matrix” gave us kickass Hong Kong styled martial arts c/o Yuen Woo-Ping. As fight coordinator, he also choreographed fight scenes in Quentin Tarantino's “Kill Bill.” You dig The Bride’s duel with Gogo Yubari? So check out “The Matrix.” I keep my DVD collection. 🎬🎭🎬

Visual: Collider.