reasons to believe in santa

David Evans2 Comments

Parents! Your child refusing to fall for the idea that Santa does everything he’s supposed to by “magic”? We thought we’d help out and provide some scifi explanations for Ol’ Saint Nick, just in case.

Let’s look beyond the whole “Living in the North Pole and having an army of elves to do his bidding” thing – After all, that part will always be cool, no matter what. The problem that today’s media-savvy younglings have with Father Christmas isn’t his product placement deal with Coke, but his modus operandi. You can prove, thanks to NORAD and the internet that Santa Claus exists and does all his deliveries in one night, but how can you explain his speedy deliveries? We’ve come up with five possibilities to try out on uninformed brains.

from http://io9.com/5114387/five-sci+fi-rebirths-for-santa-claus

Teleportation
In a world where we’re told that small Japanese men can teleport across time and space just by blinking hard, why would it be so unusual to suggest that Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer isn’t a magical flying reindeer, but instead a superpowered teleporting one? It even sounds, uh, convincing-esque: “With one blink of his glowing nose, he can bend space on itself and take Santa to wherever he needs to be.” Suddenly, Santa’s reindeer become an animal version of the X-Men, allowing you to explain that Prancer and Dancer and Donner and Blitzen aren’t any stupider names than Dazzler or Gambit (After all, there are already superheroes called Donner and Blitzen).

Cloning
What if there was more than one Santa? That would easily explain how gifts can appear all across the world in one night, but if each man in this generous army happened to be the same man, then the mystique of Santa Claus is preserved – and, as an additional bonus, your child will be given another example of why scientific research into genetics (and specifically, cloning) is a good thing. An example that doesn’t happen to be a prematurely-dead sheep.

Continue reading “reasons to believe in santa” →

nicest compliment all week

David Evans3 Comments

Last night around midnight I checked out of my hotel in Dakar.  I’d spent a fair amount of time making calls from the concierge’s desk, coordinating various events.  As I was leaving, the concierge – named Ndiack – said, “Hey man, I like the way you move.”  I’ll take it!

I also managed to keep people laughing during my presentation on data collection.  Of course, an hour after the talk, one of the more experienced participants said, “Dave, I remember I had a great time during your talk, but I don’t remember what it was about.”  Maybe I should work with the Men in Black.

best liberia line ever

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This afternoon I was sitting with several people from Liberia’s Ministry of Education. 

Liberia – quote unquote – is a welfare state.

But where do the quotes go?  “Liberia” – Rejection of colonial borders?  Or “welfare state”?  I always think of Sweden, Norway, and … Liberia 

The next participant clarified:  “Everyone looks to the government.”

best polygamy line ever

David Evans4 Comments

I’m in Senegal for a workshop with representatives from education ministries around Africa.  A representative from the Senegal Ministry of Education welcomed the delegation, and Fatu – a young graduate student on our team – translated his comments into English for the Anglophones.

Thank you, Fatu.  My favorite wife’s name is Fatu.

Not what I was expecting.

* Fatu isn’t really her name.  But the story is real.

the perfect holiday book

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I’m working from the public library this morning, and there’s a display called Jolly Holidays, filled with holiday books with titles like The Christmas Box Miracle, Jingle Bell Bark, Wreath of Deception, Redeeming the Season, Once Upon a Christmas, and…

Behavioral economist Dan Ariely’s Predictably Irrational

I grabbed it!  No better holiday reading for my trip to Senegal tomorrow!

what i’m reading

David Evans2 Comments

Over breakfast I read The Humboldt Current.  (Breakfast is my Read A Friend’s Book time, and there’s no better!)  On the bus I read The Book of Mormon.  Then, in my carpool on the second half of my commute, I puzzle my way through Le Petit Prince in French.  When I need a break during the day I read Cristina Garcia’s Handbook to Luck.  And I’m starting – for the ride home – a book of Brazilian short stories (collected for students) in Portuguese.

Trying to stave off dementia.

nature demands both hubris and humility

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Nature demanded both hubris and humility, both an unrelenting commitment to understand and an acceptance of our inability to achieve understanding – an immersion in “the magnitude and surpassing splendour of the realities” and a dependenc eon “all the wild legends of fairy magnificence” that our “imagination” and “fancy” can conjure.

I get it all but the hubris.

from Sachs’s The Humboldt Current: 19th Century Exploration and the Roots of American Environmentalism, p138.  Quotes from Reynolds, “Leaves from an unpublished journal.”

100+ reviews of African literature (plus)

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As we draw near the close of the Africa Reading Challenge, I’m delighted to share another 11 reviews from across the continent.  You can read the other 100 here.

maybe luke skywalker is as tall as my thumb

David Evans3 Comments

My older brother, a professor at a prestigious university, came to visit last week.  He shared many insights, but my favorite was this.  We were discussing our expansive collection of hand puppets, and I commented that none of the puppets are life size.  He said, Yoda is.  I say, No, the Yoda puppet is only about one foot tall.  He pointed out that Star Wars never clarifies the size of the humanoid characters (Luke, Han, Obi Wan).  This is, after all, in a galaxy far, far away.

Maybe the entire Star Wars series takes place in a space the size of my microwave oven.

book review: The Invention of Hugo Cabret, by Brian Selznick

David Evans4 Comments

I recently read this fascinating book.  It’s an innovative mix of wordless pictures interspersed with pages of text.  It’s a quick read, and I loved it!

delightful, exciting mix of mystery, adventure, books and film

This book is geared toward young adults, but don’t let that stop you. Selznick offers an exciting story in a novel format. The book is neither traditional novel nor graphic novel: Selznick mixes pages of text with pages of wordless illustrations which flesh out characters and advance the plot.

Hugo Cabret is an orphan who lived in the train station, where his uncle keeps the clocks running. But his uncle has disappeared, so Hugo keeps the clocks going while trying to fix a mysterious automaton his father left behind. Add in a toy peddler, an audacious young girl, a bookseller, and an adolescent cinephile, and you have a recipe for success!  (And we learn something about early cinema to boot.)

Although the book is 550 pages, it took about two hours to read (due to all the picture pages): It was the most pleasurable and easy two hours I’ve spent in a long time!