I never realized how “American” I was until I had to do business in Brazil a number of year’s ago. After sitting through a nearly two hour lunch and then retreating for a ‘cafezhinho’ (shot glass sized cup of delicious, syrupy sweet, strong coffee) with still no mention of the business about which we had…
DetailsNancy Olson as Betsy Carlisle in 1961’s The Absent Minded Professor vs. Anna Faris as Sam Sparks in 2009’s Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs…We’ve come a long way, right? Not really. One of the joys of having kids (or borrowing other people’s kids) is for the excuse to indulge nostalgic yearnings by re-watching favorite childhood…
DetailsAs someone who can get a little too much caught up in a ‘true confessions’ trap when looking at unconscious bias, I always admire someone who can talk about stereotypes and prejudice in a way that is humorous, but makes a point. That would be Maz Jobrani, an Iranian-American stand-up comedian who “is breaking down…
DetailsMy dad and I came to an impasse again recently. It happens whenever we get into a conversation about race. Or more specifically, a conversation about something that happened in the news or real life where people of different races were involved. As in “they believe this way” from him, and “you can’t call an…
DetailsI know I talk about about how important it is in advertising to have characters who reflect/look like your target market, but the young man in this ad for the Chevrolet Aveo captures me perfectly…Just ask any mother (parent) who has tried to get their child off to school on time in the morning! The young/hip guy having this…
DetailsDillon and I were driving home the other night and I was excitedly telling him about a band called “Sax in the City” of all sax players that would be playing at the Hyde Park Jazz Festival that took place on Saturday. Dillon had just started taking saxophone lessons last week. “It’s a group of like 8…
DetailsWhen I write about attending cultural events or ethnic restaurants with my son, I often hear Carmen Van Kerhove’s voice in my head (not literally, but from her blogs, anti-racist parent and racialicious) saying “Enough of the Celebrating, time to get down to business!” I believe that the appreciation or curiosity about other cultures (as opposed…
DetailsI’m used to the anthropological idea of cultural equivalence when talking about things like translation or kreplach versus tortellini, but I found the presumably viral listing of 32+ versions of the Jewish prayer song “Adon Olum” that showed up in my in-box today fascinating. For a ‘people’ who were almost eradicated by the Holocaust and who have only had a homeland for 60 years,…
DetailsI’m calling Mae Jemison. And then I’m calling former eBay CEO Meg Whitman. And if that doesn’t work, I’m calling any of a number of outstanding women leaders in Computer Science…. Sure women still lag in jobs in Computer Science (only 22% of all Computer Science degrees when to women in 2004-2005 according to the NYTimes),…
DetailsDid you hear about the controversy around the “Microsoft Photo Swap” last month? Microsoft turned a black man into a white man using Photoshop to reuse a photo on a website that ran in Polish, intended exclusively for Poland. Not sure of any backlash in Poland, but people in the US found out, expressed outrage, and Microsoft apologized…
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