How racist are you? Is it a gun or a cell phone?

by Jamie Rhein on

In Diversity Inc, there is an article about a pop psychology test from the University of Chicago. The test, self-administered on-line, runs through various photos of black and white men who are either holding a gun or something else. The test taker presses the “/ ” key to shoot the guy with the gun, or presses the “z” key to put the gun away.

The idea is for the test taker to see how racist he or she is in terms of who he or she thinks is more likely to be carrying a gun. I took the test and found out that I would have been shot dead several times over since my reaction time was so darned slow. I scored into the negative numbers. It didn’t matter if the shooter was black or white.

The test is pretty slick, even if, one is not prone to give much stock to this sort of study. The pondering about who is packing a gun reminds me of those discussions I had in college with friends of mine. We wondered what each of us would do if walking alone at night. If a man was coming, who crossed to the other side, and under what circumstances? Each of us admitted that our radar went up regardless of who the man was and how fast he was coming up behind us or towards us.

I don’t tend to think of people walking around with guns. I do notice the no guns stickers on signs since carrying a gun is legal in Ohio. As far as I can tell from my terrible score, when I look at a gun, I see a wallet or a cell phone. It doesn’t matter who is holding it.

Here is a link to the test to see how you do. Nicholas Kristof recently wrote an Op-Ed piece for the New York Times about this study where he expresses some dismay at his own results.

What I think is missing from the data is the background of the person taking the test. I wonder how much age, sex, and whether a person grew up in a city or in the country has any bearing on reactions? I also wonder if people who travel often are more likely to see a wallet? Or do our experiences have nothing to do with our trigger finger? I also wonder if, when we are traveling in a country where violent crime is rare, we react differently? I would guess yes.

CNN reporter and business travel expert gets caught with meth in Central Park

by Jamie Rhein on

When we were in Montana two summers ago, I noticed anti-meth billboards everywhere. The billboards were part of a media blitz to get teens and adults to not start this dreadful drug habit that rots teeth, creates pock marks and wastes away ones body and mind. For people hooked on methamphetamine, the aim was to get them unhooked. In the small town in Montana where we go each year, I have known people who showed the signs of being addicts, and it wasn’t pretty.

According to this Billings Gazette news story from last September, the media blitz has worked and meth use is down more than 50% in Montana. With the news stories about the hazards of meth use that have appeared, it always surprises me to find out when prominent people with much to lose dabble in the stuff. Such is the case with Richard Quest, a CNN International reporter.

Quest, who hosts “Business Traveler” and another program called “Quest,” was in New York City’s Central Park at 3:40 a.m. this morning and was arrested, according to this New York Times tidbit. You aren’t supposed to be in Central Park after 1 a.m. or before 6 a.m. That’s one no-no. The other no-no involves the Ziploc bag with meth in it that Quest had in his pocket. These two missteps have him facing drug charges. He did say the meth was in his pocket before the police found it.

Since methamphetamine is not particularly helpful in the long run for travelers–it may keep you feeling peppy for awhile, but can lead to memory loss and a myriad of other woes, I wonder what Quest was thinking. Not to mention that having a drug record gets in the way of travel to the United States. Quest is British. Look at Amy Winehouse who couldn’t attend the Grammy Awards.

Either life as a prominent CNN reporter is not as terrific as it looks and makes chilling out difficult, or it helps one lose track of common sense. Or, I have no idea. And one more thing. What was Quest thinking when he headed into Central Park in the wee hours of the morning? That’s nuts. Doesn’t he pay attention to the news?

The end of Nalgene bottles in Canada might be near

by Iva Skoch on

Canada might be the first country to declare Nalgene bottles toxic. Not just Nalgene bottles, but anything containing bisphenol-a, or B.P.A., a chemical widely used in plastics for baby bottles, beverage and food containers as well as linings in food cans.

Canada would be the first to make a health finding against B.P.A., which has been shown to disrupt the hormonal systems of animals, NY Times reports. United States Department of Health and Human Services’ National Toxicology Program endorsed a scientific panel’s finding that there was “some concern” about neutral and behavioral changes in humans who consume B.P.A.

The public and industry will have 60 days to comment on the designation once it is released, setting into motion a two-year process that could lead to a partial or complete ban on food-related uses of plastics made using B.P.A.

The end of the popular Nalgene bottle as we know it might be near.

How long is too long on a tarmac?

by Jamie Rhein on

Many people, who have flown frequently, have probably had their plane taxi out to the runway and sit and sit and sit for what seemed like an extraordinarily long amount of time. Peering out the tiny windows, people have wondered, “Why me? Why now?”

They’ve possibly fiddled with the window shade, putting it up for a bit and down for a bit for something to do. After awhile, they can list several items from the airline’s duty free catalog and which movies are on which route. If left sitting there long enough, people may wonder what the tipping point is for a nervous breakdown and if they, perhaps, have wandered into the set of a horror movie. They may even curse their fate that if they must be stuck on an object that’s supposed to move, it’s not the London Eye, the world’s largest Ferris wheel. If stuck on that thing, people get better service than on an airplane.

With summer travel rapidly approaching, the being stuck out on a tarmac scenarios have not improved much since last year. The gap between what passengers think is a time they can be stuck on an airplane without going bonkers, and the airline industry’s version, is not any closer because there hasn’t been a length of time established for when extra services need to kick in. Airlines view”Trigger thresholds,” within a range from “30 minutes to two hours on arrival, and from 90 minutes to three hours on departure.” When it comes to deplaning, thresholds “range from 30 minutes to five hours on arrival and and between one and five hours on departure.” What is to occur during delays isn’t established either. Do customers get a snack? water? sympathy?

According to this AP article about this stuck on a tarmac issue, to avoid spending part of the summer in a metal cylinder with wings, unsure of when life will move forward, don’t fly in or out of O’Hare in Chicago, Minneapolis/St. Paul or any of the three major New York City airports. Here’s a detail that gives some insight into why being stuck is not uncommon. Northwest Airlines has 56 departures scheduled for a 15-minute window in Minneapolis/St. Paul. That number is physically impossible to meet.

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“Bizarre Foods” on the Travel Channel: Season 2, China

by Jamie Rhein on

Location: Mostly Guangzhou, China, a city at the mouth of the Pearl River, about 100 miles northwest of Hong Kong. Until the 1980s, this city was called Canton and is the home of Cantonese style food. Because of its location, it’s the largest trading post, thus has a vast assortment of things to eat and enormous markets for picking up ingredients. Andrew Zimmern pointed out that it also has the most restaurants per capita in all of China.

Episode Rating: 3 sheep testicles (out of 4) using Aaron’s system from his post on the Minnesota episode.

Summary: Although the China episode wasn’t the travel spree of the Bolivia one, I began to pine for real deal Chinese food and fantasized about moving to Guangzhou. Except for the worms, the starfish, the chicken feet and the jelly fish, nothing Zimmern ate seemed all that bizarre–or unusual. The focus of the episode wasn’t so much on bizarre foods, but on the culinary arts of Cantonese cooking and the philosophy around it. Perhaps, the normalcy is because I’ve wandered in such markets and know that squid-on-a-stick, as gangley as it looks, is delicious. It’s my husband’s and daughter’s favorite street food.

Zimmern did explain that there is a saying about Cantonese food that goes something like this: “Anything that walks, swims, crawls, or flies with its back to heaven is edible.” The key to great taste is with freshness. Fresh ingredients makes the best food.

I first got hunger pangs during Zimmern’s eat-fest at Guangzhou Restaurant where dim sum is wheeled from table to table on carts. You pick what you want to eat as it passes by. As Zimmern explained, dim sum originated in Guangzhou at the time of the Silk Road’s heyday when travelers needed snacks to take with them on their journeys. At this meal, Zimmern sucked and gnawed away on fried chicken feet–which he loved. He turned up his nose at the stir fried milk with shrimp dish and proclaimed the braised and steamed abalone as melt in your mouth delicious. The duck feet stuffed with ground shrimp was also terrific.

The next stop was Jin Ling Lou Restaurant where the offerings wandered into the unusual. Turtle meat soup, pigeon, arachnids and suckling pig. Maybe not the suckling pig, except it was whole, and Zimmern commented on the earwax and hair.

During a walk through Qingping Market, Zimmern talked about the Chi, of foods. Rabbit meat has a cooling energy flow while chicken’s energy is hot. A balanced meal includes both. Next stop was the 5-star restaurant Summer Palace at the Shangri-La Hotel where executive chef Jacky Chan, cooked up jelly fish salad, frogs legs, hairy crab and braised pork. Zimmern mentioned the number of ingredients in many Chinese dishes. One sauce has 30 plus items.

More arduous than making sauces is noodle making. At the Jiu Mao Jiu Noodle Restaurant, Zimmern gave noodle making a try. Experts can make one noodles 50 to 60 meters long. If I were in Guangzhou, I’d head here. The noodle dishes sounded yummy. Truly. Nothing strange about them.

Zimmern’s foray outside Guangzhou included a stop in Qinxin, a mountain town that specializes in fungus. Two dishes I’d love to try are the river fish with fungus and the morel mushrooms stuffed with pork and then breaded and fried. The last stop was a family farm where all the food was grown and caught by the family members. Again, all 12 dishes looked and sounded so good, that I was salivating by the end of the episode.

One theme that showed up over and over again was the generosity that Chinese people show through their food. I can vouch that if a person in China or Taiwan takes you out for a meal, you’ll be in for a visual and tasty treat where dish after dish appears. No one expects you to eat chicken feet if you don’t want to.

To find out more about the food on the episode and the principles of Chinese food, check out Zimmern’s blog.