Thank you to Chad for writing this note for me during the last quiz night. Words fail me.

Biang-Biang Mian

This post is intended to serve as a diversion from the cruel temptress that is T-R-I-V-I-A.

Several weeks ago Julien was kind enough to introduce some of us to 'biang-biang mian' at a Shanxi restaurant. I'm not a noodle person, but these were unbelievably good. Not only are the noodles delicious, but the character used for biang is interesting in that it does not actually exist in the Chinese lexicon.

There seems to be some story behind the creation of the character, but I suspect that the method for writing varies slightly by restaurant. That's Beijing reviews a restaurant where it is possible to get your noodles for free if you can write the character correctly.

I make the stroke-count to be 51. Does anyone else get a different number?

UPDATE: Prince Roy

Chuanrgantic

Now that's what I call chuanr! I suggest you guys check out the Crescent Moon Xinjiang restaurant on Dongsi Liutiao off Chaoyangmen Beixiaojie. I think the size of the chuanr serves as a good enough review.

Raiders....ASSSEMMMBLLLEE

Hey guys,

I was talking to my friend Jackie, and she told me about this place called Lush out in Wudaokou which has QuizBowl Wednesdays. It's pretty much a trivia night, same as TTB, starting at 8, and ending with prizes for the top teams. Apparently it gets packed, so perhaps our team can meet there and chuanr the shit outta everyone else.

Wastin' Away in Meh-garitaville

meh

Of course, moron!

Moron was originally a scientific term, coined by psychologist Henry H. Goddard from a Greek word meaning "foolish" and used to describe a person with a genetically determined mental age between 8 and 12 on the Binet scale. It was also once applied to people with an IQ of 51-70 and was a step up from "imbecile" (IQ of 26-50) and two steps up from "idiot" (IQ of 0-25). The word moron, along with "retarded" and "feeble-minded" (among others), was once considered a valid descriptor in the psychological community, though these words have all now passed into common slang use, exclusively in a detrimental context.

From Wikipedia.

Pop-culture Quiz

If we don't want to have this bitter taste of defeat in our mouths next Wednesday then we need to bone up on our 70's and 80's pop-culture.

Here's a good place to start:

1970's Billboard's Quiz

Chuanrtastic

Ladies and Gents, I give you the first chuanr cover boy.

Logistics

Shall we try and make arrangements for tonight through the ROTLC blog？

Need a reply on how many people are coming.

Also, will anyone we able to get there early to save seats?

Dragon Boat Festival

A question on the dragon-boat festival might pop up tonight:

Duanwu Festival (端午節, Duānwū Jié) or Dragon Boat Festival is a traditional Chinese festival held on the fifth day of the fifth month of the Chinese calendar. It is also known as the Double Fifth.^{[citation needed]} It has since been celebrated, in various ways, in other parts of East Asia as well. In the West, it's commonly known as Dragon Boat Festival.

The exact origins of Duan Wu are unclear, but one traditional view holds that the festival memorializes the Chinese poet Qu Yuan (c. 340 BC-278 BC) of the Warring States Period. He committed suicide by drowning himself in a river because he was disgusted by the corruption of the Chu government. The local people, knowing him to be a good man, decided to throw food into the river to feed the fish so they would not eat Qu Yuan's body. They also sat on long, narrow paddle boats called dragon boats, and tried to scare the fish away by the thundering sound of drums aboard the boat and the fierce looking carved dragon head on the boat's prow. Other thoughts are that after Qu Yaun committed suicide, that because the people loved him so much, they raced out to recover his body, and the races signify the boats skimming across the water to find him. However, researches have also revealed that the festival is also a celebration that is characteristic of ancient Chinese agrarian society: the celebration of the harvest of winter wheat, because similar celebrations had long existed in many other parts of China where Qu Yuan was not known. As interactions between Chinese residing in different regions increased, these similar festivals were eventually merged.

In the early years of the Chinese Republic, Duan Wu was also celebrated as "Poets' Day," due to Qu Yuan's status as China's first poet of personal renown.

Today, people eat bamboo-wrapped steamed rice dumplings called zongzi (the food originally intended to feed the fish) and race dragon boats in memory of Qu Yuan's death.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_boat_festival

Duanwu Festival

I know we can access it now, but here's the info on today's Chinese holiday, Duanwu Jie, from Wikipedia. You might also want to check out the Baidu entry in Chinese.

***********************************************

Duanwu Festival (端午節, Duānwū Jié) or Dragon Boat Festival is a traditional Chinese festival held on the fifth day of the fifth month of the Chinese calendar. It is also known as the Double Fifth.^{[citation needed]} It has since been celebrated, in various ways, in other parts of East Asia as well. In the West, it's commonly known as Dragon Boat Festival.

The exact origins of Duan Wu are unclear, but one traditional view holds that the festival memorializes the Chinese poet Qu Yuan (c. 340 BC-278 BC) of the Warring States Period. He committed suicide by drowning himself in a river because he was disgusted by the corruption of the Chu government. The local people, knowing him to be a good man, decided to throw food into the river to feed the fish so they would not eat Qu Yuan's body. They also sat on long, narrow paddle boats called dragon boats, and tried to scare the fish away by the thundering sound of drums aboard the boat and the fierce looking carved dragon head on the boat's prow. Other thoughts are that after Qu Yaun committed suicide, that because the people loved him so much, they raced out to recover his body, and the races signify the boats skimming across the water to find him. However, researches have also revealed that the festival is also a celebration that is characteristic of ancient Chinese agrarian society: the celebration of the harvest of winter wheat, because similar celebrations had long existed in many other parts of China where Qu Yuan was not known. As interactions between Chinese residing in different regions increased, these similar festivals were eventually merged.

In the early years of the Chinese Republic, Duan Wu was also celebrated as "Poets' Day," due to Qu Yuan's status as China's first poet of personal renown.

Today, people eat bamboo-wrapped steamed rice dumplings called zongzi (the food originally intended to feed the fish) and race dragon boats in memory of Qu Yuan's death.

Gummo

Wikipedia Marx brothers

Just so you can check that there were actually five Marx brothers (as well as one who died in infancy).

Workaround Working?

This should have been a comment to Serwat's post, but as my workaround has yet to work properly, I am writing another post. Did everyone else get their Firefox fix to work? I was surprised to learn that some work networks are stricter than others... could that be the case with ours? Anyway, I'll try again.

Update: The fix works like a chuanr!! When I had originally tried I had used a proxy.pac file that I made myself, but apparently I didn't make it properly. I used the one Serwat sent and it works wonderfully! And Wikipedia too.... nice!

Question

Everytime I log onto this Blog, the list of Raiders on the right side changes order. Why does it do that?

I suppose if you all can't view this page, yet, you may not know what I'm talking about. So, go download Firefox and setup the proxy and check back.

Unfettered Net Access

I am using the Firefox workaround to access blogspot. It does not work at the office (more complicated security settings, I think), but it works well for me at home and for other friends on their computers.

1. Download Firefox

2. Check the email I will send you.

3. The email will contain an attachment called "proxy.pac". Save the attachment to your C: drive.

4. Follow the instructions in the email to set your Firefox proxy settings.

5. Blogspot/Wikipedia/whatever to your heart's desire.

This will work on PC's and Mac's, though the friend's Mac that I set up did teach me that Mac's don't have C: drives. So, in that case, for #3 above, save it in your applications and when you get the part of the instructions in the email where it tells you to cut & paste something, use this instead: /Applications/proxy.pac. (I'll add this note to the email, too.)

Let me know if you need a hand with it.

ciao,
Serwat

Posting and Reading "Radiers"

Hey Raiders,

We're still working on figuring out the best way to actually view the blog at its official address, but until then I would like to offer the following ideas for posting and viewing:

Posting
1. After you accept the invitation to join the blog as an author, you can go to your dashboard/settings in Blogger and decide on a unique mail address to which you can directly send posts to the blog via email. That's what I'm trying right now with this post.

Viewing
1. If you use a feed reader (like Google Reader) you can subscribe to the RSS feed for the blog, allowing you to have all posts delivered to you without having to go to the actual site. You won't be able to comment, but at least you can browse the posts.
2. In addition to unipeak.net, which seems down right now, you can view the blog via anonymouse.org. Just paste in the blog URL and hit Enter.

Another Geography Game

The complete link didn't appear in my comment to Ben's entry...so, I've posted it here instead. Its a geography game about the middle east and northern Africa:

http://www.rethinkingschools.org/just_fun/games/mapgame.html

Geography Games

An on-line quiz based on the GeoBee Challenge held by National Geographic each year.

http://www.nationalgeographic.com/geobee/

Find the location of a country on a global map. If you enlarge the map size it will help you find the smaller countries.

http://www.gamedesign.jp/flash/worldmap/worldmap.html

New Seven Wonders Vote

Likely future quiz fodder.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19196188/