Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving or what I say Turkey Day is coming up. Now Thanksgiving isn't as popular as its sister Christmas, but it is still as fun. With the notorious amount of food and having a a week off from school you have to love it.

Everyone knows that Thanksgiving started in Plymouth Massachusetts in 1621. After a very successful growing season (all thanks to the Native American Squanto) they decided to share the food with the the Native Americans. The feast consisted of things we don't usually think of for Thanksgiving. There was food like squash, corn ,seafood and wild animals like geese and ducks. Now, Thanksgiving didn't become a national holiday until 1863 when President Abraham Lincoln announced it to be celebrated every fourth Thursday of November. Thanksgiving has commercialized over the years. If you hadn't noticed; the main part of
Thanksgiving is what we eat and the big thing would have to be the turkey.Around 46 million turkeys are eaten on this special day. If the average cost of a turkey is $1.19 per pound and weighs around 16 pounds, that's about $875,840,000 spent just on one piece of food. That's enough with the turkey I thinks it's time to shine some light on the other important foods that take part in a regular Thanksgiving dinner. 60 million boxes of the stuffing brand Stove Top are sold each Turkey day. Since one box cost $2.99 that times 60 million is a grand total of $179,400,000 every year. Cranberry sauce, everyone has got to love some sweet tarty cranberry sauce with their meal. Ocean Spray sells 72 million cans of cranberry sauce during the holidays. One can cost $2.39 times that by 72 million and you get $172,080,000. Last but not least is the best part of the whole entire meal. The desserts. I prefer cupcakes but I think pies will do just fine. Costco almost every year sells about 1 million pumpkin pies during the week of Thanksgiving. Given that each pie cost $5.99 each they make about $5,990,000 that week just on pies.
From this point of view Thanksgiving seems very expensive. But wait until Christmas rolls around, people spend like it's their last day on earth. The statistics were brought to you by GoBankingRates. Here's a fun fact: Did you know that Thanksgiving is the busiest traveling holiday. The reason it wouldn't be Christmas is because most people like to spend Christmas with their intermediate family.

Fast Food Ads vs. Reality

We all have seen the food ads. Whether they're from Mcdonald's, Wendy's or Burger King the food in commercials look good- better than good delicious. Every time I see one, it makes me want to hop in the car and head on ever to Mickey D's and get a large fries and Mocha Frappe. Who can deny everyone has had that mouth watering experience. But once you get there that feeling has died down because of what you receive instead of what ordered. Rather than having a Frappe with tons of whipped cream and carefully drizzled chocolate sauce on top you get a cup that looks like it contains chocolate milk and barely enough whipped cream and chocolate sauce to see. Now I'm over exaggerating a little with the drink but I can otherwise with the other foods you are handed. Below are some images of what the advertisements promise and what you are really getting.
Shocking isn't it. The advertisement is twice as big as the actual Whopper and you can barely see the tomato and lettuce. I wonder if they forgot about the pickles and onions. I think it's safe to say that the real burger is more than just fluffed up for the ad.

Next up is the McDonald's Big Mac. Notorious for having 2 beef patties and a special sauce to tie it all together. Both burgers are close in size but the real thing isn't as attractive as the ads. The actual Big Mac looks like it it missing a patty. All in all I would give who ever made this burger a C+

This one is ridiculous. First of all you can't even see what's inside. Heck, I wouldn't even know what it is if it wasn't for the ad. The two tacos look like pieces of tan paper stained with oil. Who ever made this needs to be fired immediately. The tacos don't even look edible. I'm Sorry but who made gets a F-.


So There you have it. The real thing verses what we are showed in the ads. Either while watching TV or driving down the road we may never get what we expect. Pictures were taken by Dario D. from aphaila.com

Best Diguise

An aged wrinkled old Caucasian man boarded a plane in Hong Kong and a young, youthful landed in Vancouver. Canadian government is calling this an astonishing case of disguised identity. Halfway through the Oct. 29th flight the man entered the planes bathroom where he removed a complex and very detailed mask. As he returned to his seat his true self, an Asian man in his early 20's. According to an "Intelligent Alert" broadcast by the Canadian Border Services Agency "Information was received from Air Canada Corporate Security saying there might be a possible imposter on a flight the originated from Hong Kong. The passenger in question was examined at the beginning of the take off to be an elderly white male to appear to have young looking hands. During the flight the man went to the lavoratory and came out as an Asian looking male that looked as though he was in his 20's." The Canada Border Services would not confirm that they had "intercepted and detained the traveler attempting to enter the Canada under false preferences." A spokesmen from the Canada Immigration Ministry and Air Canada confirmed the details according to the incident included in the CBSA bulletin. Though his name was not released the man was met at the gate by Canadian security officials. He stated his refugee status after being escorted through customs. The officials searched his luggage and found a disguise making kit which included a leather cap, glasses and a sweater. He admitted he went on the plane with the mask on and within a few hours he removed it. It was said that the man swapped boarding passes with an American born in 1955. After this incident the airline requires all passengers to show a passport before getting on international flights leaving Hong Kong.

iPhone VS. Droid

The iPhone has always been the phone of the 21st century. With the face time and 3G speed browsing who could deny it. The phone may have some problems, but what phone doesn't. Either way nothing that came out has ever been better or even compared. That was until the new line from Verizon called the Droid hit the market.The are three different Droid cellphones. The first one is the Droid Incredible by HTC it has a 3.7" touchscreen the can be used for game playing or web browsing. Next up is the Droid 2. Unlike the Droid Incredible the Droid 2 is created by Motorola. Though it doesn't have a touchscreen it has a whole new redesigned QWERTY keyboard. Last but not least is the Droid X. With a screen that is 4.3" it's the biggest out of the 3. Not only is the screen huge but, you can shoot in HD resolution.

Now that we have the Droid phones covered it is time to shine some light on the iPhone 4. This phone has something called a retina display. Since it is a retina display the pixel density is so high our eyes can't tell each individual pixel apart. Face time is something else the iPhone has. In case you didn't know face time is like video chatting but through the phone. With the iPhone 4 you can run third party apps and change between the just as fast. The last new thing about the iPhone 4 is the HD video recording. With that, every video you record will be high definition.

The iPhone and Droid has many similarities and differences, but now is time for the face off. The first thing we will be judging is the display. With the 4.3 inch touch screen I would think the droid is a clear winner here. But clearer is the tie breaker. You see since the iPhone has the retina display that gives it a much higher result ion. Another thing is Apple uses a technology called IPS that means the phone looks and preforms better when it is in sunlight. Basically it all depends on what you like. Do u like a bigger screen or a clearer one? Next up is the camera. The Droid X has higher mega pixels but the iPhone has a front face that allows us to video chat. Both phones have shoot in high definition but since the iPhone has the front facing camera it's the winner of this round. Round three is up and we are talking about battery life. The iPhone 4 has an amazing battery life. You can get up to 7 hours of talk and 16 hours of wifi and 3G browsing plus a whole bunch more. Sadly Motorola hasn't yet release the official battery life for the Droid X but they stated the battery life will indeed be larger and the processor will be faster than the original. Still it won't be as good iPhone 4. So once again the winner is iPhone. The last thing we will be taking a look at is Network. The iPhone 4 is available on AT&T. Now, is not only known for selling the iPhone but for it's dropped calls and bad iPhone traffic in the metropolitan areas. Luckily the Droid is on the Verizon network which has been shown to have better handled the smart phone traffic. So in the last round the winner hands down is the Droid.

It's time to tally up the scores. 1 point goes to the iPhone 4 for its incredible retina screen and one more for the outstanding battery life. That makes it a total of 2 points out of 3. That means the last 1 go to the Droid. For the best network. But you might have noticed there were 4 rounds. Like I said the winner of the First round depends on your taste. Whether you like for the text and the pictures to be displayed bigger or for the screen to be clearer and have a higher resolution. Either way all the phones are great in just depends on what you like.