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Twitter: @taos

May each and every one of you have a very Happy Thanksgiving.

I am grateful for your readership, your interesting and intelligent comments and your generous feedback. As always, I appreciate it. Thank you!

If you don’t already have Thanksgiving meal plans, the very-American restaurant Kansas (even their toilets are imported from the U.S.) offers excellent Turkey and Pecan pie options today only. Their complete Thanksgiving Day meal costs 75 pesos.

You can see their Turkey-Day menu here.

But they fill up fast and don’t take reservations, so get there early.

Taos

*Next year I’ll have a new Thanksgiving Day joke

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Politicians around the world have a reputation for being dishonest.

This is particularly true in Argentina, where cynicism about public life seems to have no boundaries. Politicians here are vilified constantly. Even those who were once adored are now scorned.

But for Argentine readers, especially, it’s important to note that it’s not only local politicians that have reputations for being less than completely transparent.

As this hilarious video points out, U.S. politicians too have long been the butt of many jokes related to honesty, or the lack thereof.

Of course, not all politicians are bad. Many are honest, hard-working patriots dedicated to public service. I have worked for two such people, a U.S. senator and a Member of Parliament in the UK.

For those who don’t know him, Johnny Carson was a legendary American comedian. He was best known for hosting the Tonight Show for 30 years from 1962 through 1992.

*Hat Tip to JDF for this.

The above quote is from Argentine President Cristina Fernández last Friday.

In preparing for the country’s bicentennial celebration, she said,”The truth is that God wanted me to be president of the bicentennial.”

Dr. Lecter, the artist who made the above poster, kindly provided this for The Argentine Post.

The doctor regularly publishes his political humor at Perfil.com. You can see his Perfil blog here.

Dr. Lecter, the creative artist who made the above poster, kindly provided this translated version of a piece he published previously at Perfil.com, where he regularly posts his political humor.

You can see more of his work here, on his Perfil.com blog.

All right, let’s acknowledge the patently absurd supposition underlying the headline for this post.

Beauty, as the old saw goes, is in the eye of the beholder.

In different cultures consensus tends to emerge regarding what’s considered beautiful and what isn’t. Some scientific research indicates people tend to equate symmetrical features with beauty.

The thinking is that symmetry in nature – particularly in facial bones – denotes health, strength, genetic normality, which, in turn, denotes survivability, which is what potential mates look for in others. After all, if you’re going to have offspring, you do want them to survive, right?

But while symmetry and beauty have been linked, no deductive argument can be made in favor of one person being objectively more beautiful than another. Healthier? Certainly. Stronger? Sure. But more beautiful? What is beauty, exactly? It seems easier to recognize than to define.

Whatever the case, the observation among Argentina’s talking heads, political junkies and aesthetes is that former president Néstor Kirchner had a knack for appointing “ugly” public servants while his wife, the generally impeccably dressed and fashion-passionate President, appoints more attractive types to office.

You be the judge.

*PHOTO: From top left to bottom right: Former economy minister Martín Lousteau, Central Bank President Mercedes Marco del Pont, Economy Minister Amado (literally, “the loved one”) Boudou, Commerce Secretary Guillermo Moreno, Presidential Cabinet Chief Aníbal Fernández, Planning Minister Julio de Vido. The top row peeps were appointed by President Cristina Fernández, the second row by her husband, former president Néstor Kirchner.

**Kudos to AR.

Happy Thanksgiving!

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Men can be pigs. And they can be most swine-like when it comes to bathroom behavior. They often don’t clean up after themselves and they frequently don’t wash their hands after relieving themselves. It’s disgusting, as women know all too well.

A 2005 study of bathroom etiquette in the US found that 90% of American women wash their hands after using the bathroom while just 75% of American males clean up. That percentage for men had actually fallen to 66% by 2007, according to a newer version of the study.

As quoted in the NY Times, Michael T. Osterholm, chairman of the public health committee of the American Society of Microbiologists, which commissioned the survey, said he couldn’t explain the difference:

“I don’t think anyone knows why men are so much less likely to wash than women. People who use urinals probably think they don’t need to wash their hands. But the overall message is that most Americans do wash their hands after using the bathroom, even though we have a long way to go.”

We have a long way to go, indeed, especially in Argentina, where poor bathroom infrastructure tends to promote bad behavior.

Still, that 66% figure for American males is higher than I would expect. My sense has always been that this percentage is actually much lower, both in the US and elsewhere. In Argentina, a lack of urinal “walls” and a dearth of soap are the main culprits.

In the US, the more educated a person is, the more likely he is to wash his hands. Interestingly, however, wealthier people are a bit less likely to wash their hands than are poorer people, according to the 2007 survey. I’m unaware of any bathroom hygiene studies in Argentina. However, my impression has always been that males here surpass even their American brethren in their abuse of public bathroom facilities. My suspicion is that this is related to bathroom infrastructure and not to any inherent cultural difference.

One of the worst violations of male bathroom etiquette here, or in any toilet-using nation, occurs when a man decides not to pee in a urinal but rather in a stall.

There, in the stall, where a person is meant to sit down, men often maintain their standing position and proceed to urinate from above, sprinkling all over the toilet seat with reckless abandon. The consequences of this, unbeknownst to men themselves, are hygienic disaster and aesthetic abomination. But men don’t care. They sprinkle away with ease. There’s apparently no Freudian mechanism that inspires introspection, disgust, guilt, shame or any other reflection on the public ramifications of their allegedly private act.

Male bathrooms such as those at bars like the microbrewery Buller in Recoleta, or even at the über modern MALBA museum, facilitate this dastardly deed by not providing walls or dividers between urinals. The worst abuser of this interior design tragedy are movie theater complexes like the Village Recoleta. In male restrooms at the Village, it can be common right after a movie to see more men urinating in the stalls than in the urinals.

The reason for this problem seems pretty straightforward. Men apparently don’t feel comfortable urinating while standing immediately adjacent to other men. Now, perhaps there is some Freudian reason for that. Whatever the cause, when men don’t have walls separating urinals, they tend to avoid the urinals altogether and head straight to the stalls, which do have walls, so they can urinate away without worrying if other men can see them.

This seems to occur more in male Buenos Aires bathrooms than in other places. The reason? Perhaps Argentine males are more sensitive about publicizing their bathroom behavior? Or perhaps there are simply fewer urinal dividers in Buenos Aires? Or perhaps it’s simply a misperception. After all, bathroom behavior varies from city to city and from establishment to establishment, according to the 2007 survey.

The study showed that only 57% of men in Atlanta washed their hands while 78% of men in Chicago did. So whatever the real percentage is for Porteño men, it may be unfair to compare their behavior to an entire country (the US) when perhaps it should be compared to other cities. Finally, there is no study either in the US or in Argentina that measures the percentage of “stall urinators” compared with proper “urinal urinators.” Who would fund such a study anyway? And what would we call it? “The 2009 Survey of Male Public Bathroom Behavior” or “Men and the Urination Station: a Complete Behavioral Study.”

Whatever the case, all of this leads to a simple question: Given the way men behave in bathrooms, why don’t architects and interior designers preempt such reptilian behavior by putting dividers between urinals? To not do so is to invite men to behave like, well, men.

Until an answer is forthcoming, the above video provides a fun, comedic look at the problem of bathroom etiquette and its implications for “civilization” here, there and everywhere.

Will the real Seinfeld co-creator and Curb Your Enthusiasm star Larry David please stand up?

Is this him here on the left?

Or is it this guy here below on the right?

Or is the person in this photo here really Carlos Bianchi, genius Argentine soccer coach? Or are all of these people really the same person?

Both were born in cities that start with the letter “B,” one in Brooklyn, the other in Buenos Aires. Both were born in the 1940s, one in 1949, the other in 1947. Both are extremely successful in their fields, one in soccer the other in television. Both are bald and wear glasses. And both appear on The Argentine Post. Seriously, can you tell them apart?

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Cristina Fernández had an awkward moment at this week’s G20 summit in London. Here in this video Fernández is shown alongside the other G20 presidents just before they do a group photo shoot.

Fernández is seen standing in line as Barack Obama approaches her. She extends her hand, thinking Obama is about to great her. But in reality Obama is looking past Fernández at another leader, to whom he actually does extend his hand, completely unaware that Fernández was expecting him to greet her instead. Obama leaves her totally hanging. Ouch! This is painful to watch.

Fernández, aware that she has just been thoroughly dissed, even if unintentionally, gracefully retracts her hand and brushes off the awkward moment. The moment itself probably didn’t bother her, but you know she will be steaming at the local press as they repeat this video over and over again. The clip is funny but also uncomfortable to watch. The dis was obviously unintended, but still….

Curiously, the president’s press office posted the following photo online for reporters to download. It appears to be a picture of the exact same moment when Obama was walking toward Fernández “to greet her.” The photo contains this caption: “The president of the United States Barack Obama approaches president Cristina Fernández to greet her moments before the summit’s official photo is taken.”

But this begs the question: If Obama actually did greet the president at this point, why not include that picture as opposed to this one, which shows him approaching her, sans the actual greeting?

The answer, apparently, is that Obama didn’t actually greet her, at least not at this exact moment. But if that’s the case, which, presumably, the Casa Rosada is aware of, why would they post the picture with a caption that is, evidently, false?

A friend of The Argentine Post submitted this photo of the classic product “Assy,” a cure for lice (“piojos”) It’s one of a growing list of hilarious, if poorly-conceived product names. This one even comes with a fine steel comb to force those little buggers out.

“Assy, It’s Classy!”

One of the fun things about living here is seeing how people sometimes unintentionally misuse and abuse the English language. (The same thing happens in my small hometown in Colorado, USA, where people routinely butcher the Spanish language.) But this weekend I may have seen the funniest example yet. Had I been in a porn shop, everything would have made perfect sense. But I was in a hardware store, so the item on sale, a “McPussy” glass cleaner, seemed a bit out of place. Maybe it wasn’t just a hardware store after all? And no, I didn’t buy it!