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" How unfair is it that snowboarding guys can look as skanky as they want? If they don't shower for five days, who cares? So long as they tweak out more amplitude than than the next guy, go bigger and cleaner, they could be the scroungiest dirtballs on the slopes and still score sponsorships. But girls? No matter how good their tricks are, how high their jumps go, the pro snowboarding girls have got to work their sex appeal, watch their figures, stay in shape in season and out. Their bodies, not just their skills, make them marketable: boobs on boards. "
― Justina Chen , Girl Overboard
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" The Great Trigonometrical Survey
WHEN I WAS IN SECOND grade, I did my should-be-famous person report on one Nain Singh, who surveyed over 2,000 kilometers from Nepal to China. That alone might not sound entirely worthy of a report, but consider he accomplished this in 1865 and on threat of death. Tibet wasn’t so tolerant of foreigners back then, famous for beheading uninvited visitors. So Nain set out, disguised as a lama on a pilgrimage to Lhasa, to conduct the Great Trigonometrical Survey and triangulated his way across the Himalayas, using two known points for every unknown to measure the length of his country. He survived.
I wasn’t so sure I’d be that lucky as I mounted the last few steps that led to my two known points: Jacob, who was standing next to Erik. They couldn’t have been more different, those two. And I was the unknown in this triangulation problem. "
― Justina Chen , North of Beautiful