A podcast about books, art & life — not necessarily in that order
In the early 1990s I read about the big problem with cheap, portable sonograms making their way out to the Chinese provinces: namely, parents were aborting female babies the moment they got the news about their children’s gender, because they wanted sons. It didn’t take much advance thinking to realize that this would become a major problem.
According to AP, China’s now looking at 30 million more marriage-aged men than women, which won’t be healthy for anyone.
It’s my birfday! I turn 36 today, which doesn’t seem particularly milestone-ish. I received some great cards and gifts from family and friends, for which I’m thankful. And I got myself some neat presents, too (including a MacBook Pro
Corollary to my birthday, we have the annual “Will Dad forget to give me a call?” vigil, which then leads to the annual “Over/Under bet on how many days it takes him to realize he missed my birthday” contest. (Hint: my brother’s birthday is 34 days from now, which tends to remind Dad that he forgot something.)
Anyway, I have no special plans for the day itself. Amy & I are going out to a nice (read: fantastic) dinner on Saturday, but I’ll be grinding out the Jan/Feb issue in the office today. Still, I got in some morning-yoga and also listened to a couple of my favorite records: Ted Hawkins
Now it’s time for some Sam Cooke
Monday night itinerary:
CD
I, for one, find it refreshing when a scandal in the Catholic church doesn’t involve the rape of an underaged boy.
This story — about the newly appointed archbishop of Warsaw having to step down because he was informing for the secret police back in the ’60s — reminds me of Timothy Garton Ash’s book The File
As longtime VM readers know, I’m more of a pro basketball guy than an NFL guy. That said, I spend more money on my NFL package (including HD) on my satellite account than I do on hoops.
For a couple of seasons now, I’ve been making Super Bowl bets with Ron Rosenbaum, one of the best writers of our time. This year, Ron has his own blog, so he’s taking up the official VM challenge and posting NFL playoff picks for each week. You can find Ron’s picks for this week over here. As we get to the big game, we’ll start going head to head.
Meanwhile, here are my picks for the first weekend of the NFL playoffs:
COLTS by 7 points over Chiefs. This is the worst Colts team in the last bunch of years. While Payton’s capable of putting a team on his shoulders, his counterpart (Trent Green) is capable of modeling for Prada. The Colts can’t stop the run, which means Larry Johnson is going to be the first NFL player ever to crack the 1 mile mark in rushing for a game. That said, I have a hard time picking against Indy until they face the Patriots, most years. So I’m taking Colts minus the touchdown. (Update: WordPress ate this post for a while, so it’s actually going live when the Colts are up 9-0. I suck)
SEAHAWKS by 3 points over Dallas. Dallas overachieved this season, and the Hawks are going to pants them on national TV. I don’t like Seattle particularly, but I think Dallas is utterly outclassed. ‘Hawks -3. Don’t be surprised if this one’s a 3-touchdown blowout for Seattle.
PATRIOTS by 8.5 points over Jets. My pick for the upset (or at least the coverage-of-spread). I think Mangini knows enough of the Pats tricks to confound Bill “Fred Norris” Belichick on Sunday. My brother thinks I’m smoking crack for making this pick, but I have a feeling this’ll be a 17-13 finish, and the Jets will be on top. Jets +8.5, baby.
EAGLES by 7 points over Giants. Everything I said about the Cowboys being outclassed? That holds up for my favorite team, the Giants, too. The NJ Giants are going to be too busy pointing fingers all night to actually play football. Tiki’s final season will flame out in Philly, which sucks, because it means we’ll have to get ready to see him about 10 million times a week. Eagles minus 7.
So go on over to Ron’s site and see how his picks jibe against mine. In a couple of weeks, we’ll start betting head-to-head, so come up with some good suggestions of what we should bet, exactly.
Here’s a neat interview with architect Renzo Piano, who over the years has inherited a bunch of projects from other architects (for a variety of reasons).
When you visit buildings by other architects, what do you look for?
Haha! First, I enjoy them very much. Second, I steal everything. Stealing is maybe too hard a word. There’s an Italian word, you say “rubarro,†which means a nice robber, without a mask.
What did T.S. Eliot say, “Good poets borrow, great poets steal�
It’s really about that. But art is about that. Music is about taking and giving back. In a way I spend my entire life stealing from everything — from the past, from cities I love, from where I grew up — grabbing things, taking not only from architecture but from Italy, art, writing, poetry, music. And you know what, I put all my robberies in a little piece of paper that I have with me and fill almost a whole sketch pad. Even when I don’t like a building, I still find something to take. This is probably because I was never a good school boy, so I grew up with the idea that I was not the first in class and I was a problem all the time. When you grow up with that idea, you spend your life taking from others.
My buddy Jon-Eric called this morning and invited me out on a hike in Sterling Forest. After all the running around in the holiday-period, plus all our work-stress, it was a heck of a way to finish up the year:
Happy New Year, everyone. Enjoy the scenery.
Here’s a photo I took on Friday:
Well, I’m still working on my New Year’s resolutions, but it looks like I’ve already achieved two of my long-term goals in life:
I was driving down Rt. 17 yesterday, taking care of some errands, when a semi-interesting notion struck me. I passed the closed-down Tower Records and pulled into the lot of the Barnes & Noble in Paramus, figuring a meander through its extensive used book section would do me good. I’m weird like that.
On the way out, I stopped to check out a new book that I was thinking of getting. It looked interesting, and my first thought was, “I’ll pick that up on Amazon when I get home.” After all, the list price of the book was $30, but Amazon would likely have it for $20. Plus, I wouldn’t have to stand on line.
And that’s when I had this odd notion: for many consumers, a brick-and-mortar store is only intended for impulse purchases.
I don’t like to extrapolate from my experiences into the world-at-large, but I know there are an awful lot of people who buy almost all of their books, music, movies, etc. online. For us, isn’t a place like B&N or Borders only there for browsing purposes?
Of course, there are times when you need to pick something up in a bookstore, record store, or DVD store, even though those are all converging into single locations. But in my experience I only buy on-site if the item is a gift for someone and needs to be in-hand that day, or if Amazon has a delay on the product.
That said, even gift-buying is something I take care of online for the most part (supplemented by purchases during my travels). In fact, I wanted to pick up a CD for a coworker for the holiday, so I stopped at the nearby Borders. The CD was $18.99, which I found utterly ridiculous. Back in the office, I ordered it on Amazon for $11.98.
So, maybe I’m asking something obvious, but does it seem to you that a physical location for “content” (books, music, movies) is pretty much a browsing library? Let me know.