Category: Uncategorized

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The best of news!

Official VM buddy Craig S. is a dad! He and wife Wendy are the proud parents of Isaac Samuel S. who was born early Monday morning, 1/15/2007. I.S.S. was 6 lbs, 8 oz and 20.5 in. Baby and mom are both doing very well, Craig reports!

craigandike

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China Syndrome

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.

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Three dozen, to go

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 (a refurb, since I’m cheap)).

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 and Gillian Welch, if you must know.

Now it’s time for some Sam Cooke. Live in love.

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The information

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, in which he checked out the Stasi’s records on him after East Germany’s truth commission made that stuff available. I recall Ash marveling over the sheer volume of reports, and their utter minutiae.

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2006-2007 NFL Playoff Challenge, round 1

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.

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Steal a little and they throw you in jail / Steal a lot and they make you king

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.