The Week is a Great Magazine

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I get way too many magazines sent to my place, but one that i read every week is The Week.   It’s a great mix of all news and i recommend it for anyone.  There was also a great little article in the New York Times about how it got started and why it is different than most publishers.   Read it here.  Some exerpts from the article:

“The Week is going to be a huge global brand. Cross my heart and hope to die, I have already been offered hundreds of millions of dollars for it,” Mr. Dennis (the founder) said this month.  Mr. Dennis recently sold the American version of Maxim, a juggernaut that was showing the strains of increasing competition. Given that he was pulling back in the United States, why not just add The Week to the sale?

“I will throw The Week onto no pile until it becomes a half a billion or billion-dollar franchise,” he said. “The Week is my baby.”

He also believes he can get a toehold in the newsweekly market because, he says, the established players Time, Newsweek and U. S. News & World Report have lost touch with the news.

“‘Golfing for Cats With Jesus Who Has Cancer’ is not something that people need to know about,” he said. The Week is all news, all the time, with editors who comb publications and republish annotated accounts from a disparate group of sources. Not only does it have the editorial reach of the Web, but it has the same significant cost benefits because most of the data and reporting are borrowed.

Amen.  It’s great.  You should get it

Running in Kenya

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There’s a Sports Illustrated article this past week about running in Kenya profiling Alberto Salazar.

As big as we are, we have fewer people to draw on. In Kenya there are probably a million schoolboys 10 to 17 years old who run 10 to 12 miles a day. . . The average Kenyan 18-year-old has run 15,000 to 18,000 more miles in his life than the average American–and a lot of that’s at altitude. They’re motivated because running is a way out. Plus they don’t have a lot of other sports for kids to be drawn into. Numbers are what this is all about. In Kenya there are maybe 100 runners who have hit 2:11 in the marathon–and in the U.S. maybe five. . .

With those figures, coaches in Kenya can train their athletes to the outer limits of endurance–up to 150 miles a week–without worrying that their pool of talent will be meaningfully depleted. Even if four out of every five runners break down, the fifth will convert that training into performance…

Interesting that the US has an obesity problem and Kenya is putting out ~1 million people running 10-12 miles a day.  How many US kids do you know who at age 18 has run 15,000-18,000 miles?

Chris Rock on Music

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I read the new Rolling Stone over the weekand Chris Rock has some good lines….

Chris Rock: Music kind of sucks. Nobody’s into being a musician. Everybody’s getting their mogul on. You’ve been so infiltrated by this corporate mentality that all the time you’d spend getting great songs together, you’re busy doing nine other things that have nothing to do with art. You know how shitty Stevie Wonder’s songs would have been if he had to run a fuckin’ clothing company and a cologne line?

RollingStone: Plenty of rappers say, “I’m not a rapper, I’m a businessman.”

Chris Rock: That’s why rap sucks, for the most part. Not all rap, but as an art form it’s just not at its best moment. Sammy the Bull would have made a shitty album. And I don’t really have a desire to hear Warren Buffett’s album – or the new CD by Paul Allen. That’s what everybody’s aspiring to be.

We live in a weird time. No one knows who’s smart – we just know who makes money. ”Hey, somebody invented Viagra! We don’t know their name, but we know Pfizer, because they make the money.” That guy made a pill that keeps your dick hard, and nobody knows who the fuck he is. The pharmaceutical companies are like fuckin’ record companies. There’s literally the Bo Diddley of medicine walking around, not getting his royalties. He signed all his fucking pill publishing away.

(”Rolling Stone”, Issue 1039, November 15, 2007, page 157)

Einstein's Cosmos

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Just finished the book Einstein’s Cosmos, which is a great look into the life of the genius physicist Albert Einstein.

The book has lots of interesting facts about Einstein.  Some that i remember: He was born in Germany but he had such a bad experience in his youth, he renounced his citizenship when he was 17

He was always brilliant. There’s a myth that he wasn’t that smart when he was young. Wrong. He read a Geometry book when he was 12 and LOVED it. Since then he devoured any physics and mathematics he could get his hand on. He hated classes where they wouldn’t teach the “interesting topics of the day” and frequently got poor grades. But he was always smart.

One little tidbit i loved hearing about is that he was a total ladies man. In High School ALL the girls wanted to talk to him b/c he had such a funny personality. He was a witty guy – always cracking jokes and having fun. Bottom line: Albert was a stud and had his pick of chicks when he was in college.

Another little interesting piece of gossip – he got his main college girlfriend pregnant but she had moved away and the baby died when it was 3. He eventually had another child with her and paid alimony with his Nobel Prize money. But, as he because more famous and busier, they drifted apart and he moved to Germany, she stayed in Switzerland – leading to eventual divorce. He then became very close to his cousin Elsa, who he later married. From the book it seems that they were a great couple – He the absent-minded disheveled thinker and she  the pretty put-together socialite. His tours around the world would have been impossible without her.

The book follows his behavior during the wars, his refusal to support Germany during WWI and his endangerment as a prominent Jew – eventually moving to the states and living at Princeton.

The physics is all easy to understand language. All the cosmic questions that stem from relativity – including the puzzling worm-hole questions are all lined up. I found it a great to read before bedtime book due to the mind benders.

If you’re looking to know more about Albert – this is definitely a quick and interesting book.

drag racing on 17th street

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Went to watch the queen’s last night. I’ve always heard about it but never made the trip. It’s quite a scene. Check out the good footage i got:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfKfReJukyo]

PS: Why can’t you rotate video? Seems like it should be possible

iPhone will take down Blackberry eventually

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I had a Blackberry Pearl and loved it.  I was planning to keep it – until i saw a friend’s iPhone.  It was just so frackin’ slick that i couldn’t stay away.  Does Blackberry do email better?  Yes.  Does Blackberry have some better/smaller sizes that are better for a cell phone?  Yes, definitely.  But is it as cool or fun to use an iPhone?  Not even close.

However, i always hear about people going back to their Blackberry’s b/c of the email capability.  I can understand that.  I don’t use my iPhone email for work everyday and it is harder to type.  But the other advantages heavily outweigh this one feature.

I then read this blog post by Tim O’Reilly about “Why the iPhone Will Beat the Blackberry.”  He write that Blackberry users are cell phone power users and:

power users are a minority, and while they point the way to the future, they tend to be disappointed when the rest of the market catches up with an inferior product that has a lower barrier to new users. So, my prediction: the Blackberry will become more like the iPhone, or the iPhone and its imitators will eventually eat its lunch, relegating it to a niche player. The iPhone is now the communications device to beat. 

I couldn’t agree more.  The iPhone is only getting better going at email and the Blackberry will never come close to the iPhone in slickness of features – including the iPod.   It’s only a matter of time before Blackberry goes down.

I heard a rumor that Microsoft was going to purchase Blackberry.  I don’t hear it anymore, but i think that’d be a great move for both companies.

Music industry is actual doing ok

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Just read a good comment about the Music Industry on Chris Anderson’s blog: here.

The blog (called “The Long Tail”) comments that record labels will cease to become labels but rather artist development centers. Seems logical.

Also, it appears that every single part of the music industry except the sale of compact discs is up.

  • Concerts and merchandise: UP (+4%)
  • Digital tracks: UP (+46%)
  • Ringtones: UP (+86% last year, but probably just single-digit percent this year)
  • Licensing for commercials, TV shows, movies and videogames: UP (Warner Music saw licensing grow by about $20 million over the past year)
  • Even vinyl singles (think DJs): UP (more than doubled in the UK)
  • And, if you include the iPod in the music industry, as I’d argue a fair-minded analysis would: UP, UP, UP! (+31% this year)

I'm a lebowski book lover

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Last month, I read the book I’m a Lebowski, You’re a Lebowski: Life, The Big Lebowski, and What-Have-You and have to say that it is pretty fantastic.

There are interviews with many of the actors in the movie. All of them said how professional and awesome the Coen brothers were. Apparently the brothers showed up to the set knowing exactly how the movie will look and be. They only disagreed on one item – the look on Jeff Bridges face in the dream sequence when he’s going through the legs of the ladies on the bowling alley. Apparently, Ethan wanted a smile and Joel thought he should look scared. That’s the only disagreement they had. Pretty incredible. The book really makes you appreciate how good they are. They wrote the script, the casted the film and basically all the awesomeness that is Lebowski came straight from their brains. Of course, the book also tells you where they got the stories that fill the movie and discusses some theories about why so many people love it.

If you like the movie, this is a great pickup and read. Both my brother and i cruised through it and i could see it living in the bathrooms of many men for many years to come

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