Archive for January 19th, 2008
Posted by Ted Hopton on January 19, 2008
I was very fortunate in my early 20′s to get to travel all over the world. I wish I had a digital camera back then (meaning if they had been invented, of course), so I could enjoy my photos more easily. I don’t even know anyone who has a carousel slide projector anymore, so I guess someday I will have to invest in a slide scanner. Of course, it has been so long since I took those photos, I don’t recall how good they were, and I have no idea how well they may have held up over all this time. Better pull them out and inspect them one of these day.
One day I found the 43 Places website, and I racked my memory to recall all of the different countries I have been to, entering each of them there. It’s fun to look at the long list (and to note how the map of Europe in particular has changed, with some countries splitting into parts and Germany joining into one — no more Checkpoint Charlie and the Wall).
Posted in Nostalgia, Travel | Tagged: Travel, websites | 2 Comments »
Posted by Ted Hopton on January 19, 2008
The biggest reason I recommend Barcelona is the
Gaudi architecture. I am not a student of architecture, so I was not sure what to expect—would I appreciate his work?
Absolutely! Gaudi was a genius, a radical, and way, way ahead of his time. While La Sagrada Familia can’t be missed, and Parc Guell is fun, my favorite spots were the houses he designed, Casa Batllo and Casa Mila. Just astonishingly breath-taking and innovative!
I also enjoyed my day trip outside of the city to Montserrat, the monastery built up high in the mountains. I recommend the hike out to the highest point in that range—it is quite a view!
See my photos:
Posted in Travel | Tagged: Travel | 2 Comments »
Posted by Ted Hopton on January 19, 2008
Villefranche-sur-Mer is peaceful, scenic, charming and relatively uncrowded. Highly recommend it for a visit to the French Riviera. Found it through
Rick Steve’s guide and his advice was excellent.Gotta love digital cameras! I took as many pictures as I wanted, imagining myself quite the artist — actually filled up my entire 1GB memory card. The photo above is my favorite and I use it as my computer’s wallpaper. Here’s the entire album:
I took a walk around the harbor to the nearby Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat, too. Here are the photos from that outing: Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Travel | Tagged: Travel | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Ted Hopton on January 19, 2008
I’ve read every one of Sara Paretsky’s V.I. Warshawski mysteries and always enjoyed them. Warshawski is a spirited, tough-yet-vulnerable, flawed and successful private investigator in Chicago. She’s fighting it out in a male-dominated profession, actually has a credible and liberated social life, and over the series of books she really grows on you. Plus, I’ve gotten a great understanding of Chicago through Paretsky’s rich descriptions.
But the latest Paretsky book I’ve read is not a mystery and does not feature V.I. It’s called Ghost Country, and it allows the author to indulge magic and mysticism as well as timeless themes of betrayal and redemption. I’d say it’s pretty ambitious, and a bit heavy on the symbolism, but I enjoyed reading it and never got bored, that’s for sure. It’s definitely out on the edge, though, so if you really want to read a good Paretsky mystery, pick up one of her other books, instead.
Posted in Books | Tagged: Books | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Ted Hopton on January 19, 2008
Steven Johnson’s The Ghost Map: The Story of London’s Most Terrifying Epidemic–and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World is one of those enriched accounts of an historical event that I enjoy reading (another example is The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America). They also tend to have long titles that pretty much sum up what the book is about!
I was first intrigued by the “map” aspect of the book, since I misunderstood how important the mapping of cholera cases in London was to stopping the epidemic. In folklore, the map has been played up more than it merits. What’s really behind the successful intervention are remarkable and determined individuals with different perspectives who get drawn together unexpectedly. It’s a story of heroism as much as it is of science, and Stevens offers a forward-looking perspective on urban living in the future, as well.
Posted in Books, Health, Trends | Tagged: Books, Health, Innovation, Research, Science | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Ted Hopton on January 19, 2008
Janet Evanovich’s books are one of my guilty pleasures. Far from good literature, rather formulaic but not quite predictable, these are mysteries that make me laugh out loud. I recently finished Lean Mean Thirteen (every one of the Stephanie Plum novels has a number in the title).
Stephanie Plum is an accidental bounty hunter in Trenton, NJ. She’s not really well suited for the job, but she kept getting fired from other jobs, and in her own bumbling way she makes the rent as a bounty hunter. The attempts to bring in the FTA’s (Failure To Appear) provide endless comedic opportunities, and in every book her car somehow gets destroyed — it’s a running joke. Each of the characters is a caricature, drawn broadly and amusingly, too. I’ve become fond of them, even though they are predictable, because they are predictably funny to read about.
If you like silly mysteries that are more fun than serious, pick up one of Evanovich’s books.
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Posted by Ted Hopton on January 19, 2008
According to Mark Stevens, author of Your Marketing Sucks, it probably does. Stevens is not a shy guy, and he’s absolutely certain he knows what you should and should not do with your marketing.
I just finished the book, and I see it has highly mixed reviews on Amazon. I think he’s dead on when he says much of the marketing companies do is “Lazy Marketing.” Whether he has all the answers, I can’t say, but the book gave me some concepts that I want to try out.
Posted in Books, Marketing | Tagged: Books, Marketing | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Ted Hopton on January 19, 2008
“An Omnivore Defends Real Food” is a NYT interview with Michael Pollan, author of a truly enlightening book that completely changed my understanding not only of nutrition, but of the entire food industry and economy, especially regarding organic food: The Omnivore’s Dilemma. This interview concerns his latest book, In Defense of Food.
As a health writer, I’ve read hundreds of nutrition studies and countless books on diet and eating. And none of these has contained such useful advice as the cover of Michael Pollan’s latest book, “In Defense of Food.’’Wrapped around a head of lettuce are seven words that tell you pretty much everything you need to know about healthful eating. “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.’’
Here’s a compelling quote from Pollan: Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Books, Environment, Health, Science | Tagged: Economics, Environment, fitness, Food, Health, Media, Research, Science | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Ted Hopton on January 19, 2008
Given my love of literature combined with a growing interest in hiking and the outdoors, I’d have to say that climbing Kilimanjaro would be on my life list. It’s not very high, although I understand the longer I wait, the less the mountain will look like I imagine it from reading Hemingway. This NYT Travel article, “On Africa’s Roof, Still Crowned With Snow,” got me thinking about it today.
Posted in Environment, Outdoors, Travel | Tagged: Adventure, Environment, hiking, Outdoors, Travel | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Ted Hopton on January 19, 2008
I wouldn’t go so far to call the variety of points made in this NYT article, “So We Thought. But Then Again . . .” contrarian, but they certainly contradict conventional wisdom. Here are the main conclusions the economist author makes:
China is much further from world economic leadership than we may have thought….There has been plenty of talk about “predatory lending,” but “predatory borrowing” may have been the bigger problem. As much as 70 percent of recent early payment defaults had fraudulent misrepresentations on their original loan applications, according to one recent study….
Economists hadn’t known whether digitization would help or hurt music markets; many thought that greater exposure to music and the ease of online access might lead people to buy more. But in 2007 the outcome became clear: people tend to buy their favorite song from an album, online, rather than buy the whole album….
Heat waves may receive more publicity, but it turns out that cold periods — days with an average temperature below 30 degrees —have more significant and longer-lasting effects on human mortality. More people die in cold periods than in homicides.
Posted in Economics, Trends | Tagged: business development, Economics, Health, Music, Research, Technology | Leave a Comment »
