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I was never particularly interested in having kids. I liked them in and abstract sense, in the same way that I've always found jumping out of a plane with a parachute interesting, but I would never actually do it.]]>
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The premise is simple: I meet two or more people on the street who are strangers to each other, and to me. I ask them if they will pose for a photograph together with the stipulation that they must touch each other in some manner.]]>
Most people assume that having children will make them happier. Yet a wide variety of academic research shows that parents are not happier than their childless peers, and in many cases are less so. This finding is surprisingly consistent, showing up across a range of disciplinesI found my self laughing at this quote. I'm allowed to. I have 2 kids and its half true.
"They're a huge source of joy, but they turn every other source of joy to shit."In a culture like ours that elevates our own immediate "happiness" above everything else, it is of little wonder that we downgrade one of the most precious and profound experiences a human being can enjoy, to something that makes us unhappy.
The very things that in the moment dampen our moods can later be sources of intense gratification, nostalgia, delight.]]>
It didn't take long for me to encounter the dark side of this revolutionary device: it's too good.
It's too easy. Too accessible. Both too fast and too long-lasting. Certainly there are some kinks, but nothing monumental. For the most part, it does everything I could want. Which, as it turns out, is a problem.
I don't have an iPad, but i do own an iPhone and the attention I give this piece if technology is something I have been thinking about a lot (and I know its is something that drives my wife crazy). Do I really need to be so connected all the time?
On the one hand it is amazing that we have all that information at our fingertips, but do we really need it?
Last night while I was at the Netherlands vs Cameroon game, I was able to (via my iPhone) view real-time statistics of how many passes the Cameroon striker Samuel Etoo had made so far in the match, and how many were successful / unsuccessful. I could see how many tackles he had made, and how many shots at goal he had taken.
Ridiculous really.
But while I was digging deeper into the all the available statistics of the game so far, it suddenly dawned on me that I hadn't been watching the live game right in front me. I may never get to go to another World Cup, and while I was fiddling with my phone (thats what my wife calls it) I could have missed the goal of the tournament.
That would be small fry compared to missing out on being 100% present when playing Lego with my son, or Mom-Mom/Dad-Dad with my daughter, or even just sitting in silence with my wife after we have tucked the kids into bed after a long busy day.
Sometimes this technology really is life changing, and it does help us record and share our lives as we live them, but it can also make us miss out on a lot of what is happening right in front of us.
]]>I don't care about being recognized, and I don't care if I go through life with no fame to show for my efforts," Mr. Kimoto wrote to the photojournalist James W. Delano. "When was the last time you saw a 4-year-old sucking down heroin? Is it not a tragedy? If I can't do anything to bring attention to their plight, and if nobody cares, then what am I doing with my time and, in fact, my life?Heartbreaking.
The poverty in the region is so consuming that parents blow opium smoke into their children's noses to soothe the pangs of hunger.]]>
Family friends found this book in a vintage market in geneva, Switzerland - of all places. Now it has returned to sunny South African shores.More on Flickr]]>
Nick Faldo. Think about it. He wins six majors. He's the dominant golfer of the late 1980s and early 1990s. But we don't mention him in the same breath as, say, Arnold Palmer, even though Palmer only won one more major than Faldo. And why? Because Palmer had Nicklaus and Faldo had, well, Scott Hoch, Mark McNulty and John Cook. Now imagine he comes along in the late '90s and goes toe-to-toe with Tiger Woods from the beginning. All of a sudden Faldo gets immeasurably magnified by the comparison. I'm not saying he'd beat Tiger. (Are you kidding?) But he's the perfect foil.Simmons:
Yup. Although the late '90s were the peak of the NBA's Too Young Too Much Too Soon Era: too many young guys getting paid too much too soon, and handling it about as well as your average group of successful child actors getting their first fake IDs. This stretch was dominated by posses, tattoos, crotch-grabs, sneers, coach-choking and everything else; just a bunch of immature guys who carried themselves like superstars even though they hadn't done squat.From 2006; Part one and two.
"To me it was tough to tell the difference between Apartheid policing in the Eighties and Nineties and what I saw in Sharpeville last week."What is more disturbing is how the most of the mainstream media reported the story.
"What I find particularly odd is that publications who had journalists on the scene quote police spokespersons about a policeman and a bus passenger injured by stone-throwing protesters yet do not mention the people shot and wounded by police in what appeared to me to be excessive use of their mandate. Their photographers documented some of these incidents. Bizarre."]]>
