Garden Of Blog

Saturday

Coincidentally, more press today concerning parenting-sans-coddling. This time thanks to Mick Jagger.

Here is a thought provoking interview about raising children with more competition in their lives. I’m not sure I agree with the focus on winning and losing, but resisting the urge to shelter and underexpose a child does resonate with me. Awhile ago I mentioned here that I follow the Free Range Kids blog for this reason.

One of the authors being interviewed, Po Bronson, I recognized as the guy who wrote The Nudist on The Late Shift, a collection of essays about culture during the dot com bubble, which I enjoyed.

It has come to attention that I have shirked my duty, and never, ever, not even ONCE have I posted a cat pic.

Problem solved.

Here’s Woody Allen on basketball as a Knicks fan, from back in 1998.

When asked why it is so important that the Knicks win, since at the end of the game or even the season nothing in life is affected one way or the other, I can only answer that basketball or baseball or any sport is as dearly important as life itself. After all, why is it such a big deal to work and love and strive and have children and then die and decompose into eternal nothingness? (By now, the person who asked me why the Knicks winning is important is sorry.)

Pure Woody. But still:

In short, putting the ball into the hoop is of immense significance to me by personal choice and my life is more fun because of it.

Me, too. There are more gems in the piece, including the mock sports interview he closes with. Only Woody can write a love letter to a sport that eviscerates it, yet leaves you convinced of his love.

We had an old joke that we would raise our children ‘Hispanic’. Joke being that you can’t choose your ethnicity. But that’s not entirely true, especially as people have migrated to new places, they may adopt, willingly or not, new identities of heritage.

I got thinking about this while reading Is The New Pope Latino? Despite hailing from Argentina, it turns out his folks were Italian, and I was surprised to learn [from the article] that:

Between 1857 and 1958, 46% of the immigrants who migrated to Argentina were Italian, and 32% were Spanish.

This confirms something I had never really managed to articulate before: that Latin America has a hint of Italian in its flavor. The prevalence of Catholicism, for instance, and names like ‘Marco’. But more to the point is the shared heritage of Europeans… ‘Latin’ is a broader term amongst languages… and although we think of Latin America as Spanish-dominated, it’s certainly not 100% ‘Latino’. Or perhaps those of Italian descent may also share that ‘o’?

Henceforth, we will be raising the kids ‘Latino’, in line with our new Pope.

The world is run by a bunch of slobbering drunks.

As a frequenter of (admittedly sausage-fest) technology conferences, I, too, have wondered where all the ladies are hiding. Nothing’s been proven, but there are theories about why tech culture… and in particular, open source culture… attracts such paltry female numbers. Unfortunately the most vocal theorists are the ones that suggest that boorish, sexually threatening men are scaring off all the women, and suppressing their status in the community. They are also threatened when sex is spoken of at all at a tech conference, even by a woman.

I’m pretty sure that “silencing women” is not the cutting edge of contemporary feminism, but hey, I’m just a dude.

I’d take pains to break the topic down reasonably, but others have already done better. Check ‘em out, and remember that censorship sucks.

In the olden days, there was always a quiet dignity assigned to anyone described as a man of few words. Given the 140 keystroke limit on Twitter, this has matured into being a man of little character. Clearly, this is not an improvement.

There are yet smaller playing fields for expression. Consider Georgia, where this man should be given the license plate he desires. But:

“Really these license plates are one of the primary ways Georgians use free speech,” Gerry Weber, a lawyer working on the suit, told the newspaper.

One of the primary ways? Ouch.

It remains that the only way to achieve quiet dignity is to say nothing at all.

Happy Holidays from the Del Grecos.

We had a few technical difficulties at mindmined.com and went offline for some hours. We should be back up shortly.

Guess again. Bobby Hebb could sing and play.