Bike vs Car

Our friend Mark has a cool blog called Bike v Car.  Mark got a new car and a new bike on the same day and he has challenged himself to put more miles on the bike than on the car over the coming year.  So far the demands of modern life have allowed the car to jump off the line to a comfortable lead, but the challenge year is still young and, no matter what, the blog is full of Mark's great shots of the English countryside that serve as the backdrop for many of his bike rides.

Obviously, every time I check out Bike v Car I am overcome with jealously that Durham Salad Days does not have its own Bike v Car challenge.  Don't worry, I'm not going to start doing anything crazy like actually riding a bike, but I will present you, my gentle readers, with two of my favorite videos of supreme vehicle control and general derring-do in the hopes of settling the question of superiority between bikes and cars.

First, Danny Macaskill has a pleasant bike ride through an old train station:

Second, Ken Block goes motoring outside Paris:

One video has the best stunts, and one has the best soundtrack.  I suppose it's a tie.

Friday Feature -- This Will Never Get Old

Can I profess my undying love to Pandora?

#1.  Who isn't in love with the opportunity to handcraft his/her own personal radio stations?  Mine are obviously filled to the BRIM with Katy Perry and every wailing pop hit produced in the 1980s.

#2.  Pandora will clue you in on jams you would have otherwise missed.  Like, I had no idea that my own heart was beating to the power ballads of the sister-duo Heart (uh, All I Want to Do is Make Love to You?  Epic.)

#3.  You can play it ANYWHERE.  Home, work, on your phone....  Score!  I mean, the opportunity to display my adoration of both Rhianna and Journey in the doctors' workroom and then in the OR minutes later with just the click of a button is a modern miracle.  (As a sidenote, I have no pride.)

Pandora -- that will never get old!

The Rapture

Everyone make it through the Rapture last Saturday intact?

***warning:  things are about to get really sappy.  stop reading now if you are weak of stomach***

Matt and I were discussing the upcoming end of days on Friday night (one day prior to the impending event) and he said the following, which immediately catapulted onto the list of 'top 10' most loving things said in our relationship:

"I don't really care if anything does happen, because I'm pretty sure that where ever I end up, you'll be there with me."

Then--ever the romantic--I said, "Yeah, but are you going to do the laundry?"  (**just kidding...sort of)

Look at this STAT

Have you noticed that there haven't been many posts on this blog lately?

Well, it's probably because I've been watching this video again and again and again.

Check it out immediately (or sooner).

PS.  If you have a sensitive stomach, maybe don't watch it while you are eating...

Get On It

Remember when the "Do Not Call" registry came out, and you were able to submit your phone number, such that it would become *illegal* for telemarketers to contact you?

Well, there is now something similar for catalogues.

https://www.catalogchoice.org/

Register at the website (you do have to give them some personal info, but it all seems very official) and then you can specify all of your various catalogue preferences, telling companies which ones to keep sending you, which ones to send less frequently, and which ones to Never Send Again.

Awesome!

Craigslist (Mis)adventures

Given the new arrivals, Matt and I are selling our old living room furniture on Craigslist.


In theory, this service is awesome, right? You have some--let's face it--junk that you want to get rid of, so you post it on the Internet and then someone will come to your house to take it away for you, and pay you for the opportunity. Awesome!


Now, much as with real-life, I feel a lot of pressure to say a lot of meaningful things when I post on Craigslist. But there really isn't much fodder for waxing poetic about books on floral arranging, a TV stand, or some red shoes that didn't fit.

So, I was quite pleased after crafting this literary stunner:

Gorgeous wood and glass coffee table with two matching side tables for sale.

Glamorous curved legs with inset detail.

Very sturdy. Large enough for a big room, but glass tops keep the set feeling light and airy.

Set is in good condition, but does have some minor scratches and one small chip in the glass. I can send additional pictures of these via email. Would be fine as is, or could be sanded/painted for a new look.

Side tables: 21" tall x 22" x 26"
Coffee table: 16" tall x 36" x 36"

$60 for all three.

However, as pleased as I was to have come up with all this stuff to say, I was equally and oppositely DISpleased to receive the following email 20 minutes later:

I would be interested in the coffee table and two side tables. Please E-Mail me with more info!

NO. I can't email you with more info...because THERE IS NO MORE INFO. What more info do you want???? To hear that the wood that comprises these tables was ethically sourced from the arboreal forests of Gabon by a village woman named Idena who has four children and enjoys swimming in the river when she's not busy mounting her one-woman deforestation campaign??? BECAUSE I DON'T KNOW.

All I'm saying is, you wouldn't email James Joyce being like, "Ulysses is a good novel and all, but could you give me a little more info?"

Anthropologie - You Define Insanity

Recently encountered these darling...um...stackable giraffe bowls...which appear to serve absolutely no practical purpose whatsoever.


Here was my thought process:

#1. Jeez, these are the cutest things I've ever seen.
#2. Too bad they're *junk*
#3. Ummmm, they cost $128???!!?!?!?!!

Durham -- A Place to See

Humble Durham made the NYTimes list of 41 places to see in 2011.


Strangely, it appears right after Kurdistan (“the risk of terrorism in the Kurdistan Regional Government-controlled provinces is markedly and statistically lower than in other parts of Iraq,”) and right before Kosovo ("just over a decade ago, Serbian forces destroyed myriad towns and cities and killed thousands in their pursuit of independence fighters").

A glamorous position, indeed.

Books -- Soon to be Obsolete?

Between this article about using books as objects of home decor and recent news reports I've been hearing about the wild success of eReaders, I'm afraid that books--as least the paper-and-ink books that we know--are going the way of the typewriter and the VCR.

Now, I feel no remorse about the loss of the typewriter or the VCR. I think we can all agree that computers, despite their imperfections, make our lives better. I'm glad not to be typing this blog post on a typewriter (namely because, if I were using a typewriter today, it would probably signify that there were no computers, and hence, no Internet, in which case my "blog" would probably not be very successful). Likewise, DVD players offer many features that VCRs just could not match.

However, I feel great saddness that paper-and-ink books are becoming obsolete. Don't we all have fond memories of the way a favorite book looked or smelled or felt in our hands? I for one love lending and borrowing books, and that physical act of giving is going to be lost... pinging my latest great literary find to a friend's Nook isn't going to be the same as handing it over, face-to-face.

And what of the great pleasure of perusing other people's bookshelves? Is there any better way to truly get to know someone?

Moreover, I'm an annotater, which makes this whole situation even worse. I love to mark in books, underline, scribble, leave mysterious bookmarks in key pages and then go back, sometimes years later, to see what the me of a different time was thinking. To relive the original experience of enjoying a favorite book. It's literary nostalgia, I guess.

In any case, I'm afraid that, much as my mother has a record collection still sitting in our basement, which I mock, I will someday have a book collection, obsolete and also the object of derision.

Brainiacs

Guess what: Durham is one of America's 20 Smartest Cities.

Here is the complete list:
1. Boulder, CO
2. Durham, NC
3. Washington, DC
4. Boston, MA
5. Trenton/Ewing, NJ
6. San Jose, CA
7. Ithaca, NY
8. San Francisco, CA
9. Charlottesville, VA
10. Madison, WI
11. Raleigh, NC
12. Olympia, WA
13. Albany, NY
14. Fort Collins, CO
15. Ames, IA
16. Austin, TX
17. Seattle, WA
18. Rochester, MI
19. Corvallis, OR
20. Iowa City, IA

What is it about 20-somethings?

This article , "What is it about 20-somethings," from the NY Times Magazine was actually quite boring, being more about history than science.

However, it did inform me that a 30-year-old today is about as mature as a 25-year-old from the 1970s:

We’re in the thick of what one sociologist calls “the changing timetable for adulthood.” Sociologists traditionally define the “transition to adulthood” as marked by five milestones: completing school, leaving home, becoming financially independent, marrying and having a child. In 1960, 77 percent of women and 65 percent of men had, by the time they reached 30, passed all five milestones. Among 30-year-olds in 2000, according to data from the United States Census Bureau, fewer than half of the women and one-third of the men had done so. A Canadian study reported that a typical 30-year-old in 2001 had completed the same number of milestones as a 25-year-old in the early ’70s.

When I read the 'five milestones to adulthood', I felt badly about the fact that I'd already achieved 4 of them. You see, I really don't like the idea of getting older. Don't get me wrong--getting older is obviously better than the alternative. It just seems to imply gaining a whole lot of responsibility at the cost of a whole lot of fun. (Not that I actually do have have a lot of fun now...but I like the idea that I could have fun if I wanted to.) Plus, you get wrinkles. And bifocals. And arthritis.

But, there seem to be some benefits...namely, chances are, when you get older, you make a lot more money, which you can spend doing things that are fun...or, at least, buying things that are cool, which is a reasonable approximation of fun, and perhaps the best an old person can muster.

American Cliches

I count no fewer than 6 typical European stereotypes about Americans (and two hilarious asides) in this article written by a Serbian girl who came to the US to lifeguard at a suburban pool.

An excerpt:

Last year, no one came to my small pool. All day and I'd see nobody anywhere, except when it was time to walk the dogs. Americans do a lot of walking the dog. In Serbia, our dogs know how to go on a walk alone.

The only big one that's missing is a pointed reminder of how fat we all are....even our pets.

New York Magazine

New York Magazine recently ran a very interesting article on the current trend toward viewing children as 'projects to be perfected.' As my cohort hurtles toward helicopter parenthood, I found Jennifer Senior's critique to be especially apropos.

An excerpt:

"Before urbanization, children were viewed as economic assets to their parents. If you had a farm, they toiled alongside you to maintain its upkeep; if you had a family business, the kids helped mind the store. But all of this dramatically changed with the moral and technological revolutions of modernity.

As we gained in prosperity, childhood came increasingly to be viewed as a protected, privileged time, and once college degrees became essential to getting ahead, children became not only a great expense but subjects to be sculpted, stimulated, instructed, groomed.

The Princeton sociologist Viviana Zelizer describes this transformation of a child’s value in five ruthless words: 'Economically worthless but emotionally priceless.' Kids, in short, went from being our staffs to being our bosses."

Read the rest here.

When I Heard the Learn'd Astonomer

When I heard the learn'd astronomer;
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me;
When I was shown the charts and the diagrams, to add, divide, and
measure them;
When I, sitting, heard the astronomer, where he lectured with much
applause in the lecture-room,
How soon, unaccountable, I became tired and sick;
Till rising and gliding out, I wander'd off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look'd up in perfect silence at the stars.

-Walt Whitman

If Urology Doesn't Work Out

I'm sure I can get a job at the New York Times as a copy editor, because I know I could do better than this drivel opening an ostensible science article:

It’s hard to imagine a more fundamental and ubiquitous aspect of life on the Earth than gravity, from the moment you first took a step and fell on your diapered bottom to the slow terminal sagging of flesh and dreams.

Gag. I may not be an astrophysicist, but I'm pretty sure that gravity does not affect dreams.

Here is the article, if you dare.