Monthly Archives: April 2010

Media — No Comments
17
Apr 10

Watching 2012 in the Wake of Earthquakes and Eruptions

Let’s see. We’ve seen major earthquakes in Haiti, Baja Caifornia, Chile, an China in the past few months. Then we have this volcano, dormant for 200 years, erupting in Iceland shutting down travel and cargo in Europe.

What a great time to watch 2012, in which humanity gets nearly wiped out by geologic events.

Last night we popped in 2012 on BluRay. I highly recommend watching this movie, especially with friends who like to make fun absurdities in disaster flicks. 2012 is super-entertaining and hilarious, filled with very realistic-looking megadestruction, nail-biting but predictable escapes, character stereotypes, and a complete lack of subtlety in attempting to send a populist and brotherhood-of-man moral message. It’s perfect.

2012 is very much a new millenium movie, with emerging superpowers like India, Russia, and China having more of a presence than Western European countries. In what’s sure to delight the NAACP and piss off the white supremacists (but then again, what doesn’t annoy them), the ascendancy of African-Americans was reflected by a sympathetic black president and altruistic leading science advisor. There was also an unintentionally funny statement by a geologist, ‘The continent of Africa is rising!’

Particularly amusing were the lengthy, dramatic speeches given by various characters about the nature of our humanity at moments of extreme time-pressure. And even funnier were the moments of tender dialog by survivors of the complete destruction of the human race, including their families and presumably the majority of their Facebook friends.

New York’s destruction was notably absent. Perhaps the filmmakers thought it was okay to blow away Los Angeles and Vegas but seeing buildings fall in NYC would hit too close to home. Probably a good call.

In all, 2012 offers complete entertainment. You will not be bored. I’m not saying its the best movie, but its certainly a good time when watched with the right people.

Uncategorized — No Comments
16
Apr 10

Thank You, Frau Hugg, Miss Neely, and Dina (Again)

Yesterday I had a stiff deadline.  I had to turn in one-thousand word articles to two separate legal publications (that’s two articles for a total of two thousand words).

Yes, my writing skills were honed a bit in college.  But as a freshman at Northwestern, in some of my initial classes I would get A’s on my essays when other kids from more pedigreed high schools would suffer C’s.

This was because a couple of teachers in high school busted my balls when it came to writing.  Frau Hugg, my AP European History, dished out C’s to my essays until I could write a cogent, forceful argument, and Edna Neely, my English and Journalism teacher, took me to task for everything I did wrong.

It was a bit painful at the time but I truly believe I wouldn’t be able to deliver written content without the training I received from these two educators.

I would also like to take the opportunity to embarrass my wife, Dina Roth Port, once more.  When we lived in New York she edited national magazines and now generously reads my legal technology articles that no one outside of our vertical wants to read.  And she busts my balls all the time for all sorts of gramatical issues which I’ve never even heard of.

So thanks to the three classy ladies who forged a survivable writer out of an utter verbal idiot.

Uncategorized — No Comments
13
Apr 10

Very Proud of Dina, My Wife, The Author

My wife, Dina Roth Port, penned her first book, Previvors, which will be published by Penguin in October. It’s a guidebook about women at high risk for breast cancer and profiles the stories of five women who took control over their fate.

Dina spent the past two-and-a-half years writing, researching, interviewing, and revising what’s turned out to be an engaging and important book, and I am so incredibly proud of her. And she’s going to be so embarrassed that I wrote this.

I’ve worked hard on major projects before, pulling 18-hour days for weeks at a time. But her writing effort is like nothing I’ve ever seen: the subject matter is intense, the work took years, she had to track down and interview more that seventy top experts, and extract the stories of the women she interviewed. All on top of shuttling kids back and forth to school, adopting a puppy, and keeping our household running.

So take a look at her newly launched website and blog at dinarothport.com. And you can even pre-order copies of Previvors!

Family / Media — 1 Comment
08
Apr 10

The iPad May be the Ultimate Family Computer

Let me be clear up front: I buy into this iPad thing hook, line, and sinker. In fact, I’m writing this blog post using Safari on the device’s full keyboard.

In the context of a family, this thing is killer. It’s a killer family app. Each night my kids and I read a chapter of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, a free book from the iBook store. Next up is Winnie the Pooh. We fight (myself included) over who gets to turn the pages (turning the pages is very cool).

Then we fire up the Marvel app and read about Spiderman. Unbelievable artwork, if you haven’t seen a comic book in a while you won’t believe how beautiful they are.

Then we fire up Adobe Ideas or eChalkboard and draw pictures (which we can easily email to people). My daughter was at the office the other day and used the iPad to watch Monsters Inc from the streaming Netflix app.

Once this puppy has a video camera, and you can talk to the grandparents with a couple finger swipes, watch out – every family will have one.