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A Capitalist Christmas
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--- Quote from: Lupercal on 04 Nov 2011, 03:48 ---Theres a pizza joint up Bleecker St (Greenwich Village) that you HAVE to try (apparently simply called "Bleecker Street Pizza"). That area is home to Washington Square Park and Cafe Wha? too. Go to them all!
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I wasn't impressed with Cafe Wha?. The only good thing was the band. Also their drink menu lied about their Guinness. It said Guinness. Not Guinness Extra Stout Foulness of the Earth. So I may be biased.
I have no idea what's going on for the holidays!
Zingoleb:
From what I can tell, if you switch solely to eBooks, and DON'T go for an upgrade every six months, it's a net benefit. But using eBooks as well as paper books is actually worse. Maybe as the industry switches to a predominantly digital format, it'll be better.
Lupercal:
--- Quote from: Zingoleb on 08 Nov 2011, 17:53 ---
--- Quote from: Lupercal on 08 Nov 2011, 17:13 ---And trees saved.
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I've been curious as to how much is saved by eBooks. You'd have to count the production of a book vs. the production of the Kindle, aka trees, water, the chemicals used for processing paper, shipping, and ink, versus all the plastics/metals/chips and whatnot that goes into a eBook reader. I should go look into this - at what point (how many books does it take) is there less environmental impact from buying an eBook reader as opposed to buying paper books?
--- End quote ---
There are numerous advantages for eBooks in terms of monetary cost - cheaper for the writer to just upload a file, commission is higher, no shipping costs, and they're on average 25% cheaper to purchase than the paperback equivalent. Plus I think the new Kindle lasts for something like a month without a charge (the older/bigger version is 2 months).
To be fair the books I buy most of the time tend to be second hand, so its not like I'm pressuring the market for more NEW books, I'm simply part of the circulation of books that have already been created. I mean my copy of The Real Cool Killers is from 1986, so I'm hoping that tree has regrown by now.
It would be interesting to look into beyond my own knowledge and LuLu.com, so yeah.
The Seldom Killer:
I've long since opted out of protracted family Christmases. Not that my family aren't great, quite the opposite and I can have a lot of fun when arond them, but Christmas invariably involves doing a lot of things for kids and waiting around for other people and I usually found myself frustrated and bored a lot of the time. In the end I felt it better to be a bit selfish and Scroogeish and do things for me. I took up the London Christmas Day Bike Ride, which is a fabulous and inclusive event, particularly for those unable to do a family Christmas. A potter west along the Thames from Greenwich before heding up to Edgeware Road for dinner at a Lebanese restaurant (about five of them are open on Christmas Day. Groups then splintered off headed in a generally homewards direction and hoping to find one of the few pubs open on that day.
That's a little impractical now that I live in Yorkshire so I suspect that at about 6am I'll set off from home and head up into the Peak District to enjoy the sunrise and then heading on west towards Manchester (probably by way of Tatton Park) to meet the pretty much inlaws for lunch. Followed up with a walk out by Dunham Massey then proper Dinner, drinking, a few games and a film before bed. Save the presence of Turkey and hats its like most visits to see them and I can quietly ignore that we're making a mockery of a celebration of a god that none of us believe in. If that isn't going to happen then I'm pushing for a ride out to the beach and back. There's something wonderful about the seaside on a day when there is no profit saught.
Haven't done Christmas cards since I was about 20ish and not about to restart now. Present buying has been slowly underway for a month now.
Barmymoo:
TSK, that does sound like a lovely day! It is a bit odd that people spend months planning what usually turns out to be a stressful and fraught day where people have arguments whilst wearing comical paper hats. My favourite bit of Christmas Day is going for a walk in the crisp winter air with the dog bounding along being excited by everything - it's rare we get the entire family out in one go.
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