AatomBomb

Andrew Sullivan quotes Massimo Pigliucci on the nature v. nurture "debate", and could have taken the words right out of my mouth:

Wake up, ladies and gentlemen on both fronts: the reality is both more complex and more fascinating than either caricature would allow. It is neither nature nor nurture, it is -- as the title of an unusually balanced book by Matt Ridley puts it -- nature via nurture.

Amen, brother. Now, can we all finally grow up and stop treating genetics like a zero-sum operation?

TurnsOutPuertoRicoIsn'tJustForPorn

It's been a long holiday season here at Casa d'Aatom. I left my day job after six years to pursue something that might actually make me happy once in a while. Turns out advertising sales is no fun at all unless you really enjoy the thrill of it. And even then you end up bitter, botoxed, and incapable of leaving a building without an assistant's help. So I am a free agent. I have enough money to last a few more months, and I'm hunting for someone who wants to give this budding genius a chance at writing copy. I just want to love my job, is that so wrong?

I took the boyfriend home for Christmas, where he gained a more complete understanding of what functional alcoholism means. Then it was off to Puerto Rico to celebrate New Year's Eve. After American Airlines fucked us all day getting there (our three hour flight turned into a twelve hour ordeal that involved both Newark and JFK, and then they informed us curtly that they "don't do pillows anymore"), we finally got to San Juan just in time for an over-priced dinner at the New York steak house in our hotel.

Everyone assured us that the place to be for the best New Year's party was the El San Juan hotel. It is a beautiful historic hotel, worth the price of admission for the lobby chandelier alone, but unfortunately the open bar was in the little nightclub at the hotel. Let's just say we could have gone to Hoboken and seen the exact same crowd. So we rang in the Puerto Rican New Year surrounded by low-cut black dresses and bad heels, gulping down free cocktails. Then we adjourned to the glamorous lobby to ring in the New York New Year (which happened one hour later) with the older casino crowd.

The rest of the week was pure bliss. San Juan is gorgeous, and the amount of construction was staggering. $1.5M apartment buildings spring up just as quickly there as they do here, and they are infinitely more interesting architecturally. Ashford Avenue in the Condado neighborhood is a luxury mecca, no need to shop online for Chanel pumps there. Our hotel, a redesigned Wyndham now called the Condado Plaza, had a bar in one of the pools, seen above. That's pretty much all I need to relax. A trip to the nasty local gay bar (where they drink a hideous concoction of rum and fruit juice called Gasolina out of foil pouches), a wonderful tour of El Yunque rain forest, and a strange night getting lost in Old San Juan rounded out the week. The best part was relaxing by the pools with my lovely boyfriend, drinking and soaking up the sun.

So now we're back, and I have been working on closing the next issues of movmnt and noiZe. I'm procrastinating my noiZe work as we speak! We hired a new hot-shot editor-in-chief, Steve Weinstein, an amazing writer and editor from what I can tell so far. I'm taking a course downtown in Ad Copywriting, and hope to land a job in the next several weeks.

As for blogging? Well, I never know when the mood will strike me. But I do have several loyal readers who make me feel guilty for not posting more often, so stay tuned...

Here's a pic I took from the rain forest, on a clear day you can see St. Thomas on the right: