Family tradition states that I stay here at home. I was never one to go out during the Holy Week. It was pretty straightforward since I was young. “Jesus is dead, so you should stay home.”
And I guess it stuck. The only difference is that now, I have work and need to be in the office from Monday to Wednesday – and God forbid, Thursday and Friday since we’re rushing two magazines to be print-ready by next week.
A bunch of my friends are going to the beach. Some to out of town trips. Some on retreats. Me, well, if I’m not at work, Ill prolly be at home playing The Godfather.
magazine featuring Phoem Baranda with a swimsuit. There’s an ongoing discussion in the advertising and magazine industry (mostly in the latter) of how putting sexy women on the cover becomes an effective marketing tool to sell. This comes from the notion that the largest demographic of mag readers are male.
Apparently, this formula seems to work because some statistics show that putting women in the cover of magazines contribute to better sales. The formula goes:
Increase in women’s cleavage = Increase in sales
The general question therefore is does sex really sell?
Though it may be a sweeping generalization, there actually may be a direct relationship between putting a an outrightly sensual image of a woman on the front cover of a magazine. However, my boss did once say that if this were the case, then why are the top five magazines in the world not sexy mags? Though there may be some differences, here are the top five mags according to the Chicago Tribune:
1. WIRED
2. Real Simple
3. The Economist
4. Cook’s Illustrated
5. Esquire (perhaps the “sexiest” you can get among the 5)
Other magazines that made it to the “top 5” survey include Wytch (a children’s mag), Reader’s Digest, TIME, and Men’s Health. Where is FHM? Where is Playboy?
But consider this point:
Outside creative director Hannah McCaughey says artistic inspiration rather than newsstand calculation is responsible for her magazine’s recent spate of scantily clad covers.
“We always meant to shoot [Carlson] with the garden variety rock climbing clothes on but … I was worried I’d come back with super bland film,” McCaughey says. “For whatever reason it just felt so pedestrian and not like a cover should feel. The
A few days ago, I was invited by a friend to observe a workshop on blogging and podcasting on the subject of politics. This two day endeavor was sponsored by the Friedrich Naumann Foundation (FNF) and had prominent internet personalities such as Manolo Quezon, Angelo Racoma and Abe Olandres give talks on the art of political blogging, podcasting, and the technical science behind blogging respectively.
The end-result of the workshop were actual podcasts and blogs set up by the participants from scratch. New blood. Fresh thoughts. From average joes like you and me, but know a little bit more about politics.
On a very personal level, I feel that local politics has been saturated with the SAME hulabahoo from the SAME people who have been in politics for the past 10 years or so. It is time for new blood. They used to say that Math is the great equalizer. Times have changed – it is the Internet that gives people opportunities to be heard by anyone around the world. Thank God for this. And thank God that not a lot of these politicians that say the same thing have online journals. Manolo says it better,
“All bloggers compete in the free market of ideasâ€
The workshop was facilitated by Dr. Ronald Meinardus, the resident representative from FNF. I was also shocked to hear (in a very good way) that FNF (liberal democrats are now sexy in my book!) buys mPH and made reference to the January-February ’06 issue because it had the collectible on ‘podcasting in 5 easy steps.’
I’m currently in Digital Exchange, Greenbelt waiting for our new graphics retainer. I’m hungry and sleepy. I’m leeching off the free WiFi at the palmOne Podcentral store. And after browsing through my iPhoto library for old pictures of my dog, I wish I had his problems.
