A fun story of one couple embracing the secular side of Christmas…

So as I browsed past velvet monogrammed stockings and quilted tree skirts and pine wreaths and silver-plated picture frames that doubled as stocking holders (genius!), I said to myself, as much as to my husband: “This is why I sometimes wish I celebrated Christmas. Everything looks so cozy and inviting.” And much to my surprise, he said, “We can celebrate Christmas if you want.” And like a 12-year-old, I said, “We can?” And he said, “Sure.”

Louis Uchitelle asks that excellent question in the NY Times. My reaction is no: in a world of artful making, inventing without making would be difficult.

“Most innovation does not come from some disembodied laboratory,” said Stephen S. Cohen, co-director of the Berkeley Roundtable on the International Economy at the University of California, Berkeley. “In order to innovate in what you make, you have to be pretty good at making it — and we are losing that ability.”

Diego pointed to this article for its uncommon attention to aesthetics, I point to it for its uncommon attention to the customer:

Mr. Ennes… might be the best soup kitchen chef in New York City. On Thanksgiving, when most of the cooks at the city’s other 470-some soup kitchens simply roasted turkey, he prepared “turkey four ways,” including one with mango-ginger glaze and tropical fruit stuffing.

Despite the care he puts into his cooking, he doesn’t mind a little criticism. “They’re still customers, whether they’re paying $100 a plate or nothing,” Mr. Ennes said. “One thing we do here is listen to people and let them complain. Where else can a homeless person get someone to listen to them?”

…At Broadway Community, everyone gets to eat. There is no humiliating food line to stand in. Volunteers set each of Mr. Ennes’s courses in front of the diners.

“When you force people to queue up for food, you encourage pushiness and aggressiveness and hardness,” he said. “Sitting at a table and being served encourages community.”

A few years ago, when he was in his mid-40s, Zell Kravinsky gave almost all of his $45 million real estate fortune to health-related charities, retaining only his modest family home in Jenkintown, near Philadelphia, and enough to meet his family’s ordinary expenses. After learning that thousands of people with failing kidneys die each year while waiting for a transplant, he contacted a Philadelphia hospital and donated one of his kidneys to a complete stranger.

What Should a Billionaire Give – and What Should You?

The NY Times covers the new census figures…

Among adults, 97 million Internet users sought news online last year, 92 million bought a product, 91 million made a travel reservation, 16 million used a social or professional networking site and 13 million created a blog.

I just learned Leslie Harpold past away. She and I didn’t know each other well; we shared some mailing lists and traded some emails. But we didn’t know each other well for a while — I can vividly remember reading her circa 1999. In my mind she is one of that small group of passionate people who loved the web from the earliest days and devoted a great deal of effort to exploring what it could be, so in some small way I feel we all owe a tiny debt of gratitude to Leslie for making the web a wonderful place.