This is Shanghai from Rob Whitworth on Vimeo.

Here are three views of the Duomo di Milano. It’s very Gothic and took 600 years to complete.  All of Milano radiates out from this spot. If you’re nearby it’s a must visit.

Was touring the USS Yorktown Aircraft Carrier near Charleston, SC checking out the old airplanes on the deck.  They were very old school aircraft and this one the side of one of the planes where the rescue hatch was located.  I felt like I was walking around on the Philadelphia Experiment.

Was in Rome walking the streets checking things out.  Came across this great political poster.  Only in Italy would you see a poster like this where the message in Italian basically says “Get the F*@K out the way”

Was walking up on 5th avenue in NYC last week and thought this huge subway exhaust smack dab in front of the Prada shop was hilarious.  Actually it was kind of cool – it was a fun mix of high end fashion with the pure grit of the city smoking in front of the entrance to the shop.

I was listening to music on Spotify when an ad for Spotify itself came on.  The ad mentions how “piracy is so old-fashioned” and that “every track on Spotify makes money for the artist because after all, without them there would be no music for us to enjoy“.

It’s that last part – the “after all, without them there would be no music for us to enjoy” part that resonated with me most.  This simple radio advert is actually pretty profound and is a perfect note to end 2012 on – a year where “you didn’t build that” and “fair share” were tossed around as if the creators of businesses were somehow not quite fully entitled to the fruits of their ideas and labor.

Apparently Spotify believes (and I agree) that the right thing to do to honor the creators of the music is to make sure the creators are paid and not stolen from – because they are in fact the brains behind the music.

The ad’s “Without them” concept can be applied to any business, any product, and the job creators behind those businesses.  ”Without them” there is nothing. “Without them” people have no products or services.  ”Without them people” have no jobs or ability to sustain their families.

My point here is that millions of people enjoy music thanks to those that create music.  Likewise, millions of people enjoy employment and lifestyles thanks to people who create jobs.  Is there really any difference between a musical artist who creates a song for sale or a businessman who creates pizza? (or any product/service)?  Each has a skill. Each has a product.  Each put effort and training into making that product for sale and… “without them” there is nothing but unfinished ideas and raw materials.

In the classic book Atlas Shrugged, the industrialists, the men and women of thought, vanish from the face of the Earth, going on their own strike of sorts and leaving everything behind including the keys to the car for anyone to pick up where they left off and run things.  Nobody does.  Nobody can.  Nobody remaining behind has the know-how or fortitude to do what the industrialists (i.e. job creators) did.

There is a line in Atlas Shrugged that go like this:

“Whether it’s a symphony or a coal mine, all work is an act of creating and comes from the same source: from an inviolate capacity to see through one’s own eyes–which means: the capacity to perform a rational identification–which means: the capacity to see, to connect and to make what had not been seen, connected and made before.”

-Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged, Part 3, Ch. 2

Imagine this.  How would it be if in the name of social and economic musical justice Spotify took a percentage of all the money Bruce Springsteen makes when his songs are played on Spotify and just gave it to an artist whose music was not chosen by the consumers in the free market to be played.  We could say that he “didn’t really write that” without the world providing to him the influence to come up with such musical ideas.   Would Bruce be cool with that?  I doubt it.

Company Founders, men and women of vision and production, should be celebrated, encouraged, and thanked, not threatened or villainized.  Like the Spotify ad says – “after all, without them there would be no music to listen to.”  The same goes for job creators.

Here were two kids playing behind a laundry shop next to two huge propane gas containers and only a few feet from a major railroad track hauling freight to and from the Panama Canal each day. It might just be that just as so many kids in the USA are completely oblivious to this kind of life, maybe these two kids in the photo are just as oblivious to any other kind of life.  You are a product of your environment after all.

Only 35% of Americans even have a passport – and this is way up from the 2% in 1989 and the 18% in 2000.  Ultimately if less than a third of your country has ever even stepped across a border how they can possible understand the world that is out there (and a whole host of bigger concepts that flow from that).

I think if more Americans would travel overseas they would not only understand the world much better, they would understand their own country much better as well.

I was at a presentation in Hong Kong where the regional director of LVMH was giving an amazing presentation about this subject and he said the bulk of billionaires in China are in their forties and the overwhelming amount of millionaires in China are in their thirties.  The retail scene in China reflects this too.  When it’s nice in China, it’s really nice.  There is a downside to this as well, and the Chinese are somewhat developing a reputation for being perhaps a bit too brand conscience and there are some side effects with this (which perhaps I’ll get into on a future post), but for now, this photo paints a bit of the picture of the scene in retail – and this is but one corner on West Nanjing Road – you should see the rest of it.

On a trip to Las Vegas I decided to check out the Aria hotel across from where I was staying at Vdara.  This is a nice new part of the strip where there is less of that “Vegas” tackiness going on.  The building has this great visual effect the way the balconies are laid out and is nicely understated at night (for Vegas).  Check out Lemongrass if you go.