{"id":1696,"date":"2008-10-16T23:01:12","date_gmt":"2008-10-17T03:01:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/?p=1696"},"modified":"2008-10-17T00:10:39","modified_gmt":"2008-10-17T04:10:39","slug":"a-short-break-from-politics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/2008\/10\/16\/a-short-break-from-politics\/","title":{"rendered":"A short break from politics"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>And now, a few observations about things completely unrelated to either North American election:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/2008\/09\/22\/aside-wisdom\/\">That Wisdom book<\/a> showed up today. Totally worth the money. It&#8217;s been a long time since I bought a &#8220;coffee table book&#8221;, but if I had a coffee table I&#8217;d be proud to leave this out on it.<\/li>\n<li>You know where I&#8217;m find more interesting reading these days than Reddit, Digg, Slashdot, or Boing Boing? <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sympoze.com\/\">Sympoze<\/a>. It&#8217;s a social bookmarking site for philosophers. Maybe not as broadly interesting as some of those other sites but right up my alley. I&#8217;ve got a tonne of stuff bookmarked for posting later.<\/li>\n<li>I am too young<footnote>Alternately, my family was too poor when I was at the age to have cable channels.<\/footnote> to remember <a href=\"http:\/\/uk.youtube.com\/watch?v=840B27zYfOk\">the video for Total Eclipse Of The Heart<\/a> from the first time around, but that doesn&#8217;t matter in the modern world. Is it just me or is this a total kitchen sink production? Lots of spooky lighting, flying fabric, and running down hallways. Doves, gothic schools, Midwich cuckoos, trapped angels, wet boys, dancing ninjas, the Hellfire Club dinner, half-naked acrobat dancers, a dancing gang right out of Mad Max, mysterious sodden fencers, the Flying Cuckoo choir&#8230; did the angel boy turn into a vampire? Wow. Wait, there&#8217;s an angel again. What?  Oh, it was all a dream&#8230; OR WAS IT.<\/li>\n<li>One of the least fun aspects of my job? I have to care about things like <a href=\"http:\/\/www-01.ibm.com\/support\/docview.wss?uid=swg27005002\">this<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>When I try to explain to people why <a href=\"http:\/\/us.penguingroup.com\/nf\/Book\/BookDisplay\/0,,9780142406526,00.html?Tam_Lin_Pamela_Dean\">Tam Lin<\/a> is a great book, I usually use a line like &#8220;any book that makes you understand caring about the difference between translations of the classic must be good&#8221;, or I talk about the kind of society in which it just makes sense to try to put the Love Song Of J. Alfred Prufrock to music. But I think <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Jo_Walton\">Jo Walton<\/a>&#8211;whose <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tor.com\/index.php?option=com_comprofiler&#038;Itemid=284&#038;task=displayAllConversations\">reviews at Tor<\/a> have shown that our tastes are often very much in line<footnote>I should really get those Farthing books, I guess.<\/footnote>&#8211;really nails it <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tor.com\/index.php?option=com_content&#038;view=blog&#038;id=6962\">when she says<\/a> &#8220;The central thing the book is doing is college as magic garden.&#8221;. She&#8217;s also right that it rewards rereading&#8211;it&#8217;s almost Wolfe-like in that way. So next time I&#8217;ll just point people to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tor.com\/index.php?option=com_content&#038;view=blog&#038;id=6962\">her review<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>I normally rely on <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Kenneth_Hite\">Kenneth Hite<\/a> to provide me with <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sjgames.com\/suppressed\/\">all kinds of secret<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sjgames.com\/suppressed2\/\">history material<\/a>. However, I am equally happy to have him provide me <a href=\"http:\/\/princeofcairo.livejournal.com\/128811.html\">a field-tested Tom Yum Kai recipe<\/a>. And his <a href=\"http:\/\/princeofcairo.livejournal.com\/129273.html\">review of Wolfe&#8217;s latest book<\/a> is pretty good too.<\/li>\n<li>My pattern over the last few years of only drinking on poker night, and even then only drinking a couple of bottles of high-end beer&#8211;gotta be able to drive home!&#8211;has already marked me as a lightweight; quite a change from back in the day. But, apparently even back in the day I <a href=\"http:\/\/women.timesonline.co.uk\/tol\/life_and_style\/women\/the_way_we_live\/article4880902.ece\">wouldn&#8217;t have been much on the British scale<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>It took me a long time to get on the <a href=\"http:\/\/achewood.com\/\">Achewood<\/a> bus. Probably because the content isn&#8217;t the most accessible if you try to jump on at a random point. However a little perseverance in the archives, and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.portlandmercury.com\/books\/heartache\/Content?oid=914823\">The Great Outdoor Fight<\/a>, and I&#8217;m on the bus now. In fact, I ordered <a href=\"http:\/\/achewood.com\/shop\/product.php?prod_id=35\">the set of all the books<\/a> Onstad published himself, so I can catch up without needing to sit at the computer to do it. And now that I&#8217;m on the bus, I get to see the brilliant line in almost every update. I shouldn&#8217;t have doubted <a href=\"http:\/\/comics212.net\/\">Butcher<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/listverse.com\/science\/top-10-strange-phenomena-of-the-mind\/\">D\u00e9j\u00e0 V\u00e9cu<\/a>. That&#8217;s a new one. And the distinction between it and d\u00e9j\u00e0 vu is just the kind of pedantic quibble that I love. (You should hear me about nauseous vs nauseated.) Also, the Fregoli Delusion is a new one for me.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.wikihow.com\/Drink-Lambic-Beer\">How to Drink Lambic Beer<\/a>. Have I mentioned that I love living in the wiki world?<\/li>\n<li>This is not politics. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cbc.ca\/canada\/new-brunswick\/story\/2008\/10\/10\/gay-author-schools.html?ref=rss\">This is me being embarrassed by Atlantic Canada again<\/a>. What, are we living in cave here? Is this the 1950s?<\/li>\n<li>Is it wrong that the idea of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thinkgeek.com\/stuff\/41\/buzzaire.shtml\">a caffeine inhaler<\/a> actually appeals to me? I look at this and think &#8220;I&#8217;d like the give that a try&#8221;&#8211;this might not be the most sensible reaction, actually. I am seriously thinking about ordering a couple of these to a friend&#8217;s place in Boston for pickup next time I go down there.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/The_Hardest_Logic_Puzzle_Ever\">The Hardest Logic Puzzle Ever<\/a>. You know that thing I said about wiki world? Ditto.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p class=\"excerpt\">And now, a few observations about things completely unrelated to either North American election: That Wisdom book showed up today. Totally worth the money. It&#8217;s been a long time since I bought a &#8220;coffee table book&#8221;, but if I had a coffee table I&#8217;d be proud to leave this out on it. You know where I&#8217;m find more interesting reading&hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/2008\/10\/16\/a-short-break-from-politics\/\">Read more &rarr;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[12],"tags":[101,458,341,95,216,246,340,41,459,238,339,457,330,282,159,228,155,102,328,85],"class_list":["post-1696","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-linkapalooza","tag-aging","tag-books","tag-caffeine","tag-cultural-differences","tag-cultural-norms","tag-drinking","tag-gene-wolfe","tag-i-hate-humans","tag-music","tag-philosophy","tag-recipes","tag-reviews","tag-secret-history","tag-things-new-to-me","tag-thinking","tag-web-tools","tag-webcomics","tag-wisdom","tag-work","tag-youtube","xfolkentry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5UQvw-rm","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1696","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1696"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1696\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1700,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1696\/revisions\/1700"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1696"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1696"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1696"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}