{"id":2903,"date":"2009-08-03T23:54:05","date_gmt":"2009-08-04T03:54:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/?p=2903"},"modified":"2009-08-04T00:14:07","modified_gmt":"2009-08-04T04:14:07","slug":"natal-day-link-post","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/2009\/08\/03\/natal-day-link-post\/","title":{"rendered":"Natal Day Link Post"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Holiday Monday has kept me too busy to properly blog, so you get a bit of a tab-closing list instead.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>I&#8217;m not sure that it covers anything new, but <a href=\"http:\/\/moreintelligentlife.com\/content\/tom-shone\/when-novelists-sober\">the piece<\/a> from <a href=\"http:\/\/moreintelligentlife.com\/about\">More Intelligent Life<\/a> (the quarterly from the Economist) about <a href=\"http:\/\/moreintelligentlife.com\/content\/tom-shone\/when-novelists-sober\">authors and drinking<\/a> was a fun read anyway.<\/li>\n<li>I&#8217;ve seen some stories about tough people in the news, but <a href=\"http:\/\/www.huffingtonpost.com\/2009\/07\/29\/lubna-hussein-pants-trial_n_246901.html\">Lubna Hussein<\/a> is definitely in the top ranks. Arrested for wearing pants, and facing a possible 40 lashes, she quits her job with UN (to make it simpler to go to trial), and then shows up for her trial IN PANTS. Damn.<\/li>\n<li>I see that <a href=\"http:\/\/papers.ssrn.com\/sol3\/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1339240\">some research has been done<\/a> into marriages between people with different financial styles&#8211;like say my spendthrift ways and the nigh-masochistic disciplined frugality of my wife&#8211;and it suggests that while such marriages are common, the results are not necessarily good. I&#8217;ll keep this around as something to point to the next time someone mocks our &#8220;his&#8221;, &#8220;hers&#8221;, &#8220;ours&#8221; financial strategy.<\/li>\n<li>I love how the major media seem to lag a half-decade or so behind the world, and then seem kind of surprised when they stumble on a &#8220;new trend&#8221; that represents the long-term results of a shift that started in the not-so recent (relatively) past. Like say <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2009\/07\/30\/opinion\/30wasik.html?_r=3&#038;ref=opinion&#038;pagewanted=all\">this NYT article<\/a> about how creative people are using the web to connect with their audiences and peers,  and to build a &#8220;presence&#8221; rather than moving to the places where they could expect to find peers and an audience&#8211;like New York. No surprise to me.<\/li>\n<li>Everytime <a href=\"http:\/\/14theditch.livejournal.com\/288373.html\">Jeff Ford writes more than three sentences<\/a> about a book, I end up ordering a copy. I hope he uses this power only for good.<\/li>\n<li>The teenage boy inside me regrets that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.spike.com\/blog\/how-to-make-girls\/84496\">this technology<\/a> did not exist when he was running the show. The father-of-a-girl part of me responds by looking around for a baseball bat.<\/li>\n<li>When I said I was a spendthrift up there, apparently I&#8217;m actually a bit of piker in that department. Compare me to say awesome photographer Annie Leibovitz, and I just look terribly bush league. She makes over three million dollars a year from her photography, and has somehow <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2009\/07\/31\/nyregion\/31leibovitz.html?_r=2\">still managed to get herself over twenty-four million in debt<\/a>. That&#8217;s some dedication to debt, right there.<\/li>\n<li>And the winner of this week&#8217;s quote-that-makes-the-speaker-sound-most-like-a-jackass award would have to be <a href=\"http:\/\/nymag.com\/daily\/intel\/2009\/07\/breaking_some_guys_who_work_in.html\">Jeremy Abelson<\/a>. &#8220;In the New York dating scene, the men of finance are the lions, and the women of fashion are the trophies. We have to maintain the purity of the genetic lines.&#8221; Just reading that make me want to scrape him off my shoe.<\/li>\n<li>I admit, the web site of <a href=\"http:\/\/thesoulstoragecompany.com\/\">the Soul Storage Company<\/a> had me confused for a few moments&#8230; until I saw Strathairn, and knew it had to be <a href=\"http:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt1127877\/\">movie<\/a> propaganda (I could believe Giamatti would be in on a straight-up joke site, but not both of them.)<\/li>\n<li>If you like Joe Hill&#8217;s writing, you might want to check out a short film the BBC is hosting, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/dna\/filmnetwork\/A49258524\">Pop Art<\/a>, based on Hill&#8217;s short story.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/bibliodyssey.blogspot.com\/\">BibliOdyssey<\/a> always brings interesting things to the table, but I was particularly caught by a recent posting of <a href=\"http:\/\/bibliodyssey.blogspot.com\/2009\/07\/celtic-designs.html\">Celtic designs<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>Any hope I had that the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt0970452\/\">Solomon Kane<\/a> movie would be either a good adaptation, or at least a good movie, <a href=\"http:\/\/geeksofdoom.com\/2009\/07\/25\/sdcc-09-solomon-kane-panel\/\">is now crushed<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>I&#8217;m still too busy loving that <a href=\"http:\/\/news.yahoo.com\/s\/nm\/20090722\/od_nm\/us_ireland_goat_odd;_ylt=AugJ00brgyyDVQDiiQb.Ldys0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTFmbWIyZTllBHBvcwMyMDQEc2VjA2FjY29yZGlvbl9vZGRfbmV3cwRzbGsDZ29hdDM5c2Nyb3du\">the Irish crown a goat<\/a> as their king every year to even process the fact that the practice was at risk. I did search Google News and could find no confirmation that the goat actually made it on time. (via <a href=\"http:\/\/eddiecampbell.blogspot.com\/2009\/07\/g-oats-crowning-as-king-of-ireland-in.html\">Eddie Campbell<\/a>)<\/li>\n<li>The goat thing totally beat out the other &#8220;new of the weird&#8221; item that caught my eye recently: <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikinews.org\/wiki\/Australian_and_New_Zealander_freemasons_arrested_for_sorcery_in_Fiji?curid=129422\">the arrest of some Aussie and Kiwi masons as sorcerers<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>While I, as an occasional language pedant, am well aware of the force of <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Muphry%27s_law\">Muphry&#8217;s Law<\/a>, I hadn&#8217;t previously been aware of its name.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p class=\"excerpt\">Holiday Monday has kept me too busy to properly blog, so you get a bit of a tab-closing list instead. I&#8217;m not sure that it covers anything new, but the piece from More Intelligent Life (the quarterly from the Economist) about authors and drinking was a fun read anyway. I&#8217;ve seen some stories about tough people in the news, but&hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/2009\/08\/03\/natal-day-link-post\/\">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":[1,12],"tags":[92,257,404,83,458,75,142,265,324,27,111,227,66],"class_list":["post-2903","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","category-linkapalooza","tag-academic-papers","tag-authors","tag-badass","tag-benevolent-surrealism","tag-books","tag-comedy","tag-drunken-writers","tag-economics","tag-internet","tag-movies","tag-parenting","tag-viral-video","tag-women","xfolkentry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5UQvw-KP","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2903","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=2903"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2903\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2906,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2903\/revisions\/2906"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2903"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2903"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2903"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}