Here’s the rub: reincarnation is a load of rubbish. There’s a slight problem of there being a striking lack of supporting evidence for it. Yeah, that’s my favourite bit of Stross’ recent essay about how the media, and society in general, seems to abdicate responsibility for critical analysis in the face of religion. Here’s another bit: The knee-jerk instinct to… Read more →
Author: Mr. McLaren
My Inner Academic Nerd Is Gleeful
I am working my ass off. And, as with the entirety of my professional career, the stuff I’m working my ass off at is only very tangentially related to what I studied in school, and not related at all to what I specialized in. Just in case you didn’t know, the focus of my last couple of years of university… Read more →
I May Have To Write A Children’s Book
I’m just going to take the snippets of story that Sarah throws out pretty much all the time and stitch them together into a narrative. “A monster ate my imagination.” “I don’t have any energy because a dragon ripped up my electricity and threw it into the stinky garbage pile. If I had my saw and my hammer we could… Read more →
Like A Flash
Somehow three years have gone by in a flash. Sarah Kathleen McLaren is three years old today, and what a day it was. Someday I’ll find some free time and update her photo blog, so that far away family and friends can see some of the festivities, but right now I am totally and completely exhausted. And old. She’s pretty… Read more →
A Weekend Miscellany
(You may not think it’s the weekend, but since I have Friday and Monday off, and my late night meeting with Australians is done, I am now into my weekend.) OK, let’s talk unexpected interpretations in cover tunes. Sarah Nixey covers Human League‘s Black Hit Of Space [via jwz]. Petra Haden covers Journey‘s Don’t Stop Believin’ [via Scalzi]. Ophelia Blitz… Read more →
This is for Mike Drake
But, of course, the rest of you are welcome to be amused by it. You can go buy Gorilla, the first Bonzo Dog album, right now. This track is from that, although it’s also on about six other “best of” collections. (This post inspired in part by Gwenda pointing to this list of noir quotes.) Read more →
Gospel Of The Knife
Another thing that happened while I was underwater at work was the release of Will Shetterly‘s new book The Gospel Of The Knife. It looks like this: (I hope that the cover catches some of the many Dan Brown readers, exposing them to some good writing and also making Will a ton of money.) The book is a sequel to… Read more →
Get Your War On Annoying Public Intellectuals
You know who David Rees is. You might not recognize the name right away, but you will surely know about Get Your War On, which is Rees’ brilliant strip of savage clipart acid political comedy. What you might not know is that Rees is also an excellent comic essayist. Want proof? My wife sent me a link today to Rees’… Read more →
Small Victories
Remember this post? Well, I think this speaks for itself: Oh, the fact that you can see this means that I cleaned up enough of my desk to hook the scanner back up–while this doesn’t mean anything to you, it’s significant to me, at least archaeologically. We won’t speak about the other piece of government paper that I got this… Read more →
You go, Rakusin!
I love books. As I write this I am literally surrounded by them. Every wall, floor to ceiling. I have friends who write books. I have other friends who are just as nutty about books as I am. I read a lot of blogs and other sources of information about authors, publishers, etc. Consequently, I have spent a decent amount… Read more →
The Day The Bulls Won
I meant to mention this last month, and then things got out of hand. So, you know the “running of the bulls” in Pamplona? I don’t get it, but then there’s a lot of that Hemmingwayesque butch stuff that I don’t get. Knowing that “Injuries are common, both to the participants who may be gored or trampled, and to the… Read more →
I like Sherlock Holmes.
I don’t think it ever occurred to me that Arthur Conan Doyle‘s lifespan had convergence with the period in which film, particularly film with audio, was a common technology. I certainly don’t think of him being alive until 1930–in my mind he’s all about gaslight, and certainly set in the period well before WWI. However, reality is, as is often… Read more →
Mixing It Up 5: Minksellaneous
OK, after a pause long enough for the Minks to cross most of Canada–so much for the “do some easy posts to keep the blog going while work crested” plan–we come to the last one ..and let's finish up with an unthemed mix of various things. They’re all appropriate in some way, but they don’t fit nicely into themes as… Read more →
I am an information junkie
I just read through the 600+ posts that my RSS Reader had stored up for me in the “High Interest” category while I was working too hard over the last several weeks. I had occasionally popped into the reader and read some of what might be called the informal “Very High Interest” subset (I really should formalize that), but still… Read more →
I think the madness is over…
…or at least I am past the peak of it. The last three weeks of insanely intense work, with days getting longer as the week progressed–in the last 10 days I have been working almost all of my waking hours, including weekends, and I have seen the sunrise from my desk on three different occasions–were frankly brutal. I think I’ve… Read more →
