Memes. Memetic? I quite liked doing the list of fours. I passed over the invitation to disclose five things you don’t know about me. However, I cannot decline Ms Chrystie Hill who prompts me to list five non-library blogs. I think the meme meme is getting tired, but this was fun to think about.
Note: I have mentioned blogs of interest a couple of times in these pages already. Here are some general IT blogs, as well as some library ones, and here is a list which overlaps with it.
OK, so maybe for this, I will list blogs which are outside direct work interests, which rules out many interesting ones, as well as outside the library area. Here goes …
Gibson blog
That’s the trouble with speculative presentism, with trying to extrapolate the surreal implications of the recent past… [William Gibson]
I enjoy these occasional elliptical notes from William Gibson, chronicler of the present.
Dervala.net
My grandparents’ generation were given solid English names, like Charles, William, Margaret, Winifred. They were born before Irish independence, and before airs and notions. We Lemass-era baby boomers, on the other hand, were given high-falutin’ old Gaelic names, hard to spell and worse to pronounce. Any Dearbhailes, Sorchas, or Siobhans you meet are almost certainly around 30. Mostly, our parents tried to punt with old names that were still saints’ names, like mine, but a few daring ones went all-out on Celtic myths and called their darlings Naoise, Oisin, or Niamh. [dervala.net: Baby Name Fashions]
I like being called Lorcan – may not be very common in the US or UK, but has the advantage of being easy to pronounce – though when I am asked my name in Starbucks or a restaurant, I often say ‘Dan’: it is just easier. Our son Eoghan (maybe he will call himself ‘Owen’) and daughter Eavan (already called ‘Yvonne’ at school) carry their names with forbearance in the US.
Dervala – was she Dearbhaile? – writes from San Francisco, and from all the places where she no longer lives. Dervala’s is a writerly blog and I sometimes wonder if it will end up as a b(l)ook.
The Becker-Posner blog
One might think that because most colleges and universities (for the sake of brevity, I’ll generally use “college” to refer to any institution of higher education) are nonprofit institutions, they can be trusted to be candid in their marketing, but that notion is naïve. Institutions of higher education are highly competitive, and if anything less scrupulous in their marketing than commercial sellers, because less subject to legal sanctions for misleading advertising (it is harder to prove that one’s college experience did not “work” than that the camera one bought didn’t work) and because of the illusion of moral and intellectual superiority to which college faculty and administrators can easily succumb. Concern with reputation cannot be relied upon to keep colleges from making exaggerated claims of their “value added,” because it is very difficult for the graduates to determine, even after a lifetime, how much of their human capital is due to their college experience. There is some market control, however. In particular, colleges that depend very heavily on alumni donations have stronger incentives than colleges that do not to avoid exaggerated claims that may cause disillusionment on the part of students after they graduate. [The Becker-Posner Blog]
Does this count? A serious undertaking as, er, public intellectuals Becker and Posner exchange views about issues of the day.
CamberwellOnline Blog
I met a man in The Phoenix on Monday who explained the boiler system of King’s College Hospital to me; I confess that I’ve forgotten most of it, but I remember that it’s steam powered. [CamberwellOnline Blog]
We lived in Camberwell, London, before coming to Columbus. The CamberwellOnline Blog describes eating, drinking, dilapidation, crime, parks, walking and occasional sun shining in South East London. Oddly compulsive.
Yarnstorm
But I am also invariably seduced by the vegetables. Who could resist such alluring red cabbages, gloriously golden courgettes and incandescent beetroot? Especially when they come from Italy and have romantic sounding names and instructions. [yarnstorm]
When I go to use the family PC at home, this is often on the screen in front of me. Wonderful pictures, accomplished text. A really good blog voice.
Crinoline lady embroidery was despised by ‘art’ embroiderers as dull and lifeless and a waste of good skills. But these dainty designs remind you just how few people can embroider beautifully these days. Like all frivolous collections, they really are worth preserving. [yarnstorm: films]
