- Battleground America: One Nation, Under the Gun
- Jovan Belcher and Adam Lanza Were Not Militias
- To Keep and Bear Arms
- You’ve probably seen and read the blog post I Am Adam Lanza’s Mother all over Facebook. (The title was recently changed to “Thinking the Unthinkable”, but it’s the same blog post.) Before you start frantically retweeting it and telling all your friends to read it — or even if you’ve already done that — you should read some of the back story.
- And please, please remember that Morgan Freeman almost never makes public statements about anything. He’s an actor with a wonderful speaking voice, and he frequently portrays God in films. I’m sure he’s a lovely person. Don’t believe everything you see on Facebook.
Note: I've been 39 for 358 days and I'll be 40 in 7 days.
I have been telling a friend of mine for a few weeks now that I do not “like” Zoosk, the internet dating site. He’s not the only one who questioned why that news appeared in his Facebook feed. It’s even more annoying because I’m quite happily married, which is — of course — why people keep asking me why I like a dating site.
I assure you: I never liked Zoosk.
And so it was with some intrigue that I clicked on a link I saw on Twitter this morning. Tim Carmody retweeted Clive Thompson who linked to an article at readwrite.com titled Why Are Dead People Liking Stuff On Facebook?
At first, like others, I thought perhaps there was some way — as hard as it would be for me to believe, because I am painfully attentive to this kind of thing — that I might have accidentally “liked” Zoosk while trying to dismiss an ad or flicking through my feed on my iPhone. But that’s really a tough sell for me. And to learn that people who are dead are liking things on Facebook … Well …
I really hate to sound like a conspiracy theorist, but as Douglas Adams wrote in Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, one of my all-time favorite books:
“If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, we have at least to consider the possibility that we have a small aquatic bird of the family anatidae on our hands.”
Strange things are afoot at the Circle K, my friends.
It was raining when I got home last night so I was worried I’d have another soaking run, but when I hit the road this morning the sun was rising and the clouds had mostly disappeared. It was pretty brisk — low 60s, I’m guessing — but I ran hard to compensate for the pizza and beer at last night’s office Christmas party and was nice and warm after a mile or two.
Usually I shoot for five miles on Thursdays, but I decided to knock out a 10k today instead. A 10k is just a little less than six and a quarter miles, I learned from my Nike Running app. Bad route-estimating on my part led to me hitting a full seven miles before I made it back to the house, though. (I knew I shouldn’t have added the extra loop into Beverly Hills, but I love seeing all the Hannukah lights competing with the Christmas lights over there.)
Sidebar: Yesterday I learned that Norah Jones is the daughter of the recently-deceased Ravi Shankar. I’m learning something new every day!
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Each of these holiday-themed images is 640px x 1136px, which is perfect for an iPhone 5 background.
Okay, so there weren’t icicles on the eaves when I left the house this morning. But 49°F is freezing once you’ve lived in Southern California for over a decade. I’ve also never been able to run in anything but shorts, and I have to stick with something incredibly light — a t-shirt — if I’m going more than five miles or else the weight of my sweat becomes an issue. It took me a solid three miles before I was warm enough that I didn’t care about the temperature.
The sky was insanely gorgeous this morning. Venus and the crescent moon in the shocking clear dawn over the city were phenomenal. The Christmas trees and lights all over Century City and Beverly Hills were sparkling. Even the obese homeless guy that lives in front of the Bank of America on Pico seemed cheerful as he was stacking plastic grocery bags of yellow pages in his shopping cart.
I just finished a 13.2 mi run with a pace of 9’35″/mi with Nike+ Running. go.nike.com/09n7r7r8 #nikeplus
— David Vincent Gagne (@davidgagne) December 10, 2012
Between December 15th and January 7th there are 35 bowl games. That’s way too many to try to manage in your day planner on your own.
You want to have all those games in your personal calendar, don’t you? That way you can easily find them on your iPhone or whatever PDA you’re using (or your laptop).
For some reason that makes no sense to me, this service is not available from Yahoo!, ESPN, Google, or anyone else. So I’m here to help.
You can use one of the links below to subscribe to the entire 2012 – 2013 iCal College Bowl Schedule in iCal, Google Calendar, or Outlook.
I’ll keep the calendar updated with the teams, dates and times, television networks, and results as they are finalized.
- PC / Outlook: http://www.davidgagne.net/temp/bowl.ics
- Apple / Google: webcal://www.davidgagne.net/temp/bowl.ics
(Set your calendar to refresh every day for updates.)
I’ve never read anything by — or really know much about — David Foster Wallace. I just read this fabulous quote and think I shall add some of his titles to my Amazon wishlist.
[I]f you’re aware enough to give yourself a choice, you can choose to look differently at this fat, dead-eyed, over-made-up lady who just screamed at her kid in the checkout line. Maybe she’s not usually like this. Maybe she’s been up three straight nights holding the hand of a husband who is dying of bone cancer. Or maybe this very lady is the low-wage clerk at the motor vehicle department, who just yesterday helped your spouse resolve a horrific, infuriating, red-tape problem through some small act of bureaucratic kindness. Of course, none of this is likely, but it’s also not impossible.
David Foster Wallace – This Is Water
via @brainpicker via Twitter via stellar.io
Does it seem like I publish this list every year? Believe it or not, this is only the second time in twelve years! But last year’s rankings have changed dramatically, so it felt like I had to update the list.
There is surely some sort of life lesson here: If every other run is a half-marathon, the five-milers seem like nothing. I need to get a new pair of sneakers, though, for reals. The 2011 Nike Air Structure Triax I’ve been kicking have got to have over five hundred miles on them by now. I’ve logged 225 miles on them just since my birthday this year, which is when I started using the Nike Running iPhone app.
Every time I run it seems it takes me at least three miles before I can get into “the zone”, that sort of meditative state during which your brain isn’t deluged with thought. And, man, until I get there my mind is racing faster than my legs ever possibly could. I think about my mom, my son, my wife, my job, my goals, my youth, my heroes, college, high school, elementary school, the BCS, just about everything. But I also spend an absurd amount of that time thinking about running.
I have dozens of theories about running. Most of them have to do with how the act is a metaphor for this, that, or the other thing. When the going gets tough, the tough get going. Run harder when you’re going uphill. Take shorter strides when you’re going downhill. Use your quads for distance. Use your calves for speed. Always contemplate every step. Never take your eyes off the road ahead. Beware distracted drivers. Go farther than you did last time. Go faster. Go faster. Go faster.
Some day I need to write about running.
“Some day,” I always think, “I need to write about running.” Some day I need to record all these thoughts. Some day I need to remember to share this concept or that concept with my son. But what always happens is that I finish my run, exhausted, drink water, drink orange juice, eat protein, peel off my sweat-drenched clothes, shower, and continue living. So what do I know?
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It was incredibly difficult to roll out of bed at five-fifteen this morning, but I did. It’s been (very uncharacteristically) raining for several days in Los Angeles and it was just a wet, dark, miserable morning for a run. But about two miles into it and I started to feel better, and by the time I hit five miles I was loose and cruising.
I was positively drenched with sweat and rain after about fifteen minutes. My t-shirt felt like it weighed twenty pounds. I was very happy to notice that my knee didn’t bother me at all. I didn’t even think of it until I had hit ten miles, and then only because I realized it wasn’t hurting.
I just finished a 13.3 mi run with a pace of 9’46″/mi with Nike+ Running. go.nike.com/8j825hh #nikeplus
— David Vincent Gagne (@davidgagne) December 3, 2012