I've been reading Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix to my 8-year old for the past couple of months. Tonight we got to the part where I had to send him to bed or we would have been up all night finishing the thing. As it stands, I've been spending the last hour or so reading ahead to find out what happens. Plus, I've been starting to put together the outline of the Carnival of Recipes, getting it ready for this Friday. Keep the recipes coming to recipe.carnival(at)gmail(dot)com!

So this is it for original content tonight.

Minor Spoiler Alert -- If you haven't read Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand or Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, you may want to skip the following.

(More in the extended entry).
more...

Posted by: JohnL at 11:07 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Rocket Jones introduces us to some new bloggers today. Of the ones he linked, I particularly liked Pamela (an egoist babe) at Atlas Shrugged, Joe (a gay New Yorker living in the rural South) at aTypical Joe, and Hermitville (an infrequently-updated collection of short stories and monologues).

I've added them to my blogroll, and you should check them out. Also, be sure to check the Munuvian Showcase of New Blogs to discover other such new gems.

Posted by: JohnL at 11:01 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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This is way cool. To me, at least.

Check out in the References whose site is cited as "Letter to participants, Reagan's recordings."

(I didn't author the encyclopedia entry, by the way).

Posted by: JohnL at 11:30 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Vodkapundit Stephen Green has returned from Mexico. Yesterday, his first full day back blogging, he posted 35 entries. He kept up a similarly fast (if not quite as voluminous) pace today. Wow. Just wow.

Click over and scroll down. And be sure to check out the many lovely pictures he took on his vacation.

Welcome back, Steve.

Posted by: JohnL at 11:52 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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After sort of inviting myself in a comment to this post, I actually received a very gracious invitation from Jinnderella to start posting over at GNXP SciFi. Its parent blog, Gene Expression, has been one of my daily reads since before I even started blogging, so I am extremely happy about this development.

I look forward to adding some appropriate commentary over there very soon (in fact I am working on a book review of recently-read Calculating God by Robert Sawyer and plan to post it over there). This should not impact my lackadaisical pace of posting here in any way; I'll cross-post when appropriate, or just put a link from here to there.

Posted by: JohnL at 10:27 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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I've been out of town with my family since last Friday.

Naturally, it was during my absence that my main traffic draw, the weekly SF Babe poll, would go down and that a couple of big-time bloggers would link to me (Thanks, Virginia! Thanks Bill!)

I've got the SF Babe poll fixed now, though anyone who voted before will have to vote again (Pollhost lost everything, including the number of votes).

I hope to have some pictures and a story or two up tomorrow.

Posted by: JohnL at 09:32 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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