Unlike most, I don't consider 13 an unlucky number, as I was born on the 13th (of April). Here are 13 items that have caught my eye recently:

Mixolydian Don has an Anime SF Babe poll up at his site. I voted for Priss. More from Don about the poll here.

Ted has posted the first two chapters of his [unfinished] NaNoWriMo story and is soliciting input on a title for the novel. His excerpt has one of the best opening lines I've read in a long time. Until you get to the big surprise in the second chapter, it reads like a perfectly normal coming-of-age young adult novel. I don't know where he's taking the story from here, but I can't wait to read the rest.

Here's an interesting analysis of some recent Mozart recordings (hat tip: Bart at The Well-Tempered Blog).

Allah returns to the blogosphere today with a link-blog entitled Link Mecca (At Least 5 Times A Day).

The Commissar lampoons the Hajj and radical leftists in this hilarious illustrated parody.

Michael Crichton (whose novels I'm not too snobbish to enjoy) gave a speech in November 2005 on environmental alarmism. Here's the text, with nice graphs, quotes, and statistics. He admits that he used to be a run-of-the-mill environmentalist until he had a kind of Bjorn Lomberg moment when researching a new novel and realized that his suppositions about environmental disasters were not supported by the evidence.

Virginia Postrel blogged on the theme of the dumbing-down of American Protestantism (and graciously linked to my related thoughts in this matter). This led to my discovery of the new-to-me blog Impacted Wisdom Truth, who commented on both Ms. Postrel's and my posts on the subject.

Zoe Brain wonders where the feminists are with regard to Iran and its fundamentalist justice system.

Geekpress points us to some hopeful news that Serenity may have a sequel.

The Officers' Club linked to this great collection of color photos from the 1930s and 1940s in America.

NasaWatch asks what your standard little GPS transmitter would look like if NASA designed it.

Fred found a Hooters calendar that even my gay friend Owlish would like.

Jonathan Rowe at Positive Liberty points to some [excessively] academic writings on the quasi-libertarian and -Randian rock group Rush.

Posted by: JohnL at 09:15 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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Since I went on holiday hours around here, I have turned out very little original content, have neglected the Carnival of Music, Aircraft Cheesecake, and SF Babe poll features, and have generally been lazy.

How does the blogosphere reward me? How about these 1000 words:

Not only that, but I'm now a Large Mammal (finally) in TTLB's Ecosystem.

I swear, if all y'all had wanted me to JUST SHUT UP all along, I could have saved myself a lot of time and effort over the last 2 and a half years.

What else have I gained? I've listened to a lot of new-to-me music (check out Nick Drake), started to catch up on my reading, finished another disc from my Buck Rogers in the 25th Century DVD set, and edited a few hours' worth of home movies for DVD.

At this rate, I may never blog again...

Posted by: JohnL at 11:25 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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