A Walk Around the Blogs: Avoiding Productivity
There are things I should be doing today, like our taxes, watching a Coursera lecture on Game Theory, and C wants to play a board game this afternoon. So what am I doing instead? I’m playing facebook games and working on my blog round up. Productive, aren’t I?
But since we’re talking about both taxes and games, it only makes sense that I’m starting the blog round up with Average Joe, my favorite financial advisor and fellow board game geek. Of course the post I’m highlighting today is about one of my other “loves”- public speaking. Yes, I’m the rare person who does not fear public speaking, but actually enjoys it, or at least the 6 years competing in, and one year coaching, competitive forensics (honestly, that means speech and debate, not crime scene investigating) taught me how to be comfortable doing it.
When you’re speaking in public, the thing that most people fear is embarrassing themselves. They want to persuade their audience, not make them roll their eyes. We often want to persuade people even when we’re not speaking. Some people try to make an illegal living at it- con men and phishers. And yet, the phishers do everything that would make a person speaking in front of a crowd want to fall through a hole to the center of the earth. Len Penzo points out the Embarrassing Anatomy of a Phishing Scam.
So we’ve talked about speaking, and writing, now let’s move on to reading. Jana at Daily Money Shot gives a list of the books that would be on her shelf if she could only have one shelf of books. While I adore Jana, we only have one book in common- Where the Sidwalk Ends from Shel Silverstein.
What other books would be on my shelf?
Anathem and Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson
Neverwhere, Stardust and American Gods by Neil Gaiman
Pattern Recognition, Spook Country, and Zero History by William Gibson
Latro in the Mist by Gene Wolfe
The Sun, the Moon, and the Stars by Steven Brust
The Last Hot Time by John M Ford
The Color of Water by James McBride
The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell
The Night Battles by Carlo Ginzburg
Fifteen books will fit on a shelf, right? Actually, most of these books are on the bookshelf in our bedroom now, though some are on the shelves in the basement.
And while if feels silly to link to a round-up post on my round up post, I do feel that it’s very important to link to the Eyes on the Dollar 20/20 Roundup #24- Oh No, You Didn’t. Why? Because Kim did a guest post for me this week on Ralph the Rez dog, and then went ahead and brought two new “Rez” dog puppies into her house this week. Of yes, she did.
It makes sense to still be talking about reading, right? Over at Bringing up Bella, Leslie has a review of the book “If I should die before my dog-“. This is a subject none of us want to think about much, but it is something we should talk about. Old Dog Haven, the rescue he foster Howie through, gets a number of dogs who were beloved members of a family until their person died. If something happens to you, do you want your dog in a shelter?
Okay. Enough of the depressing. Let’s move on to the adorable and the ridiculous. One of my favorite things about Elizabeth at The Chronicles of Cardigan is that she always makes me laugh. This week, she’s hosting a challenge to caption a picture of the ever adorable Dewi AND for each entry she’ll make a donation to an animal charity. Head on over and submit your caption today.
From one bit of adorable to another. Not only is Honey, the resident dog of Something Wagging This Way Comes pretty darn cute, she just got a brand new foster sister- Layla the Beagle (and yes, I’m a little partial). But you know what just may be more adorable than these two? Puppy Bowl! Pamela explores her addiction to the annual Animal Planet programming. For the record, we will be watching the football game at our house, but we always skip the halftime show in favor of puppies and kittens.
And speaking of the big game and charity, My Brown Newfies is here to tell us about #SuperDogSunday. It’s a contest where you can win prizes AND it benefits the Petfinder Foundation. So go check it out. (I wonder if I can get a picture of Larry wearing the 12th Man flag like a super hero cape…?)
Alright, I’m feeling lazy today, so no new to me blogs. Instead, I’m going to encourage you to post links in the comments to blogs you think I haven’t seen before. What should I be reading?