What I'm Reading...

...or at least what I'm reading when not totally stressed out. Normally I'm totally chill about the holidays, but this year I somehow got behind the ball and can't get back in front of it. Yikes. Anyway, today was my company's "End of Year Celebration" which was a surprisingly pleasant early evening thing. And on a holiday side not, happy Chanukah to those who celebrate. As the atheist daughter of a Catholic and a Jew I grew up celebrating the holidays of both religions and I still take a great deal of pleasure in lighting my menorah, even if it is only because it's pretty.

But anyway, on to my reading material:

• Last week's New Yorker was particularly good, I thought. They had a piece on endogenous retroviruses called Darwin's Surprise that was just fascinating. I also had reason this week to revisit one of my very favorite New Yorker articles, Angels and Ages: Lincoln's language and legacy. I'm very interested in rhetoric and the way that slight changes can significantly alter tone and meaning, so this is very up my alley.

• Apparently Iran isn't feverishly working towards building nuclear weapons. Ahmadinejad may be a whacko, but it seems that the country as a whole is behaving in a somewhat less crazy way. If Bush was capable of reconsidering his positions he'd probably have some thinking to do

• There's been discussion (debate even) in the hockey blogosphere lately about just what hockey blogs are for and how they should operate. The most recent round of discussion started with a post on James Mirtle's blog. That post inspired Pookie and Schnookie of Interchangeable Parts to examine their goals as bloggers with a series of very interesting questions and they've invited others to do the same. So far they have responses from Katebits of The Willful Caboose and Amy of Shots off the Crossbar, with more answers expected. It's an interesting topic to me not only because it relates not only to issues of access, methodology, and professionalism, but to the fostering of community and communication, something I consider to be among the most significant internet-related benefits in my life. (Edit: Heather B. has her responses up as well at Top Shelf.)
  

And now, I have some presents to wrap.