You would think getting a short post out every weekend would be a relatively simple thing to do, but you may have noticed this is the second straight weekend edition with a two week gap. I would like to say that I will do better in the future and be more systematic, but I wont lie to you; I’m kinda lazy at times. Yep, no excuses like I was traveling to a foreign country or my blog was attacked by Russian hackers…it was just laziness.
Anyways, for those of you new to the blog, Weekend Reading is a weekly somewhat randomly distributed compilation of interesting things I’ve read or listened to. Some will be current, some will be older material. I may not agree with everything an author writes, but I think these works will provide some enjoyment and push you to think deeper about various topics. Additionally, I hope to introduce you to other writers and discover more of their work. I have found some really great blogs and writers through compilation posts like this, many of which I am now a regular reader of. My goal is to eventually have a collection of hundreds of great articles that will be readily available all in one place.
Tim Urban is a fascinating writer who covers all kinds of topics. It’s hard for me to pick a favorite, but this article on the Fermi paradox is fantastically mind-bending. If aliens and the fate of our species doesn’t interest you, perhaps you can at least learn how to not be insufferable on Facebook.
Anne Amnesia is an anonymous blogger who wrote this long and thoughtful article about poverty, drugs, suicide and politics in America. It is complex and well written; you will enjoy it.
When Mrs. Happy Philosopher was proofreading my last post she said,
“What’s with all the crazy semicolons and commas? You can’t just throw them in there at random!”
She is right of course; I frequently use semicolons, the often neglected punctuation mark. I’m sure I use them incorrectly all the time; but I don’t care; because; I really like them. In case you were really curious, this is probably how you should be using them. I’ll try and be better for the punctuation police. Happy happy, joy joy fellow philosophers!
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There’s nothing wrong with semicolons; they exist for a reason, you know. Most of my articles have at least one; I’ll occasionally use several in succession.
Cheers!
-PoF
I must be feeling extra goofy because your comment made me laugh way to much.
HappyPhilosopher,
Don’t feel under pressure to post. You won’t enjoy it as much if you push yourself and you may not come up with such great posts if you don’t give yourself some rest. When you have a post, we’ll be there. Go Curry Cracker hardly ever posts and is still great to read.
You are absolutely right of course, the posts will be ready when they are ready and I love GCC, nice example. I appreciate the support. My goal is 1 quality post each week, which is not quite as easy as it sounds. There is this balance between making writing great, not getting burned out or frustrated, publishing with enough frequency to engage readers, pulling the trigger when the article is ‘good enough’, etc. Blogging tells you something about yourself…maybe I need to write an article about that 😉
I bought my wife that semicolon poster of the Oatmeal comic; she had it hanging in her classroom for years. I think she gave it to another English teacher to put up when we FIRE’d.
Excellent. Nice use of the semicolon 🙂