rfmcdonald | [LINK] Some Friday links (Reply)

Bert Archer writes about a recent venture to east-end Toronto, to what I think are the neighbourhoods of Rverdale and Leslieville. "I hate to personify neighbourhoods, but I can’t help but think, just at the moment, that the Annex is not really trying anymore. Queen between the bridge and Greenwood certainly is."

Bert Archer also links to Michiko Kakutani's review of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. No, I don't think it has major spoilers; yes, I can see how Rowling might be upset.

On a related note, Byzantium's Shores has an interesting suggestion for the end of the Harry Potter series. It's interesting, but besides being derivative I think Rowling's fans would kill her.

Richard at Castrovalva briefly explores the increasing embeddedness of modern literature in myth, product (he argues) both of writers' increasing recognition of their debts to their predecessors and nostalgia for times past when literature had a higher social standing.

Ken MacLeod is proving himself to be funny, this humour most clearly demonstrated in his faked news items on the Pope's recent proclamation of the Roman Catholic Church's unique churchhood and Blair's much-rumoured impending conversion to Roman Catholicism.

Through the rolled-down window of his armoured limousine in the Plaza del Fiori, a senior member of the College of Cardinals expressed his concern about Blair's recent private audience with the Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI. 'This in itself could be a sign of the End of Days,' he remarked. 'When the abomination of desolation stands in the holy place, the time has come to flee to the hills.' He then leaned forward and tapped his chauffeur on the shoulder. 'That was an instruction, Luigi.'

Joel at Far Outliers touches upon the role of social class in the choice of religion

Russell Arben Fox at In Media Res introduces the casual non-Mormon to some of the current explanations for the Book of Mormon's apparent non-historicity. Faith manages.

Joe My God reacts to the appearance of former evangelistTammy Faye Messner, now dying of cancer, on CNN's Larry King. Was she really as pro-gay as all that back in the day, I ask readers in all honest curiosity?

Marginal Revolution's Tyler Cowen takes a look (1, 2) that the various debates on the importance of IQ and its heritability are necessarily senseless if the history of different groups aren't taken into account.

feorag at the Pagan Prattle links to neo-pagans who are so "upset that a figure of Homer Simpson has been painted in biodegradable paint in the vicinity of another 400-year old cartoon, the Cerne Abbas giant" that they're praying for rain to wash away Simpson. Hmm, rain gods.