A while back I looked up David Byrne’s journal and subscribed to its feed, thinking I would read a few entries and decide whether to keep the subscription.

Because his entries are often long and my attention span is poor, I usually skip them and only come back when I have a good chunk of free time and am a little bored (Sorry David).

Lots of his posts cover two (and occasionally more) topics. A recent post, for example, was about a Caetano Veloso concert and the news media (sort of; I don’t know how to describe it accurately and succinctly). I like this format a lot, but I’m not sure why. Maybe because if there are two topics, there’s a better chance that one of them will be of interest to me? Maybe because it gets me to read things I otherwise might not?

Some great DB posts from the last several months:

• 11.03.07: Social “Hateworking”, IKEA
• 10.11.07: Sexual Selection & Creativity
• 6.9.07: Graduation, Ethics, Spaceships (This one is my favorite.)

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My friend David (not Byrne) and I both have certificates of birth abroad. I was born in a hospital in Saudi Arabia during Ramadan. Until I was 13 or 14, my parents liked to tell me that my mother had a cesarian because her doctor was hungry after fasting all day and didn’t feel like waiting any longer to eat (I was born sometime between 10 and 11 pm). This was not, in fact, the reason she had a cesarian, but it makes for a better story.

David was born in a bathtub in a hotel on Mallorca, and the midwife arrived after he did. I like to think of his mother cutting (or gnawing through) the cord herself, but in fact the midwife did this. His father was a follower of the Maharishi, and he thinks his mother was trying to track down his father. The Maharishi was in Mallorca, but David’s father wasn’t. After that, David and his mother lived in Brooklyn, then San Pedro. Which, as I’m sure you know, is also where the Minutemen were from.

San Pedro is part of the city of Los Angeles, but it’s only connected by a tiny strip of highway. It’s a major port, and Los Angeles wanted control of it.