from politics to faith to pop culture
G. Willow Wilson is an American author and essayist who divides her time between Egypt and the US. Her articles about modern religion and the Middle East have appeared in publications including the Atlantic Monthly, the New York Times Magazine and the Canada National Post.
Things You Should Check Out
October 09
My sister recently turned me on to Pandora.com, a site that uses the (phenomenal) Music Genome Project to help you build your own personalized streaming “radio” stations. I was skeptical at first--most of the bands I like are little and obscure--but Pandora found yet littler and more obscure bands similar to the bands I like, and streamed them for me. You can click on a song as it’s playing to buy it in MP3 from iTunes or Amazon. This is one of those “I love the internet/how did I live before this” kinds of things.
Different but similar is LibraryThing, which uses the same kinds of algorithms to suggest books you might like based on books you have in your library. (It also has a very funny ‘unsuggester’ to let you know what you shouldn’t be reading, in case you were curious...apparently I wouldn’t like Agile Web Development With Rails: A Pragmatic Guide. No surprise there.) I am an official Library Thing Author, so you can peek at my bookcase and see what I think about, you know, Henry James.
Three more days of Ramadan left.