Today is as good of a day as any...

...to start a blog. This is partially to chronicle my 20-something adventures on this side of the pond and partially to stop sending so many "I don't know if you've seen this yet"/"this made me think of you" articles to my friends/family/coworkers. gilb thoughts may be glib (ha! a play on words!) and they may be boring (along the lines of the-public-diary-that-I-swore-I-would-never-do-oh-god-now-I've-done-it), but I hope it brings some enjoyment to some people at some point.

I'm going to do an Article Du Jour feature of sorts, which I hope, but can make no promises, will be spicy mix of politics, health, food, style, gossip, and random bits. Today's feature is Study Says Obesity Can Be Contagious (The New York Times, 7/25/07). This new NEJM study shows that a) when a person gains weight, close friends will too, and b) close friends have a greater effect on weight than family or spouses. No real surprises there. Interestingly, the friends can be hundreds of miles apart and the pattern still holds! The reverse (weight loss instead of gain) was also seen, but since this was a 30-year cohort study, the majority of the population gained weight. No surprises there either I suppose. Bad Article Du Jour. Although the accompanying video was pretty cool/psychedelic.

Article Du Jour, Part Deux: Hillary Clinton's Tentative Dip Into New Neckline Territory (The Washington Post, 7/20/07...so not so 'du jour' but whatever). I get it. Despite the desperate pleas to the media to stop covering the wardrobes/appearances/hairstyles of women politicians, it's not ending anytime soon. But this? I *believe* the point of the piece is to draw a comparison between Clinton's noncommittal politics and her noncommittal wardrobe (which thankfully doesn't include flip-flops), but oh is the article demeaning and, frankly, not particularly well-written. Givhan (who, incidentally, won a 2006 Pulitzer for "criticism" -- thank you Ms. Cortina for alerting me to this!) meanders from proudly listing Clinton's "feminine and stately" couture of years past to likening her (almost non-existent) cleavage to seeing a man with his fly down (which is so unsightly, apparently, that Givhan warns reader to "Just look away!"). Givhan finds Clinton's cleavage "flourish" to be more "unnerving" than the recent full-fledged bosom showing by Jacqui Smith, the new British home secretary. Smith's look was "all part of a bold, confident style package," but Clinton's is "a request to be engaged in a particular way" and "a provocation." I'll give Givhan a provocation. That's right.

Here's a picture of our swans.

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