This is what I get for learning more about church history

Perhaps it’s because the two both fell on a Sunday this year, but I just learned that December 28th is not only my birthday (I turned 34 yesterday) but also, according to Christian tradition, the remembrance of the Massacre of the Holy Innocents. It commemorates this event from Matthew 2: 16 – 18:

Herod Kills the Children

16 Then Herod, when he saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, became furious, and he sent and killed all the male children in Bethlehem and in all that region who were two years old or under, according to the time that he had ascertained from the wise men. 17 Then was fulfilled what was spoken by the prophet Jeremiah:

18 “A voice was heard in Ramah,
weeping and loud lamentation,
Rachel weeping for her children;
she refused to be comforted, because they are no more.”

Goodbye Mr. Lennell

The Maurice Lennell outlet in Norridge has closed. This was a destination point for many Sunday afternoon post-church drives when I was a kid so it’s sad to see this go.

Movie Journal: Fred Claus

There are moments in Fred Claus that give the watcher a glimpse of the kind of movie it could have been if the script didn’t so often descend into some of the most well-worn cliches of the Christmas movie. Most of these moments come when stars Vince Vaughn and Paul Giamatti are able to really let loose and actuallly act. Each one has a handful of moments when their performances transcend the material they’re given and do something special.

Overall Fred Claus isn’t the worst Christmas movie I’ve seen but it’s by no means the best. Enjoyable and worth checking out for those few and far-between performance moments.

QOTD: 12/29/08

Charlie O’Donnell:

Ask anyone in PR what they tell their clients when they say they want to be on TechCrunch–it isn’t worth it.  You’ll get a firehouse of traffic that will be gone in a week, with few of the people likely to be in your target audience anyway–unless your audience is other Web 2.0 entrepreneurs.

Incidentally, the idea that’s been floated of ranking Twitter search results by the number of followers is just the kind of thing that sounds interesting at first but which wouldn’t really work. Google ranks results based on an equation involving multiple factors that adds up to their definition of “authority.” While I don’t agree with some people’s assertions that *everyone* is gaming the number of Twitter followers they have, basing authority on one number isn’t all that comprehensive or accurate. Yeah, you could ignore it or sort results in other ways but it’s still a stupid idea.