Every Friday I point you to some recommended reading around the blogosphere:

1. If you’ve read even one book in Stieg Larsson’s magnificent Millennium Trilogy (e.g. The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo) you will love Nora Ephron’s spoof of Larsson’s series in The New Yorker. (And when you’re done with that, check out my colleague Luisita Lopez Torregrosa’s take on why Lisbeth Salander is the iconic heroine of our age at www.PoliticsDaily.com.)

2. While we’re on the topic of feminist heroines for our age, have a look at Salon’s interview with The Daily Show’s new correspondent Olivia Munn. (Must read if you’ve been following the whole Jezebel-Daily Show face-off over Munn’s new job.)

3. An old friend of mine has just started a delightfully funny, self-mocking look at what it’s like to be a white middle-class professional woman in NYC. If you like Stuff White People Like you will *love* Another Bourgeois Dilemma.

4. I really enjoyed Andrew Heller’s insightful take on why summers in the old days were so much better than they are now at the Flint Journal. Of course, anyone who still references “Kick the Can” has my vote any day.

5. One of my favorite new (to me) blogs, Strangling My Muse, posted last week about the “To Don’t” list. God, do I need one of those…

6. Finally, for those of you who still pine for a mullet, here’s my look over at www.PoliticsDaily.com at Iran’s ban on Western haircuts. (My subtitle that was dropped: Last of the Mohawkans…pity.)

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Remember online dating? Gosh, that seems so last century. An iPhone application which allows cruising gay men to locate one another instantly using Global Positioning System technology is now spreading to the heterosexual market.

This latest rage in online romance is called Grindr. Grindr is a free, downloadable iPhone app that lets you find “gay, bi, curious guys near you.” It’s sort of a sexual version of toptable — an iPhone app that allows you to search for all the restaurants offering a certain cuisine in your immediate vicinity. Similarly, Grindr provides a grid of who else in your neighborhood is using Grindr, what they look like and — tantalizingly — exactly how far away they are from you, measured in feet. If there’s mutual interest, you can begin to “chat” and . . . who knows? The night is young.

Grindr has been hugely popular since its release in March 2009. There are now more than 700,000 men in 162 countries using Grindr, with 2,000 downloading it every day. A BlackBerry-friendly version was launched last month. It’s so popular that its creator — the 33-year-old American-born Joel Simkhai — will be releasing a “straight version” by the end of the year targeted at heterosexuals.

Read the rest of this article at www.PoliticsDaily.com…

Image: i-Blue GPS 757 logger and TOKompass midlet via Flickr under a Creative Commons license.

Every week I offer tips for adulthood.

As many of you know, I recently moved house. And in the process of tossing out assorted long-dormant items like my son’s erstwhile Playmobil castle and the fish poacher that was serving as a spice rack, I realized that I shouldn’t limit my decluttering to actual stuff. It was also time to do a virtual declutter.

As I’ve said before, I’m not one of those die-hard Inbox Zero types. I’ve come to accept that there will always be a certain base level of flotsam cluttering up my inbox. Otherwise, I’d do nothing but eliminate emails all day long.

But there comes a time – and everyone has a different threshold – when you just can’t bear to look at your inbox splitting at the seams anymore. For me, it was when my inbox went over 1000 messages. (I won’t tell you how much over or you might gasp.) And I knew that it was time to get our my virtual hacksaw and start chopping.

If you’re like me, you probably dread the idea of sitting down and going through your inbox. Maybe there’s stuff in there that you’re trying to avoid. Or you fear that by managing your inbox, you will necessarily *not* be doing something else with your time. Or maybe the whole task is just too daunting.

But today’s post is meant to help you see that by setting aside time to clear out your inbox, you’ll actually feel calmer *and* more productive. Here’s why:

1. You get ideas. I’ve posted before about how I come up with ideas, whether it’s taking a “thinking shower” or going outside for a walk. When I get those ideas, I usually write them down in a little notebook I carry around that’s precisely for that purpose. But sometimes – and especially if it’s an idea that I plan to save for a later date – I write myself an email about the idea with the thought of subsequently storing it in a file on my computer. Except that sometimes I never actually complete that second step. And so the idea – which has subsequently gone completely out of my mind – is essentially lost, drowning in the sea that is my inbox until I find the time (which could be weeks, even months) to rescue it. Clearing out your inbox reminds you of those little gems that are hiding in the recesses of your brain.

2. You take action. And once you’ve been reminded of that cure for cancer you came up with while jogging one Thursday afternoon back in March, you might actually be inspired to do something about it. In my case, my virtual decluttering prompted me to send off an essay I’d written (gulp) 18 months ago to a major media outlet and also to get in touch with an agent I’d flagged but never actually contacted. Those were both things I’d been meaning to do for ages. But until I happened upon those items in my inbox, I completely forgot that they were even on my to-do list.

3. You reconnect with people. Just as the decluttering entailed in moving house reminds you of important people from your past, so too does scrubbing out your inbox remind you of friends and relationships that matter. I just found an email that was several months old from a friend of mine who moved to Colorado last year. In it, she not only brought me up to speed on what she’s been up to, but sent me an article about her new employer that reminded me – in turn – of an idea I’d been meaning to write about (Twofer! See #1). Another email from an old friend reminded me that his father had passed away. While I’d already sent my friend a condolence letter, I now remembered that I’d wanted to send his mother one as well.

4. You feel accomplished. If you’re like me, half of your inbox is filled with things like “Buy bananas!” “Get birthday present for X!,” “Write post on Z!” So half of your inbox is filled with things you’ve already done. (And we all know the joy of retro-actively crossing things off our to do lists!) With the rest of the items, you’re hopefully either executing them (see point #2) or storing them in a virtual home. Either way, you’ll feel like you’re getting stuff done.

5. You relax. And this is perhaps the greatest benefit of all. There’s nothing quite like a good, old-fashioned declutter, whether real or virtual. It takes years off your life…removes pounds from your body…lifts scales from your skin. (O.K., I”m mixing metaphors a bit but you get my drift.) Short of doing yoga, there’s really nothing quite so soothing.

Image: Inbox Zero by eweibust via Flickr under a Creative Commons License.

I’ve never been all that patriotic.

Part of it is that I’ve lived abroad for many periods in my life which (I think) tends to dilute one’s patriotic feelings.

Part of it is that – at least until President Obama came along – I never felt particularly inspired by my country’s public servants. So sure, I voted. But I never felt like they were offering a vision of the country that I could really buy into or that moved me to consider public service myself.

And I’m sure that a large part of it is that in America, at least, patriotism often goes along with a sort of xenophobic, jingoistic, with-us-or-against-us mentality. And that has never appealed.

Of course, it doesn’t have to be this way. My colleague Jill Lawrence at Politics Daily wrote this weekend about how – post 9/11 – she discovered her inner patriot. Whereas before 9/11 she cringed slightly at overt signs of patriotism – like hanging a flag – once she saw her country in a more vulnerable light, it moved her to feel “a visceral love for its ideals and possibilities, and a strong protective urge.” Since then, she proudly hangs a flag on her door, and wishes that more “progressive” types would do the same.

My colleague James Grady was singing a similar tune on Politics Daily over the weekend. He exhorted us all to go out and join enthusiastically in the Fourth of July parades that blanket American towns and cities every Independence Day. For Jim, the Fourth is not just a celebration of the freedom we all enjoy but an acknowledgment that it hinges crucially on mutual respect of each other’s freedoms. And *that’s* the patriotic spirit that we need to keep alive.

I was moved by my colleagues’ arguments. Which doesn’t mean that I’m any likelier to purchase – much less wave – an American flag than I was yesterday. Nor am I likely to jump on a parade float anytime soon.

But I can rally behind the idea that all have reasons to love our country which transcend our foreign policy and our showmanship and the often misguided appropriation of our national myths in the service of causes that undermine it. That at the end of the day, what has always bound our country together was a set of ideas, not a set of laws or – God Forbid – a crown. As Jill writes: “It’s sometimes hard to love this country as it is…it’s easy to love it for what it aims to be.”

Which is perhaps why – when this little gem landed in my inbox this morning  – I paused for a moment and did feel a dash of patriotism. It’s another Politics Daily colleague – Robert Trussell – singing Woody Guthrie’s This Land is Your Land – on his front porch. Have a listen.

I don’t think I’d ever paused before to listen to all the lyrics of this song but here’s the final verse:

As I was walkin'  -  I saw a sign there
And that sign said - no tress passin'
But on the other side  .... it didn't say nothin!
Now that side was made for you and me!

Amen. And happy trails.

*****

For those who are interested, I’m over on www.PoliticsDaily.com today talking about the latest thinking in development assistance: giving poor people cash as a means of eradicating poverty.

Image: American Flag by ladybugbkt via flickr under a creative commons license.

Every Friday I point you to some recommended reading around the blogosphere:

1. One of the first blogs I ever subscribed to was Deb Ng’s Freelance Writing Jobs. I initially went there for all the terrific freelance job listings, but soon learned that Deb and her colleagues also offered a wealth of information, inspiration and tips for freelancers, bloggers and writers of all sorts. Deb sold Freelance Writing Gigs this week, but continues to blog about social media over at Kommein. Here’s a great post on what civilians (i.e. “normal” people) can get out of Twitter.

2. My cousin’s daughter spent the month of June living in Palestine and blogging about it. It isn’t often that you get a window into a 21 year-old college student’s thinking *and* sophisticated political commentary at the same time. Regardless of how you feel about the whole Palestinian question, Rachel’s blog demonstrates the power of blogging and the power of youth: Summer in Palestine.

3. A friend sent me this brilliant “six degrees of separation” chart of famous literati from Lapham’s Quarterly. Who knew that Dante Gabriel Rossetti was the Kevin Bacon of his day?

4. In a less esoteric vein, I also loved this preview of the latest in the Focker franchise – Little Fockers – over in the Film Blog at The Guardian.

5. If, like me, you are quietly obsessed with Iceland, you will love my colleague Suzi Parker’s take on the new Mayor of Reykjavic, Jon Gnarr, over on www.PoliticsDaily.com. (Note: Video of his campaign anthem is an absolute must.)

6. Finally, speaking of videos, a friend posted this You’ve Got To Love London video on her Facebook page. Made me nostalgic and I’m not even leaving the city!

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