Welcome to Keith Marran's Website

You've reached the website of Keith Marran - and by extension, David Reich, Gogo, Oz, and a slew of friends and family that maybe aren't so excited to see pictures and embarrassing stories of themselves on the website.

In the early days of the web, I swore to myself that my website was not going to be like everyone else's website and just be repository for pictures of my dog, house renovations, and recent vacations. After several years of fighting that constant lure, I've decided that God invented the internet just for that reason. After all, if technology can't save us from boring home slide-shows, then what good is it?

top stories

China overtakes Japan as No.2 economy: FX chief (Reuters)

Reuters - China has overtaken Japan to become the world's second-largest economy, the fruit of three decades of rapid growth that has lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty.
Bangladesh garment workers riot over wages (AFP)

AFP - Thousands of Bangladeshi garment workers who stitch clothes for top Western brands blocked highways, attacked factories and looted shops in Dhaka on Friday, after rejecting a government wage hike.
Source: J-Lo close to deal for `American Idol' (AP)

AP - Former "Fly Girl" Jennifer Lopez is poised to return to television — this time as a judge on "American Idol."
Arizona sheriff not relenting after court ruling (AP)

AP - Lost in the hoopla over Arizona's immigration law is the fact that state and local authorities for years have been doing their own aggressive crackdowns in the busiest illegal gateway into the country.
Wildfire explodes in rural LA County hills (AP)

AP - Firefighters plan an aggressive air attack at first light Friday against a fast-moving wildfire that exploded in northern Los Angeles County, chewing through more than 7 square miles of dry brush, forcing hundreds of evacuations and burning at least three structures.

Churchill's dentures fetch nearly $24,000 (Reuters)

Reuters - A partial set of British wartime Prime Minister Winston Churchill's gold-mounted dentures has fetched 15,200 pounds ($23,770) at auction, over three times the estimate.
Brewer claims world's strongest beer (Reuters)

Reuters - A Dutch brewer with a penchant for competition has laid claim to creating the world's strongest brew: a beer that is some 60 percent alcohol by volume.
Vicar conducted 360 sham marriages (Reuters)

Reuters - A vicar was found guilty on Thursday of conducting hundreds of sham marriages between African nationals and cash-strapped eastern Europeans to allow illegal immigrants to gain residency in Britain.
Escaped tiger found after massive South Africa search (Reuters)

Reuters - Rangers captured an escaped tiger at a South African farm on Wednesday after a two-day helicopter search that had dominated news broadcasts.
Fur farm foxes trained to combat rat plague (Reuters)

Reuters - Authorities in China's far west have bred and trained "an army" of silver foxes bought from a fur farm to fight a plague of rats threatening a huge expanse of grasslands, state media said on Wednesday.

Disney sells Miramax to investor for $660 million (AP)

AP - The Walt Disney Co. has agreed to sell its Miramax Films to an investor group for about $660 million, ending a 17-year association with the studio and a six-month bidding process.
Rocker Dee Snider is normal 1 in `Twisted' show (AP)

AP - As the lead singer of Twisted Sister, the costumed makeup-wearing heavy metal band, Dee Snider has spent most of his 34 years as a rock star all fired up.
Attorneys in Calif prepare for trial in Smith case (AP)

AP - Attorneys were setting the stage for the trial of two doctors and the attorney boyfriend of the late Anna Nicole Smith, arguing about what evidence will be allowed in court.
Source: J-Lo close to deal for `American Idol' (AP)

AP - Former "Fly Girl" Jennifer Lopez is poised to return to television — this time as a judge on "American Idol."
"Charlie St. Cloud" a silly failure (Reuters)

Reuters - Every now and then a brave filmmaker can't resist the temptation to make a metaphysical movie that somehow will manage to portray everlasting love on the screen, that will somehow show a romantic idealism so great that it transcends even the boundaries between the living and dead.

YouTube boosts upload limit to 15 minutes (AP)

AP - In case 10 minutes isn't enough to show off your guitar solo skills or Lady Gaga impersonation, YouTube has raised the limit it places on video uploads to 15 minutes.
Facebook may postpone IPO to 2012: report (Reuters)

Reuters - Social networking website Facebook Inc may postpone its initial public offering until 2012, Bloomberg said, citing three people familiar with the matter said.
FBI access to e-mail and Web records raises fears (AP)

AP - Invasion of privacy in the Internet age. Expanding the reach of law enforcement to snoop on e-mail traffic or on Web surfing. Those are among the criticisms being aimed at the FBI as it tries to update a key surveillance law.
More Japan workers lose jobs, factory output falls (AP)

AP - Japan received a sobering reminder Friday of its fragile recovery: The jobless rate rose, deflation deepened, and factories made fewer cars and mobile phones.
Samsung says 2Q net profit surges 83 percent (AP)

AP - Samsung's quarterly profit surged to a record high as sales of semiconductors, flat panels and TVs climbed, but the electronics giant warned that intensifying competition in areas like mobile phones could dent earnings in coming quarters.

BP Oil Spill: Has Environmental Damage Been Exaggerated? (Time.com)

Time.com - So far, predictions of ecological catastrophe on the Gulf Coast following the BP oil spill seem overblown
Less oil on surface means less work for fishermen (AP)

AP - Even when the oily sheen starts fading from the surface of the Gulf of Mexico, it manages to become bad news for fishermen.
House to take up offshore drilling reform bill (Reuters)

Reuters - Three months after the catastrophic oil rig explosion that sent millions of gallons of crude spewing into the Gulf of Mexico, the U.S. House of Representatives was poised on Friday to debate legislation clamping down on the industry's offshore drilling practices.
Judge: FWS plan excluded possible lynx habitat (AP)

AP - A federal judge has ruled that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service arbitrarily excluded "critical habitat" that could be occupied by the elusive Canada lynx.
Donkey's Wild Ass Ancestor Confirmed (LiveScience.com)

LiveScience.com - Five thousand years ago, in North Africa, humans formed an alliance with the wild ancestors of the donkey, twice.

latest posts

Muppet Wedding Music

I’m at a wedding at the Palace Hotel of Gossip Girl fame. A string quartet played “The Rainbow Connection.”

Bravo, Wedding Planner.

Saw "The Kids Are Alright"

...and it's a really great movie. Maybe it's just because I'm so bogged down with Oz's recovery or bogged down by the mugginess of NYC right now, but I immediately thought "I want to move to California and raise kids". I've had moments in my life where those two thoughts came and went pretty quickly - usually separately. But this was the first time in my life that the idea of having kids actually felt like a good idea. I could see it all and play it out roughly in my head and it felt...doable. It felt right. It resonated with me.

So many ways to stay connected

I'm putting together an exit strategy for Facebook. I love the fact that I'm contact with smart, fun people that I rarely get to see. Unfortunately, the constant privacy concerns are...concerning me. I tried Twitter for many months, but the 140 character limit really gets to me sometimes. And I have been unable to get TweetDeck truly integrated into my weekly routine, so Twitter has fallen by the wayside. I tried Tumblr, which I ay still fall back on, but it updates Facebook in an odd way.

So now I'm trying Posterous.

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word of the day

inchoate

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for July 30, 2010 is:

inchoate • \in-KOH-ut\ • adjective
: being only partly in existence or operation; especially : imperfectly formed or formulated

Example sentence:
Kate had an inchoate suspicion that things were about to go wrong, but she was unable to think of any concrete reason for her concern.

Did you know?
"Inchoate" derives from "inchoare," which means "to begin" in Latin but translates literally as "to hitch up." "Inchoare" was formed from the prefix "in-" and the noun "cohum," which refers to the strap that secures a plow beam to a pulling animal's yoke. The concept of implementing this initial step toward the larger task of plowing a field can help provide a clearer understanding of "inchoate," an adjective used to describe the imperfect form of something (as a plan or idea) in its early stages of development. Perhaps because it looks a little like the word "chaos" (although the two aren't closely related), "inchoate" now not only implies the formlessness that often marks beginnings, but also the confusion caused by chaos.
adjure

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for July 29, 2010 is:

adjure • \uh-JOOR\ • verb
1 : to command solemnly under or as if under oath or penalty of a curse *2 : to urge or advise earnestly

Example sentence:
"Byron fled the country, adjuring Annabella to 'be kind' to his beloved sister." (Merle Rubin, Los Angeles Times, September 16, 2002)

Did you know?
"Adjure" and its synonyms "entreat," "importune," and "implore" all mean "to ask earnestly." "Entreat" implies an effort to persuade or overcome resistance. "Importune" goes further, adding a sense of annoying persistence in trying to break down resistance to a request. "Implore," on the other hand, suggests a great urgency or anguished appeal on the part of the speaker. "Adjure" implies advising as well as pleading, and is sometimes accompanied by the invocation of something sacred. Be careful not to confuse "adjure" with "abjure," meaning "to renounce solemnly" or "to abstain from." Both words are rooted in Latin "jurare," meaning "to swear," but "adjure" includes the prefix "ad-," meaning "to" or "toward," whereas "abjure" draws on "ab-," meaning "from" or "away."

*Indicates the sense illustrated in the example sentence.