Other James O’Malleys
July 17th, 2007 at 18:37
Here’s an idea for a blog meme that I’m surprised I haven’t seen before: blogging about people with the same name as you! It turns out that there are a few people on the internet who share my excellent name, so I thought I’d write about them, to try and judge whether they’re as cool as I am:
1) James O’Malley
This James O’Malley appears to be the most famous of us. He appears to be some sort of American folk musician. The front page of his website claims that “His sweet voice and gentle finger style on the guitar enthralls the most jaded listener” – I’d like to think that this sentiment applies to James O’Malleys in general, and not just this one individual. I had a listen to some of his MP3s and for a genre I’m indifferent to it was tolerable stuff – one of his songs sounded like the background music from the Lon Lon Ranch in Ocarina of Time.
2) James O’Malley
James O’Malley, PHD is proof that the name is a sign of intelligence. He’s an associate professor of statistics in the Department of Health Care Policy at Harvard Medical School. They call him Doctor O’Malley. Like other James O’Malley’s, ‘the doc’, as we call him to differentiate him, concentrates on important work: according to his bio, he is “developing likelihood-based methods for estimation of multilevel covariance structures” – coincidentally, I am also in the process of conducing some research in this field. I am researching the meaning of the word “covariance”.
“Dr. O’Malley received his BSc (honors) and PhD degrees in statistics from the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand. He then spent the last two years of his PhD at Purdue University, in West Lafayette, Indiana, where he simultaneously earned an MS in applied statistics.” – that’s two post-graduate degrees earned simultaneously. Christ(church) on a bike.
3) James O’Malley
This James O’Malley is an artist. A proper artist too. Judging by his photo, he’s rich and has a big house. Excellent.
4) James O’Malley
This one scares me a little bit – he’s trying to muscle in on my territory. He’s got his own blog, he’s a student and calls himself a journalist. He even gives me a mention. The interesting thing about looking at the page of James O’Malleys is that we all appear to be quite lazy – preferring to lean against things to prop ourselves up rather than stand under our own weight.
5) James O’Malley
This last one is some sort of graphic designer. Looking at his CV, it looks like he has an arts degree, like I myself am hoping to get. Coincidence? Maybe.
Scientific Conclusion
So it looks like James O’Malleys are generally excellent. Admittedly, the sample isn’t massive and I guess the likelihood of having a website is going to be related to technical skills and success – but is it merely a coincidence that none of the James O’Malleys that I have stumbled upon have their occupations listed as ‘failure’? I don’t think so.
Are you a blogger? Why not blog about people who share your name? We could start a meme, it’d be fun. I’m not going to “tag” anyone, as it seems a bit rude, because you give someone the horrible dilemma of snubbing the friendly request/challenge or having “here’s a stupid copy and pasted chain letter on my professional website”.
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