- So here’s a tip for first-time writers: when submitting a story, don’t include a rejection letter from the last place that had a look at it. I’ve received submissions addressed to the wrong publication — mostly by e-mail, and probably because they were sending it to many places simultaneously, even though most of us specifically say not to — but nothing like this has happened to me.
- Joshua Schachter suggests that URL shorteners are maybe not such a good thing. They’re all over Twitter — by necessity, given the 140-character limit — where I suspect they’ve been a huge boon to spammers. [via]
- Here are a couple of neat tools: Chow.com’s Know Your Pasta guide (PDF) [via] and Flipping Typical, a little web app that displays text in whichever fonts — of those it can detect — installed on your computer. [via]
- Do you get the sense that the Senate Democrats are just toying with Arlen Specter at this point? Sure, we’ll let you re-join our party — heck, even Joe the Plumber is leaving the Republicans these days — but we’re gonna make you sit at the kids’ table for awhile. [via]
- And finally, one less mystery for Doctor Who to solve: we may have found a cure for the recently widespread honey bee colony collapse. [via]
Month: May 2009
Monday various
- The AV Club’s Josh Modell on the difficulty with giving reviews a letter grade. There’s a healthy discussion there, but I think Keith Phipps sums it up nicely in the comments:
When I write I know the grade I’m assigning the movie/tv show/album helps me frame my thoughts. But, in the end, it’s the thoughts that matter, not the rating at the end of them.
- Ethics schmethics! So first The Chicago Tribune focus-grouped some news stories before they were published. [via] And then it was revealed that pharmaceutical giant Merck and Elsevier published a fake peer-review journal. [via]
- Thudfactor has an interesting post about the myth of competition:
We sometimes speak of evolutionary strategies, but “strategy†is a poor metaphor. There’s no strategy involved. Mutation is random — at least, we think so. Suggesting that an infectious disease won’t mutate into something deadly because that’s a poor strategy for victory assumes that viruses have something akin to a five-year plan. They don’t think that far. Viruses probably don’t think. I’m certain they don’t caucus to establish behaviors for all of virus-kind.
Sure, it’s survival of the fittest, but “fittest” can mean so many different things.
- Now this is interesting: The Fight Club Theory of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. Spoilers for both movies, so be forewarned. [via]
- And finally, the neuropsychology of zombies. [via]
“Everyone wants to be righteous when they can afford it.â€
Commenting on Scott Tobias’ recap of last night’s Dollhouse episode, AV Club writer Zack Handlen makes an interesting observation:
And how weird would it be to know that somewhere out there, somebody had figured out your perfect type; and that the type was passive, endlessly sweet, and completely willing to surrender to you at every turn? This is not a nice thing to learn about yourself, I think.
Somewhere halfway through this first (and maybe only) season, Dollhouse went from being a lousy show with a few interesting elements, at best an intriguing disappointment, to being a genuinely terrific show. That’s not to say it’s a perfect show — in general I agree with Handlen’s later point, that it isn’t “as fully-formed as it could be,” and still, Eliza Dusku remains the least interesting part of the whole thing — but I’d actually be sorry if (or when?) it was canceled at this point.
April in song
I swear, I never expected it to get so out of hand. But this ungainly thing is my mix for April 2009:
- “Water Here” by Bodies of Water
- “Ghosts” by Laura Marling
- “Lonely Ghosts” by O+S
- “Ghosts Under Rocks” by Ra Ra Riot
- “Crown of Love” by Arcade Fire
- “Dread Natty Congo” by Sister Carol East
- “America” by Robyn Hitchcock
- “If Jeff Buckley Had Lived” by the Indelicates
- “Ramshackle Day Parade” by Joe Strummer & the Mescaleros
- “Your Big Hands” by Jolie Holland
- “Hey World (Don’t Give Up Version)” by Michael Franti
- “Cat’s Game” by Greg Camp
- “Nowheres Nigh” by Parts and Labor
- “Come Monday Night” by God Help the Girl
- “Days Gone By” by Jon Boden
- “Oh Oh Oh Oh Oh Oh Oh Oh” by Say Hi to Your Mom
- “Sick Muse” by Metric
- “Get on My Pony” by A-Trak
- “Pony” by Sara Watkins
- “Beggar’s Prayer” by Emiliana Torrini
- “Long as I Can See the Light” by Creedence Clearwater Revival
- “Ruby, Don’t Take Your Love to Town” by the Killers
- “Cartoons and Forever Plans” by Maria Taylor
- “French Navy” by Camera Obscura
- “Soleil” by Francoise Hardy
- “Where Were You Last Night” by Photons
- “Airport Surroundings” by Loney Dear
- “Seven” by Fever Ray
- “Sweet Sweet Heartkiller” by Say Hi to Your Mom
- “Jake Summers” by Fight Like Apes
- “My Delirium” by Malcolm Middleton
- “Palm Springs” by Jill Sobule
- “Time Lapse Lifeline” by Maria Taylor
That’s 33 songs. And it could have easily been a couple of tracks longer. I blame a couple of things: all the South by Southwest retrospectives I listened to last month, and way too many free sampler albums downloaded at Amazon.com. And then, of course, Heather sent me a mix CD, and there was lots of really good music on that.Trust me: this is ridiculously long, over two hours of music, but this is after did some pruning and cut some tracks. (There are a couple of repeat bands, but there could have been more.)
Anyway, this is what I was listening to last month, if you were curious. I’m starting to remember why I limited myself to just 12 songs a month last year.
Friday Night Video
Real-life Twitter
Meanwhile, it turns out that Twitter’s ever-growing numbers are pretty much a lie:
A Nielsen survey reports that more than 60% of users who sign up for Twitter don’t return to the site the following month. So while Twitter’s traffic has catapulted to 6 million unique viewers each month, only 40% of new users actually stay to play.
I like and use Twitter, but I can’t say I’m surprised.
Links via Waxy.org Links and Gerry Canavan, respectively.