- White Castle aromatherapy candles? I’ve never eaten there, but this doesn’t sound like a good thing at all. [via]
- Stephen Hawking says: don’t talk to aliens. But what if they offer us candy? Space candy! [via]
- Digital Domesday book unlocked, underlining the dangers inherent in digital archiving. [via]
- By now you’ve seen Jon Stewart’s interview with Ken Blackwell, right? If not, you really should. Mostly, Stewart just has to let Blackwell talk.
- And finally, I got a kick out of this Super Mario Bros. clone: Enough Plumbers. [via]
Month: May 2010
Sometimes a Tuesday is just a Tuesday
Today was a less exciting, but also less rainy, version of yesterday. No meetings with authors, no hours hunched over the photocopier, just a lot of reading on art therapy and occasionally marking up pages with my red pen. Reading manuscripts is definitely the most time-consuming part of my job, but it’s also the thing that makes it feel most like editing to me, the thing I enjoy most about it. There’s a genuine pleasure in taking a good book and helping the author to make it better. I don’t think this particular book is going to take a lot of working, mostly just logistical wrangling for the images and accompanying DVD, but I still need to finish reading the last few chapters.
Beyond that, it was just your typical Tuesday.
Tuesday various
- Thinking of the Past or Future Causes Us to Sway Backward or Forward [via]:
University of Aberdeen psychological scientists Lynden Miles, Louise Nind and Neil Macrae conducted a study to measure this in the lab. They fitted participants with a motion sensor while they imagined either future or past events. The researchers found that thinking about past or future events can literally move us: Engaging in mental time travel (a.k.a. chronesthesia) resulted in physical movements corresponding to the metaphorical direction of time. Those who thought of the past swayed backward while those who thought of the future moved forward.
- Gene Roddenberry’s original pitch for Star Trek (PDF). [via] I keep meaning to finally watch the original series, now that it’s on Blu-Ray, since I’ve never seen more than bits and pieces. (That way, I’d also get to read Zack Handlen’s reviews. He’s had some interesting things to say so far about The Next Generation.)
- Erotica for the blind? [via]
- You’ve got to give Sita Sings the Blues director Nina Paley credit for sticking to her anti-DRM guns.
- And finally, Dr. Horrible’s Singalong Game [via]
Muggy Monday
I left the iPad at home today, not wanting to risk scratching it in my bag, and also not wanting the easy distraction from work and the book I’m reading, Joe Hill’s Horns. I’m enjoying the book, for the most part, but I’m still about a hundred pages to the end and would like to finish. I didn’t need easy access to Twitter or Scrabble or whatever to distract me. But I did kind of miss having it with me.
It was pouring rain when I woke up this morning, and because of that (and because of a lousy, half-broken umbrella), I got a little soaked running for the train. And I do mean running, since I only just barely made it before the doors closed shut and the train left the station. I bought a new umbrella when I reached Penn Station, but of course up on the street the rain had all but stopped, and I never even open the umbrella once today. There was plenty humidity, but the rain was pretty much done for the day.
I’d forgotten, perhaps in my three-day-weekend, brand-new-iPad daze, that I had an author visiting me this morning. There really was no reason for the visit, other than that she and her husband were in the city for a few days — staying a block from this Saturday’s bomb scare, no less — and we’re interested in pursuing a new edition of her book. But I think our discussion went well…even if I do sometimes feel like I’m faking it, having no real background in psychology myself. Still, they seemed like very pleasant people, and it really does seem like a worthwhile project, so I’m glad we had a chance to chat.
And then I spent the next hour or so printing out instructor materials we’d put online expressly so we wouldn’t have to print them out. But it was for just one customer, and I guess not every professor is rushing to join the digital age. It was a lot of paper, but it wasn’t too difficult a request to accommodate.
After that, it was mostly art therapy until the end of the work day.
Now, though, I think it’s just about time for bed.
Monday various
- Snapple Iced Tea Ingredients, depicted graphically.
- Crayola Thanks the Tea Partiers. The video was pulled from YouTube, even though it’s clearly parody. Sound familiar? [via]
- Speaking of Crayola and parody… [via]
- I got a real kick out of these Gashlycrumb Losties. Huge spoilers for past episodes of the show, it should be said. Personally, I don’t really have much of an opinion one way or another about Zoe.
- And finally — finally — Asimov’s enters the late 20th century and starts accepting electronic submissions.