Songza is a site where you can, for free, look up and listen to entire songs when the mood strikes you. They have some neat tools, one of which allows you to send a song to a friend, one to embed a song on your site, one to link to a song, one to post a song to Twitter, etc. Good if you're looking to listen to, but not purchase, a song--or to listen to the whole thing and not just a sample before purchasing. I haven't delved into their collection too deeply, but I was able to find Madder Rose's "Swim", which is not available on iTunes--and unable to find the B-52s' "Dry County," which I had stuck in my mind today on my commute. A quick search on the song I most obsess over, Laura Branigan's "Gloria," also yielded live performances of "Don't Cry For Me, Argentina" and "Me & Bobby McGee" by Branigan.
Links to some of my favorite songs of the last year (in pop, at least):
"This Heart is a Stone" by Acid House Kings
"1969" by Montt Mardie
"Toxic" cover by Mark Ronson feat. Old Dirty Bastard
"Blue Motorbike" by Moto Boy
And an oldie to shake your coffee to this morning:
"Bust A Move" by Young MC
7.09.2008
7.07.2008
Clerihews at the Boston Globe
Rats--found out too late that The Boston Globe is running a clerihew contest (finalists to be chosen tonight, 7/7, then voted on until July 10). Submissions are in the comments and are fun to read through. Some of my favorite entries (I'm disqualifying ones in which the first line consists of anything more than the subject’s name—it’s not a strict rule of the form, I guess, but I’m a hardass like that):
By “A. Nan”:
Jorie Graham
once said, "I am,
I think. Or not.
At least I'm hot!"
Frank Bidart
bent over Art,
called the friction
stuff of fiction.
By “therblig”:
Tim Berners-Lee
Invented HTTP
Thus the world wide web was born
For Nigerian Diplomats and porn
Georg Simon Ohm
Studied physics in his Bavarian home
But after much resistance, he just couldn't fight it
And wrote "Die galvanische Kette, mathematisch bearbeitet "
By “Danielle”:
Joe Orton
Was never too shy to go courtin'.
He spent some time in the slammer
Then got bludgeoned with a hammer.
[Think I'd vote for the Jorie--or Georg Simon Ohm]
Here are the only clerihews I’ve ever written, for a great class with Peter Klappert in '97:
Elizabeth Bishop
buttered the fish up
with homage and versification--
and herbed garlic, post-publication.
Marianne Moore
kept a voluminous store
of quotes that she dug in
case she needed something to plug in.
By “A. Nan”:
Jorie Graham
once said, "I am,
I think. Or not.
At least I'm hot!"
Frank Bidart
bent over Art,
called the friction
stuff of fiction.
By “therblig”:
Tim Berners-Lee
Invented HTTP
Thus the world wide web was born
For Nigerian Diplomats and porn
Georg Simon Ohm
Studied physics in his Bavarian home
But after much resistance, he just couldn't fight it
And wrote "Die galvanische Kette, mathematisch bearbeitet "
By “Danielle”:
Joe Orton
Was never too shy to go courtin'.
He spent some time in the slammer
Then got bludgeoned with a hammer.
[Think I'd vote for the Jorie--or Georg Simon Ohm]
Here are the only clerihews I’ve ever written, for a great class with Peter Klappert in '97:
Elizabeth Bishop
buttered the fish up
with homage and versification--
and herbed garlic, post-publication.
Marianne Moore
kept a voluminous store
of quotes that she dug in
case she needed something to plug in.
6.27.2008
Museum Staff Cleaning Elephant Skin, 1933
--photo by Thane Bierwert, from an incredibly cool new online exhibit by the American Museum of Natural History: images of exhibition preparations from the 1930s.
6.04.2008
Book House in Dinkytown
The June issue of Bookslut features an interview with Kristen Eide-Tollefson, owner of The Book House in Dinkytown--one of the best (maybe the best) used bookstores for poetry & poetics in Minneapolis. Whenever I bring books in for trade, she says "I love your books! I love your books!" It's also a great rainy-day date place (especially if you start a few doors down at Al's Breakfast).
5.30.2008
"Gorilla Killings" by Brent Stirton
Amazing photos taken in July '07, when locals and rangers worked together to evacuate the bodies of four Mountain Gorillas in the Virunga National Park, Eastern Congo. One of the gorillas had been shot; all were killed under mysterious circumstances. See more of Stirton's "Gorilla Killings" series here. Via we make money not art.
5.24.2008
5.16.2008
Fibular Hemimelia & Amputation--
Whenever I see a new search engine recommended, I usually plug "fibular hemimelia" into its search box for my trial run. The condition basically boils down to being born missing a fibula--and often (though not in my case) some toes. Other leg issues, like a shortened femur, missing ligaments, etc., may also be present (as in my case).
"fibular hemimelia" in Wheeless' Textbook of Orthopaedics
When I was born (1974), amputation was by far the most common treatment. The alternative: a lengthy series of surgeries, many experimental, designed to promote tibia growth and counter a leg length discrepancy. My right leg's growth was "stimulated" in a variety of ways including a fasciectomy; my left leg's growth was stunted, and I'm now at a difference of about 3 inches, for which I wear a lift (I may eventually undergo leg lengthening surgery to even 'em out, but I'd need a couple other surgeries first to make my leg strong enough to withstand the lengthening--and as an adult working a 40-hour job, that kind of free time/leave isn't anywhere near as available to me as it was when I was a student or working part-time). I remember feeling very lucky to have been born in a time when (and metro area where) alternatives to amputation were possible, if rare.
Interestingly, what I've found searching "fibular hemimelia" in the last year or so is that amputation is once again the most common (even most desirable) treatment--and that apparently "children who undergo early amputation are more active, have less pain, are more satisfied, have fewer complications, undergo fewer procedures, and incur less cost than those who undergo lengthening." ("Fibular Hemimelia: Comparison of Outcome Measurements After Amputation and Lengthening" in The Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery 82:1732 [2000])
I've grown up thinking of amputation--in regards to fibular hemimelia--as a primitive solution that modern medicine made it possible for me to avoid. The surprise? All the below folks were born with fibular hemimelia, are significantly younger than I am, and opted for amputation. You may have heard of the first one or two.
"Amputee Ineligible for Olympic Events" from the New York Times
"Pistorius, 21, was born without fibulas and had both legs amputated below the knee when he was 11 months old. But in the four years since he started competing, he has set Paralympic world records in the 100, 200 and 400 meters and it was his dream to compete in the Olympic Games."
UPDATE: This was just overruled--Pistorius might compete.
Wikipedia article on Aimee Mullins, model/actress/athlete born in 1976 with fibular hemimelia in both legs, both of which were amputated. "She has been named one of the fifty most beautiful people in the world by People." Mullins at MyHero: "Without her legs, she could still learn to walk with artificial ones. With her legs, she would have been confined to a wheelchair for the rest of her life."
Team Ossur Member Jeff Skiba--The First Amputee in History to Clear Seven Feet in the Men's High Jump
"Born without a fibula in his left leg due to a congenital defect known as fibular hemimelia, doctors amputated [the 24-yr-old's] leg below the knee when he was less than a year old."
Oak Park Hockey Player Isn't Held Back by his Prosthetic Leg
"Now a junior at Oak Park, Brown scored seven goals in 19 games this season. That's no small accomplishment for any player, particularly Brown, who was born in 1990 with fibular hemimelia in his right leg...Tonya Brown, Jake's mother, says the family consulted with doctors all over Kansas City, but few had even heard of fibular hemimelia. The early prognosis was that Jake would never walk...The Browns finally found comfort at Shriners Hospital in St. Louis when they met a family from Indiana with a daughter Jake's age who also had the condition. Additionally, the Shriners doctors were familiar with the condition...Unfortunately, the best course of action was amputation."
Racing to the Paralympic Games
"Tyler Carter of Topton is a typical 14-year-old...And oh, by the way, Tyler has only one foot. Tyler was born with fibular hemimelia, a congenital condition that left him without a fibula bone in his right leg. As a result, the leg was amputated below the knee when he was 1, leaving him with what he jokingly refers to as 'my stump.' Despite his disability, Tyler is a competitive skier who often beats able-bodied competitors in races held throughout the Poconos..."
"fibular hemimelia" in Wheeless' Textbook of Orthopaedics
When I was born (1974), amputation was by far the most common treatment. The alternative: a lengthy series of surgeries, many experimental, designed to promote tibia growth and counter a leg length discrepancy. My right leg's growth was "stimulated" in a variety of ways including a fasciectomy; my left leg's growth was stunted, and I'm now at a difference of about 3 inches, for which I wear a lift (I may eventually undergo leg lengthening surgery to even 'em out, but I'd need a couple other surgeries first to make my leg strong enough to withstand the lengthening--and as an adult working a 40-hour job, that kind of free time/leave isn't anywhere near as available to me as it was when I was a student or working part-time). I remember feeling very lucky to have been born in a time when (and metro area where) alternatives to amputation were possible, if rare.
Interestingly, what I've found searching "fibular hemimelia" in the last year or so is that amputation is once again the most common (even most desirable) treatment--and that apparently "children who undergo early amputation are more active, have less pain, are more satisfied, have fewer complications, undergo fewer procedures, and incur less cost than those who undergo lengthening." ("Fibular Hemimelia: Comparison of Outcome Measurements After Amputation and Lengthening" in The Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery 82:1732 [2000])
I've grown up thinking of amputation--in regards to fibular hemimelia--as a primitive solution that modern medicine made it possible for me to avoid. The surprise? All the below folks were born with fibular hemimelia, are significantly younger than I am, and opted for amputation. You may have heard of the first one or two.
"Amputee Ineligible for Olympic Events" from the New York Times
"Pistorius, 21, was born without fibulas and had both legs amputated below the knee when he was 11 months old. But in the four years since he started competing, he has set Paralympic world records in the 100, 200 and 400 meters and it was his dream to compete in the Olympic Games."
UPDATE: This was just overruled--Pistorius might compete.
Wikipedia article on Aimee Mullins, model/actress/athlete born in 1976 with fibular hemimelia in both legs, both of which were amputated. "She has been named one of the fifty most beautiful people in the world by People." Mullins at MyHero: "Without her legs, she could still learn to walk with artificial ones. With her legs, she would have been confined to a wheelchair for the rest of her life."
Team Ossur Member Jeff Skiba--The First Amputee in History to Clear Seven Feet in the Men's High Jump
"Born without a fibula in his left leg due to a congenital defect known as fibular hemimelia, doctors amputated [the 24-yr-old's] leg below the knee when he was less than a year old."
Oak Park Hockey Player Isn't Held Back by his Prosthetic Leg
"Now a junior at Oak Park, Brown scored seven goals in 19 games this season. That's no small accomplishment for any player, particularly Brown, who was born in 1990 with fibular hemimelia in his right leg...Tonya Brown, Jake's mother, says the family consulted with doctors all over Kansas City, but few had even heard of fibular hemimelia. The early prognosis was that Jake would never walk...The Browns finally found comfort at Shriners Hospital in St. Louis when they met a family from Indiana with a daughter Jake's age who also had the condition. Additionally, the Shriners doctors were familiar with the condition...Unfortunately, the best course of action was amputation."
Racing to the Paralympic Games
"Tyler Carter of Topton is a typical 14-year-old...And oh, by the way, Tyler has only one foot. Tyler was born with fibular hemimelia, a congenital condition that left him without a fibula bone in his right leg. As a result, the leg was amputated below the knee when he was 1, leaving him with what he jokingly refers to as 'my stump.' Despite his disability, Tyler is a competitive skier who often beats able-bodied competitors in races held throughout the Poconos..."
I'm Pro-Coat and I Vote
"Museum Kills Live Exhibit" in the NYT:
One of the strangest exhibits at the opening of Design and the Elastic Mind, the very strange show at the Museum of Modern Art in New York that explores the territory where design meets science, was a teeny coat made out of living mouse stem cells. The “victimless leather” was kept alive in an incubator with nutrients, unsettlingly alive. Until recently, that is.
Paola Antonelli, a senior curator at the museum, had to kill the coat. “It was growing too much,” she said in an interview from a conference in Belgrade. The cells were multiplying so fast that the incubator was beginning to clog. Also, a sleeve was falling off....
One of the strangest exhibits at the opening of Design and the Elastic Mind, the very strange show at the Museum of Modern Art in New York that explores the territory where design meets science, was a teeny coat made out of living mouse stem cells. The “victimless leather” was kept alive in an incubator with nutrients, unsettlingly alive. Until recently, that is.
Paola Antonelli, a senior curator at the museum, had to kill the coat. “It was growing too much,” she said in an interview from a conference in Belgrade. The cells were multiplying so fast that the incubator was beginning to clog. Also, a sleeve was falling off....
5.11.2008
Animation Backgrounds
is a blog that posts exactly that: backgrounds from animated movies. Many would make excellent desktop wallpaper (I'm going with one from Mary Poppins, below).
Animation Backgrounds
Animation Backgrounds
4.30.2008
Why, why does this appeal to me?
4.29.2008
Clay Shirky: "Gin, Television, and Social Surplus"
Two excerpts. Read full transcript here. Video of talk here.
One:
A couple of weeks ago one of my students at ITP forwarded me a project started by a professor in Brazil, in Fortaleza, named Vasco Furtado. It's a Wiki Map for crime in Brazil. If there's an assault, if there's a burglary, if there's a mugging, a robbery, a rape, a murder, you can go and put a push-pin on a Google Map, and you can characterize the assault, and you start to see a map of where these crimes are occurring.
Now, this already exists as tacit information. Anybody who knows a town has some sense of, "Don't go there. That street corner is dangerous. Don't go in this neighborhood. Be careful there after dark." But it's something society knows without society really knowing it, which is to say there's no public source where you can take advantage of it. And the cops, if they have that information, they're certainly not sharing. In fact, one of the things Furtado says in starting the Wiki crime map was, "This information may or may not exist some place in society, but it's actually easier for me to try to rebuild it from scratch than to try and get it from the authorities who might have it now."
Maybe this will succeed or maybe it will fail. The normal case of social software is still failure; most of these experiments don't pan out. But the ones that do are quite incredible, and I hope that this one succeeds, obviously. But even if it doesn't, it's illustrated the point already, which is that someone working alone, with really cheap tools, has a reasonable hope of carving out enough of the cognitive surplus, enough of the desire to participate, enough of the collective goodwill of the citizens, to create a resource you couldn't have imagined existing even five years ago.
[bold mine]
Two:
In this same conversation with the TV producer I was talking about World of Warcraft guilds, and as I was talking, I could sort of see what she was thinking: "Losers. Grown men sitting in their basement pretending to be elves."
At least they're doing something.
Did you ever see that episode of Gilligan's Island where they almost get off the island and then Gilligan messes up and then they don't? I saw that one. I saw that one a lot when I was growing up. And every half-hour that I watched that was a half an hour I wasn't posting at my blog or editing Wikipedia or contributing to a mailing list. Now I had an ironclad excuse for not doing those things, which is none of those things existed then. I was forced into the channel of media the way it was because it was the only option. Now it's not, and that's the big surprise. However lousy it is to sit in your basement and pretend to be an elf, I can tell you from personal experience it's worse to sit in your basement and try to figure if Ginger or Mary Ann is cuter.
And I'm willing to raise that to a general principle. It's better to do something than to do nothing. Even lolcats, even cute pictures of kittens made even cuter with the addition of cute captions, hold out an invitation to participation. When you see a lolcat, one of the things it says to the viewer is, "If you have some sans-serif fonts on your computer, you can play this game, too." And that's message--I can do that, too--is a big change.
This is something that people in the media world don't understand. Media in the 20th century was run as a single race--consumption. How much can we produce? How much can you consume? Can we produce more and you'll consume more? And the answer to that question has generally been yes. But media is actually a triathlon, it's three different events. People like to consume, but they also like to produce, and they like to share.
One:
A couple of weeks ago one of my students at ITP forwarded me a project started by a professor in Brazil, in Fortaleza, named Vasco Furtado. It's a Wiki Map for crime in Brazil. If there's an assault, if there's a burglary, if there's a mugging, a robbery, a rape, a murder, you can go and put a push-pin on a Google Map, and you can characterize the assault, and you start to see a map of where these crimes are occurring.
Now, this already exists as tacit information. Anybody who knows a town has some sense of, "Don't go there. That street corner is dangerous. Don't go in this neighborhood. Be careful there after dark." But it's something society knows without society really knowing it, which is to say there's no public source where you can take advantage of it. And the cops, if they have that information, they're certainly not sharing. In fact, one of the things Furtado says in starting the Wiki crime map was, "This information may or may not exist some place in society, but it's actually easier for me to try to rebuild it from scratch than to try and get it from the authorities who might have it now."
Maybe this will succeed or maybe it will fail. The normal case of social software is still failure; most of these experiments don't pan out. But the ones that do are quite incredible, and I hope that this one succeeds, obviously. But even if it doesn't, it's illustrated the point already, which is that someone working alone, with really cheap tools, has a reasonable hope of carving out enough of the cognitive surplus, enough of the desire to participate, enough of the collective goodwill of the citizens, to create a resource you couldn't have imagined existing even five years ago.
[bold mine]
Two:
In this same conversation with the TV producer I was talking about World of Warcraft guilds, and as I was talking, I could sort of see what she was thinking: "Losers. Grown men sitting in their basement pretending to be elves."
At least they're doing something.
Did you ever see that episode of Gilligan's Island where they almost get off the island and then Gilligan messes up and then they don't? I saw that one. I saw that one a lot when I was growing up. And every half-hour that I watched that was a half an hour I wasn't posting at my blog or editing Wikipedia or contributing to a mailing list. Now I had an ironclad excuse for not doing those things, which is none of those things existed then. I was forced into the channel of media the way it was because it was the only option. Now it's not, and that's the big surprise. However lousy it is to sit in your basement and pretend to be an elf, I can tell you from personal experience it's worse to sit in your basement and try to figure if Ginger or Mary Ann is cuter.
And I'm willing to raise that to a general principle. It's better to do something than to do nothing. Even lolcats, even cute pictures of kittens made even cuter with the addition of cute captions, hold out an invitation to participation. When you see a lolcat, one of the things it says to the viewer is, "If you have some sans-serif fonts on your computer, you can play this game, too." And that's message--I can do that, too--is a big change.
This is something that people in the media world don't understand. Media in the 20th century was run as a single race--consumption. How much can we produce? How much can you consume? Can we produce more and you'll consume more? And the answer to that question has generally been yes. But media is actually a triathlon, it's three different events. People like to consume, but they also like to produce, and they like to share.
4.27.2008
...and then there are the good typos:
Scrap found at the library:
my favorite month is july
because I was born
on that mouth
my favorite month is july
because I was born
on that mouth
4.23.2008
They got...the mustard...out!
Last night's American Idol with Andrew Lloyd Webber reminded me that I've wanted to post a recent Improv Everywhere mission: Food Court Musical! (below or click link)
In high school, whenever I had a big audition after school, I'd walk down the crowded senior hall waving my arms around like Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music singing "I Have Confidence"; there are multiple occasions on which I've burst out with Grease 2's "Cool Rider" (if you are unfamiliar with this Michelle Pfeiffer masterpiece, go see it!) in public, and I unfortunately remember drunkenly singing "Somewhere in my Youth (Or Childhood), I Must Have Done Something Good" (a song I could've sworn I hated) at the top of my lungs at New College the night a girl I'd had a long crush on asked me out. So "Food Court Musical"--in which a bunch of planted food court "employees" and eating customers perform a "spontaneous" musical at a mall--gets me in all the right places.
In high school, whenever I had a big audition after school, I'd walk down the crowded senior hall waving my arms around like Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music singing "I Have Confidence"; there are multiple occasions on which I've burst out with Grease 2's "Cool Rider" (if you are unfamiliar with this Michelle Pfeiffer masterpiece, go see it!) in public, and I unfortunately remember drunkenly singing "Somewhere in my Youth (Or Childhood), I Must Have Done Something Good" (a song I could've sworn I hated) at the top of my lungs at New College the night a girl I'd had a long crush on asked me out. So "Food Court Musical"--in which a bunch of planted food court "employees" and eating customers perform a "spontaneous" musical at a mall--gets me in all the right places.
4.11.2008
This week in praise
Less praise than one might reasonably hope for:
Editor of largish poetry press, to me:
"I heard you read at the Loft a few weeks ago. I liked that anecdote you told about American Idol and Million's Poet" [so, apparently, not your poems].
More praise than one might normally expect:
Woman at Preschool Storytime, to me:
"I just wanted to tell you you have an amazing singing voice!" (after I sang "If You're Happy and You Know It, Clap Your Hands")
Editor of largish poetry press, to me:
"I heard you read at the Loft a few weeks ago. I liked that anecdote you told about American Idol and Million's Poet" [so, apparently, not your poems].
More praise than one might normally expect:
Woman at Preschool Storytime, to me:
"I just wanted to tell you you have an amazing singing voice!" (after I sang "If You're Happy and You Know It, Clap Your Hands")
3.21.2008
3.20.2008
Charles Cumming's The 21 Steps
The 21 Steps is a short story designed to be read while following the action on Google Maps. It's actually a lot more interesting (not the story, the experience of reading the story with the map integrated) than I thought it would be. It adds a "sense of immediacy" (in quotation marks because I suspect that's meaningless) I didn't expect. Getting the story in little, delayed bits heightens suspense and clarifies the charm of cell phone novels.
From CNN: "Euthanasia Debate Woman Found Dead"
This story is from France. Here's a guide to assisted suicide laws around the world.
I find laws against assisted suicide even more (far more, really) outrageous than laws against gay marriage. If I could see only one of these--assisted suicide or gay marriage--become widely legal in my lifetime, I'd choose assisted suicide. Especially if more damn places of work, including mine, would make health benefits available to unmarried long-term partners.
I find laws against assisted suicide even more (far more, really) outrageous than laws against gay marriage. If I could see only one of these--assisted suicide or gay marriage--become widely legal in my lifetime, I'd choose assisted suicide. Especially if more damn places of work, including mine, would make health benefits available to unmarried long-term partners.
Nice Tool: DailyLit, Brijit, and Zamzar
DailyLit
Good news--a huge chunk of Cory Doctorow's oeuvre is now available for free at DailyLit. DailyLit has a brilliant premise: sign up, choose a book or two, and get a shortish segment of the book delivered to you each day (email or RSS). They have tons of free public domain books (and some Creative Commons ones, like Lessig's Free Culture), and more recent books are available for anywhere from $4.95 to $9.95. I'm all about the free, but there are some very useful selections (given the daily way you'll be receiving them) available for pay: language books, SAT review, etc. The poetry section is currently limited to dead, free folks. If you're a poet who makes your books (oop, outside of copyright, owned by you, etc.) available on the web, please consider contacting DailyLit. I'd love to see more poetry selections available.
This said, I have to admit that when I first found DailyLit last fall, I signed up for The Scarlet Pimpernel--available in only 105 parts, which seemed unambitious--but quickly fell behind, felt like I was drowning in backed-up Scarlet Pimpernel emails, and quit.
Brijit
Brijit reads magazines--both print and web-based--so you don't have to--or, better yet, so you can choose which articles you want to track down and read in full. It's also free. Receive 100-words-or-less reviews/abstracts of articles in Slate, Salon, The Onion A.V. Club, Rolling Stone, The New Yorker, The Believer, Conde Nast Traveler, The Economist, and so on, by email or RSS feed. Brijit pays writers 5 bucks per article to write the summaries/reviews. Some publications aren't reviewed as frequently or thoroughly as others (I haven't received too many from The Believer). I subscribe to about fifteen and read them in my feed reader. I love this tool, because I rarely read magazines even in waiting rooms (always have a book along), and it helps me get a feel for what's going on in magazine-reader-land. Brijit also offers summaries of a number of TV shows, including The Colbert Report, The Daily Show, and Meet the Press.
Zamzar
Zamzar offers free online file conversion. Convert an ancient WordPerfect doc to a Word doc, a doc to a pdf or docx, a jpg to a gif, etc. Super simple, done in an instant, and very useful to me at the library when someone brings in a document in a format our computers don't recognize. Can also convert music and video files in one format to another.
Good news--a huge chunk of Cory Doctorow's oeuvre is now available for free at DailyLit. DailyLit has a brilliant premise: sign up, choose a book or two, and get a shortish segment of the book delivered to you each day (email or RSS). They have tons of free public domain books (and some Creative Commons ones, like Lessig's Free Culture), and more recent books are available for anywhere from $4.95 to $9.95. I'm all about the free, but there are some very useful selections (given the daily way you'll be receiving them) available for pay: language books, SAT review, etc. The poetry section is currently limited to dead, free folks. If you're a poet who makes your books (oop, outside of copyright, owned by you, etc.) available on the web, please consider contacting DailyLit. I'd love to see more poetry selections available.
This said, I have to admit that when I first found DailyLit last fall, I signed up for The Scarlet Pimpernel--available in only 105 parts, which seemed unambitious--but quickly fell behind, felt like I was drowning in backed-up Scarlet Pimpernel emails, and quit.
Brijit
Brijit reads magazines--both print and web-based--so you don't have to--or, better yet, so you can choose which articles you want to track down and read in full. It's also free. Receive 100-words-or-less reviews/abstracts of articles in Slate, Salon, The Onion A.V. Club, Rolling Stone, The New Yorker, The Believer, Conde Nast Traveler, The Economist, and so on, by email or RSS feed. Brijit pays writers 5 bucks per article to write the summaries/reviews. Some publications aren't reviewed as frequently or thoroughly as others (I haven't received too many from The Believer). I subscribe to about fifteen and read them in my feed reader. I love this tool, because I rarely read magazines even in waiting rooms (always have a book along), and it helps me get a feel for what's going on in magazine-reader-land. Brijit also offers summaries of a number of TV shows, including The Colbert Report, The Daily Show, and Meet the Press.
Zamzar
Zamzar offers free online file conversion. Convert an ancient WordPerfect doc to a Word doc, a doc to a pdf or docx, a jpg to a gif, etc. Super simple, done in an instant, and very useful to me at the library when someone brings in a document in a format our computers don't recognize. Can also convert music and video files in one format to another.
3.17.2008
The VQR blog, which last September gave us a groovy list of the 10 most common titles of work submitted to the journal, now gives us a neat table of poems on cliched topics (percent submitted to and percent accepted by VQR).
The post begins: This was supposed to be a blog entry about how authors submit poetry to us covering cliched topics that there’s just no way we’re going to print. But then I did the math, calculating the percentage of our submissions and published work that contain any of a dozen mainstays of poetic terminology, and found that precisely the opposite is true...As it turns out, our editor is all about those dreaded paeans to cats."
(more here)
The post begins: This was supposed to be a blog entry about how authors submit poetry to us covering cliched topics that there’s just no way we’re going to print. But then I did the math, calculating the percentage of our submissions and published work that contain any of a dozen mainstays of poetic terminology, and found that precisely the opposite is true...As it turns out, our editor is all about those dreaded paeans to cats."
(more here)
3.05.2008
"Global Mourning"--Clive Thompson in Wired
I'm just now catching up with the January 2008 issue of Wired, and found this, from Clive Thompson's one-pager "Global Mourning: How the Next Victim of Climate Change Will Be Our Minds," interesting:
Australia is suffering through its worst dry spell in a millennium. The outback has turned into a dust bowl, crops are dying off at fantastic rates, cities are rationing water, coral reefs are dying, and the agricultural base is evaporating.
But what really intrigues Glenn Albrecht--a philosopher by training--is how his fellow Australians are reacting.
They're getting sad.
In interviews Albrecht conducted over the past few years, scores of Australians described their deep, wrenching sense of loss as they watch the landscape around them change. Familiar plants don't grow any more. Gardens won't take. Birds are gone. "They no longer feel like they know the place they've lived for decades," he says.
Albrecht believes that this is a new type of sadness. People are feeling displaced. They're suffering symptoms eerily similar to those of indigenous populations that are forcibly removed from their traditional homelands. But nobody is being relocated; they haven't moved anywhere. It's just that the familiar markers of their area, the physical and sensory signals that define home, are vanishing. Their environment is moving away from them, and they miss it terribly...
[It's a] fascinating new way to think about the impact of global warming. Everyone's worried about resource management and the spooky, unpredictable changes in the ecosystem...sea levels...clean water...species...that'll go extinct.
But we should also be concerned about the huge toll climate change will inflict on our mental health...
[italics Thompson's. Pg. 70, Jan 2008 Wired]
Australia is suffering through its worst dry spell in a millennium. The outback has turned into a dust bowl, crops are dying off at fantastic rates, cities are rationing water, coral reefs are dying, and the agricultural base is evaporating.
But what really intrigues Glenn Albrecht--a philosopher by training--is how his fellow Australians are reacting.
They're getting sad.
In interviews Albrecht conducted over the past few years, scores of Australians described their deep, wrenching sense of loss as they watch the landscape around them change. Familiar plants don't grow any more. Gardens won't take. Birds are gone. "They no longer feel like they know the place they've lived for decades," he says.
Albrecht believes that this is a new type of sadness. People are feeling displaced. They're suffering symptoms eerily similar to those of indigenous populations that are forcibly removed from their traditional homelands. But nobody is being relocated; they haven't moved anywhere. It's just that the familiar markers of their area, the physical and sensory signals that define home, are vanishing. Their environment is moving away from them, and they miss it terribly...
[It's a] fascinating new way to think about the impact of global warming. Everyone's worried about resource management and the spooky, unpredictable changes in the ecosystem...sea levels...clean water...species...that'll go extinct.
But we should also be concerned about the huge toll climate change will inflict on our mental health...
[italics Thompson's. Pg. 70, Jan 2008 Wired]
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