New URMA issue on my desk

Vol. XIX, No. II: the Fall/Winter 2009 issue of Research in Review (Florida State University)

Tuesday coffee break: average salaries

From PhDcomics.com

Monday coffee break: What's the recipe?

Our hunger for cookbooks. (Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker)

New URMA issue on my desk

Volume 63, No. 1: the Fall 2009 issue of Medicine on the Midway (University of Chicago)

New URMA issue on my desk

The Autumn/Winter 2009 issue of Perspectives (Ohio University)

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Vol. 4, No. 1: The November 2009 Annual Report edition of UC Research (University of Cincinnati)

New URMA issue on my desk

Volume 9, No. 1: the Winter 2009/2010 issue of Washington State magazine

New URMA issue on my desk

Vol. 38, No. 2: the Fall 2009 issue of ugaresearch (Univ. of Georgia)

New URMA issue on my desk

Volume LXII, Number 2: the Fall 2009 issue of Engineering & Science (Caltech)

New URMA issue on my desk

The Fall 2009 issue of Ideation (William & Mary)

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Vol. 22, No. 4: the November 2009 HHMI Bulletin

More Weary Words

"A few years ago it seemed as if writers couldn’t be hired at The Times unless they used the word “frisson” in just about every column. That usage has receded a bit, but not much. The new word-that-must-be-used is “trope,” meaning metaphor, example, literary device, picture — and maybe whatever else the writer wants it to mean."

More Weary Words (via The New York Times)

Writing quote of the day:

"Anyone who translates knowledge from the technical into the popular language is disregarding the rules of caste, and is thus taboo. Technical terms, long words, learned-sounding phrases, are the means by which second-rate intellectuals 'inflate their egos' and feed their sense of superiority to the multitude. If an idea can be expressed in two ways, one of which involves a barbarous technical jargon, while the other needs nothing but a few simple words of one syllable which everyone can understand, this kind of person definitely prefers the barbarous technical jargon. He wishes to be thought, and above all to think himself, a person who understands profound and difficult things which common folk cannot comprehend." W.T. Stace, "The Snobbishness of the Learned," in Atlantic Essays 94, 99 (Samuel N. Bogorad & Cary B. Graham eds., 1958).

I know what they MEANT, but...

Warning on a piece of equipment at my gym:

STOP EXERCISING IF YOU FEEL WEAK OR FAINT

New URMA issue on my desk

Volume XXXII, No. 2: The Fall 2009 issue of Research & Creative Activity (Indiana University)

Wednesday coffee break: The order by which people are admitted to heaven

Note: magazine editors only to be admitted if hell freezes over; proofreaders admitted without review by committee. (Notre Dame magazine)

New URMA issue on my desk

The fall 2009 issue of (ahem) Endeavors (UNC-Chapel Hill)

New URMA issue on my desk

The 2009 issue of Texas A&M Engineer

Thursday coffee break: Wimps

Modern man 'a wimp', says anthropologist:

"Many prehistoric Australian aboriginals could have outrun world 100 and 200 metres record holder Usain Bolt in modern conditions.

"Some Tutsi men in Rwanda exceeded the current world high jump record of 2.45 meters during initiation ceremonies in which they had to jump at least their own height to progress to manhood.

"Any Neanderthal woman could have beaten former bodybuilder and current California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger in an arm wrestle...." (The Independent)

Wednesday coffee break: Wellcome Image Awards 2009

"The Wellcome Image Awards recognise the creators of the most informative, striking and technically excellent images among recent acquisitions to the Wellcome Images collection of medical and historical images..."

New URMA issue on my desk

The Fall 2009 issue of Research Frontiers (Univ. of Arkansas)

Duck and cover: Weimar Berlin

Blickfang: the eye-catching covers of Weimar Berlin (A Journey Round My Skull)

New URMA issue on my desk

Volume 1, Number 1: University of Delaware Research

Friday coffee break: Ig Nobel Prizes 2009

VIA NEAT-O-RAMA: The 19th annual Ig Nobel Prizes were awarded Thursday night at Sander’s Theater on the Harvard campus. The awards are given to "honor achievements that make people laugh, and then make them think." A few of the winners:

PEACE PRIZE: Stephan Bolliger, Steffen Ross, Lars Oesterhelweg, Michael Thali and Beat Kneubuehl of the University of Bern, Switzerland, for determining — by experiment — whether it is better to be smashed over the head with a full bottle of beer or with an empty bottle.

VETERINARY MEDICINE PRIZE: Catherine Douglas and Peter Rowlinson of Newcastle University, Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, UK, for showing that cows who have names give more milk than cows that are nameless.

LITERATURE PRIZE: Ireland’s police service (An Garda Siochana), for writing and presenting more than fifty traffic tickets to the most frequent driving offender in the country — Prawo Jazdy — whose name in Polish means “Driving License”.

See the entire list of winners at Improbable Research.

But I read it for the... articles?

A few weeks ago I found a cheap subscription to Vanity Fair. I just got my first issue:

Duck (goose?) and cover

30 book covers from Poland (from A Journey Round My Skull)

Duck and cover: The most controversial mag. covers of all time

"While some controversial covers have worked and sold more magazines, or won awards for the editors who made the decision to go to press with them, others were embarrassments that the publication had to either apologize for, or fire an editor over." (WebDesignerDepot)

O RLY?

Conservative Ideals Drive Hummer Ownership: "A team of researchers has found that Hummer owners say their vehicle choice is strongly related to their personal morals...." (wired)

The Big Picture: Dust

Dust storms in Sydney, Australia (boston.com)

New URMA issue on my desk

Volume 3, No. 1: The Fall 2009 issue of UNLV Innovation (University of Nevada, Las Vegas)

New URMA issue on my desk

The Summer 2009 edition of Odyssey (University of Kentucky)

Dead Salmon + MRI = Red Herring

Neuroscientist Craig Bennett bought a salmon to test an fMRI machine and work out some protocols.

So, as the fish sat in the scanner, they showed it “a series of photographs depicting human individuals in social situations.” To maintain the rigor of the protocol (and perhaps because it was hilarious), the salmon, just like a human test subject, “was asked to determine what emotion the individual in the photo must have been experiencing.”
The salmon, as Bennett’s poster on the test dryly notes, “was not alive at the time of scanning.”

Those involved got a laugh out of the situation, until the scans came back and showed that activity was detected in different areas of the brain when the fish was “shown” the pictures. Remember, the fish was dead.

The result is completely nuts — but that’s actually exactly the point. Bennett, who is now a post-doc at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and his adviser, George Wolford, wrote up the work as a warning about the dangers of false positives in fMRI data. They wanted to call attention to ways the field could improve its statistical methods.

Which is not to say that scans aren’t a useful research tool, but that they must be carefully monitored to avoid false positive results. (wired.com)

Stupid is as stupid doesn't do.

A new film about Charles Darwin and the writing of his most famous book is about to be released around the world with the notable exception of the United States of Ignorance.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/6173399/Charles-Darwin-film-too-controversial-for-religious-America.html

Tuesday coffee break: The ghost fleet of the recession

"The biggest and most secretive gathering of ships in maritime history lies at anchor east of Singapore. Never before photographed, it is bigger than the U.S. and British navies combined but has no crew, no cargo and no destination — and is why your Christmas stocking may be on the light side this year..." (dailymail.co.uk)

Is the world getting better? (New Scientist)

New URMA issue on my desk

The Summer 2009 issue of Research in Review (Florida State University)

Science marches on: research shows men can't think after talking to pretty women

Men lose their minds speaking to pretty women: Talking to an attractive woman really can make a man lose his mind, according to a new study. (telegraph.co.uk)

Thursday coffee break: publish *this*

How to Publish a Scientific Comment in 1 2 3 Easy Steps: a somewhat long but entertaining read about one scientist's attempts to point out glaring mistakes in an article that was published in a leading journal.

New URMA issue on my desk

The Fall 2009 issue of Washington State magazine

New URMA issue on my desk

Summer 2009 issue of Agricultures (Purdue)

Friday poll results

Did Yale University Press do the right thing when they removed images of Mohammed from a book about the Danish cartoons?

• Yes: 3 (10%)
• No: 17 (60%)
• I'm not sure: 8 (28%)

This day in history: Lunar Lunacy

"On August 28, 1835, one of newspaper history's most notorious hoaxes was perpetrated by the New York Sun. An article in a week-long series about the telescopic 'discoveries' of esteemed British astronomer Sir John Herschel -- an alleged reprint from the nonexistent Edinburgh Journal of Science -- described his detection of winged, humanlike beings on the moon. Sir John was quoted as saying, 'We counted three parties of these creatures walking erect in a small wood... They averaged about four feet in height, were covered, except on the face, with short and glossy copper-colored hair, and had wings composed of a thin membrane without hair, lying snugly upon their backs, from the top of their shoulders to the calves of the legs. The face, a yellowish flesh color, was a slight improvement upon that of the large orangutan.' The ruse temporarily catapulted the Sun ahead  of its rivals and went on to badly embarrass those who copied the story without authenticating it. The New York Daily Advertiser, for example, wrote that Herschel 'added a stock of knowledge to the present age that will immortalize his name.'" (via my Dictionary of Forgotten English desk calendar)

More on the Sun's moon hoax here.

Duck and cover: E-ink

Esquire’s E Ink Cover A 21st Century Flop: "Esquire unveiled a special 75th edition today sporting the first use by a magazine of electronic paper technology, but what is presented as the future of digital/print convergence is little more than ink mashed with some underutilized circuitry." (wired.com)

Duck and cover: MacWorld

A short time-lapse video showing the photography, Photoshop, and layout stages for a cover of MacWorld magazine. Call me crazy, but this seems like a lot of time and money spent to produce a cover that ends up looking essentially like nothing more than stock photography. (File under "reinventing the wheel.")

Cover creation from Peter Belanger on Vimeo.

"After working on the latest cover for Macworld Magazine I wanted to show what is involved in making a cover. I focused on the three main areas: the photography, photoshop and design. I chose a time lapse format to convey lots of information in a small amount of time. The only drawback of time lapse is that since half a day goes by in 30 seconds, the whole process seam so easy! Lots of details were left out of the design process (like the cover meetings and rounds of layout options). I began to photograph the design process after the layouts had already been narrowed down to just three cover designs."

Wednesday Coffee Break: The New Literacy

It's not that today's students can't write. It's that they're doing it in different places and in different ways. (Wired)

New URMA issue on my desk

Vol. 22, No. 3: HHMI Bulletin, August 2009 (Howard Hughes Medical Institute)

New URMA issue on my desk

Summer 2009 Volume 2: University of Manitoba Research Life

New Yorker screws up! URMA has contest! [Mary Beth] wins prize(s)!

WE HAVE A WINNER. For providing the correct answer (missing word on
page 53), Mary Beth will receive TWO (count 'em) fabulous prizes:

1) A Commie self-adhesive mustache and beard set

B) A "Diagnose Your Neurosis" Wheel o' Wisdom

Congratulations to Mary Beth. If you get hit by a bread truck tomorrow, at least you will have died happy. (As for Mary Beth's "that" versus "than" guess: the New Yorker is technically in the right here; they're reporting the quote as it was stated. That's my excuse, anyway. It's Monday morning and I'm too groggy to delve into the several thousand words that Fowler's Modern English Usage devotes to "that" and "than.") Regardless, huzzah for Mary Beth. Two prizes for a job well done.

(Confidential to J. Worley in Lexington, KY: next time, send a bribe.)

Unsexy and Unsuccessful

Reader's Digest declares bankruptcy: How a once-mighty publisher fell, and why it may rise again (The Economist)

New Yorker screws up! URMA has contest! You win prize!

It's a dark, dark day in magazine-land, and somewhere, Eustace Tilley is rending his morning coat and striped trousers (if not rolling over in his grave): there is a copy-editing mistake in the latest issue of the New Yorker (Aug. 24, 2009).

The first URMAn to find the mistake wins a fabulous* prize. Here are the official rules:

1. Yes, this is a real contest.
2. The first person to find the error and email it to the URMAlist (listing the page number, the sentence, and the error) wins.
3. Endeavors people are ineligible, but for all I know, they might be bribed to give you clues.

*Prize may or may not be fabulous.

Video appears in paper magazines

The first-ever video advertisement will be published in a traditional paper magazine in September.

Wednesday coffee break: Fun with Google Analytics

Some of the keyword searches people were using over the past year when they stumbled upon our little ol' URMAblog. Feel free to use any of these as a jumpoff point for your next poem, short story, folk song, or flashback:

don't step in that
short words are words of might
break a kindle
cap'n franks nc
found that ducks may be even more comfortable standing under a sprinkler
hot housewives 2008 pictures
urma pics
redsex
was darwin wrong
bluesex
coffee makes you happy
oh evolve
best way to win a debate
chuck berry is on top
pretend restaurant
cold down
nyuk nyuk
break nut
endowment effect cartoon
good screenplay
new zealand citizenship requirements
perks for employees
the snobbishness of the learned
a&m rubber ducks
agoraphobia parrots
parrots for psychosis
black hole black coffee
coffee makes you break out
egg corns
easy ways to win a debate
evolution for dummies
feel dizzy
i hate my copy editor
jason smith breaks neck
nutjobs r us
pictures of 100 year old men
rich kids want pity
rubber ducky you're the one

Friday poll results

I consider myself...

• A journalist: 3 votes (15%)


• A communicator: 16 votes (80%)


• An administrator: 0 votes


• Something else/none of the above: 1 vote (5%)

The High Strung Rocks Gitmo

Leftie, pacifist, Detroit indie-rock band plays Gitmo library. Interesting tale ensues.

"'The best description I can give is that it was like camp,' Derek explained. 'Like a giant summer camp, but with a Defense Department budget. They have everything down there—the soldiers. Beaches, McDonalds, KFC, a supermarket, baseball fields, volleyball fields, basketball courts, a skate park, a gym, a weight room, batting cages, go carts, and every kind of golf: mini-golf, Frisbee golf, regular golf, driving range. The week we got there they were all talking about the rotisserie machine that was coming. Someone wanted it, and they just ordered it. It was bizarre. They took us snorkeling. We played basketball. We hung out on the beach with, like, a cooler and a gallon of cheap rum. But the weirdest part was, I couldn’t actually figure out what everyone does down there. As far as I could tell, they just... maintain the position. That’s their whole job. Keep up the base, fix things that break, stuff like that. And on the weekends, they barbecue and go to the beach.'" (Vanity Fair)

Tuesday coffee break bonus

Healthy One Day, Dying the Next: A Medical Race (New York Times)

Tuesday coffee break: Why I Don't Twitter

"Twitter is a bunch of friends sitting around a table, all shouting at the same time — and shouting mundanities at that... What did you do before you tweeted? It’s the social equivalent of an all points bulletin, or... a quasar or something. What did you do before when you needed to send something of little consequence or urgency to a bunch of people who may or may not want to see it? The only thing that comes to mind is skywriting." (techcrunch)

Science marches on: what to do when zombies attack

"If zombies actually existed, an attack by them would lead to the collapse of civilisation unless dealt with quickly and aggressively." [Don't get me started on the fact that one of the researchers insists that his surname ends in a question mark...] (BBC news)

Duck and cover: The Pelican Project

The Pelican project: a collection of Pelican paperback covers from the 1930s to the 1980s

Wednesday coffee break: Never too late anymore!

New URMA issue on my desk

Research Horizons: Vol. 26, No. 2, Winter/Spring [?] 2009 (Georgia Tech)

(Foamy) Heads of State:

From Wilson’s brewery ban to J.F.K.’s French champagne, parsing a president’s drink choice (Wall St. Journal)

Friday coffee break: the weirdest thing you will see all week

One Got Fat: Bicycle Safety, 1963. "A group of children, all wearing ape masks, rides their bicycles to the park for a picnic. Along the way, all but one are eliminated for violating basic bike safety rules. This strange film was narrated by Edward Everett Horton."



"Farewell, Mossby Pomegranate -- victim of fallen arches."

(via probablybadnews.com)

Thursday coffee break: the suprisingly cool history of ice

"Perhaps it was his Yankee entrepreneurial spirit, or perhaps monomania, but [Frederic] Tudor was obsessed with the idea that ice would make him rich. During the next decade, he developed clever new techniques to convince people that they actually needed ice, including a “first one’s free” pitch. While living in a South Carolina boarding house in 1819, Tudor made a habit of bringing a cooler of chilled beverages to the dinner table. His fellow boarders always scoffed at the sight, but after a sip or two, they’d inevitably fall in love with his ice. Tudor traveled around the country and convinced barkeeps to offer chilled drinks at the same price as regular drinks—to see which would become more popular. He also taught restaurants how to make ice cream, and reached out to doctors and hospitals to convince them that ice was the perfect way to cool feverish patients. The truth is that people never knew they needed ice until Tudor made them try it. Once they did, they couldn’t live without it." (mental_floss)

Wednesday coffee break: Inside Netflix

Not long ago, Netflix sent a 128-page presentation called "Reference Guide on our Freedom & Responsibility Culture" to Netflix employees. Here it is. WARNING: you might start wishing you worked for Netflix.

Culture

View more presentations from reed2001.

Wednesday coffee break: probably bad news

An easy mistake to make. Lots more at probablybadnews.com

Tuesday coffee break: understanding science

Why don't Americans understand science better? Start with the scientists. (Short article by the co-authors of the new book "Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens Our Future," via boston.com)

Monday coffee break: to Kindle or not?

A New Page: Can the Kindle really improve on the book?
by Nicholson Baker, The New Yorker

"The Kindle edition of 'Selected Nuclear Materials and Engineering Systems,' an e-book for people who design nuclear power plants, sells for more than eight thousand dollars. Figure 2 is an elaborate chart of a reaction scheme, with many call-outs and chemical equations. It’s totally illegible. 'You Save: $1,607.80 (20%),' the Kindle page says. 'I’m not going to buy this book until the price comes down,' one stern Amazoner wrote."

Thursday coffee break: big pictures, big eclipse

Shots of the longest solar eclipse of the century. (Boston.com's Big Picture series)

100 Things Your Kids May Never Know About

33. Having to delete something to make room on your hard drive
...
45. Not knowing exactly what all of your friends are doing and thinking at every moment
...
71. Remembering someone’s phone number
...
And 97 more... (wired.com)

Wednesday coffee break: The man who doesn't use money

Could you survive without money? Meet the guy who does:
In Utah, a modern-day caveman has lived for the better part of a decade on zero dollars a day. People used to think he was crazy... (Details magazine)

Tuesday coffee break: CT Scanner Art

"Radiologist Kai-hung Fung makes beautiful and informative art from the CT (computed tomography) scans of his patients, digitally manipulating them to look more appealing."

Can't possibly be true

"The normal way that the U.S. Bureau of Prisons transfers "low-risk" inmates between institutions is to buy them bus tickets and release them unescorted with an arrival deadline. In the last three years, reported the Las Vegas Sun in May, 90,000 inmates were transferred this way, and only about 180 absconded. Though supposedly carefully pre-screened for risk, one man still on the loose is Dwayne Fitzen, a gang-member/biker who was halfway through a 24-year sentence for cocaine-dealing. (Since the traveling inmates are never identified as prisoners, Greyhound is especially alarmed at the policy.)" [San Jose Mercury News-Las Vegas Sun, 5-23-09, via newsoftheweird.com]

How's this for headline writing?

She shot him and broke his heart
The forbidden relationship began behind bars, where she was his psychologist... (Raleigh News & Observer)

Coal is your goal

Underworld: "In a powerfully understated narrative, Jeanne Marie Laskas offers a window into the lives of coal miners in Southeastern Ohio, transporting readers deep into a claustrophobic subterranean world. The men -- who go by such nicknames as Smitty, Pap, Hook, Duke, and Ragu -- slowly reveal themselves to be tough but nuanced characters, veritable diamonds in the dust, portrayed by Laskas with humor, grace, and compassion."

Finalist, feature writing, American Society of Magazine Editors' Best American Magazine Writing 2008. (Jeanne Marie Laska, GQ)