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)

A question of balance: redesigning the Atlantic

Look behind the scenes at last fall's redesign of an icon of American journalism.

1. A general discussion: "For a graphic designer, few jobs are as challenging as designing a magazine. Unlike a logo or a poster, the design of which can rely on blunt simplicity, a magazine is a complex organism, the result of an intricate interplay of words and pictures. Any single issue represents thousands of minute decisions about typography, layout, photography, and illustration. And these decisions are made within an accepted system of conventions -- preconceptions we all share about how a magazine is read -- and more practical and mundane limitations like budgets and schedules...." A Question of Balance, the atlantic.com

2. A slightly more detailed take from the design studio: "When Pentagram undertook a redesign of the Atlantic -- the eighth in its history -- the goal was to establish an intelligent and striking framework for the magazine’s wide-ranging editorial voice."

3. Bonus gallery: 151 Years of Atlantic covers

To do two things at once is to do neither.*

The Autumn of the Multitaskers: "The rise of personalized technology was supposed to give us time and freedom. Instead, argues Walter Kirn, it has imprisoned us. With self-deprecating wit, Kirn takes us along on a bruising ride through multitasking hell, and explains why 'parallel processing' threatens both the brain and the GNP."

Finalist, essays, American Society of Magazine Editors' Best American Magazine Writing 2008. (Walter Kirn, The Atlantic)

*--Publilius Syrus, Roman slave, first century B.C.

House cats know what they want and how to get it from you

Anyone who has ever had cats knows how difficult it can be to get them to do anything they don't already want to do. But it seems that the house cats themselves have had distinctly less trouble getting humans to do their bidding, according to a report published in the July 14th issue of Current Biology... (euerkalert)

Duck and cover: ASME's Top 40 Magazine Covers of the Last 40 Years

On October 17, 2005, the 40 greatest magazine covers of the last 40 years were unveiled at the 2005 American Magazine Conference (AMC) in Puerto Rico, by Mark Whitaker, Editor of Newsweek and President of American Society of Magazine Editors (ASME), and AMC Chairman Evan Smith, Editor of Texas Monthly.

Oh.

Researchers from Cleveland State University, for a recent journal article, assessed the physical traits of 195 female characters from the first 20 James Bond films, revealing that more were brunette than blond and that at least 90 percent were young, slim and of above-average looks. [Daily Telegraph (London), 6-7-09, via newsoftheweird.com]

Watching whales watching us

"Whales, we now know, teach and learn. They scheme. They cooperate, and they grieve. They recognize themselves and their friends. They know and fight back against their enemies. And perhaps most stunningly, given all of our transgressions against them, they may even, in certain circumstances, have learned to trust us again." (N.Y. Times Magazine)

White paper: "Consumers value magazines in their media mix. Do you?"

This Magazine Publishers of America white paper takes a look at ten key indicators of the strength of magazines.

Executive Summary:

1. Magazine readership increased over the past five years
2. The number of issues read has gone up as well
3. Subscriptions are the highest in a decade
4. The number of consumer magazines remains high
5. The age of magazine readers consistently trends younger than the total adult population
6. Magazines are the #1 medium of engagement
7. Magazine ad effectiveness continues to rise
8. Magazines excel in driving web search
9. Magazine readers are social networkers and word-of-mouth influencers
10. Magazine brands continue to evolve

The Boy Who Loved Transit

How the system failed an obsession: "An uncommonly seamless blend of fluid writing and fastidious reporting, "The Boy Who Loved Transit" tells the story of Darius McCollum, a thirty-seven-year-old New Yorker who has spent much of his life in jail for impersonating a transit officer. Writer Jeff Tietz outlines the numerous ways in which the court system has failed McCollum, the the piece is much more than a sermon against injustice; it's a complex portrait of an inscrutable character who, in Tietz's hands, comes alive."

Finalist, profile writing, American Society of Magazine Editors' Best American Magazine Writing 2003. (Jeff Tietz, Harper's, May 2002.)

Also: a Wikipedia entry on McCollum; "The Ballad of Darius McCollum" by a band called the Dare Dukes.

Terminal Ice

"...at the heart of the mystery, like broken shards of a colder climate, float the icebergs, ghost-white messengers trying to tell us something we can't quite fathom."

Finalist, feature writing, American Society of Magazine Editors' Best American Magazine Writing 2003. (Ian Frazier, Outside)

Lying in wait

"Thanks to profoundly deep reporting and riveting prose, the reader spirals downward right along with George O'Leary in his fall from grace as Notre Dame's head coach. In "Lying in Wait," Gary Smith renders his subject as the King Lear of the sports world with such pathos that even a reader with no interest in sports can feel his anguish. This is Smith, a master profiler, at the top of his game."

Winner, profile writing, American Society of Magazine Editors' Best American Magazine Writing 2003. (Gary Smith, Sports Illustrated)

Wednesday coffee break: Tyson and Dawkins on teaching about science

Tuesday coffee break: Catch me if you can

Nicky Gumbel is probably the most charismatic figure in the Church of England today. His 10-week courses, intended to turn agnostics into true, speaking-in-tongues believers, have reaped an astounding number of converts. Jon Ronson signed up. Being Jewish, he presented a special challenge. Would he end up with the sheep or the goats? (guardian.co.uk)

Arizona senator: the Earth's been here 6,000 years, and we haven't messed it up yet, so...

Wired's Art Director on the basics of magazine design

Glory, Grief, and Secretariat's race for the Triple Crown

"Horseman, Pass By" was the winner in the feature writing category of the American Society of Magazine Editors' Best American Magazine Writing 2003. It was written by John Jeremiah Sullivan, and appeared in Harper's.

"Sham led the field going into the first turn. He was flying. Everyone watching the race knew that he was going too fast. The strategy for Secretariat, for any horse, would have been to hang back and let Sham destroy himself, but [Secretariat's jockey] Ronnie Turcotte decided to contest the pace. It was, to all appearances, an insane strategy. William Nack writes that up in the press box, turfwriters were hollering, "They're going too fast!"

"Secretariat caught him just after the first turn, and for the first half of the race it was a duel between the two rivals. Then, around the sixth furlong, Sham began to fall apart. [Jockey] Laffit Pincay pulled him off in distress, and Secretariat was alone. Turcotte had done nothing but cluck to his horse.

"This is when it happened, the thing, the unbelievable thing. Secretariat started going faster. At the first mile, he had shattered the record for the Belmont Stakes, and at a mile and an eighth he had tied the world record (remember that he was only three years old; horses get faster as they age, up to a point). Everyone -- in the crowd, in the press box, in the box where the colt's owner and trainer were sitting -- was waiting for something to go wrong, because this was madness..."

Thursday coffee break: Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest (2009 Results)

An international literary parody contest, the competition honors the memory (if not the reputation) of Victorian novelist Edward George Earl Bulwer-Lytton (1803-1873). The goal of the contest is childishly simple: entrants are challenged to submit bad opening sentences to imaginary novels. Although best known for "The Last Days of Pompeii" (1834), which has been made into a movie three times, originating the expression "the pen is mightier than the sword," and phrases like "the great unwashed" and "the almighty dollar," Bulwer-Lytton opened his novel Paul Clifford (1830) with the immortal words that the "Peanuts" beagle Snoopy plagiarized for years, "It was a dark and stormy night."