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.