BrownStudies » Link Harvest

Assorted links

brownstudy — Wed, 26 Sep 2012 03:06:58 +0000

Will tablets kill PCs? Daniel Lemire thinks tablets more than satisfy the mainstream (non-techie) user’s needs. Jeff Atwood opines about his spiffy new ultraportable laptop, which is everything he wanted in a laptop 10 years ago.
A great animation showing the secret law of page design harmony (scroll down).
The oldest self-help book: a 19th-century American grimoire, or collection of magic spells and incantations. The writer explores the American zeal for DIY and self-reliance as expressed in this once-popular book, which includes many features of modern self-help books, such as testimonials. “Within the pages of self-help books are recipes not just for healing but for divinity, a promise that every American can be individually complete and autonomous.”
Whatever you think about in the shower is where your attention is — so make sure you’re thinking about something worthwhile.
Lemire on peer review and this salient quote: “The editor-in-chief of a major computer science journal once told me: you know Daniel, all papers are eventually accepted, don’t forget that.”

Temptatious articles to read

brownstudy — Tue, 18 Sep 2012 01:47:04 +0000

This is why the potential is always there for me to get nothing done. Here are some of the top links that caught my eye from today’s Arts & Letters Daily and Marginal Revolution sites. I could have spent a happy hour reading all of them, but I decided to confine them to my Readability queue instead. I may actually get around to reading these items in the next few months. We’ll see if they’re as interesting to me then as they are today.

Literary self-publishing. An indie band that releases its own CD or album gets street cred. Not so for those who publish outside the mainstream press.
New books on fairy tales. What makes these archetypes so durable? Why do books on a theme come in threes?
“The fantastic pervades the world’s literatures of every time and place; our much vaunted realism is the sport, the mutant.” Gore Vidal often derided the grey American naturalistic prose style of the ’50s (his early novels were written in that style).
Simon Schama on the writers who inspired him.
Gladwell on Jerry Sandusky and how child molesters get away with it.

Assorted links

brownstudy — Sat, 08 Sep 2012 02:45:18 +0000

The History of Outlining
The “Victorian laptop” (hat tip to Taking Note)
Straining the soup ever more thinly. Haven’t we said all that there needs to be said about the Pythons? Haven’t they done other work in their long careers? I’d much rather see brand new reissues of the Big Red Book and Brand New Papperbok.
Solve a problem by looking at it. Very much a Taoist idea, I think — solve by not-solving.
A new theory that Jack the Ripper was a cart driver who told police he discovered the first victim.

Assorted links

brownstudy — Sat, 01 Sep 2012 00:13:06 +0000

One of my favorite writing sites is by England-based sitcom writer James Cary and called, appropriately, “Sitcom Geek”. What I love about his posts are his practical and serious thoughts on the business of conceiving and writing situation- and character-based comedy (as opposed to sketch or standup comedy). Here’s his latest post, echoing the feelings/advice I read on many academics’ and fiction-writers’ sites: Just start typing
Another favorite blog is by self-help writer and editor Doug Toft. Here’s one of his latest: 7 things to know before you use a self-help technique
I also enjoy the rough and ready booster shot that is the language learning site, All Japanese All The Time. Khatzumoto continues to stun me with his inventiveness and cheek in generating advice on how to teach yourself any language (especially Japanese). A great read for auto-didacts and those who want to be. Here’s a recent post that helped me make up my mind on a personal issue that had stymied me: The problem is choice
Who killed lard?
Zombie grammar rules that eat your brain. First on the menu: split infinitives.
Fascinating: Sewer workers (and dwellers) of Victorian London

Assorted links

brownstudy — Sat, 04 Sep 2010 20:51:40 +0000

Steve reviews Robert Graves’ The Anger of Achilles, and finds more ways to say that Graves is one can short of a six-pack than I could imagine.
Bookshelf Porn: “A collection of all the best bookshelf photos for people who *heart* bookshelves.”
The illustrated guide to a PhD. Check out the other articles on his site if you’re into programming and time management. Good stuff.
“Past the Cemetery,” a poem by Charles Simic. I wonder what I’d have thought of the poem if it had been titled differently.
A cultural historian on Batman: “Here’s a character with massive financial resources and considerable technical and intellectual knowledge whose main response to crime is to dress up in a costume and beat up street-level thugs.” Please. Batman is only as mixed-up as his super-villains.
Yiddish Theater talk-rendering of “Old Man River” (from the Mary Tyler Moore blooper reel)

Assorted links

brownstudy — Sat, 21 Aug 2010 15:17:42 +0000

“The truth is dancers and musicians live in two different worlds.”
For academic writers, the Rule of 200. Writing 200 words/day is rather like writing for 15 minutes/day — it sets an objective, emotionally neutral goal. Getting that first draft squeezed out is most important; quality can be layered in later. Also, this raises the task from a “special project” (I only write when I’m inspired or when I think I have time) to a routine that one doesn’t have to think about doing — you just sit down to do it. I would like to find a similar metric for editing a document, but maybe minutes per day is the best metric there.

Science is boring!

brownstudy — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 15:24:10 +0000

Interesting confluence of views from today’s feeds:

Let’s face it, science is boring – science-in-society – 21 December 2009 – New Scientist
“Science is not a whirlwind dance of excitement, illuminated by the brilliant strobe light of insight. It is a long, plodding journey through a dim maze of dead ends. It is painstaking data collection followed by repetitious calculation. It is revision, confusion, frustration, bureaucracy and bad coffee. In a word, science can be boring.”

Medical Hypotheses: Why are modern scientists so dull?
“How science selects for perseverance and sociability at the expense of intelligence and creativity”

Links harvest

brownstudy — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 13:00:52 +0000

Susie Bright asks: What makes a person change the course of their life?
Why bother learning stuff?
Social Media Venn diagram
As he turns in his dissertation, Cal Newport (of Study Hacks blog fame) reflects on his grad-school experience
A thought on the university as “an ethically superior institution”
James Fallows is back in the US after several years reporting in China, and has this priceless quote in his blog post about the healthcare “debate”:

Pretty soon I will lay off the “As a Rip van Winkle returnee to your country, what I notice is….” approach. But I have to say that it is striking to come back — from the world of controlled media and not-always-accurate “official truth” in China — and see the world’s most mature democracy, informed by the world’s dominant media system, at a time of perceived economic crisis and under brand new political leadership, getting tied up by manufactured misinformation. No matter what party you belong to, you can’t think this is a sign of health for the Republic.

Link harvest

brownstudy — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 02:40:09 +0000

James Fallows on the China Xinjiang / Uighur controversy: “The point about separate fact-universes is one of the sobering marvels of the modern info-age. It’s true within the United States, as discussed long ago here; and it’s true between countries, as China, Turkey, and the rest of the world all digest different versions of the Xinjiang ‘truth.’ Main point: the internet, mobile phones, and other info technology, far from eliminating the country-by-country differences in information and belief, in some ways may increase them, as each little info-sphere is able to reinforce its own view of the world.”
Wonderful account of a man remaking his life as a pen-and-ink artist of theater rehearsals. I’m officially jealous.
Garden path sentences.
Personal informatics.
The fate of the Neanderthals. Modern humans have driven thousands of species to extinction without exerting itself; this explanation makes perfect sense to me.
Funny, rueful poem: “Rereading Jane Austen’s Novels“.
Evan Dorkin‘s you-were-there account of seeing Monty Python’s stage show at NYC’s City Center in April 1976 (complete with some Playbill scans). Now that is a birthday gift worth remembering.

Assorted links

brownstudy — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 01:14:40 +0000

“A comparison of the 2008 population — using data from a variety of sources — with the first census in 1881 shows that the number of Cocks has shrunk by 75 per cent…” Read the rest for the context.
How to e-mail a professor. They may not notice, but then again, they do notice.
Saaien Tist on processing research literature, a topic that is becoming of increasing interest to me and that everyone has a different solution for.
Wonderful poem by B.H. Fairchild about “On the Waterfront,” a small-town movie theater, and waiting to come of age.
I’ve always liked Brian Eno’s Oblique Strategies. (More here, here, and here.) Now someone has created a Twitter feed for them (I think with new or homemade ones added, too): Oblique_Chirps.