I recently sent these tips to my guy, on deflecting a flirt by quoting lines from stock video game characters (“NPCs“): The Guy pointed out that it looks fun, but he hasn’t had girls giving him bad pickup lines recently. I can fix that. Because we met in church, I’ve…
I’ve talked about using the US census to estimate your dating options in America, in Maine, and in selected US cities. If you’d like to explore your own area, here’s how to get started: 1) Set up your account and use the online analysis tool First, you’ll make a free…
(A technical post for those seriously interested in e-reading. Feel free to move on if you’re here for other things!) I like the convenience of reading on a tablet, but I prefer annotating PDFs to reading in Kindle or epub. If I’m buying a book and taking notes, I want…
Where do sexpots, breastfeeding fathers, neanderthals, and picky eaters come from? This post highlights interesting web articles about human bodies and cultures (anthropology) as a way of introducing social scientists to popular writing for the web. Skeleton Sex Pots (Stephen E. Nash, writing for Sapiens) Maybe you’ve seen the, ahh, explicit sexual acts show…
Have you read what Aristotle wrote about internet trolls? In On Trolling, he writes, “that trolling is a shameful thing, and that no one of sense would accept to be called ‘troll’, all are agreed; but what trolling is, and how many its species are, and whether there is…
We’ve talked about craft bookbinding, but how do people repair existing books? Luckily, I have more experts at hand who are willing gullible enough to let me photograph them as they Do Things With Objects. In this week’s object lesson, Chuck, a retired librarian in central Maine, shows us how…
Most books are made in factories, and even boutique presses use machines alongside hand labor to create a small run of books: But you can also craft a high-quality book by hand. A few years ago, I got to watch British bookbinder Jonathan Smith, at his craft in southern Kazakhstan. It can…
When I was in kindergarten, my mother took away my Barbies. “But they’re miiiiine,” I cried, and she said something about taking a break. I was getting too focused on how I looked, on clothes and pretty friends and having the right body. I wanted everything that Barbie had….
Yesterday, I posted to facebook on how many weekday hours American parents spend on housework, childwork, and job work. Click through to interact with Nathan Yau’s visualization, which shows that e.g. many dads now spend 1-3 hours per day in child and house care (much more than in 1965!) but they’re also doing more…
I’ll tell you what ADD feels like: Boredom, and jittery limbs—even after a long hike. Wanting more from people, but finding it never enough. Intense engagement with interesting people, books, or ideas. Arm-scratching pain and boredom in church, structured events, and meetings. Restless while in conversation about the everyday….