Day: November 23, 2011

Wednesday is the new Friday

I went to work early this morning, which is something I like to do on those rare mornings when I can convince myself to wake up in time. An early arrival, to a quiet — and, this morning, still mostly dark — office, with a semi-leisurely breakfast in the break room with a good book, before getting down to the work day itself. And today, it was a shorter workday, with the office closing early for the Thanksgiving holiday, which is always a nice bonus.

Meanwhile, I also stumbled across this review of Kaleidotrope‘s fall issue. Lois Tilton of Locus didn’t love all of the stories — some she genuinely disliked — but she called the issue overall “surreal, fantastic, imaginative. Worth reading.” Which, y’know, is pretty much what I’m going for with every issue.

So, anyway, that was my…I want to say Friday, since that’s what it feels like, with a four-day weekend and Thanksgiving with family ahead of me. But I realize it’s still just Wednesday. Which makes the fact that it feels like Friday feel even nicer.

Wednesday various

  • You kind of have to love Umberto Eco’s answer to the question “What’s one thing you’re a fan of that people might not expect?” He said: “My last grandchild.”
  • John Seavey pitches Evil Toy Monkey — The Series. I’d watch that.
  • “It was nearly toast, but Coney Island Bialys and Bagels is on a roll again after Muslim businessmen Peerzada Shah and Zafaryab Ali recently took over the 91-year-old mainstay of the Jewish noshes.” Now if we could just figure out how the Middle East is like a bialy shop… [via]
  • Ken Jennings suggest weaning ourselves from our GPSes:

    But as much as I love GPS, I worry that wayfinding is yet another part of our brains that our culture has decided it’s okay to outsource to technology. A famous 2000 study on London cab drivers showed that the hippocampus, the brain’s seat of spatial knowledge, grows physically as our geographic knowledge increases. Many people believe their sense of direction is hopeless, but in reality, that just means they need more practice. In experiment after experiment, researchers have learned that repeating a few simple exercises can turn lousy spatial thinkers into good ones. Without that exercise, our skills get flabby.

  • And finally, Firefly the Animated Series. Oh, if only. [via

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