CornerScribe

Archive for January, 2005

Link: Monkeys Pay to See Female Monkey Bottoms.

Okay, as interesting as it might be to learn that monkeys will pay for naughty pictures, just as lots of people do, I think there’s something else here that’s really intriguing.

What about the fact that monkeys can understand trading for something they want at all? They trade juice for the chance to view images of other monkeys. Don’t you think a creature that can understand that is a bit too intelligent to be kept in a zoo?

Link: Wired News: A Century of Einstein.

Well, if you’re struggling for ideas as the February NaNo approaches, here’s another source. Relativity, time travel, the atomic bomb…. No shortage of interesting topics to explore there!

Good luck to all those — like me — who have crazily committed to another 50,000 word month. Have fun, and write, write, write!

Here are a few writing tidbits for inspiration.

1. Put on some music and write whatever it makes you think about. Headphones work best for this.
2. Turn the sound (and captioning) off the television and watch a program you’ve never seen before. Can you tell what’s happening? How? Jot down some descriptions of movements, facial expressions, etc. that tell you what the actors’ moods are. Now, choose a scene from one of your works and rewrite it using some of these ideas.
3. If your boss were an animal, what kind would he/she be?
4. You are an incredibly brilliant mad scientist. What will be your first experiment?
5. List all the phobias you can think of. Now, list some "odd" phobias that you haven’t heard of. For example, fear of pizza, rubber bands, snow shovels, ferrets, etc. Write a story about a character that has an unusual phobia.

This is for all the techies out there. If you, or someone you know, tends to buy a lot of computer books, you may want to check out Safari.

For about $15 a month, you get full access to 10 books. You keep the books on your "bookshelf" for 30 days, and then you can either keep them on the bookshelf longer or trade them in and choose other books. I usually keep one or two spots open at any time in case something comes up that I need.

This is really handy, especially if you just need to look up a few things and read a good explanation. You might not always be able to find what you want through search engines, and you certainly don’t want to buy a book for that.

I’ve been a subscriber for over a year, and I can’t count the times I’ve used it.

knitmeister.

Here’s a cool blog, if you’re a knitter. She also has up some great links for yarns, so if you do any kind of needlework, you may want to check out her site.

BBC NEWS | UK | ‘I don’t like Monday 24 January’.

Okay, maybe I should stay in bed today!

This is a little goofy, but it looks like that today is the most miserable day of the year. At least, according to at least one person.

Now that we’re over three weeks into the new year, how are those writing resolutions coming along? Yes, I’m still writing every day! I think this is the first resolution I’ve kept this long.

Human ancestors unearthed.

This is a subject I find interesting. You might have noticed the articles about hominid fossils being found in eastern Africa, and this is one of the many articles I’ve run across on the subject.

Note also the book recommendation in the sidebar. I enjoy reading — and speculating — about what everyday life might have been like for our early ancestors.

If anyone has any book recommendations, I’d be interested to hear them.

Yahoo! News - Harvard President Issues an Apology for Remarks.

I’ve been loosely following this story as well. Apparently the president of Harvard made some comments speculating that innate ability may be a partial explanation as to why women tend to not pursue (or not excel in) science and math careers.

From what I understand, he also speculated that many women are unwilling to work the long hours needed to rise to the top of their profession once they have children.

I don’t know what the statistics are, but this is what I see from my own experience. I’m a woman in a technical job (programmer), and it’s true that most of the technical people where I work (about 350 people total) are men.  Men do make up the vast majority of the upper-level developers as well.

Why?

I can’t answer that, but I can speculate. (I know, look where it got Harvard’s president!)

I suspect that he may be partially right, that many times women aren’t willing to wrok long hours because of family responsibility. However, I can say the same for many men. That may explain why any one individual doesn’t advance, but I don’t think it would make a significant difference when comparing the sexes.

I think part of it may be cultural. I wasn’t encouraged to do math and science in school, and I didn’t have a computer to experiment with until I was grown. I think more men tend to spend time just experimenting than women do, and that may explain part of the discrepancy. I hope that changes as more games are designed with girls and women in mind and as computers become more ever-present in our lives.

Here’s where I’ll get in trouble. I wouldn’t rul out innate tendencies as part of the explanation. Perhaps women tend to prefer careers that involve high levels of human interaction. That certainly isn’t something you get sitting behind a computer. That certainly doesn’t mean woman aren’t as bright or as capable.

When does having a different set of abilites make you less capable? As a writer, I’d argue that working with language is every bit as challenging as working with a computer. It certainly takes different skills, but that doesn’t mean that either skill set is inherently better.

Prospect - article_details.

Here’s an interesting article for the science fiction fans out there.

I’m no physicist, but the gyst is that an advanced civilization might be able to one day leave the universe (perhaps via a wormhole).

Here’s a creative exercise that some of you might enjoy. I first did this in a writing class at Radford University . It was taught by a really nice guy, Bill Brown, who also happened to be a really good poet.

Grab some paper and a pencil and draw the first place you can remember living as a child. Draw in as many details as you can. What was in your room? Who lived on each side of you? What was in the yard? Keep going, putting as many details in the drawing as you can.

When you’ve drawn in as much as you can remember, I’ll bet that you have at least one or two story ideas. Maybe it’s something that happened there, an attic that spooked you, or how you felt when your friend moved away.

Happy writing!