Thursday 16 April 2009

Spring readings

Good advice that I'm still struggling with:
On practical ways to end email bankruptcy, and then stay solvent

Interesting articles in the New York Times:
In defense of secrecy
Why imaging should not replace dissection in medical training
On abandoned boats in the US
On the return of wine-on-tap
On earthquake prediction,
and Why young buildings failed in old towns
Why anarchy on land means piracy at sea
The superbug of the moment
Last voyage for the keeper of the Hubble

On blogs:
recently I've been reading Byron Smith on The cost of dying;
discussing church as A good place to doubt, with Michael Jensen;
Christian obedience, work, and rhetoric, with Chris and friends;
and Le Guin, and The Jane Austen Book Club, with Natalie

On freedom of speech and religious freedom:
The US Supreme Court tells people to get real

In the category of news that's too melodramatic for fiction:
Judges plead guilty in scheme to jail youths for profit

2 comments:

Eb said...

On e-mail, "It’s unlikely that any message is so urgent that it can’t wait 20 minutes for your response — if it were, the sender would call, send an instant message or find some other way to reach you.". Amazingly some people still don't use IM.

Bruce Yabsley said...

"Amazingly some people still don't use IM.: Like me, for example.

And there are other complications: If you have trouble getting someone's attention, and it's causing inefficiency, you may want to respond immediately when they do contact you, since you know you have (or had) their attention then. And so on.

One problem I have is that I get a lot of email that will take 20 min or some hours to resolve, or that I read only to discover that it needs other input before it can be resolved. Don't have a good solution for this sort of thing ...