Make Your Own Magazine

Here is a fun craft activity to try (pretend there are helpful line illustrations like in kids’ magazines), making your own magazine!

1. Start a file in a word processing program that can save as a PDF (yours probably does, take a look under Save As or Export or whatever).
2. Every time you run across an interesting looking article online that you don’t have time to finish now, copy and paste it into that file.
3. When you have a good bunch of stuff there, turn it into a PDF.
4. Turn that PDF into a booklet with BookletCreator.
5. Print it out (double sided, flip short side).
6. Fold in half and staple.

This makes an awesome purse/man satchel sized magazine! Tips based on my own various mistakes:
Make sure you set “result sheet size” to Letter in BookletCreator, or to whatever size paper you have. Leaving it on Auto made it look funky.
Make sure you get all pages of the article on those web sites that break them up into pieces. It can be disappointing to run out of article when you read your magazine on the bus.
Make sure you have the article title marked out clearly if you end up losing some formatting, it’s nice to reset your brain for a new article.
Bonus points for making a nice cover.

True Tales of Crime

After the Sounders game (Go Sounders!) I was in the parking garage and saw a car that really slammed into the bumper of the car next to it while pulling out of a parking space. Since the car at fault did not stop to leave information, I wrote down their license number and left it and my name and number on the damaged car. I got a call today from the owner of that damaged car, confused about my note. Why? BECAUSE SOMEONE TORE THE NOTE, REMOVING THE INCRIMINATING LICENSE NUMBER!!!! Unluckily for criminals everywhere, I still had the number in my purse. Hah!

But next time I’m just going to call the State Patrol.

Good and bad diseases

From the same book as previous:

The table [of causes of pauperism] suggests also that insanity, epilepsy, paralysis, syphilis, lameness, and general wreck are conditions especially associated with bad habits, and that deafness, blindness, rheumatism, and cancer are associated with absence of bad habits.

(I especially like the category “general wreck.” That’s what I’m shooting for.)

Things to Avoid

Causes of Pauperism:
Intemperance
Drug habit
Immorality
Shiftlessness and inefficiency
Crime
Temper
Stinginess
Speculation
Neglect by relatives
No support
Accident
Sickness
Physical defect
Mental deficiency
Insanity
Old age

From Almshouse women: a study of two hundred and twenty-eight women in the city and county almshouse of San Francisco by Mary Roberts Coolidge. Stanford University, Cal.: Published by The University, 1896. p. 29.

Lucky Starr Series Review

David Starr, Space Ranger; Lucky Starr and the Pirates of the Asteroids; Lucky Starr and the Oceans of Venus; Lucky Starr and the Big Sun of Mercury; Lucky Starr and the Moons of Jupiter; Lucky Starr and the Rings of Saturn; Asimov. Yes. Reading the introductions to these was a little like listening to the John Hughes commentary on Ferris Bueller’s Day Off: it seemed like Asimov hated (or at least wanted to apologize for) everything that made these books charming. Charming they were, nevertheless, though the latter three are somewhat less so as Asimov strove to render them indistinguishable from his other work.
Charming though they were, the former three could have used some editing attention. My favorite example, I think, was this:

There were four of them. The number increased as more men joined the group.

I also have to wonder whether, in a conversation set in the asteroid belt, when a character from the asteroid belt says “We’d have to take it to one of the rocks,” I can blame the editor for compelling “Anton turned to Lucky, explaining suavely, ‘We always refer to the asteroids as “rocks,” you understand.’” or only for leaving it in.
Very much of its time, the series has a simple optimism unlikely to be captured again:

In this age of Galactic civilization, with humanity spread through all the planets of all the stars in the Milky Way, only scientists could properly cope with mankind’s problems. In fact, only the specially trained scientists of the Council were adequate.

Actually just really gross to eat food while wearing them

I got these new headphones that block out external sound, and the instructions had the usual warning about not wearing them when you drive, but also had this howler, with accompanying diagram:
“Be sure to ensure that there is continuous audio signal to the headphones to ensure that you are not left alone in silence with the horror of your own thoughts!”