Unintended consequences

Via GeekPress, an interesting and non-melodramatic account of how information from 23andMe genetic testing drove a rift through one family.

Networking

The emerging science of "superspreaders" (via GeekPress):

... Sen and co found similar results when they examined the network of scientific dissemination in journals of the American Physical Society as well as in subsets of the networks on Twitter and Facebook. Users of all these different networks showed the same information-spreading behaviour.

Closing tabs

The reviewer from the Columbia Spectator was not at all keen on my novel; on a brighter note, the picture accompanying the article is very nice! We took it Wednesday morning on the steps of the gazebo in Sakura Park, as Grant's Tomb was closed off from visitors. Really my favorite days of all involve the production of quota on the order of 1500 words and 2-3 hours of fairly strenuous exercise, but I was thoroughly enjoying my week of minor limelight (i.e. photo shoot morning after book party!).

I'm in San Francisco - had a beautiful run this morning, did a spot of work on my taxes so that it wouldn't all await me when I get home Sunday evening and am heading out shortly to visit a friend and her baby. Will read tomorrow night at Writers With Drinks - come and say hello if you find yourself in the neighborhood.

Miscellaneous linkage:

Too much Twitter?

Gravy lakes of the world.

Fast and furious Jurassic life in the egg.

Best literary cat picture ever?

Closing tabs

Do androids dream of electric sheep?

An unusual literary mash-up.  (Courtesy of Brent.)

Jordan Ellenberg on graphs and networks.

Books for the twenty-first century

Lee Konstantinou interviews Helen DeWitt for the Los Angeles Review of Books.

'Muggletonians and animals'

Good piece at the Telegraph about naturalist Charles Davies Sherborn and his 'little slips of paper'. (Link courtesy of Brent, who saw it here.)

A related bit, loosely speaking: Ann Blair at Rorotoko on her new book Too Much to Know: Managing Scholarly Information Before the Modern Age. (Via Bookforum. Here Blair describes her own favorite chapter in the book:

For the most committed note-takers one German professor, Vincent Placcius, published in 1689 instructions for building a large closet in which to store one's notes taken on slips of paper: when opened out the closet could store up 3,000 topical labels, each with a hook onto which to stick the slips that corresponded to that topic.

If you missed it the first time I linked to it, take a look atthis lovely LRB piece by Keith Thomas on his own reliance on little slips of paper.

(I seem to write regularly here about indexing...)

Procrastinatory tidbits

At the NYRB blog, James Gleick ponders the OED's new and novella-length entry for the word "information."

At the LRB, Michael Wood reflects on linguistic similarities and differences between Lewis Carroll and James Joyce (the piece also quotes, appealingly, a pun from Walter Redfern's book, which I now covet but do not think I will be able to get electronically: "A person who has been given bits of greenery for her birthday instead of the colourful flowers she was hoping for decides to make the best of things. She says: ‘With fronds like these, who needs anemones?’").

Bundles

More on Google's data-gathering algorithms and the havoc they may wreak (courtesy of Nina, who has what is possibly the most sly and elegant little self-description on her web page that I have ever seen!).

That Darnton talk the other day really has me pondering the ramifications of Google Books - I want to get seconded to a task force that considers these things and have a long-term furlough from my real job!