Journal Links and Writing Science Articles

[Buster's Uncle]

Well, I think I'd hate myself even if I weren't a Jew.

I'll take you at your word.

But it doesn't have to stay that way. I know it's uncomfortable for introverts like us, but by sustaining an effort to be kind/nice to people, talking to and smiling at strangers- both you and others will feel better about you. I had a sales job after working more or less alone for 20 years. I had to learn to connect with people, so I practiced everywhere I went.  A simple good morning, weather comment, or, being a scientist with mad observation skills- you can find something to sincerely compliment.

It's not easy, but it gets easier. When you see somebody's face light up when you tell them that you hope you have hair as great as they do when you reach their age, it will make both of your days.

You managed your move, you can do this, too!

Lori, I know you well enough to be near 100% sure that you instantly blew the above off as trite-ish and not the right tack for you and your strengths and weaknesses...

You would be surprisingly wrong, if so - look, I don't talk about that side of my issues much, other than labeling myself a hermit, but I totally do the social anxiety and hiding stuff like you do -worse in fact, 'cause you still leave the house and I've given up completely - I even hate/dread having to go five minutes to the store every two weeks to score a couple cartons; they might be out of stock, or the price has raised and I brought exact change, or any or a million weird/unpleasant/uncomfortable things my powerful imagination wants to generate...

-Which is to say, this is an issue of yours I fancy I completely get, but I've greeted strangers in renfairs avec tights and elf-talk, and I've flown two convenience stores solo on third shift -and read my job description and was the best employee both places about obeying the order to greet everyone as they entered the store- and in all those jobs, I was quickly able to force myself to break the ice and successfully make strangers feel liked, and I was good at it, and they liked me back and I quickly developed a straight-up habit in those jobs of doing and being that way and it was for fun and profit.

Look at it as the monkey rituals of our talking monkey species w/ its overwhelming trooping instinct requiring the monkey ritual grease, and that most of the 98% of monkeys not as bright as us picked it up monkey-see young and w/o reflection, and I did it late by calculation and you can, too.  Start saying "hello" more.  Perfunctory observation of the ritual is a very good thing that will pay off in spades. 

Better is to successfully fake sincerity, and I kid you not that it's not that hard to fake once you work out that the best way to fake sincerity is to find some level upon which to actually be sincere.  -Sounds like nonsense, but accosting strangers in renfairs, I quickly fell into looking for anything at all that I liked about what I saw of the strangers, and if you want to like strangers, I found that almost everyone has beautiful eyes if you want to see them.  In the stores, when having to constantly reminded me, I naturally went to a manner of saying it kindly with my eyes and my voice that imbued "Howdy!" with unmistakable undertones of I'm glad to see you and I like you.  I was saying it the way my Mom does, and copying someone good at it, monkey-see, is fine.

There is very little in this horrible hell of a universe where we find ourselves that I loathe more than unpleasantness with strangers - in jobs greeting/accosting/waiting on the public, I did everything I had in my power to pre-empt any possibility of that unpleasantness, precisely because I have crippling social anxiety --- and it made me very very GOOD at the interacting with strangers parts of those jobs.  Fooling everyone into feeling liked on First Contact is SO a basic your-welfare-positive basic social skill to be studied and cultivated, and again, faking sincerity works best when you can find something real in there to bring to he forefront of your mind and make it not faking.

And my hand to God as a fellow profound misanthrope, it's not actually all that hard to do and install as instinctive habit, good first contacts - though I'll probably always struggle with the maintenance day-to-day doing it in the hallway in passing - which you do also need to do.  TRY...

[Buster's Uncle]

-So, back on topic, I am officially too busy this week, and that probably isn't getting better soon - I've yet to have a look at Elok's story, too.  But I wanted to point out that any new science writing from you hasn't a procrastination cycle already attached.

And this: any questions?  Try to think of questions if you like.

(Oh, and is the email with your account here any good, or would I need to dig up the time Elok cc:ed us if I wanted to email you?)

[Lorizael]

Sorry for being absent here. Last week got bad. Uh, yeah, that email will work. No questions spring to mind at the moment, but it's 7 in the morning, so...

[Buster's Uncle]

A thought - rebrowsing the TCOL thread and just got to page seven and your big summation.

I read that and know you understand about the bones and structure and nuance of a fiction w/o you having ever shown me anything you've written.  It's cogent and insightful and organized and articulate and - hey, your language is lively and bounces along and --- THAT doesn't read like my pal on his science blog proving his science case.  You write up a bit of real science like you took on Elok's 500+ page novel at a stroke, and you don't need any coaching from me other than I root around and find that notebook with the two-page style guide and scan and share, you learn that and go at it writing like you're talking to Elok with a careful analysis - and you're ready, just like that.

[Buster's Uncle]

(Oh, and is the email with your account here any good, or would I need to dig up the time Elok cc:ed us if I wanted to email you?)

Something odd was going on with my email account; it ate the first two tries w/o appearing in Sent messages, and I have no way of knowing if you got the third try, as Elok did.  -Go check Writers' Workshop, willya?  I finished reading last night.

[Buster's Uncle]

Turns out the notebook in question was sitting on the bookshelf beside me in plain sight, almost, the whole time.  I scanned this as .jpgs to preserve the hand-editing marks I put in on purpose - I'm from before computers took over, when you HAD to know that stuff, and it's possible if you ended up in a brick and mortar staff gig, it could still come up, and you'd rather know the editing marks and not need them than the converse.

You might want to merge all six pages into a reference .pdf or something, also run off a hard copy.  I think this gives you a goodly 90% of all the formal AP Stylebook stuff you'll ever need, and like knowing the editing marks, you probably won't need to follow style this formally in our post-journalism age, but you'd rather have the ability and not need it...

The first two pages demonstrate a terse lede, and proper attribution for quotes and paraphrases -ignore that I substituted an online name for the benefit of strangers looking in- one and two-sentence paragraphs, and probably more that doesn't jump out at me...






I don't remember writing this page, but I must have partly based it on something else - definitely wrote part of it.

-The rest is just some basics handouts I had left over from my formal schooling - good stuff, though.








Master this style guide, write me a good sample of anything science or other news -length to be determined by how much space the news in question needs to be tersely covered for a lay audience- and you should graduate Buncle's Free Off-The-Cuff Journalism 101 course with an A, and you're pretty much ready to ace the Johns Hopkins program - or go straight to pimpin' yo'self out for gigs...

[Buster's Uncle]

Lori?  Anything to report?

[Geo]

A Computer Model Has Finished Running Explaining Why The Moon Has More Of Earth In It Then Of Theia

[Lorizael]

I ended up not applying to the Hopkins program because the more I looked into it, the more it just seemed like a... give us some money and we give you a master's degree that says Johns Hopkins on it... kind of thing. Haven't done much science writing in the interim. Haven't updated the blog.