Squandering time on wasting space

If either of you readers is an academic, you might know that the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association—APA style—has recently appeared in its sixth edition. It came with a recommendation that people who submit manuscripts revert to typing two (count ‘em, two) spaces after sentence-ending punctuation (and colons). My colleague Dan Hallahan and I found this recommendation to be a reason for quizzical looks at each other. So, we created a blog devoted to discussing the topic. We welcome the curious to SpaceWaste, where we’ve dumped an inordinate amount of time over the past ~two weeks. Visitors will find comments about how this affects those who (a) type original manuscripts, (b) read manuscripts as referees, and (c) edit documents for publication.

Baseball openers

With the opening of the baseball season, I was probably already vulnerable for being taken by a post evoking some history of the diamond. When my brother Frank sent me a link to a post by Nancy Cantwell about a baseball outing in the 1950s to Polo Grounds, I jumped to it.

Then, as I paged through the her site, I found that she apparently appreciated Jon Stewart’s re-arrangement of Cramer (as did I); Ms. Cantwell has links to those videos in another of her posts. What is more, in a post about Werner Herzog she’s got a link to a base-jumping video (one of my other faves).

Time lapse

Thanks to a Tweet by Dan Gillmor, I got to watch some nifty videos of time-lapse photography.

Mr. Gillmor, who’s one of my most-admired contemporary journalists, has a Web site, of course, as well as a home on Twitter.

Too bad CA isn’t VA

People buying newly built homes in California may be eligible for a substantial (at least to me) tax credit over the next few years. According to Lauren Beale in the Los Angeles Times, the CA state government is considering giving residents who purchase previously unoccupied houses up to $10,000 over three years.

For those of you out there shopping for newly built homes, that state tax credit of up to $10,000 for buyers starts Sunday.

The credit applies to purchases that close by March 1, 2010, or until the $100 million runs out, according to details released today by the California Building Industry Assn. The amount of the credit is based on the purchase price — 5% of the sales price or $10,000, whichever is less.

The US federal credit would be nice (we’re not eligible, I fear), but up to $10K more would be even nicer. Sigh. Regardless, I’m still very happy about the plans to move into our brand-spanking-new place in the next couple of months. (By the way, following local trails along the neighborhood creeks, I ran from The Rental to the new site this morning. It was a light 30-min outing, with a long pause in the middle as I visited with the crew at the site.)

Link to the story.

Fund for Peace shout out

The Fund for Peace focuses on alleviating the conditions that cause war. The venerable organization (it celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2007) provides many useful resources, including Country Assessment Reports (reports about countries’ stability and political risks based on economic, social, and political indicators), the Globalization & Human Rights Series (a set of essays about issues in sustainable development and human rights), and many other products. Jump over to Fund for Peace.

Harvesting traffic

In “Wireless bridge sensor powered by traffic vibrations,” Meagan Ellis of Materials World Magazine reported on a project by Edward Sazonov demonstrating the use of vibrations generated by passing traffic to charge a battery that can then power a sensor and wireless transmitter. Ms. Ellis used this tease for her story, which ran 1 Feb 2008:

A novel wireless sensor for use on bridges that is powered by the vibrations of vehicles passing overhead has been developed by researchers at Clarkson University in Potsdam, USA. The device, which measures temperature, humidity, light and pressure, could function for years without requiring maintenance or battery replacement.

Link to Ms. Ellis’ story. Professor Sazonov’s page about this project is here. Other coverage here, here, and here.

So, mayhaps this idea from Google’s 10^100 project isn’t too far out, no?

Rational local buying thoughts

Over on Flashes of Panic, Parker Morse has a clearly reasoned and written statement about spending one’s funds in stores owned and operated by our neighbors. Take the 2-3 min it will require to jump over there and read his post. It may even be a enough to inspire me to write a letter to the editor. (After corresponding for many years, Parker and I had in-person lunch recently, so I figure it’s O.K. for me to use his first name.)

Margaret and Helen

Dear Loyal Readers,

Probably 50% or more of you know about Margaret and Helen. I just learned of their site in a message from my brother, Frank. For the 1-2 of you who don’t know about the Margaret-and-Helen site, here’s the link:
http://margaretandhelen.wordpress.com/.