“Things just seem to burn during wars, often random things like a junkyard full of old tires, or a warehouse, or the papers in a government building.”
-Are you ready for something long to read? Here is a substantial account of 2003-era Baghdad, and how Boston Globe reporter Elizabeth Neuffer died there.

Today’s blockbuster on Why Parents Hate Parenting really tries to wrap up on a sunny note. After a huge stretch explaining how children became parents’ bosses instead of household servants, and how everyone with a child is pretty much miserable and has no life, the article tries to put on the big spin that people are happier if they’ve has a “purposeful” life: “About twenty years ago, Tom Gilovich, a psychologist at Cornell, made a striking contribution to the field of psychology, showing that people are far more apt to regret things they haven’t done than things they have. In one instance, he followed up on the men and women from the Terman study, the famous collection of high-IQ students from California who were singled out in 1921 for a life of greatness. Not one told him of regretting having children, but ten told him they regretted not having a family.” Yeah, nice try. We childless have great purpose. We’re doing stuff night and day! We’re making partner at the firm and starting businesses and writing books and then, outside of our “day jobs,” we’re doing charitable and pro bono work, and also pursuing our tertiary interests (because we need an additional layer of hobbies when we’re tired of our regular hobbies!) and traveling and learning and reading and then, late at night in bed, we have long, luxurious talks about our ideas and feelings and goals! None of these conversations involve brands of diapers! It’s GREAT!

“When a magazine has to go to such great lengths to explain their cover or explain their ideas, then perhaps their message wasn’t as clear or powerful as they thought it would be. Whether it’s one of their readers or a casual browser, the cover seems to paint a picture of Obama being a lonely man. In addition, the fact that The Economist they didn’t consult Reuters before using the photo seems to be the first red flag that their cover wasn’t going to work.”
—The Weekly World News upbraids The Economist

for improper use of Photoshop on the cover of its June 19 issue. Because this is where we are now.

The “American Institute of Architects… has branded The New York Times Building as the city’s ‘ugliest’ building.” Now, that being said? The American Institute of Architects is fronting this building on their website right now. It is a building at Central Michigan University and it is a horrible insane piece of strip mall garbage. So.

It’s pretty hot on the East Coast, just like it was 100 years ago at this time! Highs are expected to fall just short of the three-digit mark, although this is one of those sorts of situations where you don’t want the New York way of overachieving for the sole purpose of making a point to rear its head. Anyway, jalapenos for everyone! (“They put out a tremendous amount of heat and it turns on the body’s natural coolant.” I would think they would also add to my already-extant vague nausea, but this is why I’m not a doctor!)

Isn’t it great how no one really talks about the coming rise in sea levels? It was such a hot topic a few years ago and then we basically had to pull the conversation way back because people in America mostly wanted to argue about whether we are really related to monkeys. Fortunately, we are intentionally raising our children to be stupider, by means of intentionally cutting funds to schools, so as to serve American students ever less-well, so that we can make a large disposable servant-worker class and a smaller educated class. Also it serves someone’s interests, clearly, if we can convince a majority of America that evolution is false and there is no such thing as global warming. (Also keeping them unsure which country we declared independence from on July 4.) That way, when they consolidate many of the poor uneducated people in giant poor uneducated metropolises, everyone who lives there will all be surprised in 90 years when they are all homeless or dead because Oakland and New Orleans and Miami are gone. But just remember: “A lot of Oakland is really low ground and the entire San Jose region is hugely threatened. You can kiss Miami and Galveston goodbye, and those low-lying areas around Houston. All the Gulf cities. New Orleans, of course, is among the most endangered. I think by 2200 each of those will be in the throes of being abandoned, if not already abandoned.” At least they’ll still have Baltimore and Detroit and Gary for a fresh population of workers!

A few anti-cheating protections in place at the University of Central Florida, which is going way-high-tech in order to preserve (or re-institute?) its students’ academic integrity, which has taken something of a hit in recent years: “No gum is allowed during an exam: chewing could disguise a student’s speaking into a hands-free cellphone to an accomplice outside.”

The 228 computers that students use are recessed into desk tops so that anyone trying to photograph the screen — using, say, a pen with a hidden camera, in order to help a friend who will take the test later — is easy to spot.

Scratch paper is allowed — but it is stamped with the date and must be turned in later.

When a proctor sees something suspicious, he records the student’s real-time work at the computer and directs an overhead camera to zoom in, and both sets of images are burned onto a CD for evidence.

Pencams! Tiny ear-sized phones! Why has no one made a Mission: Impossible sequel about professors’ attempts to stop cheating? Tom Cruise would certainly be able to chew some scenery!

Of course, there are some people who don’t need high-tech solutions in order to smuggle in notes from the outside world:

As for Central Florida’s testing center, one of its most recent cheating cases had nothing to do with the Internet, cellphones or anything tech. A heavily tattooed student was found with notes written on his arm. He had blended them into his body art.

Do you think the plan, if he was successful, was to get the notes permanently integrated into his ink in order to commemorate the day he fooled the world?

[Via]

To celebrate American freedom each year, straight men find ways to pull each others’ pants down and shoot fireworks out of their behinds. It’s very odd, don’t you think? What does it mean? I would suggest that there’s plenty of guys unable to sit down at work today, but that would presume that anyone has a job in America these days. Also, in the future, this will be considered a major new American art form. Like jazz.

What follows is mostly safe for work? Sort of?

Without these fine fellows, we wouldn’t have news reports that say things like “Friends say Kirk Harris lost several of his fingers and damaged his colon in the accident and fire officials say it happened because fireworks weren’t being used properly.”

According to a quick survey of Google News, it looks like this year’s tally includes several missing hands, one or two missing arms, a number of fingers, and a few burn incidents. Also a couple of arrests! And some valiant people who protected children from fireworks stunts gone wrong and lost some digits in the process.

Eventually, I would imagine that this kind of thing seems to participants, when they later look at themselves on video, really gay. I’ve seen gay porn less gay than this.

by Sam Biddle

I am not entirely sure what networking is, and I’m not sure anyone else is either. I am somewhat sure that I am not doing it. I’ve been given the gist of it before. I know that it’s all about meeting the right people, and making new contacts, and following up and other italicized things. L___ takes it upon himself now and then to explain it to me-frustrated, exasperated-how one can turn a stranger into an employer. L___, who graduated with me, has a very good job, and is in a constant state of networking. He networks on the toilet. He networks during acid rain storms. Were the Nazis invading Manhattan he would network to the bitter end, and might even extract himself from the ensuing occupation with a few deft emails.

Sometimes I help L___ with his laptop, and in return he sublimates his disgust and horror at my lack of careerism into a sort of benevolent mercy; the kind one might direct toward a friend’s mentally challenged younger brother who needs help tying his shoes. He wants the best for me. He knows I have it in me, somewhere. He saw the zeal and determination with which I used to lie on my couch and watch MTV Jams in college-if only he could bring Mystikal out of retirement (prison?) to help him coach me.

I suppose the crassness of it bothers me. But I’m not naive-I know that getting ahead requires the killer instinct, the Will to Handshake. I’m not afraid to be cutthroat to find work that I want. I’m cynical enough. I can be coldhearted. I registered online for a Bolt Bus account not for the convenience, but just so that I could board before the rest of the line and see the looks on their faces. But to feign a jolly round of schmoozing and winking that underlies asking-but-not-asking for a job-is this all there is? Would it really be so taxing on the self to just call networking bald, shameless self-interest? Ethical egoism has a long, proud history here-nobody should be afraid.

I couldn’t even attend most networking events-are those even real things? I don’t even know what a ‘derivative’ is, no matter how many times L___ patiently explains. Are there networking events for people like me? I’ve sent pleading emails to editors and staffers of publications I enjoy, throwing myself at them. I will do anything for you. I will fact check. I will answer phones. I will sort a pack of Skittles into the different colors. I will blow compressed air onto your dirty keyboard. I will blow compressed air down your pants. Do real writers network? If so, is it secret? I imagine a vaulted loft, a hushed password, an iron door. Inside bloggers and columnists in ocher robes exchange login info and freelance gigs, pausing to make paper mâche masks with strips of old Times Literary Supplement issues. Can I come?

R__ and I sat jobless in Tompkins Square Park the other day, eating pretty good sandwiches wrapped in tinfoil, talking about sad, idle white person things like why Twitter won’t use banner ads, and how sad it is that nobody goes on AIM anymore. Just then it occurred to me that I wasn’t networking, so I looked around, in a panic. And there it was: a plaid-shirted, glassy-eyed multitude. The park was teeming with people. No grassy spot was un-lazed upon. It was a Wednesday afternoon, and it was-my God! It’s 3 p.m.! What are you all DOING here? The park was swarming with people who, the more I thought about it, simply could not have been employed. They were reading magazines. They were well-dressed, but sprawled out as if they had been tossed there. They were fanning themselves with Blackberrys in the humid daze. It looked like a scene from a World War I field hospital, had the allies invaded the East Village instead of the Argonne.

They looked like they should, in some fundamental sense, be employed. It was as if they mustered themselves for a day of earnest work and then realized, Oh, right, and headed to the park with an issue of Wired instead. They were unconcerned. Some were passed out entirely, prostrate, skin baking under a v-neck, dreaming of upcoming book readings. If everyone is here, if we are all here, who is in charge? I was gripped with fear. There was no solidarity here, no order. It was a dystopian scene; a post-apocalyptic scenario, in which the sole survivors were people who had apparently wandered out of a Vassar alumni event or something. Where were are these people all going to go? Are these my people? Why aren’t we organized? Why were we all under this brutal sun instead of doing something?

A piece of avocado fell out of my sandwich and the entire thing was getting kind of soggy anyway so I threw it out and brushed off my pants. I thought about the week before, to a night when K___ was promoting (a word, like networking, that means absolutely nothing and yet so many bad things) a party at a club by the High Line. Inside was another multitude, this one having spent its day working at a coveted internship, or for their mom’s friend-exhausted, depleted, eager to preen and regenerate. Tall, proud, dumb looking boys leaned against their tables, faces puffing with drinks and the hope of licking someone.

Were you to transcribe the conversations taking place, they would all be typed out in Comic Sans. Nobody in New York ever wants to be where they are at any given moment, and so bars and clubs serve mostly as a loud, dark place to text other people and ask what they’re up to. All mouths were constantly agape-I was greeted with a hoarse chorus of HeyyEyeyyHeyyyHeyyyyyyyyyy! Were I a CIA operative, this would be when I started desperately chomping at the emergency cyanide tablet wedged in my molars. This pack had networked well, and would now claim their prize. The song changed, and hundreds of thousands of girls threw their hands in the air. The jangling of bracelets quaked the room. Now you’re in Newwww Yooooooooork!… There’s nothing you can’t do!

I brushed the rest of the sandwich crumbs off my lap and was glad to be in the park.

Previously: Diary of an Unemployed Class of ’10 Philosophy Major in New York City, Part 2

Sam Biddle is a recent college graduate in New York City.

Photo by See-ming Lee, from Flickr.

by Ann Finkbeiner

Hanny van Arkel was 24 years old and teaching primary school in Heerlen, the Netherlands. She also played guitar and during summer vacation back in 2007, she was noodling around on the website of a famous rock guitarist named Brian May. Brian May got famous in the middle of a doctorate in astronomy on interplanetary dust, so his website had links to astronomy websites, and Hanny clicked on a new site called Galaxy Zoo. A week or so before, Galaxy Zoo had posted a million galaxy pictures and asked the internet to please classify each one according to whether it was a spiral or an elliptical or something else-astronomers need these classifications, a million galaxies is a lot to classify, computers are no good at it and humans are spectacular. So Hanny took a little online lesson and started clicking-spiral, elliptical, spiral-and after each click, another galaxy popped up. She’d just classified IC 2497 as a spiral and was looking at the next one, then thought, “Wait, what was that?” and clicked the back button.

IC2497 was clearly a spiral, but below it was a blue-ish smudge that was clearly something else. So even though she didn’t like online forums, she uploaded IC 2497 and its something else to the Galaxy Zoo forum so some real astronomers could look at it, and wrote, “What’s that blue stuff below? Anyone?” The real astronomers agreed it was weird. Hanny wanted to call it “Unidentified Bluey Stuff,” but the forum, knowing Hanny was Dutch, called it Hanny’s Voorwerp-”voorwerp” is Dutch for “object.”

By early January, 2008, the astronomers figured out that Hanny’s Voorwerp was at the same distance as IC 2497. Then they found out it was a cloud of gas in a state of excitement brought on only by being hit with hard ultraviolet and xrays.

Unfortunately IC 2497 didn’t look capable of generating that kind of excitement. So they looked at the Voorwerp again, but with bigger optical telescopes and in xrays, radio waves and ultraviolet light. They compared, they argued, they discussed its every ramification and aspect, decided it was more green than blue. By May 30, Hanny’s 25th birthday, they’d asked for and received time on the Hubble Space Telescope. By July, it was all over the internet. By November they’d figured out that the Voorwerp was embedded in a cloud of gas so big it hid IC 2497’s center, and in the center was a black hole out of which shot a hard x-ray jet-and where the jet hit the gas, it made the Voorwerp.

The gas cloud-the size of 8,500,000,000 suns-is probably what’s left of some nameless galaxy that ran into IC 2497 and came apart. As of this May, astronomers had gotten the Hubble data and are still looking in it to see how big that black hole is and whether that nameless galaxy left any stars behind. Meanwhile, Galaxy Zoo uploaded 0.5 zillion other galaxies that, like IC2497, have active black holes, looking for more of what they’re calling little Voorwerps-”Voorwerpje’s.”

Hanny had gotten famous-interviewed, photographed, travels all over to give talks. Brian May congratulated her, some scifi/fantasy guys are turning her into a webcomic, to be released this fall. She likes all this. But she hasn’t gotten any makeovers, she still looks like she plays guitar and teaches school, though she’s moved on to teaching secondary school now, in the school she herself had attended. And she still clicks on galaxies at Galaxy Zoo. Somewhere in the process she took her first airplane flight, and coming in to land at night, she thought the city below looked like upside-down stars. She says she likes telling people how cool science is and that everybody can do it. Here, try it.

Ann Finkbeiner is a science writer. For several years now, she’s been mostly writing books. She’s just finished her last book, has no idea for another one and hasn’t a clue what to do next. She’s co-owner of The Last Word on Nothing.

Photo: the Sloan Digital Sky Survey.