More Housekeeping, Less Time

This is one of those days where I'm reduced to going back through my Google alerts and just marking everything more than two days old as "read", otherwise, I'm going to go completely mad trying to catch up.

In one of his older routines, Eddie Izzard talks about only doing passive research, letting the research come to him. I do something similar with topics for writing, setting up alerts on topics of special interest (astronomy, geology, evolution, paleontology, the history of science, et cetera) and then seeing what comes back. It can be interesting, but it can also convince me in a matter of moments that there's a lot of absolute nonsense out there on the 'Tubes.

Before my projects for the day really begin, I'm trying to get through some of my old alerts, and I realise that I haven't looked at some of the email folders for more than a week, and that I don't have the intellectual energy or acuity to read through all five hundred of them.

In situations like this, there's only one thing to do: put on Wilco's A.M. and compile a list:

• Orac has a great smack-down of anti-vaccinationist nonsense which must be read to be believed. Orac's one of those writers who makes me feel quite dim, and I enjoy the challenge of trying to keep up with him.


• Here's a list of books that I'm not even going to try to complete - a thousand and one books? I might have read that number of books in total in my life, if I were being really generous with what I classify as a "book" (Target novelisations read in my early teens don't really count). I certainly haven't read everything listed, although there are multiple instances of books listed where I have read other titles by the same author.


• ERV has a request: Help Get Rid of Sally Kern. Seems like a sound idea to me.


• The latest lander on its way to Mars, Phoenix, is due to land on 25 May: the BBC news site has the story.
  
• Tonight, if you happen to be in the greater Kansas City area, there's a meeting of the Beagle Society at HMS Beagle over in Parkville. The discussion will be a free-ranging talk on evolution, based around articles from the freely available online journal from Springer Publications, Evolution: Education and Outreach. Give it a read, and drop in if you're in the neighbourhood - the talk starts at 7pm.


• The only topical radio panel game always guaranteed to make me laugh out loud at least once per week, The News Quiz, is back for a new series - catch the podcast or the Listen Again repeats if you can't hear it live.

Speaking of Eddie Izzard - we're going to see him on 31 May! I'm so excited that I've temporarily mislaid the tickets. Got two weeks to find them, though. What surprises me is that the tour is coming to Kansas City - last time he toured the US, five years ago, I drove to Chicago to catch him at the Schubert Theatre (and it was a fantastic show). A local appearance will certainly be less costly in travel terms, and I'm certainly looking forward to it.