Tag Archives: New Scientist

by | April 1, 2011 · 10:38 am

Link Envy

Here’s this week’s catalogue of blogs, websites, resources and other things that make our socks roll up and down.

Restless Lori:

Lori is on hiatus this week, and will be back next week, after she has eaten her weight in guacamole.

Restless Maria:

If you write short stories or essays, you get that literary journals are important as a place to break through as a writer. There are so many journals in North America that writers can submit to and enjoy. Here are three Canadian journals that are on my reading pile right now. To learn more, consult the current Writer’s Market, or read the featured profile in Writer’s Digest.

The Antigonish Review
Founded in 1970 and supported by St. Francis Xavier University, this “eclectic review” features poetry, fiction and book reviews. Also watch for their annual poetry and fiction contests.

Descant
Descant is a highly acclaimed quarterly journal, founded in 1970 and published out of Toronto. Watch for book news, launches, contests, and even intern opportunities.

On Spec
I’ve been a subscriber to this “Canadian magazine of the fantastic” for years. On Spec is the perfect mix of stories, artwork and interviews.

Restless Bjas:

New Scientist
This mag is an obsession of mine. If you write any kind of sci-fi, check this out. It will inspire the heck out of you!

Literary Rambles
If you’re writing Middle Grade (MG) or Young Adult (YA) fiction, you may already know about this site. If not, you totally should! Casey McCormick is an aspiring author, agent intern, blogger, wife, and mom. She’s an awesome part of the kidlit community and a founding member of WriteOnCon. Best part about her site is the popular Agent Spotlight series.

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by | July 14, 2010 · 8:29 pm

Your blog is being used to predict the future

In the time it takes you to read this sentence, more than a thousand tweets will have been twittered and dozens of blogs posted (according to Jim Giles @NewScientist). Most of it is fluff, yet possible this information will be used to make predictions about our society. And you thought you were just rambling senselessly…

Okay, so a rather serious post for Restless Writers, but hey – you’re still reading! And this IS a blog! It’s true, research scientists are analysing the population’s state of mind by looking through blogs and tweets. They are being used to forecast sales of homes, cars, products and even how the stock market may behave. Blogs are providing a sample of what is going on in society.

Even more bizarre, your words (a.k.a. web data) are being analysed to create an index of national “mood.” This is called the Anxiety Index—a measure of frequency with which a range of words related to apprehension (e.g. nervous) appears in your posts. Same goes for twitter; it holds similar predictive power.

I am relatively new to the whole blog & tweet world, and of course, once online, it’s inevitable that we are all being mined. So knowing this, will I change my tweets or blogposts? Absolutely not. Nor should you. What a wonderful world we live in that we may speak and express ourselves freely.  

Blog away. Tweet til dawn.

In the words of Voltaire, “think for yourselves and let others enjoy the privilege to do so, too.” 

Beckie

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