The Wretched Scribbler

The Wretched Scribbler blog features posts about writing, research, publishing, books, media, communications, idea platforms, idea entrepreneurs, and the people, projects, clients, and original concepts of Idea Platforms, Inc. Comments welcome.

Distracted from Distractions?

Posted Fri, 03/26/2010 - 1:17pm by Anna

Last week Nielsen’s "Three Screen Report" popped into our inboxes and reported that the average person who owns the necessary devices spends 35 hours each week watching TV, four hours watching online video, and an additional 2.5 hours watching "timeshifted" TV, also known as DVR. It also indicated that for 3.5 hours every month, Americans multitask by watching TV and using the internet at the same time. (As if that’s going to make Lost less confusing.)

Our shocked reaction: that’s over 40 hours of video each week! We started mentally tallying our weekly video-watching time. Then that of our family and friends. And then we started doubting the accuracy of the report, or at least what the takeaways should be.

Nielsen records viewer demographics and the time the TV was turned on, assuming that turned on equals tuned in. They also have some panel members keep viewing diaries of the shows they watched, which is likely more accurate in some ways and less accurate in others.

What the survey doesn’t account for are the hours people "watch" TV while preparing dinner or leave the TV on to make a near-empty house feel full. It also doesn’t factor in the use of the mute button when an actual conversation trumps a show or accidental naps.

So while we appreciate the trend of multiple-channel video consumption Nielsen reports, we also take the hard numbers with a grain of salt, or at least with the thought that the findings are one more data point in an ever-evolving picture.

India 911

Posted Tue, 03/16/2010 - 2:10pm by jbutman

We have clients and collaborators around the world: India, the United Kingdom, Sweden, Germany, France, China, the United States (East and West), so, for a tiny company (five people), we keep a pretty global schedule. We arrive at the office to !! emails from Kavita, Anand, Anubhav, and Geetanjali. Simon calls on his homeward commute, during our lunchtime. Dr. S. may call in just before our bedtime, as he heads out for dinner. Sunday afternoon is really Monday morning and tomorrow could mean later today or actually tomorrow.

Email irons out the time and geographical differences, but phones and faxes can still get us in trouble. We had to send a fax to Meena at her home office, but it turns out that she had one of those old fax-phone jobs. When we called at 4 p.m. our time, it was 1:30 a.m. in Delhi. "Hallo, hallo?" answered a grumpy male voice. Beep. Beep. "Hallo, hallo!" Now we know that Meena has a husband.

Louisa, in our office, needed to send a 40-page fax to Debo. She dialled the country code for India, 91, and then began to dial the number proper, which started with 120. She only got as far as the second 1, before a distinctly American voice answered.

"Hello. 911. How can I help you?"

Louisa talked back to the fax machine. "No!"

"Hello, 911." The voice sounded urgent. "Are you there?"

"I'm fine!" said Louisa. Beep beep. She picked up the handset. "Hello!"

"Hello hello can you hear...?"

Louisa stabbed the stop button. The voice ended. "Urff," she said.

We're still waiting for the police to show up at our door. Or maybe at Debo's. Maybe later today or perhaps early yesterday. Not sure.

The Pre-Submission Author’s Freak-Out

Posted Wed, 02/24/2010 - 12:46pm by andivonravi

Dear Reader of Blog (especially you many many “Authors” out there):

I beg you to be aware of a phenomenon that I have seen occur in the final week before the delivery of your manuscript to the publisher, whether it be a “traditional” publisher such as, let me think, umm, Portfolio (hi Adrian Zackheim, you business publishing Titan you!), or a print-on-demand site such as, umm, well there are many of them -- and they do one heck of a job for you. I am not kidding; the POD book is looking pretty, pretty close to the one printed at an ink-and-big-sheet-of-paper shop. Except for those very special firms such as GGP Media GmbH, Possneck, Germany. (Check out the Everyman’s Library edition of The Raj Quartet if U don’t believe me.)

Oh yes, the phenomenon. I almost forgot! It is the interesting behavior that comes over authors when they realize that, with that final press of the SEND button, they are committing their thoughts, indeed their legacy, to paper forever, or as long as anything might last these days or in the days to come. I must describe it as something akin to a freak-out. Suddenly, every word becomes ultra-precious. Hyphens and commas become oracular.  Points that seemed minor only a month before, now take on the significance of The Hierarchy of Needs.

This is understandable, I guess, because, unlike the Web-thing, books, with their acid-free paper and cloth jackets, sit on the shelf for long periods of time and can be picked up and searched by anyone with capacity for grasping and scanning. No wonder so many authors, so many of them dear friends and collaborators and clients of mine, bite their nails down to the quick and forego weekend activities and obsess over words in ways they have never done before, in that final week before all is frozen forever in type.

Please call me if U need help with this.

Love and understanding,

Andi von Ravi

Kangaroo Rats

Posted Tue, 02/16/2010 - 3:24pm by Hannah AA

Sometimes research for The Emotional Calendar, the book we are working on with Dr. John Sharp, leads to some amazing—but totally irrelevant—discoveries that need to be shared.

The kangaroo rat is absurdly cute. But that’s not what makes it a fascinating creature. The kangaroo rat is almost perfectly adapted to its ultra-hot desert habitat in the southwest US. It does not drink water!

Here’s how it works. Kangaroo rats feed on seeds, which have an extremely low water content. For this reason, almost all of the water that the rat uses is what’s known as “metabolic water.” The oxidation of sugar during cellular respiration results in the release of water as a biproduct. Specifically, the oxidation of 1 gram of carbohydrate releases 0.56 grams of metabolic water.

Because kangaroo rats have so little water, they have amazing water conservation adaptations. Their kidneys have a unique design that allows them to produce urine which is 30x more concentrated than blood—the most hypotonic (electron-rich) urine known among animals. Furthermore, their respiratory system is designed to conserve water. The rats spend their days in burrows where the air temperature is cooler than their body temp. As the air is warmed in their nasal passages, it picks up water vapor, cooling the tissue. When the warm, moist air returns from the lungs, it cools as it flows through their extensive nasal passages. The moisture condenses as the air cools, so that most of the water lost during inhalation is conserved as they exhale.