Another very busy week on the book-promotion front, mostly on the far side of the Atlantic, because the UK edition is more recently released. This included a Thursday livestream conversation with a curator at the Royal Museum in Greenwich, which was a lot of fun. It was a member exclusive for them, though, so I’m not sure when if ever it will be posted somewhere I can share.
Me on Substack:
— You Need to Be Lucky AND Good: Some thoughts on the tricky balance between acknowledging both the role of luck and the need for hard work in career success.
— Harvard Isn’t a College: It’s a mistake to talk about elite schools as if their most important output is self-improtant bachelors of arts.
— Book Review: WIN by Harlan Coben: A bit of a review, but largely about how a genre change snapped me out of a bout of reader’s block.
Me Elsewhere:
— Geniuses and Craftsmen in the History of Timekeeping at Forbes: How the contributions of people who get their hands dirty get undervalued.
— Why Are We So Obsessed With Measuring Time? on Futureproof with Jonathan McCrea: The first of two Irish radio appearances. I appreciated him stopping my fairly canned discussion of Newgrange by saying “I love that you’re on radio in Ireland telling us about Newgrange. We’ve all been there on school trips.”
— "A Brief History of Timekeeping" by Union College Professor Chad Orzel on WAMC’s Roundtable: A phone interview with Joe Donahue, who’s always great to talk with.
— Tipp Today Full Show 9th February ’22, with Fran Curry: Second Irish radio appearance. They don’t have my segment split out separately; I’m on at the 1:37:00 mark, give or take (if you start a little earlier, there’s a car ad that features an amazing accent…) This was live at 6am my time; I don’t think you can hear the dog trying to get my attention wondering why his morning walk was being delayed.
— The History of Timekeeping on Viewpoints Radio: This taped a couple of weeks ago, but I didn’t see it until this week.
Links Dump:
— How the Ancient Greeks Measured Time Shows What they Valued By Patricia Claus: Lots of quotes from my book in this piece at Greek Reporter (via a Google alert for my name), but they didn’t talk to me directly. Which is great— I’m glad to see the book get traction with folks who we haven’t been directly soliciting.
— A 2,000-Year History of Alarm Clocks by Naomi Russo: I actually thought about trying to pitch Atlas Obscura on the book, but never did anything about it, so I was kicking myself when I saw this tweeted out. It’s from 2016, though, and so genuinely has nothing to do with me.
— Walking the World: Kyiv by Chris Arnade: A war zone that isn’t a war zone.
— The Hand Sanitizing Station in the Corner of Chase Bank is Really Making Me Feel Safe by Jeff Maurer: This week in “I Bet That Was Cathartic”
— The Legalized Gambling Free-for-All by Jay Caspian Kang: I listen to a lot of content from The Ringer, which goes very heavy on gambling ads. My own take on this is probably closer to Kang’s, though.
— Academic urban legends by Ole Bjørn Rekdal: A story that will be familiar to anyone who’s ever traced (or tried to trace) a long line of citations back to the original source.
— People Aren’t Meant to Talk This Much by Ian Bogost: A rare piece making the case for Google+ (which I liked, so this made me faintly nostalgic).
— Sam Malone by David Krell: A deep dive into the career of one of Boston’s favorite relief pitchers.
Pseudo-Random Photo of the Week:
Ususally this is a photo I took, but I’m making an exception this week for this shot from Simon Webster, who tweeted me this photo of a rack at the WH Smith’s in London’s Victoria Station. This makes me very, very happy. Thanks, Simon.
Pseudo-Random Song of the Week:
We talked about this at dinner the other night, when SteelyKid noted that the narrator in this is not a good person, and I explained that that’s kind of the point— he’s regretting being a jerk. It is, however, a really timeless kind of song— I mean, the video is very much of a particular era, but if you didn’t know better, this song might plausibly have been a hit at any point in a stretch of about 40 years. That’s pretty remarkable.
That’s a bunch of stuff, right there. I’m spending a chunk of the afternoon today signing books at our local indie bookstore, which is always interesting. I suspect wearing a KN95 is not going to enhance the experience in a good way, alas… Anyway, here are some buttons:
And the comments will be open.