The shortest route from Dave’s mind to yours

Earlier today I put up a post on Twitter asking for suggestions about places to donate money in bulk to counter the carbon emitted due to my travels.

One suggestion came from @SFriedScientist:

TerraPass is pretty good, founded by a Duke alum and has some decent people on their advisory panel http://www.terrapass.com

So I checked out TerraPass, and it seems like a pretty slick operation. Basically they spend the money you give them on projects that wouldn’t happen otherwise, resulting in reclaiming or avoiding emissions (landfill projects seem popular this year).

TerraPass has a handy calculator for your family’s entire carbon output.

So, I entered our two cars, the cost of our home’s utilities, and an estimate of the number of flights we take each year (8 medium, and 4 long round trips). Here are the results:

Whew! That’s a fair chunk of change — but when you consider that you’re covering all the carbon a family of four is responsible for generating in a year, in some ways it’s not so bad.

Still, not necessarily the investment one takes lightly, especially since in the grand scheme of things it probably won’t make much of a difference. Sure, I’ll feel a little less guilty about all that flying (and heating and air conditioning), but if everyone else on the planet isn’t doing the same thing, global warming is still going to happen.

Then I got this comment from @imascientist:

Err, fly less?

Right. Paying $300 a year, which few others are willing to do, isn’t going far enough to solve the problem, and instead I should simply not fly.

I could do that, I suppose. I was planning on traveling to a conference in San Francisco for my job next month, but my boss would probably understand that I’d rather “save the environment.” I was planning a vacation this summer, but why should I do that when the fate of the world is at stake?

Now, I realize that people like me, with their cars and houses and plane travel, are responsible for a disproportionate share of the problem of global warming. But it’s not clear to me that just “flying less” is going to help any more than paying for carbon mitigation. If I pay for carbon offsets, money gets invested in preserving the environment, demonstrating that a carbon-neutral society is economically viable. If I just don’t fly, I’m not convinced that the world will be better off. Proportionally, that will get noticed less than contributing to the success of a carbon offset company.

But neither “solution” is going to get anywhere near solving the problem. For the problem to get solved, the world has to come together. I just happen to think that’s more likely to occur if companies like TerraPass are thriving.

Over the course of the afternoon, I’ve had a really nice conversation with Carla Casilli on Twitter. It started out with Carla’s observation:

When will we stop calling media on the internet “new media”?

To which I replied:

Shortly after “new york” reverts to its rightful name, “york” ;)

After a few back and forths, Carla and I agreed that perhaps instead of “new media,” we should just say “mannahatta” — the original Lenape Indian term for New York.

After all, it makes just as much sense to use #mannahatta as a catch-all for media on the internet as it does to say “new media.” I worked for what would become HarperCollins’s “New Media” department over 20 years ago!

Thus, in the name of all that is Right and Just, I declare that henceforth, the term for media on the internet is #mannahatta. It’s obsolescence-proof since it doesn’t include the term “new.” Just think of all the old “new” things that just seem silly today. The literary school of new criticism was old by the late 1960s. New Coke died in the 1980s. My once-new Prius is now the shameful progeny of a dinosaur of a car company. So if you want to talk about online media, shun the new, and just say #mannahatta.

40 years from now, when people are talking about “new mannahatta,” you’ll be able to tell them you remember when…

What is the Mystery Project? As I announced last week here and on CogDaily, it’s a new project that will be a major focus of my efforts for the foreseeable future.

But what exactly is it? I’m not going to tell you right now; I want to make a splash when the project launches. That said, I’m prepared to give a bit of an update that may help you get a sense of what’s coming.

• The project launches on February 1. There, I’ve committed to a date. Expect announcements here, on Twitter, and wherever else I can think of that doesn’t cost me any money. Yes, I know, that’s very soon!
• The project is independent. That doesn’t mean I won’t be working with other people, it means I won’t have a “boss” or anyone else controlling financial or other strings.
• The project involves a blog. At this point, in fact, it’s just a blog, but I do hope it will grow into more than that. It’s also different from any other blog I’ve seen. That doesn’t mean something similar doesn’t exist, just that I haven’t seen it.

This is something I’ve been thinking about off and on for almost a year, so it’s a pretty well-considered idea, but I’ve only gone into heavy preparation mode for the past week or so. I’ve downloaded Wordpress templates, set up a domain, prepared a site, contacted people who can help me with background information I need, and done a lot of other behind-the-scenes legwork.

Everything is coming together quite nicely, except for advertising. Most sites that allow you to sell ads on your site want to see an existing site. They need circulation numbers to provide to advertisers, and so on. That’s fine, but I need some sense of where ads will go, how big they’ll be, and what kind of code snippets I’ll be needing to place on the site. In the unlikely event that the blog is an instant sensation I’d like to cash in be in a position to recoup some of my investment of time and resources.

All that’s left is to finalize the site’s design, write background material, “about” pages, and the like, and write the first post. That, and deal with any other unexpected glitches that arise along the way. I’m really looking forward to this launch. I hope you’ll like it as much as I think you will.

Since the farewell post on Cognitive Daily directed people here, it’s only fair to let all the new folks know what they’re in for. First of all, what is this place? Well, I can only tell you what it’s not. It’s nothing like Cognitive Daily. Mainly this is a place to let you know what I’ve been doing and what’s on my mind.

These days, a lot of that functionality is duplicated by Twitter, so if you really want a blow-by-blow account of what I’m thinking about (as filtered by my personal privacy norms), go there.

I do use this blog to explain the thinking behind my other projects, like Cognitive Daily and ResearchBlogging.org, and I’m planning on using it a bit to give you some background for the Mystery Project to be named later.

You’ll see much more politics and opinion here than on CogDaily, and a little more snark. Sorry, that’s just who I am when I’m not in “science writer” mode. Still, I try to avoid idle rants. Expect posts to be reasonably on-topic and reasonably well-thought.

So that’s about it. Welcome. Hope to see you around, and I especially hope you hang around long enough to find out about the Mystery Project (it shouldn’t be much more than a couple weeks!).

Is it possible to live on just 40 percent of your income, and save the rest?

It is if you use the optimistic “accounting system” proposed in this article. Here’s how it works, says freelance copywriter Mary-Jo Dionne:

Every time I get paid, I instantly pop 10% into my shopping/mad money account; 20% into a business expenses account; and 30% into a taxes account. I’ve learned to live on the remaining 40% only–this is what I use to cover mortgage, retirement, bills and real-life stuff.

In Dionne’s world, the money she spends on shopping, business expenses, and taxes is “saving,” while the money she saves for retirement is a “living expense.”

I suppose this arrangement works for her, but in the real world, if you’re a freelancer, that means you’re actually a small businessperson. When you get paid, you don’t get to count your revenues as profit until you’ve paid all your expenses, including taxes. So really Dionne should only count as “income” the 40% she uses for “real-life stuff” and the 10% she “saves” for “shopping/mad money.” Of this income, we don’t know how much she really saves — that would be the portion that presumably goes into her retirement account. I doubt that adds up to 60% of what’s left.

Could someone really live on 40 percent of their true income? I’m pretty sure I could. I could live in a quarter of the space I’m in now. I could take public transit or ride my bike instead of making car payments. I could cook for myself more often instead of going out. I could buy cheaper wine or forgo it entirely. I could cancel satellite TV. I could cancel my vacation plans.

But what would be the point? After I’ve saved a reasonable amount — say 10 or 15 percent for retirement and unexpected expenses — any additional savings would simply go to amassing wealth. Anyone with a reasonable income who saved 60 percent of it would be quite wealthy in 20 years. What then? Would you spend it all then? If so, why not spend it sooner? Why not enjoy your income for your whole life, rather than deferring it and blowing it all at once?

I wrote the headline for this post on Twitter a few hours ago, after having racked my brain to come up with the four headlines required for each SEED column I write.

Actually, I only ever manage to write two of them. My editor comes up with the other two, in addition to editing mine. Why are there four headlines? I’m not sure — that’s just how SEED rolls. But even if I only have to come up with one, as I’ve done for the hundreds of CogDaily posts I’ve written, I don’t like it. In fact, ScienceBlogs wants me to come up with two headlines for those as well — a “headline” and an “excerpt,” which appears below the headline on the ScienceBlogs home page. I never bother with the excerpt, so the software automatically inserts the first 15 words or so of my post, which may or may not help a reader decide whether to click through to read the whole thing.

After tweeting about my headline-writing frustration, I got about a half-dozen replies and retweets, which for me on Twitter is practically an avalanche. Noah Gray (@noahWG), who’s an editor for Nature, said “You’re kidding right? That’s all Twitter trains you to do!!!” I replied that I didn’t think so. In fact, I think of a tweet as a mini-article with no headline.

Then I thought about it a little more and realized that my least favorite kind of tweet really is more like a headline: It’s the tweet you make when you’re pimping your own writing. Just like a headline, the tweet becomes a sales pitch: “Read this article. Please. And click on some of the surrounding ads while you’re at it. Also, believe that I’m an intelligent, thoughtful person. Invest some of your intellectual capital in me. Aren’t I swell?”

Bleh. I hate that stuff.

But why do I hate it? It’s not that I don’t understand the importance of a headline. Tens of thousands of people see the headlines for each post I write, but only a fraction of those people actually click through to read the post itself. The better the headline, the more clicks I get, and the more I get paid. Heck, the headline is probably more important than the article itself.

Not only that, but in this age of search engines, a well-crafted headline can draw even more page views based on how many people search for the words in your headline. Write a headline that captures the current internet buzz, and you could get hundreds of thousands of hits.

And think about this: Often when your story gets posted onto Digg or Reddit, the poster doesn’t bother to change your original headline. If your story is going to get the tsunami of traffic that a listing on the homepage of one of those sites brings, it will to be on the strength of the headline you write. Ditto Stumbleupon, Facebook, and, yes, Twitter.

I realize, too, that most people understand that a headline is basically a sales pitch. It’s not beneath a writer’s dignity to put her story in the best possible light. It’s expected. A perfectly-phrased headline isn’t like a salesman sticking his foot in your door, it’s more like a really great movie trailer, exciting and inspiring you but not giving away too much. Just as I like a good movie trailer, I love to read a great headline.

But particularly for science writers, there’s also a responsibility involved in headline writing. “Do vaccines cause autism?” might draw more clicks than “No evidence that vaccines cause autism,” but since many more people read the headline itself than read the article, it’s irresponsible to run a misleading headline. Even if your article debunks the antivax hysteria, a headline like that would probably do more to perpetuate the myth than not running the story at all.

A headline, especially for a science writer, must always balance the need to adequately promote the work with the need to accurately portray it. Meeting that second goal might actually mean less success for the science writer.

For me, the act of writing a headline is a near-daily reminder of this dilemma. And that’s what makes coming up with a headline my least favorite part of the writing process.

We all know that older cars tend to have higher emissions than newer cars. That’s why I pay $30+ per year for an inspection — to prove that my old 1994 Plymouth Voyager is still road-worthy. It’s not a great car, but in fact it gets about 25 miles per gallon, which means it doesn’t even qualify for the “cash-for-clunkers” program. Plus our Prius isn’t big enough to haul around Jim’s electric bass and amps.

One of the advantages of having a teenage son is that you get to send him to the service station to get the car inspected. You just hand him a check with the amount left blank and have him show you the receipt when he gets home.

But I was surprised last week when Jim came back with a receipt for just $13.95. The receipt was clearly marked “SAFETY INSPECTION ONLY.” No emissions inspection was done at all.

What’s the point of that? Isn’t the main reason we have to pay for emissions inspections to keep pollution down? Apparently only for cars that don’t pollute very much. You see, for cars earlier than 1996 model years, the state of North Carolina doesn’t require emissions inspections.

I did a little Googling and found out that several states don’t require emissions checks for older cars. Why? Because it’s “too expensive.” Apparently owners of clunkers balk at spending $30 per year getting their emissions checked.

I hate to break it to these folks, but THAT’S THE WHOLE POINT!!!!!!

You get old cars inspected because THEY CAUSE MOST OF THE POLLUTION. Not inspecting these cars means they’ll keep pouring carcinogens and allergens into the environment until they get too expensive to fix. If we keep inspecting them, then we can identify the really bad ones and get them off the road SOONER.

By the way, the Voyager has always passed its emissions inspections with flying colors. As soon as our teenagers head off to college, though, this baby’s headed for the junkyard.

This sort of manufactured controversy drives me crazy.

Apparently right-wing wackaloons are apoplectic because the Obama administration is encouraging people to send them the delusional emails they receive. (The administration “says” they are only asking for the emails so they can defuse ginned up “controversies.”)

Why are the crazies so mad?

Because Obama might be making a seekrit “ENEMEEZ LIST.”

This is news?

Yes, wackaloonz, it’s true: IF YOU SEND SOMEONE AN EMAIL, THEY HAVE YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS. They know who you are, and they can send your email along to anyone else. So whether you’re seekritly plotting to overthrow the guvmint, or you don’t want your wife to find out about your Argentinian mistress, or you just don’t want people to know your political views, DON’T BROADCAST IT ON EMAIL!

That is all.

Why did I start Cognitive Monthly?

They say science journalism is in a crisis mode. Many newspapers are cutting their science sections, and even the venerable Scientific American is struggling to find a business model that works in the age of the internet. So why on earth would I decide now is the time to start charging for a bit of rather home-grown science journalism?

Honestly, I don’t know. And I have no idea whether this idea will work. What I do know is that I’m unsatisfied with most science journalism produced these days, whether or not the whole business is in crisis mode. I also know that my experiences working with the traditional science journalism establishment have been unsatisfying. I don’t like deadlines. I don’t like selling ideas before I write them. I don’t like chasing down sources for interviews. I don’t like dealing with editors. I don’t like other people telling me what to write. Maybe that means I shouldn’t even try to be a “science journalist.”

But still, I’m also unhappy with the level of depth attained in a single Cognitive Daily post. Initially Greta and I started the site as a way to keep notes for a much larger work — a book, in fact. But all my issues with the science journalism world also apply to the world of trade book publishing. We’ve gone back and forth with several agents, even signed a contract with one, but in the end we simply didn’t want to be told what to write.

In the course of preparing sample materials for agents, however, I’ve found that I very much do enjoy the actual process of writing longer pieces. The problem is, a blog isn’t really the place to showcase a longer work. My eureka moment came when I saw how much Greta loves to read books on her Kindle. Here’s the perfect medium for sharing a larger work — and it’s even something people readily pay for. Why not give it a shot? Even though we don’t have an entire book to sell, just some sample chapters, we don’t actually need a whole book. The chapters can stand pretty much on their own. Since there’s no printing press, there’s really no reason you have to sell a book-sized chunk of writing all at once. You can sell it a chapter at a time.

There are also some interesting possibilities for synergy between the chapters and the blog. You can work interactively with readers to answer the bigger questions brought up in the comments section of a blog. Then you can put all that in your longer report, and sell it on Cognitive Monthly. It just might work.

I didn’t want to limit the project to just the Kindle platform, so I looked into other forms of digital publishing. Lulu.com offers exactly what I need — a way to charge people to download PDFs. As a bonus, they automatically transfer the PDFs to iPhone format. Yeah, I’ve covered all the hot personal technology devices!

There were a few technical glitches along the way, number one being the fact that there’s no easy way to go from Apple Pages to HTML, required for the Kindle (you have to take a cockamamy path via RTF and TextEdit). Lulu has its own set of hoops to jump through. Greta, who’s been very involved throughout the process, wanted to edit the final version, which meant editing two different versions of the file, then re-uploading each to its respective online distributor.

Next, we had to set a price. Obviously we can’t charge a book-level price for a chapter-length report. $1 is as cheap as you can go on either Lulu or Amazon, but that seemed a little low — almost like we weren’t placing any value on the product — so we settled on $2. On Lulu, this translates to $1.60 for us. On Amazon, only $.70. But we figured Amazon, plus the Kindle, might generate more impulse buys, so it’s probably worth it to be there. If we sell a few hundred copies a month between the two sites, it’s a worthwhile experiment. If we sell over a thousand, about 1 percent of the monthly visits to Cognitive Daily, it’s almost a sustainable career. Plus, 12 issues corresponds roughly to the length of a book. If a book is worth $24, then surely a chapter is worth $2.

I don’t expect to sell that many right away. As Bora Zivkovic notes, there’s a built-in tendency to expect to get stuff for free online. But that’s changing. We pay for music. We pay for movies. Now we’re starting to pay for books using devices like the Kindle and iPhone. Even newspapers and magazines are starting to move to Kindle. But why pay for a subscription if you don’t want to read every article? Doesn’t it make more sense to read just the articles you’re interested in? If the answer to that question is yes, then we might actually have a business model. In any case, it certainly seems worth it to try.

The other nice thing about an online monthly is that it never goes out of stock. Most people will decide not to buy this month, but maybe next month’s topic will seem more interesting to some people. If they like that article, they might decide to buy the back issues. Month by month, assuming we have a good product, sales should grow faster and faster, because there are more and more articles to buy.

Right now, neither Amazon nor Lulu offers a “subscription” model for mere mortals, but that would be an awesome next step. I could see a lot of people who might balk at $2 per month decide that $12 per year isn’t a bad deal, and I’d take that guaranteed payday over the iffy month-to-month prospects. Amazon also has a weird quirk. You set your price, and get a 35 percent royalty based on that price. But then they can turn around and sell it at a “discount,” which they did. The book now retails for $1.60 at Amazon. Fortunately, our royalty doesn’t decrease based on our adjustment. Clearly it costs them much less than the $1.30 they’d make at full-price to sell the book. I’d rather they not sell at a discount and just give us a bigger royalty, but I suppose if their discounts get too obscene, we can just increase our suggested price on Amazon. I’d rather people buy it from Lulu, where we make $1.60 per book.

One very unnerving aspect of the whole process is the way you can watch your sales roll in, in real time. In some ways, I’d rather just get a report once a month or so, so I don’t obsess about it. This is a long-term project, and its success is best not measured on a day-to-day (or hour-to-hour) basis.

I really hope this thing works, not just because the money would be nice, but also because it is a model that other writers and creative people might be able to follow. You could produce anything this way — a serial novel, a play, a TV soap opera, a record album — whatever you want. Creative people would be freed from the overlords who’ve controlled the means of distribution for centuries. Either that or I’ll sell 20 copies over the next four months and have to figure out something else to do with my life.