How Writers Can Turn Their Archives into eBooks

Posted on October 14, 2010June 27, 2021 by Matt Kristoffersen

The Atlantic, October 14, 2010

For about fifteen years now, writing books has been an essential part of my life. But this summer I started to rethink what it really means to publish a book.

This year well-established authors like John Edgar Wideman began to do something radical: they started working directly with eBook sellers like Kindle and Lulu. I was reminded of the early days of blogging. Blogging presented a new way to publish an article. A writer could get an idea, create a piece of whatever length the idea demanded, and publish it with the press of a button. I started blogging myself, and have done so ever since. But I didn’t give up writing those conventional articles; blogs simply opened up a niche that didn’t exist before.

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Reminder: Tomorrow I’ll be talking in DC, live and live-streamed

Posted on October 13, 2010July 28, 2021 by Matt Kristoffersen

Tomorrow I’ll be speaking in Washington DC at the Koshland Science Museum about communicating science in new media. It’s going to be a retro-future kind of talk. For one thing, I think Vesalius was a great model for thinking about science in new media. He had a lot of things figured out 450 years ago that we’re just rediscovering.

Plus the semi-super-secret project I mentioned last week. I’ll explain that tomorrow morning.

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Monkey self-recognition? Not so fast!

Posted on October 11, 2010July 28, 2021 by Matt Kristoffersen

Last week I posted a story about an experiment suggesting monkeys can recognize themselves in the mirror. One of the experts I contacted was Peter G. Roma, who was the lead author of a 2007 paper that failed to find evidence for this kind of self-recognition. Roma responded today with an interesting response, which I’m posting here, and at the end of the original post.

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All in the Mind goes all parasitic

Posted on October 9, 2010July 28, 2021 by Matt Kristoffersen

I’m a big fan of All in the Mind, a radio program on neuroscience, psychology, and all things brain-ish, produced by Natasha Mitchell for Australia’s ABC Radio National. So it’s a double pleasure to hear her new episode about how parasites alter behavior. Check it out.

Announcements, Announcements, cont’d: Me and Misha Considering His Genome

Posted on October 5, 2010July 18, 2021 by Matt Kristoffersen

Misha Angrist has written an excellent book that you might just want to buy for its title alone: Here Is A Human Being. In this case, the being is Misha. He was one of the first people to have his genome sequenced, and he’s chronicled the experience in this book.

Here’s the endorsement I sent to Misha’s publisher back in the spring:

Our genomes pose a paradox. They are at once profoundly intimate and remotely abstract. Misha Angrist blasts the paradox apart with Here Is A Human Being. He bravely explores what it really means for him to be able to gaze at his own genome, not by simply considering the nature of his particular gene variants, but also probing the many ways that genomics is going to influence society as a whole. A fascinating, unique book.

The book is coming out at the start of November. To celebrate the occasion, Misha and I will “be in conversation,” as they say, at Labyrinth Books in New Haven on Saturday, November 6, at 6 pm. Come join us!