What Your Email Inbox Count Says About You

By Jen Doll and Rebecca Greenfield

What’s the number of unread emails—right now, at this moment, without changing anything—in your inbox? That would be 3,487 in the case of Jen here; 1 in the case of Rebecca. More about what that means in a second, but first, a bit of backstory: The New Yorker‘s Silvia Killingsworth has embarked on an exploration of what she dubs in her headline as “Zero Dark Inbox,” or having absolutely zero unread emails in one’s inbox. She writes, “I have four e-mails in my inbox right now, but I’m aiming for that number to be zero. Like many practitioners of the ‘Inbox Zero’ system, I treat my inbox like a to-do list, with each e-mail representing a task….” She’s adhering to a method promoted by Merlin Mann, a lifehacker and proponent of Getting Things Done; essentially, it’s the digital version of opening all your letters (what letters?) and bills when you receive them and dealing with them then as opposed to setting them aside and waiting for the bill collectors to start bugging you to pay up (not that we would do that, of course).

Killingsworth took on the pursuit of Inbox Zero for herself, calling it “exhilarating and terrifying”—fortunately, like many a process-and-detail-oriented person, ”I am addicted to the gratification that comes from tidying up,” she writes. Inbox Zero is a coping mechanism, a way to move on with conversations throughout the day; on the down side, entire threads may be forgotten, no longer staring you in the face. “And what about when you actually reach Inbox Zero? It doesn’t feel like winning. It feels like staring into the abyss,” she explains. But there are at least many like-minded or attempting-to-be-like-minded commiserators with whom you can share your attempts to get there, so that’s fun, sort of like a support group.

But if Killingsworth and her ilk, wholeheartedly and diligently attempting to get to Zero, are one example of an email-lifestyle, what are the others? We undertook a brief investigation of the staff of The Atlantic Wire to find out What Our Inbox Numbers Say About Us (and therefore, perhaps, you too; remember our book readers diagnostic?). As for our unread email counts, here’s what we found.

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The evolution of African pulp fiction

Lurid cover essential: Jungle Jim

 

Sean O’Toole traces the genre from its current incarnation back to the golden age of the genre amid high apartheid and African independence.

The last hours of Muammar Gaddafi’s life were ingloriously spent hiding in a drainage ditch on the outskirts of his hometown of Sirte. What did the former Libyan leader do and think as he unsuspectingly awaited his executioners in that makeshift bunker? It is an ample ­scenario for fiction writers.

In the imagination of young Nigerian author Iheoma Nwachukwu, writing in issue 12 of Jungle Jim, an irreverent monthly showcase of new African pulp fiction, the brotherly leader had sex with a bodyguard, a woman named Hana — “a quick one before her shift ends”.

Published in May, a year after ­Jungle Jim launched in Cape Town, Nwachukwu’s contribution is a lurid piece of agitprop that melds authorial conjecture with historical fact. Presented in the form of a taped soliloquy, Escape to Hell portrays Gaddafi in an introspective mood.

“Am I crazy because I’m horny in war?” Gaddafi thinks out loud. He also contemplates his mortality, reminisces about the executions he ordered and fumes at the ingratitude of the Libyan people.

“I gave them free electricity, go in the cities and look! They pay nothing!” he shouts. “Libya has no external debt! I did it! Libya has foreign reserves of $50-billion!” For proof, Gaddafi instructs the reader: “Look in your computers! Don’t be fooled!”

I asked Jenna Cato Bass, a twentysomething filmmaker and Jungle Jim’s publisher-editor, why she opted for the retro A5 print format when history points towards the inevitability of computers, or online publishing.

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New chapter for mystery book sculptures

The first of the new sculptures was found by Emma Lister, a teaching assistant at Glasgow School of Art

The anonymous artist behind a series of intricate book sculptures which mysteriously appeared across Edinburgh last year has produced five new works.

The 10 original sculptures became a social media sensation and the artist was described as a “literary Banksy”.

The artist, whose identity is still being kept secret, has produced the new works as part of Book Week Scotland.

The new sculptures, inspired by classic Scottish stories, have been hidden at secret locations across the country.

Clues released online each day this week will help literary fans to track them down and win their own sculptures.

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Would Jane Austen Write A Blog? (and other things writers probably shouldn’t do)

By Cath Murphy

Twitter, NaNoWriMo and blogging are activities writers now take for granted. But spin back two decades and blogging would have been easily confused with something people did behind the steamy windshields of cars. It’s hard to imagine how we spent our time in the dark days before WordPress; it’s even harder to work out whether the time and effort spent on some of the activities we take for granted is justified. In the spirit of ‘what would Jesus have done?’ I’m going to pierce this fog of confusion by using three authors as a prism through which the torch of truth may be concentrated.

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Oxford American Dictionary names “GIF” word of the year

(Credit: Stuart Miles)

“GIF” as a verb “has evolved … into a tool with serious applications”

By Prachi Gupta

Internet culture gets its proper due in journalism today, as ”GIF” has beat out “YOLO” as the Oxford American Dictionary’s word of the year. “GIF celebrated a lexical milestone in 2012, gaining traction as a verb, not just a noun,” said Katherine Martin, head of the U.S. dictionaries program at Oxford. “The GIF has evolved from a medium for pop-cultural memes into a tool with serious applications including research and journalism, and its lexical identity is transforming to keep pace.”

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Brilliant Book Art by Thomas Allen

Artwork and Photography by Thomas Allen

Inspired by a View-Master and pop-up books as a child, Thomas Allen became interested in recreating these three-dimensional experiences by using mid century books and pulp fiction paperbacks as still life subjects. Allen gently cuts around the shape of his figures, physically releasing them from their two dimensional surface, and then places them in a new display of meaningful interactions.

His characters are brought to life from their pages and covers by detailed lighting and selective focus, ultimately telling a distinct narrative with their newly defined settings.

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Can paper survive the digital age?

Money, laws, tickets, newspapers, not to mention its many uses in art … despite the digital revolution, our world is still built on paper. Ian Sansom reflects on an enduring addiction to the white stuff.

I want to make a modest proposal. I want to propose the foundation of a National Paper Museum. It’s a back-of-the-envelope notion, a paper-fed pipe-dream. But it’s not impossible. Museums are made of paper anyway, founded on blueprints and letters to the Times, and fuelled by ancient documents and handwritten catalogue entries. In the mid-19th century, Richard Owen, superintendent of natural history at the British Museum, decided that his area of specialisation needed its own space, and so he set about making his argument – on paper, in letters and in campaigns.

In 1858, more than 100 naturalists signed a letter to the chancellor of the exchequer, complaining about the display of natural history in the British Museum. Thomas Huxley and Charles Darwin put together a petition. Owen published a booklet, On the Extent and Aims of a National Museum of Natural History. Money was raised. A competition was announced for the building of a new museum. Plans were submitted. Francis Fowke won the contest, on the strength of his perspective drawing. Interiors were sketched and designed. Plans became reality, and the new British Museum (Natural History) – what we know now simply as the Natural History Museum, one of the jewels in the crown of Albertopolis – finally opened to the public on Easter Monday 1881. We have a Science Museum, and a museum of the decorative arts. We have galleries aplenty and exhibitions everywhere. But we lack a national monument to the stuff that’s made it all possible.

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A sip of Mampoer — for a small price

By Nick Hedley

MAMPOER.co.za, an experimental website run by some of South Africa’s big names in publishing, is set to shift African journalism “into new territory”.

Describing its long-form in-depth articles as mini-books — “shorter than a novel, longer than a magazine” — the site is named after “a small drink that packs a giant kick”.

The website began selling articles of between 5,000 and 15,000 words to readers for $2.99 each about a week ago, and co-founder Anton Harber says the site is seeing “a steady stream of visitors, and sales are picking up nicely”.

Mampoer’s creation resonates with a continuing shift to digital publishing.

US news magazine Newsweek recently said it would stop its print edition and focus entirely on digital publishing.

Analysts have expressed cautious optimism that Mampoer will address a gap in the South African market.

But they warn that attracting readers willing to pay for content will be difficult when free content is still widely available.

 

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George Lucas Will Use Disney $4 Billion to Fund Education

Spokesperson for Lucasfilm tells THR the majority of the sale price will go toward educational philanthropy.

By the end of the year, the $4.05 billion sale of Lucasfilm to Disney should be finalized. And since George Lucas owns 100 percent of his company — which has little to no debt — all that money goes to him.

After that, Lucas plans to quickly put the bulk of the money into a foundation that will primarily focus on educational issues, a spokesperson for Lucasfilm tells THR.

“George Lucas has expressed his intention, in the event the deal closes, to donate the majority of the proceeds to his philanthropic endeavors.”

It’s not yet clear which foundation will get the proceeds. Lucas is currently the chairman of Edutopia, which is part of the George Lucas Educational Foundation. He could put money into that or create a new foundation that would be funded from the sale.

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At Newsweek, Ending Print and a Blend of Two Styles

By CHRISTINE HAUGHNEY and DAVID CARR

 

From the start, it was an unwieldy melding of two newsrooms: a legacy print magazine, Newsweek, combined with an irreverent digital news site, The Daily Beast. It had high-profile ownership, first in Sidney Harman and then in Barry Diller, and it was held together by the experienced magazine editor Tina Brown, looking for one more big hit on her résumé.

But on Thursday, Newsweek buckled under the pressure afflicting the magazine industry in general and newsweeklies in particular, with their outdated print cycles that have been overtaken by the Internet.

In a message posted on The Daily Beast, Ms. Brown announced that Newsweek would cease print publication at the end of the year and move to an all-digital format. The transition, she wrote, would include layoffs, and at a staff meeting Thursday morning, she grew teary-eyed when she told employees that she didn’t know how many people would be let go.

The staff remaining will publish a digital magazine called Newsweek Global. Readers will continue to pay for Newsweek, Ms. Brown said, and some Newsweek articles will appear on The Daily Beast, which will continue as a free Web site. The end of the print edition will help stem Newsweek’s estimated $40 million in annual losses.

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