Links for 2011-01-31

  • “He was the first to achieve the alchemists’ dream of changing one element into another, yet he wasn’t an alchemist. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry, but he wasn’t a chemist. The work for which he received the Prize was carried out in Canada, but he wasn’t a Canadian. He achieved the first man-made nuclear reaction, but he doubted nuclear energy could be controlled by man. He was Ernest Rutherford, pride of New Zealand, England, Canada and McGill University.”
  • “I’m just one of about 800,000 people still living in the city of Detroit, Michigan, the nation’s 11th most-populated city. Because of the events of the last half century, this is a city that journalists and academics love to examine and study. In focusing on the sensational, they often concoct maddening generalizations about what they’ve found here. In the time I’ve lived in Detroit, I’ve come to realize that the most sensational claims and the public perception they create often have little to do with the day-to-day reality of being a Detroiter. This is a complicated city, and even in the most sincere efforts to cull some truth from it, visiting journalists often end up spreading damaging falsehoods.

    One of the most annoying is that Detroit has no grocery stores.”

  • “The JofUR solicits any and all types of manuscript: poetry, prose, visual art, and research articles. You name it, we take it, and reject it. Your manuscript may be formatted however you wish. Frankly, we don’t care.

    After submitting your work, the decision process varies. Often the Editor-in-Chief will reject your work out-of-hand, without even reading it! However, he might read it. Probably he’ll skim. At other times your manuscript may be sent to anonymous referees. Unless they are the Editor-in-Chief’s wife or graduate school buddies, it is unlikely that the referees will even understand what is going on. Rejection will follow as swiftly as a bird dropping from a great height after being struck by a stone. At other times, rejection may languish like your email buried in the Editor-in-Chief’s inbox. But it will come, swift or slow, as surely as death. Rejection.”