That’s a complete lie. I’m just curious to see whether the number of hits to my page go up because I put the term ‘Obama’ in there. According to today’s Google statistics, there are 216 million web pages with ‘Obama’ compared to 230 million with ‘Bush’. Given that the word “bush” can mean countless other things, it’s not surprising that Bush outranks Obama on Google. But seeing as George Bush has been US president for 8 years, and Obama’s only been in the public eye for a year or so, it’s pretty telling. And to put this in further perspective: “Barack Obama” - 105 million pages vs. “George Bush” - 22.7 million pages. I’m not making a political statement here - I simply wonder why the US electorate felt compelled to go through all that effort, and all those dollars, when they could have just googled the candidates and gotten the same outcome...
Next week I get to experience the delights of transatlantic travel once again - traveling to Chicago for a big conference. And three days after I get back, I’m off to Switzerland. I do worry that the journal may suffer - I can make editorial decisions when I travel, but it’s impossible to send papers to review, so inevitable delays build up. I’ve been looking at this year’s statistics: This year alone I’ve sent over 300 papers to review, and have made over 500 editorial decisions. Collectively (myself and the Associate Editors), we reject between 25% and 30% of submitted manuscripts without sending them out to review, and we only accept for publication around 10% of submitted manuscripts. So fewer than 15% of manuscripts which are sent to review are accepted. It exhausts me just thinking about all this. I need a break. Or a medal. Or just a little more time in each day.
Not much else to report - the leaves fall as fast as I can rake them up and the fish are slowly becoming more and more immobile as the water temperature drops and the days become darker. I fear I am myself becoming more fish-like each day...
