Am just back from yet another conference. This time, in Southampton. I’m sure Southampton has some redeeming features other than its university. Couldn’t find them, though... Mind you, it was hard to see anything through the incessant rain...
My last post, which detailed a bunch of significant life changes over the past 3 years, failed to mention my new iPhone 3G. I’ll forget my own children next... My mother, as it happens, did once forget me: Left me in my pram outside the local Budgens. Got all the way home (a few blocks away) before realizing. Needless to say, I have no recollection of that brief moment in which I was less memorable than a bag of shopping...
Not much else to say for myself... am looking forward to a couple of weeks’ stay in York before my next trip. A time to relax. And to manage the journal, and write reviews for NIH...
Sunday, 14 September 2008
Sunday, 7 September 2008
the human condition
The human condition (well.... my condition) is not unlike the pond filter that I cleaned out today. You fill up with gunk, and the only way to really get rid of it is to dismantle the whole thing, clean out all the festering sludge, carefully re-assemble it, and watch patiently as it starts to function again. And whereas before, what came out of it was a kind of soupy mess, what comes out now is clean and pure, and able to support a habitat the occupants of which are oblivious to the great cleansing drama that has just taken place outside of their immediate experience.
Yeah right. But I have stopped eating biscuits and chocolate, and I did today manage to do up the top button on a pair of jeans into which I haven’t managed to fit for way too long. The great cleansing has begun...
Five weeks ago (my last post) I was about to go on holiday. Which I did. It was fantastic. I came back all charged up... and promptly got depressed the moment I stepped foot into the office. But a few weeks later, and life is good again. The journal isn’t spiralling out of control, the kids are back into their usual term-time routine, the conference season has started again, and now that the summer is almost over it can finally stop raining and the sun can come out.
I’m in fact just back from a conference in Cambridge (the UK one - not the Massachusetts one). These days, going to a conference is as much about meeting up with old friends as it is about learning about the latest research or getting feedback on one’s own. So it’s nice to realize that I have a life beyond http://ees.elsevier.com/cognit (the website at which I manage the journal). And it’s nice to be reminded, as I write this, that there are a whole bunch of people out there, with whose lives my own occasionally makes contact, whom I wish I could thank... just for making that contact. Some of them, if they read this, would know who they are. But equally, some of them would have no idea that I include them also.
Two days ago was this blog’s third birthday. Looking back, it does astonish me how much my life has changed in these 3 years. The most significant of the changes, in no particular order, include:
Yeah right. But I have stopped eating biscuits and chocolate, and I did today manage to do up the top button on a pair of jeans into which I haven’t managed to fit for way too long. The great cleansing has begun...
Five weeks ago (my last post) I was about to go on holiday. Which I did. It was fantastic. I came back all charged up... and promptly got depressed the moment I stepped foot into the office. But a few weeks later, and life is good again. The journal isn’t spiralling out of control, the kids are back into their usual term-time routine, the conference season has started again, and now that the summer is almost over it can finally stop raining and the sun can come out.
I’m in fact just back from a conference in Cambridge (the UK one - not the Massachusetts one). These days, going to a conference is as much about meeting up with old friends as it is about learning about the latest research or getting feedback on one’s own. So it’s nice to realize that I have a life beyond http://ees.elsevier.com/cognit (the website at which I manage the journal). And it’s nice to be reminded, as I write this, that there are a whole bunch of people out there, with whose lives my own occasionally makes contact, whom I wish I could thank... just for making that contact. Some of them, if they read this, would know who they are. But equally, some of them would have no idea that I include them also.
Two days ago was this blog’s third birthday. Looking back, it does astonish me how much my life has changed in these 3 years. The most significant of the changes, in no particular order, include:
- the house
- the pond (twice)
- advancing through several grades at Karate
- a new messenger bag, made from the finest Italian leather with the finest Italian craftmanship (but not a Jack Spade... so apparently I’m still not hip enough. But at $195, I’ll leave the Jack Spades to Brian...)
- the journal
- new friends (and some almost lost friends)
- new students
- new postdocs
- new data
- new publications
- zillions of trips to Washington
- and enough stress which, if harnessed, would power a small town...
Saturday, 2 August 2008
pre-flight checklist
Things to get done before 12 days’ vacation in Italy with the family...
- clear queues at the journal of all submitted manuscripts waiting to go out to review. done
- clear queues at the journal of all manuscripts for which reviews are in and decisions to accept/reject are required. done
- stop thinking about how much more I could have done if I’d not been going on holiday. done
- stop thinking about how much more I’ll have to do when I get back from holiday. done
- stop worrying about things I could have done better to prepare for the holiday. not done
- stop worrying about things I could have done better. not done
- cut grass at the last minute, before it rains. done
- pack clothes, sun cream, hat, swimsuit, another hat. done
- pack chargers for ipod, phone, satnav, camera, computer, and countless other gadgets that have now become essential accompaniments to travel. done
- treat pond for algae, feed fish, show next door’s kids where the fish food’s kept. done
- pick up kids. done
- pick up kids’ passports. not done
- pick up kids’ passports. now done
Saturday, 26 July 2008
Sunday, 6 July 2008
Martial arts in the office
Ok - it was a stupid thing to do. The likelihood that nothing would be broken was surely close to zero. But when someone asked me what the hardened conkers were for, on one of my bookshelves, I foolishly said that they were so I could practice dodging bullets, and even more foolishly said that if they were thrown at me I would be able to deflect them with the reflexes of a pouncing tiger (ok... so I did not say that, but it was something along those lines). Oddly, this person whom I would normally admire and respect proceeded to throw these things across the room at my head. By “throw” I actually mean “hurl at meteoric speed” - bullets would scarcely have travelled faster. But true to my word, I rather impressively deflected the things while I calmly sat in my chair (I was calm only because I didn’t actually have the time to quake with fear). It was only moments later, after these missiles had been deflected in all directions, that I realized that all the fragile objects in my office, including my computer screen (it was inches from my head), were miraculously intact and unbroken.
Unless I have misremembered who it was, I once found myself sitting next to James Pennebaker on a flight to the US. He gave me his copy of “Running with Scissors” (he’d just finished reading it - it’s not like he carried a stash of them around to give out to strangers). I’m ashamed to say I had absolutely no idea who he was until I googled him when I got back to York. But he’ll have had no idea who I was either. So we’re quits. Except that I guess, technically-speaking, I’m up one book. And a good book at that.
Saturday, 14 June 2008
Friday the 13th
Friday 13th doesn’t sound like an auspicious day to fly, but that’s what I tried to do - didn’t quite manage it, though... Was about to fly back to the UK from Washington, DC, but no sooner had we all settled down on the plane than we were told that we had to ‘deplane’. Apparently they’d forgotten to do a security sweep, with the result that we actually took off on Friday 14th. Not that I’m superstitious....
I really like this constructive use of ‘deplane’. From now on I shall, when I arrive at work, ‘decar’; my students will ‘deoffice’, and my children, because they are tired of the responsibility of having to grow up, will be encouraged instead to ‘dechild’. And anyone I don’t like can just go decelibate.
oops, have I just overstepped the mark of decency? I don’t think so; after all, I was merely making a comment on the linguistic potential of United Airline speak.
Speaking of which (I shall leave the reader to figure out which of the above I am referring to), here is another tip for prospective authors submitting papers to the journal I edit: If you are asked to make changes, and you don’t, and you then feel sufficiently aggrieved at receiving a rejection letter that you feel an urgent need to write to the Editor questioning his professional competence, integrity, and maternal ancestry, do make sure that if you are going to sign your letter with the names of your co-authors, they are aware that, on their behalf, you called the Editor an incompetent imbecile of indeterminate genetic stock. They may not necessarily share your views, and may one day wish to submit something of their own to the journal, in which case it would be a shame if mud had stuck.
It must be the jetlag, but I swear my sentences are longer, more convoluted, and generally less comprehensible than normal. It’s definitely time to deblog.
I really like this constructive use of ‘deplane’. From now on I shall, when I arrive at work, ‘decar’; my students will ‘deoffice’, and my children, because they are tired of the responsibility of having to grow up, will be encouraged instead to ‘dechild’. And anyone I don’t like can just go decelibate.
oops, have I just overstepped the mark of decency? I don’t think so; after all, I was merely making a comment on the linguistic potential of United Airline speak.
Speaking of which (I shall leave the reader to figure out which of the above I am referring to), here is another tip for prospective authors submitting papers to the journal I edit: If you are asked to make changes, and you don’t, and you then feel sufficiently aggrieved at receiving a rejection letter that you feel an urgent need to write to the Editor questioning his professional competence, integrity, and maternal ancestry, do make sure that if you are going to sign your letter with the names of your co-authors, they are aware that, on their behalf, you called the Editor an incompetent imbecile of indeterminate genetic stock. They may not necessarily share your views, and may one day wish to submit something of their own to the journal, in which case it would be a shame if mud had stuck.
It must be the jetlag, but I swear my sentences are longer, more convoluted, and generally less comprehensible than normal. It’s definitely time to deblog.
Saturday, 24 May 2008
Sample Cover Letter for Journal Manuscript Resubmissions
by Roy F. Baumeister
Dear Sir, Madam, or Other:
Enclosed is our latest version of Ms # 85-02-22-RRRRR, that is, the re-re-re-revised revision of our paper. Choke on it. We have again rewritten the entire manuscript from start to finish. We even changed the goddamn running head! Hopefully we have suffered enough by now to satisfy even you and your bloodthirsty reviewers.
I shall skip the usual point-by-point description of every single change we made in response to the critiques. After all, it is fairly clear that your reviewers are less interested in details of scientific procedure than in working out their personality problems and sexual frustrations by seeking some kind of demented glee in the sadistic and arbitrary exercise of tyrannical power over helpless authors like ourselves who happen to fall into their clutches. We do understand that, in view of the misanthropic psychopaths you have on your editorial board, you need to keep sending them papers, for if they weren’t reviewing manuscripts they’d probably be out mugging old ladies or clubbing baby seals to death. Still, from this batch of reviewers, C was clearly the most hostile, and we request that you not ask him or her to review this revision. Indeed, we have mailed letter bombs to four or five people we suspected of being reviewer C, so if you send the manuscript back to them the review process could be unduly delayed.
Some of the reviewers’ comments we couldn’t do anything about. For example, if (as review C suggested) several of my recent ancestors were indeed drawn from other species, it is too late to change that. Other suggestions were implemented, however, and the paper has improved and benefited. Thus, you suggested that we shorten the manuscript by 5 pages, and we were able to accomplish this very effectively by altering the margins and printing the paper in a different font with a smaller typeface. We agree with you that the paper is much better this way.
One perplexing problem was dealing with suggestions #13-28 by Reviewer B. As you may recall (that is, if you even bother reading the reviews before doing your decision letter), that reviewer listed 16 works that he/she felt we should cite in this paper. These were on a variety of different topics, none of which had any relevance to our work that we could see. Indeed, one was an essay on the Spanish-American War from a high school literary magazine. The only common thread was that all 16 were by the same author, presumably someone whom Reviewer B greatly admires and feels should be more widely cited. To handle this, we have modified the Introduction and added, after the review of relevant literature, a subsection entitled “Review of Irrelevant Literature” that discusses these articles and also duly addresses some of the more asinine suggestions in the other reviews.
We hope that you will be pleased with this revision and will finally recognize how urgently deserving of publication this work is. If not, then you are an unscrupulous, depraved monster with no shred of human decency. You ought to be in a cage. May whatever heritage you come from be the butt of the next round of ethnic jokes. If you do accept it, however, we wish to thank you for your patience and wisdom throughout this process and to express our appreciation of your scholarly insights. To repay you, we would be happy to review some manuscripts for you; please send us the next manuscript that any of these reviewers submits to your journal.
Assuming you accept this paper, we would also like to add a footnote acknowledging your help with this manuscript and to point out that we liked the paper much better the way we originally wrote it but you held the editorial shotgun to our heads and forced us to reshuffle, restate, hedge, expand, shorten, and in general convert a meaty paper into stir-fried vegetables. We couldn’t, or wouldn’t, have done it without your input.
Sincerely,
[This was sent to me a couple of years ago, when I took over as Editor-in-Chief of Cognition. I wrote to Roy to establish the provenance of this piece (and to ask permission to reproduce it here), and he told me this was written over 20 years ago, "I wrote it to work out some of my own frustrations with the review process back then. I think it is my most widely read publication, and not even listed on my CV!"]
Dear Sir, Madam, or Other:
Enclosed is our latest version of Ms # 85-02-22-RRRRR, that is, the re-re-re-revised revision of our paper. Choke on it. We have again rewritten the entire manuscript from start to finish. We even changed the goddamn running head! Hopefully we have suffered enough by now to satisfy even you and your bloodthirsty reviewers.
I shall skip the usual point-by-point description of every single change we made in response to the critiques. After all, it is fairly clear that your reviewers are less interested in details of scientific procedure than in working out their personality problems and sexual frustrations by seeking some kind of demented glee in the sadistic and arbitrary exercise of tyrannical power over helpless authors like ourselves who happen to fall into their clutches. We do understand that, in view of the misanthropic psychopaths you have on your editorial board, you need to keep sending them papers, for if they weren’t reviewing manuscripts they’d probably be out mugging old ladies or clubbing baby seals to death. Still, from this batch of reviewers, C was clearly the most hostile, and we request that you not ask him or her to review this revision. Indeed, we have mailed letter bombs to four or five people we suspected of being reviewer C, so if you send the manuscript back to them the review process could be unduly delayed.
Some of the reviewers’ comments we couldn’t do anything about. For example, if (as review C suggested) several of my recent ancestors were indeed drawn from other species, it is too late to change that. Other suggestions were implemented, however, and the paper has improved and benefited. Thus, you suggested that we shorten the manuscript by 5 pages, and we were able to accomplish this very effectively by altering the margins and printing the paper in a different font with a smaller typeface. We agree with you that the paper is much better this way.
One perplexing problem was dealing with suggestions #13-28 by Reviewer B. As you may recall (that is, if you even bother reading the reviews before doing your decision letter), that reviewer listed 16 works that he/she felt we should cite in this paper. These were on a variety of different topics, none of which had any relevance to our work that we could see. Indeed, one was an essay on the Spanish-American War from a high school literary magazine. The only common thread was that all 16 were by the same author, presumably someone whom Reviewer B greatly admires and feels should be more widely cited. To handle this, we have modified the Introduction and added, after the review of relevant literature, a subsection entitled “Review of Irrelevant Literature” that discusses these articles and also duly addresses some of the more asinine suggestions in the other reviews.
We hope that you will be pleased with this revision and will finally recognize how urgently deserving of publication this work is. If not, then you are an unscrupulous, depraved monster with no shred of human decency. You ought to be in a cage. May whatever heritage you come from be the butt of the next round of ethnic jokes. If you do accept it, however, we wish to thank you for your patience and wisdom throughout this process and to express our appreciation of your scholarly insights. To repay you, we would be happy to review some manuscripts for you; please send us the next manuscript that any of these reviewers submits to your journal.
Assuming you accept this paper, we would also like to add a footnote acknowledging your help with this manuscript and to point out that we liked the paper much better the way we originally wrote it but you held the editorial shotgun to our heads and forced us to reshuffle, restate, hedge, expand, shorten, and in general convert a meaty paper into stir-fried vegetables. We couldn’t, or wouldn’t, have done it without your input.
Sincerely,
[This was sent to me a couple of years ago, when I took over as Editor-in-Chief of Cognition. I wrote to Roy to establish the provenance of this piece (and to ask permission to reproduce it here), and he told me this was written over 20 years ago, "I wrote it to work out some of my own frustrations with the review process back then. I think it is my most widely read publication, and not even listed on my CV!"]
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)