Today's Time Waster: Ngrams

I'm indexing one of the most fascinating books I've worked on in a long time -- a book that I'd copyedited some months back about the field of digital humanities. Came across this:

"The Google n-grams viewer (https://books.google.com/ngrams) offers a view of the Google Books collection not as a set of texts, but as a set of word groups that can be filtered by time and language."

First search was interesting (it's 1:20am, I'm indexing, and free association or lack of too much creative brain power is kicking in):

Allen Ginsberg/William S. Burroughs/Hunter S. Thompson

I figured Ginsberg to be in the lead. Burroughs and Thompson at this point are neck and neck.

Second search:

New York Mets/Georgia Republicans/peyote

The results were rewarding.

Not-So-Social Media

I'll admit it: I occasionally troll Comments sections -- especially my hometown newspaper's, especially the Letters to the Editor -- under an assumed nom de Facebook.

I posted a response under my alias on a Publishers' Weekly article today, and I received blowback from two people who said I really had no place calling other people's opinions into question.

Excuse me?

Cream and Sugar with That?

From an article about a coffee shop that hires the homeless:

For some of the critics at that neighborhood meeting, “It challenges the idea that people who are homeless are lazy or just aren’t working hard enough,” he said. And Seth was effusive in his praise of his homeless employee. “He’s an incredible guy. You would never know he was homeless. He used to be an editor for novels. . . .”