Heather Gain, the marketing manager of the Harvard Book Store in Cambridge, Mass., said that in recent years the store had begun doing more events that required the customer to buy a book, constantly reminding them that “if they aren’t purchasing the books from the establishments that are running these events, the bookstores are going to go away.”

“We’re a business,” Ms. Gain said. “We’re not just an Amazon showroom.”

The New York Times has the rest of the story here.

That address on the bottom of this column? That is the pathetic, confused death knell of the once-proud newspaper industry, and I want nothing to do with it. Sending an email to that address is about as useful as sending your study group report about Iraq to the president.

Here’s what my internet-fearing editors have failed to understand: I don’t want to talk to you; I want to talk at you. A column is not my attempt to engage in a conversation with you. I have more than enough people to converse with. And I don’t listen to them either. That sound on the phone, Mum, is me typing.

Some newspapers even list the phone numbers of their reporters at the end of their articles. That’s a smart use of their employees’ time. Why not just save a step and have themset up a folding table at a senior citizen centre with a sign asking for complaints?

Where does this end? Does Philip Roth have to put his email at the end of his book? Does Tom Hanks have to hold up a sign with his email at the end of his movie? Should your hotel housekeeper leave her email on your sheets? Are you starting to see how creepy this is?

Not everything should be interactive. A piece of work that stands on its own, without explanation or defence, takes on its own power. If Martin Luther put his 95 theses on the wall and then all the townsfolk sent him their comments, and he had to write back to all of them and clarify what he meant, some of the theses would have been all watered down and there never would have been a Diet of Worms. And then, for the rest of history, school pupils learning about the Reformation would have nothing to make fun of. You can see how dangerous this all is.

Robert Sapolsky and an olive baboon share a quiet moment on the Talek River, July 2007 (Credit: John Heminway)

A lot, apparently. National Geographic has a fascinating look at stress via the research of Stanford neurobiologist Robert Sapolsky. Here’s a bit of it:

In this revelatory film, discoveries occur in an extraordinary range of places, from baboon troops on the plains of East Africa to the office cubes of government bureaucrats in London to neuroscience labs at the nation’s leading research universities. Groundbreaking research reveals surprising facts about the impact of stress on our bodies: how it can shrink our brains, add fat to our bellies and even unravel our chromosomes. Understanding how stress works can help us figure out ways to combat it and mitigate negative impacts on our health.

For over three decades, Robert Sapolsky has been working to advance our understanding of stress — in particular how our social standing (our place in various hierarchies) can make us more or less susceptible to the damaging effects of stress. Throughout the film, he weaves the grim realities of the impact of chronic stress with his wry observations about 21st century life.

The documentary is available on Netflix instant watch and here’s the story on it from PBS.

Some interesting thoughts on the Pareto 80/20 principle as applied to work efficiency here.

The annual APSA meeting in Washington, DC is upon us and should be a very successful event. Look forward to some live Twittering from us on the event. Pssst … the twitter feeds are to your right.

See it here.

Back in 1980, I forgot to return my Columbia House Record Club notice and ended up receiving Black Sabbath’s “The Mob Rules” in the mail as the monthly featured selection. It ended up being a great decision. This was my first introduction to Black Sabbath and the experience changed my musical taste forever. While the appeal of Black Sabbath has always been Tony Iommi’s riveting guitar riff’s, the vocals were unlike anything I had listened to prior to that time. Of course, many of you must assume I am talking about Ozzy Osbourne. Nope. In 1980 Ozzy was a solo act, having been fired by Iommi a year before. The lead singer of my Black Sabbath was Ronnie James Dio.

Dio only made two albums with Black Sabbath prior to going out on his own as a solo act, known simply as “Dio.” Both Black Sabbath and Dio struggled after that, although Dio did have a minor MTV hit with “Rainbow in the Dark” as I recall. Eventually, I bought the very first Black Sabbath CD’s and realized that the early Osbourne era music blew away anything Black Sabbath or Dio did (or 99% of the heavy metal acts afterward, for that matter) after 1979. But if it wasn’t for Dio, and the second incarnation of the band, I never would have discovered the early stuff.

Anyway, I recently found out that Ronnie James Dio died last month after battling stomach cancer for several months. He was 67. Who would ever have thought that he (rather than Ozzy) would be the first Black Sabbath vocalist to pass away? I am not a metal enthusiast anymore, but the news saddened me nonetheless. I suspect that Dio is largely unknown among the younger crowd today, but his legacy will live on forever among metal fans. Few will ever match his vocal ability – he was the quintessential heavy metal vocalist. But his cheesy stage moves will be copied by heavy metal wannabe’s for years to come. Most notable of those moves was the “devil horns” hand gesture which was popularized by Dio, and which now seems to be a standard move for any real metal singer.

In 2008, Hit Parader ranked the 100 greatest heavy metal vocalists of all time. Here are the top 10. If you are really interested, check out the complete list.
01. Robert Plant
02. Rob Halford
03. Steven Tyler
04. Chris Cornell
05. Bon Scott
06. Freddie Mercury
07. Bruce Dickinson
08. Ozzy Osbourne
09. Paul Rodgers
10. Ronnie James Dio

Normally, this sort of thing would fall within my twitter posts, but I couldn’t pass up providing the above pic of a “Planet of the Apes” lunch box. Note that it depicts the television show as opposed to the series of movies. I want this lunch box

You can find the rest here. [h/t Boing Boing]