Oh So Boring…

This is just a little annoyance of mine, but it’s something that’s been grating on me.  Recently, I decided to make a concerted effort to use CiteULike as a way to semi-organize the papers I read on the web. (I’m fairly certain that I had a previous account a while back, with quite a few (50, 60) papers in it, but for the life of me I can’t seem to remember/find it.)

Still, that is no reason not to start again.  So, I’ve been adding papers, and I noticed something that just bothers me. When you add a paper to CiteULike, you get to “rate” your…enthusiasm about the paper.  From “Top priority!” (5 stars) to “I might read it” (2 stars), it’s all good.  But then you get to “I don’t really want to read it” and that gives it one star.  That one star seems…odd to me.

To me, one star still means it’s a paper I want to read.  Maybe it’s in astronomy or some field I don’t know much about, but if I’ve taken the time to press the CiteULike button and save it to my “library”, it seems like the least amount of interest would be “might read it”, not “not gonna do it”[1]. Read the rest of this entry »

Inspired by that “25 Things About Me” meme that is all over Facebook–and which I’ve done–I figured I could use this space to let people know other odd things about me.  Some of these might be long posts, others short.  If nothing else, they will be boring and quite banal, but they will get me writing.  Huzzah!  So, now for Random Thing #1…

I am afraid of small insects.

Odd, eh?  Note, this is only small.  I don’t mind tarantulas.  But a tiny little spider? *shudder*  I love watching big ol’ butterflies and moths.  But a small miller moth?  Those small, harmless, food-for-swallows moths?  Freak me out!

There is one exception to this rule: bees, wasps, yellowjackets…all those flying, stingy, yellow, black, harbingers of doom.  I am scared of them all.  Even the mundane honeybee that doesn’t want to bother me at all.  “Run away!”