There are some challenging and stimulating links in this Monday’s Link Roundup. My favorite is Famous Creators on the Fear of Failure. We all face this fear at one time or another and there’s some comfort in knowing how others face it. Memories, both good and bad, are the raw material of a personal historian’s work. It’s worth checking out Even If We Could Erase Bad Memories, Should We?
- How to Send Visitors Away from Your Website in Two Seconds or Less. “Your website is your online storefront. Window shoppers will give your site two seconds of their time before deciding whether to take a closer look. You read that correctly: TWO seconds.”
- So You Think You Can Proofread? “One of less common myths about publishing eBooks is that proofreading is so easy anyone can do it. The Society for Editors and Proofreaders (SfEP) wants to show you why it’s not true.”
- Jewish Marriage Contracts. “The ketubah is the contract that Jewish law requires a groom to provide for his bride on their wedding day. Different Jewish communities adopted styles and even shapes for their ketubot that were characteristic of their localities.”
- The power of place: Robert Caro. “Show, don’t tell” is a mantra of narrative writers everywhere, but even the most useful adage can lose meaning with repetition. Before a lunchtime audience of writers at the Second Annual Compleat Biographer Conference on Saturday, legendary biographer Robert Caro reinvigorated the concept.”
- Famous Creators on the Fear of Failure. “While intended as advice for design students, these simple yet important insights are relevant to just about anyone with a beating heart and a head full of ideas — a much-needed reminder of what we all rationally know but have such a hard time internalizing emotionally.”
- Books can’t make history without people. “…to fear that rising digital downloads will spell the death of ideas is to imply that books with a physical spine have a power that’s independent of the humans who read them. The reality is, humans also need a spine to make anything valuable out of books.”
- Even If We Could Erase Bad Memories, Should We? “New science suggests it might be possible to free ourselves of mental burdens—but would doing so destroy who we are?”
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