Friday Reading

Technically I work in academia, though our publishing products are geared toward consumers. Therefore we are bound to a certain degree to the academic calendar, which means that most of the following two weeks will be paid time off. Officially our break starts on the 23rd, but I'm taking off a couple of extra days before that.

However, this means that a lot of stuff has to get done ahead of time to compensate for not being here for almost two weeks. So in addition to finishing my monthly deadline stuff this week, I've had to set up emails that will go out to subscribers next week and the week after, deal with a formatting problem in one of the emails, and make arrangements for how a few other small things will get done while I'm not here. (Short answer: I'll be doing them from home.)

Anyway, what all this means is that I don't really have anything for you today, but I can point you in the direction of something you may or may not find interesting, depending on your point of view. Fifty years ago yesterday, two planes collided over Staten Island; one landed there, in an unused army field; the other crashed into an intersection in Brooklyn. The New York Times has been doing look-back coverage all this week on their City Room blog. (It's in reverse order; the posts from the beginning of the week are at the bottom of the page at this link.)