Guys, I'm a hot commodity right now...well, my free time and willingness to donate it are in demand anyway. Recently, I've been contacted about some unique opportunities:

Earlier this year, I attended the CASE Editors Forum in Philly with a couple of coworkers. It was an unexpectedly invigorating event. I got to meet other editors at alumni and institutional magazines, network with a niche group that I both didn't know existed and am glad that it does—a medical clique of the alumni world. Plus, I got to seem my former professor and life mentor Joel Lovell speak about multimedia stories and how he couldn't reveal the topic for the second season of Serial. All in all, the speakers and events reminded me that a lot of talented and earnest people are working at magazines like mine, and even though there's a stigma about the industry, we can still produce kickass stories.

Planning starts now, so ed friends, send your ideas my way. Otherwise, see you in San Antonio in March!

Born from a previous bit of serendipity with the Society for Middle Ear Disease, I've also been named as an ad hoc member to the board of the International Society for Otitis Media. I'm all about the ear disease lately!

And, finally, along those lines, I just confirmed my authorship on the treatment guideline update for otitis media with effusion (fluid in the ear), which will probably be the most read and cited paper of my career, according to the group's leader. Not that I had a stack of peer reviewed articles competing for that title, but still.

​And they say you can't do anything with an English degree!

A bill proposed by House conservatives today would mandate that all babies born in U.S. hospitals must be issued American-made boot straps for their cute widdle feet upon exiting the womb. 

"It's a common sense, patriotic measure to start American's youngest citizens off on the right foot," said Speaker John Boehner, who co-sponsored the bill. He did not indicate whether the pun was intended.

Boehner said the bill would target border communities, areas where same-sex parenting is legal, and regions with high concentrations of people of color in particular, as "those people" are in the most dire need of boot strapping aid.

Babies will be expected to begin tugging at the soft, pastel colored bands as soon as they stop doing that weird, stiff movement with their fingers. According to the bill, boot straps must be worn indefinitely through childhood unless the youngster starts his own business, which must be financially solvent at least three quarters in a row. After six months of age, parents must pay for the accessory and assist children in learning to yank those suckers hard for the good of our nation. A controversial proviso also states that unemployed adult workers and those applying for welfare must re-purchase and wear the straps as soon as they file assistance paperwork with the government.

Critics argue that the bill would be a historic overreach of congressional power, an idea that co-sponsor Paul Ryan called "ridiculous." 

"This program will create jobs," he said. "Don't you 99-percenters want jobs? Crafting these straps is an honest-to-God, minimum wage skill that any liberal arts graduate should be grateful for." He added that his great-grandfather wore boot straps all his life. "My great-grandmother loved cleaning them for him after he came home from work," Ryan said.

No word yet on how babies born at home or in hippie doula facilities will be affected by the bill. The measure is expected to go to the Senate next week.

Ho-ly smokes. I've been pleased, frightened, surprised - basically every emotion - with the reaction to my Wilson Quarterly piece, "Secondhand Stories in a Rusting Steel City." 

My supportive MFA program featured it; Longform picked it for a weekend read (no, I didn't select it myself!); and BuzzReads, delightful website of the long and short, said some of the nicest things about it (above).

The reaction on Twitter has been similarly flattering:

There is nothing quite like this feeling. 

Before I put this one to bed and focus on new stories, I wanted to be sure to note, as a couple readers have pointed out, that Braddock is thankfully not so destitute anymore. The bulk of time I spent in the shop was during the worst parts of the recession, and slowly but surely, the town has been recovering since then (as we all have). I think it's important, though, that we don't forget the hard times as we move forward into the future. Speaking of...

What are these new stories? you might be wondering. A play, of all things - more on that collaborative project coming soon. A few stories pitched out in freelance land - you'll be the first to know when those come of something. And finally, returning to my extracurricular grad school love, a screenplay based on my weird neighborhood, not too far from Braddock. Stay tuned, y'all. More good things are bound to happen.

If you're one of the 11,000 or so scribblers attending AWP in Minneapolis this year, flag me down! I'll be checking my Twitter feed and would love to meet you. 

Better yet: On Friday from 9 am to 10:15 am, I'll be talking with a few other very smart folks about how to best use social media. The panel will be applicable not only to writing program peeps, but really anybody in the literary world looking for a few tips and some tried-and-true methods for upping engagement.

This'll be my second conference in as many months. In March, I attended my first CASE Editors Forum, which was as inspiring as it was informative. Alumni mags aren't often seen as the most exciting publications, but there's no good reason why they can't be. Lucky me that Pitt Med is as sophisticated as it is beautiful, and how nice to be reminded of that. I'm stoked for my upcoming feature about pathologists and precision medicine at Pitt—stay tuned for it!

Ever the contrarian, here's my spin on end-of-year lists.

Chalk it up to starting a new job, getting married, or my love for the internet—I just can't seem to finish a book this year. This is not an indictment on the titles listed. Many of the books were interesting, with good premises and writing. Nevertheless, they sit. 

In no particular order, a list of my 2014 failures:

Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Picketty. I bet I'm not the only one to crack and abandon this puppy. I have good intentions to open it again. In the meantime, this four-paragraph summary will have to do.

Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson. Sllllllooooooooowwwww. However, I loved Robinson's Gilead. Can definitely recommend.

Mendel's Daughter by Martin Lemelman. A fascinating concept: a graphic memoir that tells the story of the author's mother through her own recorded words. Not entirely sure why I quit this one.

The 9/11 Report: A Graphic Adaptation by Sid Jacobson and Ernie Colón. Continuing the attempts at graphic works, I picked this one up, mostly out of curiosity for such a project, and—probably unsurprisingly—couldn't quite motivate myself through it. 

The Empathy Exams by Leslie Jamison. Some gorgeous language and an intriguing conceit, but a surprising lack of self interrogation that made me put the book down. I just don't get the hype surrounding this critic darling.

Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk. I know. Love the movie, couldn't make the book happen.

In other modern classics: A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams. I could feel its radio roots, and couldn't help but decide that this is an audiobook read for sure (someday).

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. To be fair, this was a reread attempt.

In aspirational, "you should totally read this because everyone else is" tomes: Beyond the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo. I'm sure it's lovely; I just have to come to it on my own in like five years.

Finally...The Big Short by Michael Lewis. But I'm almost positive I'm going to finish this one, maybe even before 2015! (Update: I met my goal!)

There you have it, a list of my literary endurance failures. The big bad book form won this round, but I read a gazillion research papers, news articles, and longform reportage (duh), so I'm not too down on myself.

It wasn't all bad though: I did read Bossypants by Tina Fey about three times (twice on shuffle). Thank goodness for long car rides and audiobooks. 

I can't be the only one who reads like this, right? And I can't be the only one who's sick of fawning end-of-year lists. So let's hear it: What books didn't you finish in 2014?

In a landmark study published Tuesday, researchers at the University of Somewhere announced they have pinpointed a region in cats' cerebral cortex that illuminates during MRI scans when cats see dark cloth. This research has important implications for feline-homo sapiens relations.

"It turns out," lead researcher Alissa Grady, PhD, said, "that cats aren't just assholes—it's a fundamental feature of their brain to want to shed on your work pants."

Grady and her lab first restrained dozens of house cats of varying colors and breeds so they could hook them to brain imaging systems.

"The subjects really struggled," their study, published in Goddamnit, Nature, notes.

Control subjects were shown neutral images of blank walls and human faces to simulate the cats' typical visual environment. (Interestingly, the cats generally ignored the facial pictures, most opting to nap instead.) 

Study cats were shown an array of objects and colors—toy and real mice, house spiders, different colors of cloth, those plastic balls with bells in them. A significant portion of the felines exhibited no reaction whatsoever to the items, the so-called "dispassion" portion of their brains exploding with activity. But when the cats did react to stimuli, it was only when shown dark clothing. Reds, yellows, and whites were overwhelmingly ignored while navies, blacks, browns and other work-appropriate wear excited the cats' "attraction center"—also theorized to be involved in knocking stuff down off counters.

"Cats are only somewhat colorblind," Grady remarked, "so this seems to have more to do with shade than color."

Further research is needed to determine whether cats' subsequent behavior—rubbing, shedding and pawing on the cloth—is a voluntary action, a response to emotional triggers or some kind of inborn jerk reflex.

"Anecdotally, some cats showed elevated levels of oxytocin [a hormone related to bonding] during blood testing. But to really pinpoint what caused that spike is beyond the purposes of this study," Grady said.

When I started grad school in 2009, it was in the midst of the publishing industry crisis. Newspapers were closing, magazines were panicking, everyone was afraid of Kindles and iPads. I was lucky enough to work with Joel Lovell, who framed those headlines in terms of opportunity: It's the best time to be starting out, he said. You can be the people who change things, who find new ways of writing and reading.

And of course he was right. People rushed to save longform nonfiction, newspapers still exist, and phones—not dedicated reading devices—have seemingly won readers' hearts. Though many mobile sites still have a long way to go until they make sense, this ubiquitous reading has been a good thing. Online magazines, which once seemed so...amateur...are now producing some of the most innovative work in the genre. That's what I'm talking about today: my two favorite online mags. (Well, aside from the one I edited for a while.)

Aeon. A multimedia mag that I can't get enough of. They're asking such cool questions (why does sadness make better art than happiness?) and tackling subjects nobody else is getting at (why we need darkness). It's a magazine that approaches the cool parts of philosophy and art, but without all the self-important jargon of the field. The stuff you never knew you wondered about. On a larger scale, The Atlantic makes these moves, and I love their stories too, but it's particularly exciting when a new player comes onto the field. Their film arm is doing some gorgeous work too.

Nautilus. Beautiful, scientifically inclined stories. A new themed issue each month, encased in the right kind of images and design effects. They'll make you care about cosine functions among other technical conundrums. I'm a little disappointed that they're heading toward subscription-style access, but even so, the articles they do make available are well worth a read.

I know, right? Let's back up. Some of my appointments in the Writing Center are recurring tutorials—students who have registered for a one-credit course to accompany their freshman comp class. Sometimes we review their essays, sometimes we brainstorm, but occasionally, I get to read with them. 

There's one student who often ends up wanting help reading, and they [choosing the anonymizing pronoun here, for privacy's sake] get assigned the coolest essays. The craziest part? They're all in a textbook. 

The Writer's Presence. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised, given Robert Atwan of The Best American Essays fame is a co-editor. There are classics of your college textbook variety: "The Declaration of Independence," "Letter From Birmingham Jail," "A Modest Proposal," which don't age, if you ask me. But there are also gems: essays like Lars Eighner's "On Dumpster Diving" and Laura Kipnis's "Against Love"; journalism like Charles Bowden's "Our Wall." Just a solid anthology of stuff you'd actually read after college.

I keep meaning to get a teacher's copy (perk!) but its name is so unassuming that I've forgotten for actual weeks to look it up. Consider this my own reminder.

No, I'm not some kind of shill for the book or getting paid to gush. I just really love a good collection, and this one took me by surprise.

Not to be a downer, but I've been coming across some heavy stuff lately. 

"We Kill Ourselves Because We Are Haunted" by Jennifer Percy.

A story at Guernica that, while not saying much we don't already know about the appalling lack of care for returning veterans, is compelling nonetheless. An excerpt from Percy's book, Demon Camp, the story follows Sergeant Caleb Daniels through coming home, trying out Native American medicine man treatments, and nearly killing himself until a friend calls and interrupts. Holy smokes.

As someone with a little brother in the Army, these kinds of stories horrify me. (Luckily, he hasn't seen battle yet, and I'm hoping he never does.) I've read lots of stories on PTSD and post-combat soldiers—the recently deceased Matthew Power's "Confessions of a Drone Warrior" sticks out as a memorable one—but none have quite articulated exactly what it means to be haunted after a war like Daniels and Percy do. 

I think what I value in that description is that the Thing doesn't feel isolated, quarantined, in the soldier's experience—anybody can feel it. I'm not a mental health professional, but I do know that feeling like you're not alone matters. Being understood, if only briefly, matters.

It's worth noting that the US Department of Veteran Affairs has a list of resources for those suffering.