Slate‘s new redesign hurts my eyes.

What Microsoft adCenter has to say about you, the reading audience:

48% of you are male, 52% of you are female.

Microsoft predicts that 24.60% of you are below eighteen (what?) and that being down with the kids is the future of edrants.

Generally speaking, it’s split as follows:

18-24: 26.80%
25-34: 27.20%
35-49: 23.00%

Of course, had I known all along that I was appealing to fifteen year olds, I would have seriously curtailed my use of ten-cent words. I suppose I’ll have to spend more time dwelling upon Beyonce.

Perhaps something is off with the calculations. 60% of the John Birch Society‘s readers are women? Really? (via MeFi)

[UPDATE: Tito works the numbers, determined to find the manliest website.]

• Word on the street is that Harper Lee has written something for Oprah. This is the second essay that she’s written in 40 years, which makes one Harper Lee essay every twenty years. Maybe we might get another out of Lee if she lives another twenty years. But I think the workaround here is to cryogenically freeze Harper Lee and have her wake up a century now, only to extract the mandatory five essays she owes us. (via Bookslut)
• Maud unfurls an interesting Borges-Pynchon connection.
• I have a grand temptation to cover this. Of course, if all the purported “experts” are as clueless as Tee Morris, then it might be safe to say that the Dummies books are the publishing industry’s answer to Wikipedia.
• Pete Anderson happily reports that he’s received 100 rejections for his stories and speculates upon the reasons why.
• Gabriel Garcia Marquez can’t get his hometown renamed to Macondo.
• After four attempts, Roger McDonald has won the Miles Franklin Literary Award.
• Nearly 150 years later, the remains of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s wife will finally be moved next to her spouse. Eminent domain’s a bitch, ain’t it?
• Ed Guthmann talks with Dhanvant Shanghvi.
• Jeff VanderMeer may be suffering a fate worse than a DVD selection consisting solely of Uwe Boll’s oeuvre: he can’t leave New Hampshire.
• James Wood apparently reviewed Terrorist at The New Republic, but I’ll be damned if I can read the article. (Thank you for your HTML incompetence, TNR!) Does anyone have a working link?
• “Primo Levi and Translation” (via ReadySteadyBook)
• Lionel Shriver on immigration, with some cogent objections from Laila.
• Harry Potter to die in Book 7? Pop open the champagne. (via Bookninja)
• Frank Wilson, book review editor of The Philly Inquirer, offers some interesting thoughts on the whole print vs. online media debate. Like Bud, I have to say that it’s good to see someone in print media offering a more nuanced take over the standard “newspapers are gatekeepers/bloggers are upstarts” argument that guys like Tanenhaus and Freeman frequently resort to.
• Dave Munger on why he won’t go to the movies anymore.
• For those who missed the BEA speech in podcast form, the text of his speech is now available, which sends Levi Asher into an uproar.
• The best advice to a writer juggling exercise and a day job? Lots of exercise.

Various tasks currently occupy my attention. Will return on Tuesday. Visit fine folks on right, commit minor infractions, you know the drill.

Scarves for Tech Addicts.