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Musings on Random Musings


Kara Zor-El

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.oO(I've obviously stumbled into the Cranky Thread by mistake.)

It was a recognition like that that caused my last post. Coffee made things better. The interview went pretty well. But sure would not have an hour before.

 

And the post prior to that, a response to the guano-on-a-manure-substrate email from the textbook publisher ... I'm still trying to decide whether to go postal with that one, or merely boycott that publisher silently.

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It was a recognition like that that caused my last post. Coffee made things better. The interview went pretty well. But sure would not have an hour before.

 

And the post prior to that, a response to the guano-on-a-manure-substrate email from the textbook publisher ... I'm still trying to decide whether to go postal with that one, or merely boycott that publisher silently.

Publish it anonymously on social media. Or incorporate it in a Google review of the publisher.

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In general, I don't do social media other than this forum, and an electronic soccer league which I've been playing for more than 20 years now. I tend to think of blogs as write-only memory, and Facebook, well, my wife's on it and that's as close as I care to be. The Google reviewer idea is interesting and I'll have to investigate that option further.

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The one thing publishers have that individuals don't is lawyers. IP and copyright infringement and smacking folks down are more important to publishing houses than actual educational content. And that gives authors contemplating writing their own ... reason to pause for thought.

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How many ways are there to discuss, e.g., conservation of angular momentum and how that causes formation of an accretion disk? I've got long-held ways of describing that. But are those things I've absorbed verbatim from some textbook in my long, sordid past? Might be. If they are, would that trigger a nasty copyright infringement suit? Partly depends on if a publisher thinks they can bully a free agent author into caving just with a letter from their legal department. My institution ... I don't think has had an experience with that situation, and they seem to have caved a couple of times over the last few years on some issues. And given I am *not* among the tenured faculty, I am inclined to expect they'd drop me like a live grenade.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Went to a baby shower this afternoon. There was a party game I hadn't encountered before, where they give you both parents' full names, and using that as the letters supply, come up with possible middle names for the baby.

 

They gave me a prize because my last suggestion, scrawled as time expired, was "Imhotep".

Baby was born over last weekend. They named him Apollo.

 

I think I like Imhotep better.

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My prediction for the Women's final: Venus in three sets.

 

Good thing I didn't bet any money on this one. I thought Venus would put up a bigger fight, but I like Garbine Muguruza as well. Congratulations to her.

 

Also, congrats to Melo and Lukasz Kubot for winning a very long, tough championship match, and to Ekaterina Makarova and Elena Vesnina for their flawless victory.

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