Ultimately though the single most limiting factor on deal negotiations is each side's willingness to actually read and understand the terms of the contract that don't interest them, and I don't see how this website would ever change that.
commenter on marginal revolution on making deals online
Truer words never spoken. My old publishers' attitude: as long as we put the contract in a drawer without looking at it, we can do anything we want!
Thursday, March 12, 2009
Sunday, March 8, 2009
inforr
I decided to ride my bike to the gym the other day; it wasn't locked up outside. 'Oh,' I thought, 'it must have been stolen.' It was only at this point that I realised how much I had always disliked it, and what a relief it was to have it taken off my hands.
Walked to the gym. Half an hour or so later I suddenly seemed to remember riding the bike to Cafe Kleisther days? weeks? earlier and locking it up outside Kleistpark U-Bahn. Went down to Kleistpark after the gym. Sure enough the bike was there, with an empty Burger King bag in its basket. Went to Kleisther for a coffee and forgot the bike again. Now that I've remembered it again I might go and pick it up.
It's not really safe to ride it if I have books in my head and am also dealing with a lot of Cheshire cats (normal publishing people). If I have to think through a book, and if people make nice noises and I am suddenly left with a lot of grins hanging in the air, there isn't enough mental capacity left to stay out of traffic accidents. So then I just end up walking the bike for miles, or leaving it at home.
I woke up this morning and thought how good it would be to stay in bed; how many bad things could have been avoided if I had taken the simple precaution of staying in bed. How many e-mails had better remained unwritten, unsent; &c. I had spent much of yesterday, though, installing MS Office 2007 , R 2.8 and a couple of packages on my netbook, as well as activating my one year's free subscription to Inference for R; I had also downloaded all the documentation onto my Mac so I could read it on a separate screen while manoeuvring around the tiny screen of the netbook. So if I got out of bed I could try out Inference for R.
Got up. The netbook is, needless to say, not my weapon of choice for playing around with a plug-in for Word and Excel that lets the happy user incorporate R code into Office documents, but the old Sony Vaio would not install Office 2007 without some extra Windows Service Packs that I had no way of downloading, 2C2E. I set up an array of laptops on the desk and start working through the QuickStart documentation.
Well, what can I say? I worked through various examples in the uniformly excellent documentation; sure enough, various Word and Excel files obligingly did nice things with R. I then reached a point at which an example incorporated a plot in Lattice: one followed instructions, and there it was, a beautiful Lattice plot right in the middle of a Word document! Exactly what I had always wanted!
Exactly what I needed for my Guggenheim project!
I shall probably have more to say about this when I've had time to work through some of my own examples; can only comment at this point that it is really not very common to start out on new software with the feeling that one can get straight to work on a project whose problems it solves, without putting in who knows how many hours getting the thing to work.
Walked to the gym. Half an hour or so later I suddenly seemed to remember riding the bike to Cafe Kleisther days? weeks? earlier and locking it up outside Kleistpark U-Bahn. Went down to Kleistpark after the gym. Sure enough the bike was there, with an empty Burger King bag in its basket. Went to Kleisther for a coffee and forgot the bike again. Now that I've remembered it again I might go and pick it up.
It's not really safe to ride it if I have books in my head and am also dealing with a lot of Cheshire cats (normal publishing people). If I have to think through a book, and if people make nice noises and I am suddenly left with a lot of grins hanging in the air, there isn't enough mental capacity left to stay out of traffic accidents. So then I just end up walking the bike for miles, or leaving it at home.
I woke up this morning and thought how good it would be to stay in bed; how many bad things could have been avoided if I had taken the simple precaution of staying in bed. How many e-mails had better remained unwritten, unsent; &c. I had spent much of yesterday, though, installing MS Office 2007 , R 2.8 and a couple of packages on my netbook, as well as activating my one year's free subscription to Inference for R; I had also downloaded all the documentation onto my Mac so I could read it on a separate screen while manoeuvring around the tiny screen of the netbook. So if I got out of bed I could try out Inference for R.
Got up. The netbook is, needless to say, not my weapon of choice for playing around with a plug-in for Word and Excel that lets the happy user incorporate R code into Office documents, but the old Sony Vaio would not install Office 2007 without some extra Windows Service Packs that I had no way of downloading, 2C2E. I set up an array of laptops on the desk and start working through the QuickStart documentation.
Well, what can I say? I worked through various examples in the uniformly excellent documentation; sure enough, various Word and Excel files obligingly did nice things with R. I then reached a point at which an example incorporated a plot in Lattice: one followed instructions, and there it was, a beautiful Lattice plot right in the middle of a Word document! Exactly what I had always wanted!
Exactly what I needed for my Guggenheim project!
I shall probably have more to say about this when I've had time to work through some of my own examples; can only comment at this point that it is really not very common to start out on new software with the feeling that one can get straight to work on a project whose problems it solves, without putting in who knows how many hours getting the thing to work.
Friday, March 6, 2009
the eternal flaneur
Peter, how many become "too many", and for whom? I can assure you I read at least one book per week, and I listen to music and write every day, besides working as an economist for more than 8 hours and wasting (well, I read meanwhile...) 2 hours and a half coming and going. Let's say I see an average of two to three films per day, which can seem too many but for me is less than half what I saw when I was many years younger. On the other hand, I feel any film loses context if you don't watch and rewatch a lot of them. No use to see only recent releases, if you don't compare and measure them with films from the past, as it would not have much sense to see only films made before 1968 (I know people who do that). To go on a diet of supposed masterpieces would be equally senseless: how do you know they are outstanding without knowing the average production from which they stand out or diverge? Compulsive? Might be, although I try to go about it quietly, and I have not anymore the urge I felt when I had to see "all Minnelli" or "all Hawks" or "all Godard", I've seen already most of what survives, I know no one is able anymore to see everything, and I'm still curious about things made anywhere anytime. So that's it.
Miguel Marías
found here
alien alert
a reader writes
Thought you might like to know in case of future nuts like myself asking you about how to work in the UK--as of, I think, summer 2008 international students in the UK can, after getting whatever degree, obtain a work permit for up to I believe 24 months. Does not count towards citizenship time, but the goal is to switch to another visa option after some time working.
Thought you might like to know in case of future nuts like myself asking you about how to work in the UK--as of, I think, summer 2008 international students in the UK can, after getting whatever degree, obtain a work permit for up to I believe 24 months. Does not count towards citizenship time, but the goal is to switch to another visa option after some time working.
Thursday, March 5, 2009
NEA
The deadline for the National Endowment of the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship has been extended from March 5 to March 17. If you're eligible I'm guessing you'll know; if you thought you'd missed the deadline you now know it ain't so.
meanwhile
I get an email from Ben Hinchliffe asking if I would be interested in a year's free trial of Inference for R, a plug-in which allows you to haul whatever it is you've been doing in R into Microsoft Office.
Fresh from the Ed Park meltdown (2C2E) I've been thinking that what I should do is go back to the States to live with my mother and get a job at Waffle House: 1. I love Waffle House; 2. There are 4 Waffle Houses in Frederick, Maryland, not far from my mother's home in Leisureworld; 3. Leisureworld always conjures up a combination of the Stepford Wives and Westworld, a film in which Yul Brynner runs amok as a robot cowboy; but 4. There are 4 Waffle Houses within striking distance, how bad can it be? 5. TAR ART RAT says his grandfather lives in Leisureworld and is having a rare old time.
I then read an article in the New Yorker about DFW's last book, a book about someone who works at the IRS. For DFW, this was the ultimate in boredom; he was trying to grapple with the concept of a life in which grace was found in the heart of boredom. I want to argue with him: DFW, you just don't get it. You don't know what it's like to have a quote-unquote job where the work you put in writing a text is nothing, the thing that pays the bills is the work you add to this nichts-an-sich by charming and waiting and charming and waiting and charming. What would that be like, to turn up and put in 8 hours' work and get paid for the 8 hours' work, instead of putting in 3000 hours' work and not getting paid because you could only add a paltry month of charming and waiting and charming instead of the three years that were industry standard? (I know what it's like, obviously; this is what makes Waffle House look so good.) I go to the IRS website to check out employment opportunities; that sounds so good, that sounds so good.
But all this time Inference for R has been lurking at the back of my mind. According to Ben Hinchliffe, it works on Windows, Microsoft Office 2003 Professional, Microsoft Office 2007 all versions. I only have the Home/Student edition of Office (for PC and Mac); I normally use a Mac; but if I pick up a copy of Office 2007 I can try this out! I remember seeing a cheap copy at Saturn; I take the 204 bus to Kurfurstendamm, pick up Office 2007, head home, stop off at this café.
The battery in my laptop is about to die.
Last seen wandering vaguely
Quite of her own accord
Fresh from the Ed Park meltdown (2C2E) I've been thinking that what I should do is go back to the States to live with my mother and get a job at Waffle House: 1. I love Waffle House; 2. There are 4 Waffle Houses in Frederick, Maryland, not far from my mother's home in Leisureworld; 3. Leisureworld always conjures up a combination of the Stepford Wives and Westworld, a film in which Yul Brynner runs amok as a robot cowboy; but 4. There are 4 Waffle Houses within striking distance, how bad can it be? 5. TAR ART RAT says his grandfather lives in Leisureworld and is having a rare old time.
I then read an article in the New Yorker about DFW's last book, a book about someone who works at the IRS. For DFW, this was the ultimate in boredom; he was trying to grapple with the concept of a life in which grace was found in the heart of boredom. I want to argue with him: DFW, you just don't get it. You don't know what it's like to have a quote-unquote job where the work you put in writing a text is nothing, the thing that pays the bills is the work you add to this nichts-an-sich by charming and waiting and charming and waiting and charming. What would that be like, to turn up and put in 8 hours' work and get paid for the 8 hours' work, instead of putting in 3000 hours' work and not getting paid because you could only add a paltry month of charming and waiting and charming instead of the three years that were industry standard? (I know what it's like, obviously; this is what makes Waffle House look so good.) I go to the IRS website to check out employment opportunities; that sounds so good, that sounds so good.
But all this time Inference for R has been lurking at the back of my mind. According to Ben Hinchliffe, it works on Windows, Microsoft Office 2003 Professional, Microsoft Office 2007 all versions. I only have the Home/Student edition of Office (for PC and Mac); I normally use a Mac; but if I pick up a copy of Office 2007 I can try this out! I remember seeing a cheap copy at Saturn; I take the 204 bus to Kurfurstendamm, pick up Office 2007, head home, stop off at this café.
The battery in my laptop is about to die.
Last seen wandering vaguely
Quite of her own accord
GPO
Owen Hatherley in the New Statesman on the film unit of the General Post Office:
Although they were very different from each other in their style of work, both men favoured an unstable combination of wild experiment and sober realism. Here, after a decade of traditionalist torpor, modernist aesthetics finally entered British public life with the anglicisation of Weimar Germany’s innovations (the great animator Lotte Reiniger was hired by the GPO) and the Soviet directors’ fierce, fast-cut polemic. Audiences were either non-paying and captive, with the films being distributed to public bodies, or, more rarely, paying customers, with the films acting as shorts before the main feature at the cinema. Curiously, the unit’s greatest success in theatres, Harry Watt’s North Sea, is a straightforward drama-documentary, duller to contemporary eyes than the experiments in realist and surrealist montage.
...Conventional wisdom has it that the Film Unit, and the British documentary movement in which it played a central part, were products of a middle-class obsession with mythologising the working class and “improving” its taste, luring workers away from Hollywood escapism.
Though this is not the whole story – Len Lye, its most extreme experimentalist, was from a poor family in New Zealand and had left school at 13 – it is undeniably the case that most Film Unit employees, such as Wright and Auden, were from upper-middle-class Oxbridge stock. One work that shows the GPO’s class paternalism at its most blatant is Evelyn Spice’s Job in a Million, where an underdeveloped working-class youth is nurtured by the GPO as an apprentice. Even though the poor here are never patronised, and speak eloquently in their own accents, it is rather unnerving to see line upon line of neat proletarian boys in shiny uniforms being trained by benevolent patricians. Yet why this should be considered more dubious than today’s depiction of the working class as dirty, stupid, racist and violent (from How Clean Is Your House? and the BBC’s White season to Guy Ritchie’s prole-face fantasies) is a mystery. Certainly, the postal workers’ unions supported the Film Unit more actively than did the GPO’s wary bureaucracy.
the rest here
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