Short woman cares about you being tall? Cut.
I’ve seen this online so often….”must be over 5 ft. 10 inches.” Talk about superficial. It’s one thing if you’re a tall woman, but I’ve seen this on so many short women’s profiles.
Dear Macmillan and other arrogant publishing companies,
I have a Kindle, first edition. I am part of a target audience for the Kindle and similar devices: I travel a lot, I’m overeducated, and an early adopter of technology (for another example, I bought my first Tivo in 2000).
Recently, there has been a lot of coverage on how the iPad and Nook allow publishers to charge more than the $9.99 that Amazon wants to charge for e-books. Amazon believes that $9.99 is a fair price for an e-book, as the royalty and distribution model don’t require much capital. Macmillan and others believe that this price point is too low, and that books should be more like $12.99-$14.99. This is absurd.
Browsing at Amazon right now, I see that NY Times bestsellers are between….yup, $12.99 and $14.99. So Macmillan would have me buy an e-book for the same price (or even more in some cases) as a hardcover book? The utility of the e-book is less than the hardcover book. I can get money back out of a hardcover book by re-selling it, I can give it to a friend, I can light it on fire and warm my hands. Based on this diminished utility, unless I only read when I travel, why would I buy an e-book? People generally like hardcover books and they don’t require a $200+ reader in order to be able to read them.
I think twice about buying a book at $9.99 unless it’s something I really want to read; at $12.99 or $14.99, I will wait for it to be $7 in a few months. I can read one of hundreds of thousands of other books in the meantime. Good luck with this totally asinine pricing.
Yours truly,
jdl
One of my sophomore roommates in college said that I’m “open to suggestions,” which is something that has stuck with me because the truth of it was undeniable.
In college, it was true because I would prioritize doing something fun over schoolwork (who didn’t), even though I worked enough that I didn’t have a lot of time for screwing around. Ask if I wanted to do something, and the answer was “yes.” Still is.
I’ve always thought of it as pertaining only to fun things that friends suggest, but recently, I’ve started to consider: have I always taken the path of least resistance? Have I truly made any significant decisions in my life?
Looking back on the college application process in high school, I don’t feel like I prepared well for it. Up until everyone else started applying to colleges, I had no idea what I was going to do after high school. There was only a vague possibility of going to college, and those chances were so remote that I only applied to three schools. I was accepted at two of them, and I went to the better of the two. No decision there.
Law school too. Sure, I took steps to take the LSAT and apply to a few schools, but it was because I was only partially employed at the time that any of that came to pass. Going to law school seemed like a better idea than sitting on the couch for another year or two. It doesn’t feel like it was a real choice.
Every job that I’ve ever taken was because I knew someone who put my resume in; they didn’t necessarily “get me the job,” but it undoubtedly smoothed the application process.
After I had this realization about myself, it occurred to me that it’s probably human nature to take the path of least resistance. Choices that we think we have, we don’t. Everyone does this all the time without thinking about it. When we do think back upon it, we can see it.
What’s the most significant non-decision you’ve made?
I’m probably in the minority here, but I was raised Mormon. My mother has been Mormon her whole life, and my dad did convert for a time while they were courting and for some time after they got married. He got fed up with the church before I was born, though, and for as long as I remember, he has been atheist or at the very least agnostic. If I were religious, I would thank God that at least one of my parents happened to be sane.
So, yeah, I went to Mormon church. When I was a kid, my dad was still young enough that he actually cared that we listened to our mom and went to church with her because that’s what she wanted. That’s what it seemed like at the time; in retrospect I’d say he just wanted his quiet Sunday mornings at home without other people. Frankly, I’d be a little disappointed in him if this latter reason weren’t the real reason he wanted us kids to go to church with my mom.
While I was a kid, I didn’t think anything of going to Mormon church, because it was the only religious experience I knew. I did think, though, that it was weird that we drove so far (15-20 minutes) to get to the church, and that no one I knew from school was at church.
Let me explain a little bit (though I went for 18 years, I definitely don’t know everything) about the Mormon church. Please don’t take this as gospel, but these are my recollections and lessons that I learned at the church that I went to. Continue reading…
After a glorious week (not) in Kansas and Detroit, I was driving home from SFO the other night, listening to KQED (NPR) and I couldn’t help but think about Arnold Schwarzenegger. Maybe it’s just because he’s California’s governor and I was glad to be back home, but I think it was probably because he was the guest of the Commonwealth Club and the audio of the interview was playing on KQED (some Youtube videos and other info can be found here).
It’s pretty surreal to listen to him talking about energy policy and conversations he’s had with John McCain; it’s also pretty surreal to think of the guy who bought a Hummer 15 years ago (way before they were commercialized) and has been a Republican for 40 years as being a green energy guy. He had an amusing anecdote about a conversation with McCain regarding California car emissions, which have been challenged by the Bush administration (the Bush EPA refused to give California a waiver to allow it to set its own emissions standards, which the Schwarzenegger administration has gone to court to fight). He was talking to McCain about the waiver, and McCain’s take was that there shouldn’t be 50 different emissions standards. Schwarzenegger said, “I agree. Adopt ours.”
While I chuckled about that riposte, Schwarzenegger continued talking about pollution and at one point said “Well duh!” Hearing that in his accent made me reminisce about all of the funny things he’s said in movies over the years and how his being governor has put a real crimp in the quality of normal action movies.
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