Letter Never Sent

Business — Comments Off
11
Oct 07

How to profit off of dead authors

If you enjoy old books, as I do, you are familiar with the concept of reading in translation. Unless you absolutely must read a work in its original form and are willing to learn a new language to do so, it is the easiest way to absorb the information. Let’s say you want to read something originally written in French from the 17th century. You would most likely purchase an English translation of the text to do so. This is obviously a boon to readers. However, it is interesting to note the regularity with which new translations of public domain books are released. The accepted dogma about new translations is that they are an improvement upon past translations due to an improved understanding of the context, the discovery of new information, etc. I think a more mundane explanation is responsible for most new translations: easy money.

Think about it. In 500 years of publishing, there are thousands of volumes of old works available for anyone to republish without royalties to the original author. However, if you were to just republish a work, you would have nothing you could copyright. So, how do you make money off something a dead guy has already written? Simple. You commission a professor in French literature to create an entirely new translation from the original source. The translation does not have to be better than any past translation, in fact many new translations are worse than past translations. The new translation has just one requirement: it has to be something you can copyright, own, and sell to retailers. That’s why we see several translations of the same books. With a popular enough book, every publisher could commission their own new translation and copyright it. With books that do not need translating a similar practice is in effect. To copyright a new edition of a public domain book, simply commission an expert in the material to write a new introduction and afterword. Slap on the new material and you now have an edition of a public domain work you can copyright.

While none of this is wrong, it is annoying. On the plus side, consumers have continued to have access to older works. On the minus side, we keep having to pay the going rate for a book that has been in circulation for hundreds or thousands of years (in the case of Plato, for example). This is one reason why I love projects like Wikipedia and, especially, Google Books. With Google Books, you can find the public domain equivalents of older works and you can read them in their entirety online or download them to your computer. This is awesome.

For example, instead of having to buy one of my favorite books of practical philosophy, The Art of Worldly Wisdom by Baltasar Gracián y Morales. You can now just the entire thing in an older, public domain translation from 1892.

XI. Cultivate those who can teach you. Let friendly intercourse be a school of knowledge, and culture be taught through conversation thus you make your friends your teachers and mingle the pleasures of conversation with the advantages of instruction. Sensible persons thus enjoy alternating pleasures: they reap applause for what they say, and gain instruction from what they hear. We are always attracted to others by our own interest, but in this case it is of a higher kind. Wise men frequent the houses of great noblemen not because they are temples of vanity, but as theatres of good breeding. There be gentlemen who have the credit of worldly wisdom, because they are not only themselves oracles of all nobleness by their example and their behaviour but those who surround them form a well-bred academy of worldly wisdom of the best and noblest kind The Art of Worldly Wisdom By Baltasar Gracián y Morales, Joseph Jacobs

Business / General / Literature — Comments Off
10
Oct 07

You’re dead to me

I’ve always enjoyed going to used book stores. Back in San Antonio where I grew up there was a Half Price Books on Broadway that was built into an old two-story house. With every wall covered in shelves, the hallways and rooms were a tight fit to go in and out of. It was the perfect shopping experience for a teenage reader: row upon row of musty paperbacks piled to the ceiling; creaking floorboards and hidden treasure for pennies.

Fast forward fifteen years. I still love books, but the world has changed. These days, professional eBayers pounce on rare treasures they can sell at auction to the world, which removes some of the treasure hunting aspect, and many specialty book sellers have closed shop and now sell almost exclusively online.

None of these reasons are why I stopped shopping at my once beloved used bookstores. I had to be pushed, kicking and screaming, into buying books online for one reason: I could never find what I was looking for. I didn’t know if what I wanted was in the store somewhere or not and I found this completely frustrating. Just tell me if you have it or not. Please.

Any book published in the last thirty years has either an ISBN number, a UPC barcode, or both. If used bookstores tracked their inventory it wouldn’t just please their customers (me). They could also then start offering books online, track what’s selling well, see which stores have the worst theft, and use this data to discover all sorts of other interesting information.

I shop on Amazon, for now. But, if I can search my local used book store for a book I want, I will gladly return to your musty stacks.

Politics — 2 comments
09
Oct 07

The Renunciation Vote

During past presidential elections I have been swept away with a fever for politics. Like with many other people, it seemed to happen only during the presidential election cycle. For me, it was similar to how I ignore sports except during the playoffs. When everyone starts to care about the outcome, it is easy to join in and become excited.

Over time though, I grow more and more disinterested in politics. In 2004 and in this current election, I have been sitting on the sidelines, watching both factions battle it out for the quarterback position in American government. When you watch from a disinterested perspective, everything seems so vain and not a little bit ridiculous. Consider the kind of people who want to be president. They are either true reformers and leaders, who will never compromise enough to make it, or they are craven careerists, who will serve their benefactors. In either case, all outcomes are inconsequential. Our electoral system is such that we are guaranteed a president that most people will not care for. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but it tempers any interest in the outcome.

Anyway, with all the attention on the Internet about Ron Paul, I feel like we’ve been here before. It seems like every election there is a scrappy outsider candidate. A candidate with strong feelings and beliefs but with little chance of becoming president. These are the idealist candidates and they often appear in the form of a kindly grandfather figure with the gentle authority of wisdom and morality. The idealist candidates don’t have a prayer at getting elected, but becoming president is not their goal. Usually a vote for the idealistic outsider is a vote for the renunciation of politics. It is a vote for a world where things make sense.

The sage candidate

They are good at stirring up emotions while inspiring and galvanizing people, but bad at resembling someone you would actually want as president. Can you imagine the bizarro universe in which Ross Perot, Ralph Nader, or Ron Paul actually became president of the United States? It would be entertaining for a while, but ultimately a train wreck. These candidates are good for people who dislike politics because they appeal to ideals rather than mundane realities. Idealists want to change the world, but they don’t really want to deal with the world on its own terms. Who can blame them?

General — Comments Off
09
Oct 07

When cars get personal

The Honda Puyo is an interesting concept car. When I think about cars in the future, this is the kind of thing I imagine visually.

In the future I imagine our cars will transition from being extensions and avatars of our selves to being more like intelligent partners. With the introduction of artificial intelligence and sophisticated navigation into automobiles, we will cede more control of the driving experience to our vehicles who will drive for us to take us where we want to go. After all, the point is to get somewhere whenever you like. Most people could care less about the actual driving part. With the car driving itself, you could sit back and nap or entertain yourself. No need to focus on the road because someone else will be driving.

In a way, this new partnership with our vehicles harkens back to the days when you rode astride your trusty steed to get from place to place. Even though you steered and told the horse where to go, it took care of the actual movement on its own and was pretty good at avoiding obstacles. You could even fall asleep in the saddle.

In the future, your silicon steed will probably have a distinct personality, voice, and name. Instead of starting up your loud, fossil-fuel-burning machine and driving yourself, you will approach the car, the doors will open for you, and you will say something like “Henry, pick up Jane and then drop us off at the movie theatre on Mockingbird Lane.” Then your car, Henry or whatever you name it, will do the rest while you check your email or play a game. I don’t think this is far off. We have most of the technological pieces in place.

DARPA has funded a project over the last several years to promote the development of autonomous driving vehicles. We have developed systems that can successfully drive cross-country. In November 2007, DARPA’s Urban challenge will take place on a course with traffic. The autonomous vehicles will need to avoid other cars and obey normal traffic laws.

It will consist of a 60 mile course on primarily paved roads, but this time, the vehicles will have to drive in traffic. They will have to stop at stop signs, look for other vehicles, obey the rules of precedence at intersections, obey traffic laws (don’t cross double yellow center lines), pass other stationary and slow moving cars, back up, park, make a U-turn and plan a new course when the main road is blocked, and take evasive action if a collision with another vehicle is imminent. Sort of makes a 132 mile drive on a closed course in the desert seem like a walk in the park.

The military’s interest in autonomous driving has to do with the desire to have robotic convoys who can travel through dangerous territory. Congress has mandated that one third of the US military’s ground vehicles must be able to operate autonomously by 2015, so this technology will quickly be a reality.

If we are improving so much year over year, it would not take long for this technology to enter the marketplace. We will probably ease into it with something like driver-assist and then it will just get better and better. As soon as cars can drive themselves, many of our traffic issues will improve due to removing the inefficiencies caused by bad driving.

Once we create cars that can drive themselves, then we can focus on the next step, which is to turn cars into a commodity rather than something everyone needs to own. It is highly inefficient for everyone to own a separate 3000-6000 lb vehicle that they only use for an hour a day. If cars could drive themselves, you could create a system where groups of people could fractionally own a vehicle or where you could order car service on demand from several nearby cars for hire.

Psychology / Science — Comments Off
25
Sep 07

It’s not how much you burn

This article on weight and exercise in New York Magazine presents the argument that conventional science has it wrong on diet and exercise. How many models do we have for how things work that are just plain false?

To be sure, this is the same logic that leads to other unconventional ideas. As it turns out, itâ€™s carbohydratesâ€”particularly easily digestible carbohydrates and sugarsâ€”that primarily stimulate insulin secretion. â€œCarbohydrates is driving insulin is driving fat,â€ as George Cahill Jr., a retired Harvard professor of medicine and expert on insulin, recently phrased it for me. So maybe if we eat fewer carbohydratesâ€”in particular the easily digestible simple carbohydrates and sugarsâ€”we might lose considerable fat or at least not gain any more, whether we exercise or not. This would explain the slew of recent clinical trials demonstrating that dieters who restrict carbohydrates but not calories invariably lose more weight than dieters who restrict calories but not necessarily carbohydrates. Put simply, itâ€™s quite possible that the foodsâ€”potatoes, pasta, rice, bread, pastries, sweets, soda, and beerâ€”that our parents always thought were fattening (back when the medical specialists treating obesity believed that exercise made us hungry) really are fattening. And so if we avoid these foods specifically, we may find our weights more in line with our desires.

The prescription seems to be: dump the sugar and junk carbs. Eat high quality, less processed food.

General / Personal — 3 comments
21
Sep 07

More dietary experimentation

I am convinced that our obesity problems are caused primarily by one aspect of the typical American lifestyle: the widespread use of prepared meals (fast food, dining out, frozen dinners, sodas, and snacks) for daily eating. While we may be less active than in generations past, the real difference is that Americans rely more on prepared food for the bulk of their diet than ever before in the past. The lower the income, the lower the quality of the food, the greater the degree of obesity. As food preparation has been outsourced effectively to industry, consumers have compelling alternatives to the time-consuming work of cooking and cleaning. Naturally, they take the path of least resistance on a day to day basis. Over time this results in extra calories being stored as fat, which never get used simply because we keep eating the same calorie-rich foods in larger amounts.

With that in mind, over the next few weeks I will experiment with a couple ideas:

No sugar, soda, dairy. Beverages will be confined to black coffee, water, and maybe the occasional beer. Juices and sodas either have too much sugar or carcinogenic chemicals.
More cooking at home. Although, it is surprisingly difficult to prepare meals without dairy or tons of easily digestible carbohydrates.

I’ll let you know how it goes.

General — Comments Off
17
Sep 07

The livingroom is everywhere

The nomad life is appealing. Living in a city for a brief time, then picking up and moving again whenever the fancy strikes. Having someone to cook and clean up while you focus on the other things you enjoy.

There was a news item recently about a couple who lived for 22 years in a TravelLodge. While I would prefer to move around more than that, it shows that hotel living is a sound concept. In fact, a few generations back, when home ownership was more rare than it is now, it was common for people to live in a boarding house or hotel for extended periods of time. Now in our connected age of affordable travel and communications technology, the main obstacle is a feeling of rootlessness. But I don’t think this has to be a real barrier. It is at least possible to make an anonymous space feel like home.

I see people camping out in public places all the time: from comfy library chairs and study rooms, to Starbucks, and chain bookstores. Grab your gear and your headphones and you can pop into your personal bubble whenever you like. Watch your video, listen to your audio, read and rove where you will. In Japan, the government is concerned about people who live a transient lifestyle, but who may not be classically homeless. The concern seems to be that many people sleep, eat, and bathe in Internet cafes while living without a proper residence. Are they worried about this as a negative indicator of the economy or are they concerned about an increasing number of people who prefer to live between places?

The nomad lifestyle is made possible by technology and trends in business to provide more service. Just as it has become commonplace to eat food in a restaurant rather than at home, there are opportunities in providing facilities for sleeping and bathing outside the hotel setting. Many 24 hour businesses like gyms, truck stops and Japanese Internet cafes already provide facilities for their customers to shower and look to their personal hygiene. It would not be surprising to see new businesses popping up to provide the barest essentials of shelter and personal hygiene in a very low cost package. There may be many creative solutions to the problems of life that do not require owning a house or maintaining a permanent address.

Cool Tools / General / Software / Internet / Technology — 1 comment
15
Sep 07

Cheap and easy way to go paperless

I read a good entry over at Signal V. Noise about how to go paperless by using an expensive duplex scanner from Fujitsu. While I still think this is a great way to do it, and I may even buy one of those scanners, a while back I came up with an easier and far cheaper way to scan my mail and documents into a digital form and have been using it for a while.

Most offices, like mine, have fax machines or fax copiers. I also have a fax to email service through my toll-free provider, Ring Central, where your fax documents are scanned and emailed to you as PDF attachments. If I ever want to archive a paper document into a digital form, I just fax it to myself and save the PDF to my computer. I also leave a copy in my gmail account where I can access the file from anywhere.

The only downside I have discovered is that the faxed PDF is not transformed into indexable text via OCR (optical character recognition) during the scanning process. I compensate for this shortcoming by giving each document a readily comprehensible file name. If you fax each document at a high enough resolution you may be able to perform OCR on the output, however the descriptive file naming used in conjunction with Google Desktop Search has worked well for me.

General — 1 comment
27
Aug 07

Trick Your Brain: Three Money Saving Tips

The secret to saving money is to learn how to trick your emotional, animal brain. Here are a few tips I use:

Before you buy something you don’t need, make sure you want it three or more times. Back in college when I worked at the Eckerd’s one-hour photo lab, this guy came in to check out our selection of digital cameras. He really wanted to buy this particular Olympus camera, but then as he handed the camera back to me, he said he was going to take a walk around the block to think it over. This struck me as very sensible. Often when you want something, the feeling is temporary. Before you buy something extra, make sure it’s really something you want.
At the grocery store, load up your cart with whatever you want. Then before you check out filter out any items you don’t really need. By the time you filter, the desire for many things will have passed and you can put back those cookies.
Think yearly for any recurring monthly expenses. Let’s say you sign up for cable at roughly $100 a month. Instead of thinking of this as $100 a month, think of it as $1200 a year (100 x 12). If you cut off the cable, you give yourself a raise of $1200 a year. Do this calculation for any recurring expenses you are considering taking on. I created a spreadsheet listing any current recurring expenses like bills, bank charges, internet subscriptions, rent, etc. Then I created a section where I show what I could cut every expense down to if I needed to make drastic cuts in spending due to job loss or other catastrophes. Anything you spend automatically every month is considered your “nut”, the bare minimum of your expenses before discretionary spending. Try to keep this as low as possible and you’ll have more money to invest and save.

the old stuff