Monday, November 23, 2015

A Random Assortment

~ Nick Offerman in a play of A Confederacy of Dunces? Oh my goodness. I'm dying to go. Why is Boston so far? (It's also very cheap if you're under 35; the play, not Boston.)

~ Alan Jacobs on the problematic immediacy of student evals.

~ The author of Goodnight Moon (the literature I'm most engaged with at the moment) loved Gertrude Stein.

~ Zebras in West Philly (via Dillard)

~ Prescient 2009 soliloquy about Trump running for president (via Francisco)

~ I have a student who snaps. (They explained it to me, when I inquired, as expressing something like, Wow, that's deep.)

~ Memphis mow-to-own program. I always like alternative ways of coming to ownership.

~ On welders and philosophers. That was a great moment of fun for philosophers, who aren't always mentioned in presidential debates.

~ Two of my favorites: PAL on JVS.

~ On books for sale on amazon for a penny.

~ Essential pre-Thanksgiving dinner refugee debate reading.

~Cute: "Diocese converts ambulance into mobile confessional."

~ This is old now, but I thought it was pretty sane on the campus protests:

Whereas the campus unrest of the 1960s began with a series of protests at the University of California, Berkeley in defense of free speech, campuses are erupting today for the opposite reason — because a shockingly large number of current college students (51 percent in a recent poll) believe speech and expression should be curtailed in the name of keeping those students safe from emotional harm.
~ Another great critique of the university as a home here.

~ T.S. Eliot and the sexual wasteland.

~ Why and How you Should be Eating Popcorn for Breakfast. (Via Hopkins)

6 comments:

Miss Self-Important said...

I've long wondered about how a profit is possible on those one-cent books, and sometimes felt offended on their behalf because some of them are really good books (like mass market paper editions of classics) and it's an insult to them that they're selling for a penny. But I guess if costing a penny saves them from being mulched so I can buy them, ok.

Emily Hale said...

I just naively assumed the sellers made money through shipping, but it sounds like amazon takes a good chunk of that. Makes me want to buy books through alibris or another site instead. But yes, it's good that they aren't mulched!

Miss Self-Important said...

But why wouldn't Alibris also take a cut? It also has to generate some revenue to exist. Even Ebay takes a small percentage of all its sales, and it doesn't have its own warehouses and stock to maintain like Amazon does.

Emily Hale said...

Maybe it doesn't take as big of a cut?? I don't know. But it seems that amazon (and we are avid amazon prime users, for which I am embarrassed for the sake of the packaging that goes into it, if nothing else) takes a big cut of everything! Also, wouldn't it make sense to take a more proportional cut? I like the idea of a books-only site, rather than one site that sells absolutely everything.

Emily Hale said...

Okay--maybe amazon doesn't take more--didn't really look into it, but here's some old and very subjective info: http://alibrisdealersforum.yuku.com/topic/2738/Alibris-Fees-are-too-much#.VlRxMlWrSUk

Miss Self-Important said...

This makes it seem like the member fee is the biggest drain for sellers, but that would only be the case for those who don't sell much per month. If you're one of these huge warehouses of salvaged garbage, $50 a month is probably not such a big deal vs. being a college student who just wants to sell a few used textbooks at the end of the year.