It sounds like they've started drawing down the National Guard numbers.

Thanks, I'll check it out.

Ruth, do you have a list like post #5 for biology? I feel like I saw one somewhere. Btw, how's that compilation of your posts coming? :laugh:

I didn't read the original thread so I just saw "vent - I hate getting old - update in op" and I thought the update was going to be "I'm older". ;) Sorry, just trying to add some humor.

Well, yeah, but I don't say that out loud to my kids, just to hundreds of strangers. :D I have to admit I would feel weird telling my kids to act pouty about school. I wonder if sends a message to them? I'm not saying she shouldn't because dynamics are different in each family, I'm just saying I would feel weird asking my kids to pout and look sad that we were starting again.

Yes, and that teen had been his own patient, I believe.

I can't get too worked up about it. I do think I would like the picture better if everyone was excited, with the mom jumping and the kids grinning, or everyone including mom was sad, indicating their fabulous summer together had come to an end. But whatever. She probably loves 'em to death. (The verbal complaints though, the ones not done in good fun and said in front of children, I cannot abide.)

The neurological function remaining intact was the most important thing. Now rest and recover!

http://www.mercurynews.com/science/ci_26153749/california-drought-conservation-efforts-failing-despite-pleas-save I think plenty of people in CA have done the ice water challenge. Bigger picture, I do understand the meme upthread about using clean water when lots of people don't have it. It's hard to explain but it's like we don't even think about it. I'll give an analogous example: when I started potty training my oldest, I was new to it and looking for tips. I couldn't believe the number of people who told me to put some Cheerios in the toilet bowl and have him aim for them. They said it was great fun! And these were nice, helpful, decent people. We have such an abundance of food they thought nothing of throwing food in the toilet and urinating on it. I was appalled. To a person without steady access to clean water I could see how dumping water is a bit...strange.

It may turn out to have been extra helpings of pie.

:lurk5:

We're in a serious drought over here. I'd prefer it if they were standing in an almond orchard. :)

Yes, let your kid read Carrie if they fall prey to all the "but what about the prom?" questions.

Even if professors are not clamoring for the nth edition beforehand, they often adopt it when it comes out, regardless. Or, apparently, the bookstore does for their convenience, depending on the institution. If that were not the case, publishers would be out of business. Someone's buying this stuff. I said upthread we need a real concerted effort for people to contribute content to free, open materials which can be used as needed. This includes some sort of e-textbooks for different topics and freely available academic articles. People spend tremendous amount of time and effort documenting the most mundane things on wikipedia. Perhaps I have spent too much time in the open source software community, but I have seen people contribute enormous amounts of effort and talent to make things freely available, modifiable, and usable.

Obligatory responsible answer: I would wait until high school, for Stephen King. Real answer: I had read all of King's then-published novels by the time I was 14. They were eye-opening and some scared the heck out of me. For years after reading It I was scared of drains. Good times. :laugh:

A reminder I'm not defending the companies, just providing background.... Paper prices and author's schedules do matter. I'll try to briefly provide info: Re: paper prices, it's not cheap to print a 1400-page hardcover book. The paper costs are high and if the publisher can get a good deal on a paper price through the printer, they may bring their book out sooner. I don't know about now, but when I was in publishing there were only 2 printers in the US who could print a book that size. Time on the printer was usually booked and partly paid for years in advance for a title. Negotiating the paper price came with that booking. If there was an anticipated glut in the paper market, a publisher could lock in a good paper price and find it's worth it economically to get a book out earlier. Nobody wants to pay to store blank paper. Re: author's schedules, I think this comes from working with particular authors. Some of our authors were quite well-known and had enough pull to do things like get the next edition done so they could go to the Amazon for research for a year. Maybe this is more of a biology thing, I don't know. Maybe economists and physicists can't get away with that. I can't speak to it only taking an hour of the author's time for a new edition. When I worked in publishing the authors put in a lot of time and reviewed all the comments from the focus groups and the professional reviewers, wrote and re-wrote after copyedit. They drew sketches of what they wanted the artists to depict. And yes, these were for revised editions. Perhaps it was a bygone era. As far as not needing new textbooks, that's completely correct. We also don't need 60 types of Android phones, 50 homeschool writing programs, and 200 kinds of HD TVs. We could all make do with maybe 6-7 different models of cars. But they are created and used anyway. The demand is there and if it's not, the product goes away. From where does the demand come? Not from the students and their parents, surely.

I can't speak for the current market. When I worked in textbooks, we made real changes between editions, but definitely some of the decision to come out with a new edition was driven by non-content factors such as competitors' plans, locking in a good paper price, authors' demands and schedules, etc. It's a business first and foremost, and while all the scrambling has a lot of downsides for the consumer, so would having publishers go out of business, resulting in less competition. I don't consider 11-12% to be extremely lucrative considering the risk of locking in contracts for authors, paper, time on printing presses, shipping, etc 3-4 years in advance. Other industries I've been in, such as software, are much more profitable. There's almost no need for new texts ever, unless there's a brand new field or at least a decade has gone by in a rapidly changing industry such as biotech, and 5 years for some computing topics. Most of the releases are done due to the reasons outlined in the first paragraph here and my second, longer post above.

I'm not defending the current prices. I'm just explaining how much work and money goes into them and that the profit margins, at least then, were not outrageous. If these prices had stayed in line with inflation or there were extenuating circumstances like huge price increases for paper, I could defend them. But I cannot. I think one of the things that happens is that publishers look at a bigger adoption picture. Profs pretty much only want to see a textbook sales rep if there's a new edition. Profs don't really like reps but reps can get a foot in the door if there's something new. Because there are multiple publishers they try to release the books in such a way that the release dates dent the competition. It's a bit like prime time schedules; each network trying to come up with the best thing while trying to head off viewership of other networks and avoid being clobbered at the same time. Nobody wants to go head-to-head with a juggernaut. Nobody wants their movie to come out the same weekend as Star Wars Episode VII, directed by JJ Abrams. :D When a publisher doesn't have a new edition, their reps are not meeting with the profs, the competitors' are. That prof may decide to switch and never come back. Publishers feel pressure to provide sales reps with something in their hands so they can get in the door. Some publishers hurry and publish a new edition because they want to switch profs before the new edition of the juggernaut comes out next year. Some publishers wait for the year after the juggernaut so they don't go head to head. Multiply by all the publishers, the limited time slots for adoption decisions, and the limited number of profs. Hijinks ensue. A publisher (and author!) may have preferred to make more changes but hear another publisher's schedule has moved up so they cut modifications to come out first. Adopters really want a physical book in their hands. So yes, it is about money, as most things are, but it's not as simple as saying we'll change a chapter and increase the price 10%. It's more more complicated than that. Again, I'm not defending, just providing landscape since I have a background in this industry. What we really need is an open source, openly editable textbook setup. Like Wikipedia, but in textbook form (electronic chapters, discussion questions, etc) and free.

Nor did I. :blushing: Why take an effective private action when I could just complain publicly?

I feel your pain. I saw a chart somewhere that showed the costs of textbooks vs general inflation and the curves for textbooks was much steeper. That said, I do think people underestimate how much work goes into creating a textbook. I used to work for a textbook publisher on a very well-known biology book. Our team on this particular book consisted of: --The author --An acquisitions editor. She worked on 2-3 acquired books at a time, while trying to review others for possible acquisition. --A Sr. Production Editor, full time. Reviewed content, fonts, layouts, proofs. Also responsible for working with buyer on negotiating printing/paper prices. --Two junior Production Editors, full time. --An Editorial Assistant, full time. --A contractor who worked 40 hours/week looking for existing art we could use. --A contractor who worked 40 hours/week creating new art. --A contractor who worked variable hours 20-45 hours/week securing permissions for the use of artwork or charts. --A legal team who did lots of legal stuff, including contracts and making sure we weren't doing anything that could be construed as copying. I think they also dealt with ISBNs. --Each chapter was reviewed by 2 biology professors in its field. So for 40+ chapters, a person found two professors to review each, mailed them the chapters, followed up to get all the reviews back, went over suggested changes with the author, and send payments, for all 90+ people. Not sure what to call this person but it was a full-time job. Review coordinator? It became easier after universities developed a web presence, I think. Before that, it was cold calling. --A marketing team which looked at the competition and met with profs and students to find out what they wanted as far as content or format changes. --Another 4-5 people to create the student workbooks, test bank questions and answers, CDs, etc. This includes the content, the layout, the proofs, and printing. --A web person to create the web pages and get samples on the web, plus any online components to go with the text. --A marketing person to do sales training --Sales people who covered more than just this one book, sent free copies to potential adopters. The margin on the book, after all the royalties were paid out, plus the salaries/contractor payments, plus the cost to actually print, ship, and store the books, was 11-12%. ETA: This was a 3-4 year process.

Asking anyone, just quoting this for context.... Forgetting about costs for purposes of this discussion, how do we proactively find the "other Fergusons" and provide them with the information and training Ferguson will receive now that they're in this situation? I wonder if there are metrics (demographics of age/race/family size/income/city size) or questions which could be developed to determine law enforcement attitudes and attitudes towards law enforcement to determine potential hotspots.

:party:

Just seeing this. :grouphug: :grouphug: :grouphug:

I must be reading these differently. Where was "thug" used as a description for people by a news organization, which was part of my original point? Or Stripe's original point, which was official documents like police reports etc. I feel like you're taking our specific points about news reports and such and extrapolating them to general culture, sitcoms, the rantings of attention-hungry sports stars, etc. Your quote, which I interpreted to mean actual news reports from legit news organizations. My quote below, in which I am specifically talking about news reports, ie the reporters themselves are calling people thugs, not talking about other people calling people thugs. That's what I said you would find zero of. Stripe's quote: And now you're sending links about hashtags, sitcoms, and sports stories. I'm an idiot; can you show me exactly where a legit news org has called someone of any color a thug? I don't want my comments to be used as a platform for a larger discussion of the word "thug" when I was speaking about something specific, as if I don't know that "thug" in it's current form often, but not always, has racist connotations. I've acknowledged that up front and personally know more about it than I care to. I've outlined above the two things I was trying to accomplish. I think I'll stop trying now. :)

I don't see why it wouldn't be legal. Perhaps the schools give something back in return you're not aware of so it's quid pro quo.