Links for 2011-04-22

"Gauss has an Erdos number of -1."

"Self-publishing is the part of the map where the author is the publisher and hires the editor, hires the cover artist, the typesetter, the proofreader, contracts the printer, buys the ISBN, arranges distribution, promotion, marketing, and carries out every other aspect of publishing.

What you need to recall is that while the author is the publisher, "publisher" and "author" are separate roles. One of the classic mistakes I see with self-published authors is that they don't put "paying the author" in their business plan as an expense. The money still needs to move from one pocket to another. Those pockets may be in the same pair of pants, but that movement has to be in the business plan, and it must happen. Here too, Yog's Law ["Money flows toward the author."] is completely true, and will help the self-publisher run his/her business as a business."

"Mr Thiel believes that higher education fills all the criteria for a bubble: tuition costs are too high, debt loads are too onerous, and there is mounting evidence that the rewards are over-rated. Add to this the fact that politicians are doing everything they can to expand the supply of higher education (reasoning that the "jobs of the future" require college degrees), much as they did everything that they could to expand the supply of "affordable" housing, and it is hard to see how we can escape disaster."

"RECENTLY, I joined friends at a lunch table where a lively discussion of college tuition was in progress. The question at hand was a chestnut: why does college cost so much, and why does the cost grow so alarmingly year after year? I interrupted my lunch mates. They -- and most of the public -- misconstrue the issue. They are really asking why the price of tuition is so high.

The reason is simple, and not just semantics. It's explained in every Econ 1 textbook: supply and demand. "