Staring at empty pages, centered 'round the same old plot

[austin_dern]

I'm an author! I grant you I was this before, with a full two textbooks co-written under my belt, which certainly adds up to one book even if the second used a lot of material from the first. This is hard to avoid, mathematically speaking; there's not a lot of point to coming up with a new way to explain the Law of Large Numbers unless you're showing off all the ways you can work up explanations for the Law of Large Numbers. Still, it's written.

In any case as mentioned we hatched the plan for a second edition of the book, and the publishers finally got around to sending their approval. Better, they've sent the contract out, after a short pause while they seemed to be very uncertain of the notion that I wasn't at a college or university. Really, they asked about what school it should be sent to twice for me, and then only settled on sending it to my co-author's school and having him send it on to me.

Despite this roundabout method (I can't be the only non-affiliated author they've ever dealt with, can I?) the certified-mail envelope finally reached me, and I've got multiple copies of the contract on hand. Of course, that's the easy part. Now there's the challenge of getting LaTeX installed and working on the new computer, and the writing stuff too.

Trivia: The Westinghouse Electric Company was the fifth company which George Westinghouse incorporated. Source: Empires Of Light: Edison, Tesla, Westinghouse, And The Race To Electrify The World, Jill Jonnes.

Currently Reading: Rock, Paper, Scissors: Game Theory In Everyday Life, Len Fisher. I cannot express how much more credible your pop-sci book about game theory becomes when you explain how QUANTUM! computers will destroy Prisoner's-Choice type defects wherein every agent acting for his own rational best interest turns out to screw over everybody involved.

(And, hey, old time radio fans: Turner Classic Movies is showing the Fibber McGee and Molly, and Great Gildersleeve Too, movie Here We Go Again tomorrow at 2 pm Eastern Time, United States feed. Someday they're bound to get to Love Thy Neighbor, I know it. )

Comments

[bunny-hugger.livejournal.com]

I know in my field, being an unaffiliated scholar is a pretty major problem. There was at some point some talk of trying to work out a way for independent scholars to get nominal affiliations at local universities to get around it, but nothing widespread seems to have come of it.

My undergraduate adviser, the person whom I can probably blame for my decision to go to grad school, no longer works at that institution, but is listed on the faculty as a "research professor." You don't have research professors at liberal arts institutions in philosophy departments. My father (who has some mild obsession with looking up stuff about my old adviser on Wikipedia) asked me if I knew that said person was listed on the faculty at Undergrad School. I said, "Yes, but I think he does not draw a salary. It's probably an exchange where they get the prestige of his name and he gets an institutional affiliation."

Dad left the room, disappearing into the computer room. He returned, proclaiming that he had looked it up and Former Adviser did not get paid by Undergrad School. Apparently I'm not as trustworthy as Wikipedia. He then wanted to know what would be in it for him to let Undergrad Institution use his name. I explained again that the affiliation itself is what's in it for him. He is no longer working for an institution of higher learning, so he needs an affiliation. I think my father didn't really understand that this is something of value.

I would think it would be different in the sciences, though.

[chefmongoose.livejournal.com]

As an idle thought, Austin.. would your Singapore university consider some deal akin to affiliation?

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

I'd never have thought of that but, yeah, they might just. Worth looking into.

[moxie_man]

I would think it would be different in the sciences, though.

Not necessarily. Two years after I finished my Master Degree, my adviser and another grad student (or was it an employee of the local NWS office...can't recall now) published a paper using a lot of my data. I received credit as co-author despite not writing one word of said paper. They listed me as affiliated with the school, though I was not a student nor employed there nor anywhere else at the time. I guess they couldn't be truthful and simply say "My Real Name, Unemployed-but looking" (shrug)

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

I'm surprised. I'd have figured there are enough mathematics and science people who carry on work from affiliations with not-really-academic institutions like the NOAA or the Naval Research Labs, or as a sideline while doing something unrelated to pay the bills, that listing someone as 'unaffiliated' or simply not saying anything shouldn't bat an eye.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

You know, my first instinct was to say that it seemed natural that more unaffiliated people with science degrees would carry on doing work than in humanities. But on thinking it over, well, I imagine it's hard to do original philosophical work without a good library to call on, but that doesn't need affiliation with a school, just a willingness to drive to the state university. It shouldn't be any fundamentally less likely than a mathematician or a theoretical physicist producing a work worth publication.

Some kind of ``research affiliate'' position ought to be made for people not academically employed but doing research work. It could be an extension of the alumni programs for whoever granted the degree.

I know Isaac Asimov clung to his title of assistant professor long after he left Boston College, but that was in good part tied up with his political squabblings with the administration there, and since he got tenure without them realizing it (!) he was going to insist on the title even if he didn't draw any pay or responsibility (or privilege, except for having a mail drop, which he paid for with a talk every semester or year or whatnot).