Author: Chris Aldrich

I'm a biomedical and electrical engineer with interests in information theory, complexity, evolution, genetics, signal processing, IndieWeb, theoretical mathematics, and big history. I'm also a talent manager-producer-publisher in the entertainment industry with expertise in representation, distribution, finance, production, content delivery, and new media.

📺 “Suits” Inevitable | USA Network

Watched "Suits" Inevitable from USA Network
Directed by Christopher Misiano. With Gabriel Macht, Patrick J. Adams, Rick Hoffman, Meghan Markle. Tensions come to a boil when Harvey must choose between Donna and Paula while Louis continues his relationship with Sheila.

👓 ‘We Are All Accumulating Mountains of Things’ | The Atlantic

Read ‘We Are All Accumulating Mountains of Things’ (The Atlantic)
How online shopping and cheap prices are turning Americans into hoarders
The irony of reading this given the material I’ve been reading about materialism and minimalism lately. I think that just today I threw out about 50 pounds of old junk I didn’t need and have piles of old, well-used things that have gone past their useful lives to me.

People keep fettering while I’m always unfettering….

👓 What Michael Cohen’s Guilty Plea Means for Trump | The Atlantic

Read What Michael Cohen’s Guilty Plea Means for Trump by David A. Graham (The Atlantic)
The president’s former fixer on Tuesday said he broke campaign laws at Trump’s behest, paying off two women who alleged extramarital affairs.

👓 The Lazy Trope of the Unethical Female Journalist | The Atlantic

Replied to The Lazy Trope of the Unethical Female Journalist (The Atlantic)
With Camille Preaker, Zoe Barnes, and Rory Gilmore, Hollywood’s depictions of women reporters have never been further from reality.

👓 Blind Confidence Couldn’t Save Paul Manafort | The Atlantic

Read Blind Confidence Couldn’t Save Paul Manafort (The Atlantic)
President Trump's former campaign chairman was found guilty on eight counts of fraud and financial crimes. But it’s not too late for him to cut a deal.
I initially caught the news about this as an interruption while a soap opera was on after lunch. It reminded me of summers with my mom watching television and interruptions for news about the Reagan administration, Oliver North, and even Clarence Thomas hearings. Oh the nostalgia…

It’s incredibly rare that I’ve randomly got soaps on the television, and I had even contemplated the nostalgia before the news broke. It’s almost as if the universe were listening to my brain.

👓 What Happens to Students When Their Professors Are on Welfare | The Atlantic

Read What Happens to Students When Their Professors Are on Welfare (The Atlantic)
The plight of non-tenured professors is widely known, but what about the impact they have on the students they’re hired to instruct?
Universities are squeezing out as much as they can without students realizing the drop in quality and services they’re receiving.

👓 About Us | Precaricorps

Read About Us (Precaricorps)
PrecariCorps has four fundamental purposes:
  1. To improve the lives and livelihoods of contingent faculty undergoing financial hardship by providing charitable assistance to them in the form of cash assistance and/or grants;
  2. To create and distribute educational media to the public, including parents, students, and college communities, that details how colleges function in the post-recession U.S. economy;
  3. To create and design a searchable archive for contingent faculty issues in the news;
  4. To conduct research on contingent faculty and their role in the economy of U.S. colleges to encourage a broader public understanding of how colleges budget their financial resources as well as what effects these budgetary practices have on faculty populations, student populations, and the general value of higher education.

👓 Update on Badging with Webmentions | Greg McVerry

Read Update on Badging with Webmentions by Greg McVerryGreg McVerry (jgregorymcverry.com)
As #EDU522 Digital Teaching and Learning Too wraps up I find myself reflecting on my goals for the class…I mean “my goals” in the class not the hopes on the instructional design. Much more on that later. All summer, well before EDU 522 began, I set off to create a remixable template others cou...
I suspect that Dr. McVerry could have gotten further a bit faster had he built the course on WordPress directly instead of on a remixable platform. This would have made it easier to send webmention-based badges which could have been done by creating a badge page on which he could have added simple links to all of the student pages that had earned them. This would have made things a bit less manual on his part.

But at the same time, he’s now also got a remixable platform that others can borrow and use for similar courses!

👓 ‘Inclusive access’ takes off as model for college textbook sales | Inside HigherEd

Read 'Inclusive access' takes off as model for college textbook sales (insidehighered.com)
Hundreds of colleges are signing on to publishers’ programs, with apparent savings to students. Some applaud the movement, while others are skeptical.
Inclusive Access is a great marketing term. It sounds nice, but has some insidious implications. It would be interesting to do some additonal in-depth reporting on the economics of these models. The article could have done at least a back of the envelop calculation and been far more skeptical of what was going on here.

Highlights, Quotes, Annotations, & Marginalia

The “inclusive” aspect of the model means that every student has the same materials on the first day of class, with the charge included as part of their tuition.  ❧

It almost sounds to me like they know they’re not getting a cut of the money from poorer students who are finding the material for free online anyway, so they’re trying to up the stakes of the piece of pie that they’re getting from a different angle.

This other model of subscription at the level of the college or university is also one that they’re well aware of based on involvement with subscription fees for journal access.
August 21, 2018 at 10:17PM

She said that her institution, which has inclusive-access agreements with more than 25 publishers, had saved students more than $2 million this semester alone. Morrone said this figure was calculated by taking the retail price of a textbook, subtracting the cost that students paid for the equivalent etextbook and then dividing the cost saving in half to account for the fact that many students would not have bought the book new.  ❧

$ 2million compared to what? To everyone having purchased the textbooks at going rates before? This is a false comparison because not everyone bought new in the first place. Many bought used, and many more still probably either pirated, borrowed from a friend, from the library, or simply went without.
August 21, 2018 at 10:21PM

Students like the convenience of the system, said Anderson, and all have access to the most up-to-date content, instead of some students having different editions of the same textbook.  ❧

They’re also touting the most up-to-date content here, when it’s an open secret that for the majority of textbooks don’t really change that much from edition to edition.
August 21, 2018 at 10:24PM

A key difference between inclusive access and buying print textbooks is that students effectively lease the content for the duration of their course, rather than owning the material. If students want to download the content to access it beyond the duration of their course, there is often an additional fee.  ❧

So now we need to revisit the calculation above and put this new piece of data into the model.

Seriously?! It’s now a “rental price”?
August 21, 2018 at 10:26PM

Campus stores are often the ones driving inclusive-access initiatives, as they receive a cut of the sales. While the profit margins are smaller than for print, inclusive access means that the stores receive revenue from a larger number of customers. Donovan Garcia, course materials manager at the University of Mary Washington, said that lower margins were also mitigated by lower overheads. “We’re not purchasing books, we’re not paying shipping, we’re not having to put any time or effort into returning unused books or paying restocking fees,” said Garcia.  ❧

I suspect the publisher is also saving on sales commissions to their sales staff as well.
August 21, 2018 at 10:27PM

👓 Why a professor buys his books from the bookstore | Chuck Pearson

Read Why a professor buys his books from the bookstore by Chuck Pearson (Another fine mess)
Friday, I made a visit to my campus bookstore, and I bought my books. The guy who runs Tusculum’s bookstore, Cliff Hoy, is a great guy, and the work that Tusculum’s bookstore does is fi…