short takes

[cellio]

A random observation while leaving Pennsic: many drivers appear not to understand the basic etiquette of simultaneous left turns. Suppose you're at a four-way intersection (sans signal) trying to make a left turn, and the guy on the cross street to your left is also trying to make a left turn. If you let him go first, he will block oncoming traffic for you and you can slip your turn in behind his; meanwhile you are blocking oncoming traffic from his right in your lane so that he only has to worry about that oncoming traffic coming toward you. You both win. If, instead, you rush through the intersection ahead of him, you get your turn and he's out of luck because of the traffic behind you. Why don't more drivers understand this? It took me more than five minutes to make the left turn out of Cooper's Lake onto Rt. 422 (a 55-mile-per-hour road) during which time three drivers screwed this up.

Amazon is now starting to sell short electronic texts (2-10k words) for order of 50 cents a pop (though I can't now find that price info on their site, so I don't remember why I know this). It's called Amazon shorts. I gather that they're mainly targeting established authors (short stories? essays?), but it sounds like they'll consider anyone. I find myself wondering if there is a class of content that I could provide that people would pay fractions of dollars for. (I don't know how much of that 50 cents the author gets, mind.) It's probably not worth the hassle for a new author unless you're working toward a book and want to build some buzz, but even so I find the idea interesting. (I probably got this link from tangerinpenguin.)

St. Augustine on intelligent design (from siderea).

Rob at Unspace has an interesting entry on faith that rings true for me. "So, I live sort of an inverse of Pascal's famous wager. But if I am wrong, and there is no God, I won't have many regrets. My life has been better because I believe in Him."

Comments

[geekosaur]

You also got the price info from tangerinpenguin. :)

[tangerinpenguin.livejournal.com]

I did post a citation for this, but it's also been getting a bit of press (including tonight's Marketplace on NPR) so there are a lot of opportunities to have picked up references through osmosis.

I do know (from BoingBoing, I believe) that authors get some cut of the price, and get it immediately (i.e. there's no "minimum to sell" before it kicks in, which is apparently policy some other places.) I don't know how much that cut is, as it's not my project and they don't lay out the numbers in the FAQ (although presumably they do go into more detail when you or your agent contacts them at the "for more information" email address.)

[cellio]

Upon checking, I see that I did get it from you -- or, at least, I did read your entry on the subject a few days back, and that's presumably when I harvested the URL.

Cut + no minimum sounds like a smart setup to me. And yeah, I assume you get more details sometime before you actually submit material for publication.