jsackmann

I have no idea whether this applies to Lex, or if there are better explanations, but... he probably just asks. In my limited experience with my little podcast in the sports analytics world, I'm consistently surprised by who says yes, and how few people say no. ~90% of the people I've asked to be a guest have said yes, and those who have said no haven't done so because they're "too famous" or something like that.

Not OP, but they're referring to situations when players call their own lines. (Virtually all amateur matches.) If you are horrible (or blatantly biased) at calling lines, your opponent can call the tournament referee, and you may end up with a line judge. But that takes time, and only happens after you aggravate your opponent. If you wait until a key moment to make a bad call in your favor, your opponent won't be able to reverse it, even if they call the referee and get a third party to call the lines for the rest of the match.

This is a particularly big issue in competitive junior tennis, unfortunately.

The headline currently says "Nate Hentoff" but it's Nat, not Nate.

Broadly speaking, major chords sound bright and happy. Minor chords sound dark and sad.

The C major scale consists of C-D-E-F-G-A-B-C. The A-minor scale consists of A-B-C-D-E-F-G-A. Those are the same notes, but if you play each of those patterns on a keyboard, the first one sounds happy, the second one sounds sad.

A C-major chord (technically, triad) is made up of C-E-G, the first, third, and fifth notes of the scale. Again, sounds happy. The A-minor triad is A-C-E ... sad.

But if you play a melody -- that is, one note at at a time -- it isn't always clear whether it's happy or sad. In most western music, though (including virtually all pre-1900 classical music and the vast majority of modern pop), the piece will end ("resolve") with a clearer "happy" or "sad" type of chord. That final chord is what determines the key.

(In a huge amount of classical and popular music, the final chord is the same as the opening chord, but not always. When they're different, the final chord tells you the key.)

Where I grew up (eastern WA): "Eight is great; nine, you're mine."

>the chicken earned US$4,500 per month ($47,700 today)[5] and was valued at $10,000

Not a very generous multiplier, but then again, the actuarial tables for a headless chicken wouldn't be all that favorable.

Yep. I drove a cab for about a year (2003ish, college town of ~200,000 people), and the company I drove for did this. It wasn't a big business, but there were a few substantial accounts, notably the local university hospital system, which sent around a lot of specimens in very serious-looking containers. Pre-ubiquitous GPS, shared taxi dispatching and routing involved a lot of yelling and guessing.

I traveled for about two years. I was able to work remotely, so I didn't have to worry too much about a tight budget or finding employment upon return.

It was a great experience, and here's what I'd change:

- spend more time in fewer places; be less of a tourist. (bonus: for the most part, the less you move around, the less expensive it is.) I would particularly try to do this in places that aren't typical tourist destinations. Think of stops of 1-3 months (perhaps with side trips) rather than 1-2 weeks.

- if you're traveling with someone else (particularly a significant other): (a) be really, really confident that you want to travel together for that long; (b) do whatever you can to find destinations that you both are interested in; (c) explicitly acknowledge that you will want to spend time apart during your travels; and (d) expect the relationship to get rocky at times even if you do all of the above perfectly. It's hard.

- Plan to return to your current home, if at all possible. I didn't do this, and re-adjusting to 'normal' life was much more difficult without an existing set of family and friends around. Even if you do go back 'home', re-entry won't be seamless. One of my friends spent two years in Japan and claims that she was more homesick upon returning home (USA) than she ever was in Japan.

In my experience: Amazon automatically discounts some books, a certain time after their release. I've published several through their subsidiary CreateSpace, and the two that sold more than negligible amounts were discount the same ~28%. One eventually went back to my 'retail' and the other stayed discounted.

Again in my experience, Amazon's discounts do not effect the author's take. At least in CreateSpace, the author's royalty is based on the retail price the author sets.

The economics are true of just about anything that scales -- startups and anything in the arts both come to mind. There's no guaranteed route to six-figure comfort (like there is with, say, dental school), but the potential rewards are enormous.

And, as other responses have pointed out, in all of these fields, people really, really want to do them. The number of writing jobs that are 'comfortable' (pick your number, $60k?) has sharply declined from the glory days of the newspaper industry, but it still has the same non-monetary attractions, and there are the still the same opportunities to become, say, a bestselling nonfiction author.

It's not talking about success rate of items that are mailed; it is talking about the number of pieces that are mailed in the first place. The latter number is declining.

In a sense, that's what an active blogger does before going blog-to-book. True, the author is the one putting the sentences together, but the market has a lot of say in the direction future articles go, and what of the blog content goes into the book version.