Profs and Students: Read Your Contracts!

I know I keep harping on this, but someone has to.

I was just asked to sign a contract for something I’m doing which defined my work as “work for hire.” This is becoming more and more common not only in publication boilerplates, but in others kinds of things professors do in the normal course of their duties, like giving talks. Often this language is buried in boilerplates written by lawyers (and thereby covering all possible circumstances and tilting the tables toward the institution offering the contract) and not something consciously reflected upon by the people issuing the contract. But it is a contract nonetheless, and the more we get used to giving away the rights to our own work, the more we cede to private hands what used to exist in the domain of fair use, the more our work can be monetized by others whose interests are not necessarily ours, and the fewer rights we have both as authors and intellectuals.

Ted Striphas has a great piece on contracts for publication which I’m mentioned before. Click here for the official but padlocked version (you can read it if your school has a subscription to the journal) or here for the free version.

Incomplete Theses on Audio Aesthete-ism: Beginnings of a Rant

1. One or two generations ago refined taste in music meant familiarity with a fairly limited (and stable, learnable) Western concert music repertoire. Today that refinement is reflected through a carefully cultivated, willfully eclectic cosmopolitanism. The déclassé listener likes or understands only one genre of music or a limited genre of music. Even apprentice aesthetes know the opening gambit is “I like everything.” “I don’t listen to any particular genre.” Only later do the same predictable references emerge, interspersed with enough surprises to keep others guessing and demonstrate ingenuity. There is still Bach and Mozart, but they are joined by countless others.

2. Snobbery of genre still exists but it is now more specialized and subcultural (or limited by age). It has been replaced by a profusion of snobbery in equipment (which has existed for a century but is now less specialized). There are legions of self-described experts who proclaim that records have more “fidelity” to a made up source than compact discs. [Wait, what is fidelity?] Other legions will decry digital formats’ “degraded” sound even as they parade around with earbuds that cost pennies to make and distort the audio more than any modern compression algorithm. If your collection of recordings has lost value, equipment is still a refuge for distinguishing yourself from others. The sleek interface of the Apple product or the heady practicality of choosing the cheaper alternative speak volumes of who you are.

3. As in food or painting, one can hardly escape having likes and dislikes — even strong ones. I would not exempt myself. But we must be wary of moral elevations of like and dislike, which, as Bourdieu taught us, is also at the same time an attempt at social elevation.

1111: we live in an era where dates have interesting numeric sequences

For the first time probably since childhood, I didn’t stay up to see the years turn over. There’s nothing spectacular about that decision — just a mix of jet lag, just getting back from Minnesota and that our main social event around the new year happens to be today instead of last night. Though I do tend to think that New Years Eve is a lesser holiday.

All the same, I awake and the calendar looks different, so it is time to contemplate the promise of 2011, which includes eight more months of sabbatical, missing the rest of what I call winter (I had enough from two weeks in Minnesota, thanks) and some travel along the west coast.

I’m not big on new years resolutions. But this is a year for introspection. I thought it was going to be all about thinking and working through stuff, but the reality is that it’s more like I’ve just got the space for epiphanies to hit me. In 2011 I’ll work on making more of that space. Two other not-drastic commitments:

1. Play music with other people more. I’ve been doing a lot of computer-based composition and studio work that’s more like sculpting or cooking, but I’ve had occasion to be reminded of the exquisite pleasure of being a bassist in an ensemble (not that there only has to be only one bassist, mind you). So in 2011 I’ll make some more occasions to simply play music with other people. For fun.

2. Rationalize our charitable giving. We give money away every year but it’s in a clumsy fashion, usually ending with a big chunk of cash in December (30th or 31st, naturally). A more rational schedule and a list of organizations, dates and amounts will help us give, well, more and in a more rational fashion. I am also contemplating moving to fully anonymous giving — but that’s another story and here I am talking about it anyway.

I mention it here at all because my understanding is that people on the left tend to give away less money (proportionate to their incomes) than people on the right. And those of us who lead secular lives are less likely to be given regular occasions to be thoughtful about it. Even though we are inundated with pitches for this or that organization, we certainly don’t talk about it much. But then, it’s not polite to talk about money or privilege or obligations to others. Even though I’ve been thinking about the issue for about a month as the usual December chunk approached, I was struck by how much it was on the minds of my friends in Minneapolis who do have some religious practice.

Medical Progress + More Medicine and Money

Today was a big medical day. I stayed home from the Center so that Ya-Ya could get his eye pressure checked (glaucoma) and I could talk with a local endocrinologist about my fatigue. We went over my blood results and determined that my TSH could be further suppressed (which means increasing my dose of synthroid) and that it might make me feel better. I’m not anemic and I don’t have a hangover from radiation fatigue (two alternate theories that were dismissed), so that’s a relief.

Of course what is more blogworthy is my visit to a non-profit medical center for this task. They may still be nonprofit but money suffuses all the interactions. My Quebec insurance requires that I put out the cash and then ask for reimbursement (and when I don’t get the full reimbursement, I go to my private insurance–this will take months as you can see). When I arrived at the endocrinology department, I got an intake form which I expected to be the usual case history thing. Nope — there was room for 3 insurers, and then a spouse and someone not living with me they could contact in “an emergency” (like if I didn’t pay my bill). After filling that out, I sat down in the waiting room. I was called back up to sign another form regarding a discount for prompt payment (it said 25%, I was told 30 on the phone, which they gave me when I asked). Then I saw the doctor and we talked. Though I am happy to go through whatever is necessary to feel better, I did feel the need to ask for no unnecessary tests since each one would mean more money out of pocket for me. He did a careful physical exam and asked me lots of questions which showed that he was thoughtful and thorough, and then we went over where my bloods ought to be vs. where they are. My TSH is at .68, which is in the “normal” range but the American Thyroid Association guidelines suggest that it should be lower for high risk patients and anecdotal evidence from other thyroid cancer patients suggests that .68 is a bit high to feel fully good. There is a balancing act between TSH, which you want low and T3 and T4, which you don’t want too high. Synthroid does suppresses the TSH and elevates the T3 and T4, so past a certain point it’s not good to increase my dose. Nevertheless we’re giving it a shot and that will be that.

After the visit, I paid — it was about $300 before the discount and I suspect they were being nice. Then I went down to billing to see if I could pay for the blood test I had just under two weeks ago. The results are in the system but not the bill. The billing office is not a happy place. I saw the two people ahead of me come out of there with long, serious faces and I could tell from the tone of one of the conversations that the topic was unpaid bills that needed to be cleared up for further service.

I left the building marvelling at how lucky I am to be able to afford my healthcare.

Oh yeah, the synthroid was $20 for a months’ supply, about twice which I pay in Quebec. Though I didn’t shop around — I got it while picking up a few groceries.

Oh yes: Ya-Ya’s glaucoma? It’s stable. His vision isn’t great, though and I suspect it’s gotten a bit worse. He’s spent the day in his “safe place” (ie, the carrier) since returning home. The vet bills are higher here as well.

—

As to today’s report in the NYTimes that a judge ruled part of Obama’s healthcare plan unconstitutional, all I can say is “meh.” It is kind of stupid to mandate that people buy insurance, instead of simply specifying medical care as a right.

Stuff

One of my goals for this year was some serious introspection so as to return to my Montreal life with a clearer head. I am not sure if I have simply not done enough of it, or if it’s simply a matter of being outside of my normal “zone” and having epiphanies now and then. So far, it seems to be the latter.

The other night I was dining with some new friends who are, of course, also colleagues at the Center. As often happens, these dinners are intergenerational, and three of my companions are close to retirement age (or just passing through it) and are also switching up their living arrangements. This involves divesting themselves of a lot of their material possessions. Not in some self-inflicted-poverty way but in the sense that they are pack rats and over the decades had accumulated all manner of things.

Then the epiphany hit me: I don’t miss most of my stuff.

Partly it’s an illusion fostered by the fact that I’m not in my normal life, that more and more aspects of my life appear to be contained in this computer that I’m typing in (and backed up in the cloud), that some “things” from my life in Montreal (like most of my ties) are simply not needed while I’m here, and that Stanford has an amazing library and the Center has amazing librarians so I don’t need all my books to get work done. But still, my apartment is full of things that if you pointed them out to me I would call them indispensable. Yet here I am and I have probably forgotten half of them. Okay, not my kitchen, not my studio speakers, not my acoustic bass guitar, I’ve had call for a bass amp here, and not the beautiful apartment itself, but that still leaves lots of stuff. I miss my friends and many other aspects of my Montreal life. But the stuff? Most of it appears to have no effect on my happiness. Which I knew intellectually but now I know a little better emotionally.

Of course I have no illusions about undoing my bourgeois existence, and purging is so much work (we just did that to move in 2004, 2007 and even a bit this year in anticipation of renters) that I probably won’t do anything about it.

Version Control

Here’s a question for any book writers hanging out on this blog (feel free to email if you don’t want to post). I’ve got a versioning issue.

The mp3 book is made up of several long chapters. In two cases, which I’m presently about to deal with, I’ve provided condensed, edited, shortened versions for others’ edited books. Now I’m at the point where I’ve made revisions that I like to the chapter and revisions I like to the versions-for-others.

I know about MS Word’s “compare function” and all that, but is there actually an efficient way to get your changes back into the “master” version that’s not so clunky? This is more a writing technique question than a technology question. I think I will just have to do what I’ve always done, which is walk through both versions simultaneously on my screen. But I imagine someone has thought up a better way.

UPDATE: With no good suggestions (and none from the other book-writers at the Center) I did it the old fashioned way. It hurt, but it worked. Now I must bring on the axe.