Tuesday, July 30, 2013

Semantics don't apply to me

A dialog at home:

Little Girl (to Little Boy): You're a child.
Little Boy: I'm not a child, I'm a <his name>.

I've also heard this which kid substituted for child. There are two interesting things here. One, Little Boy seems to have figured out that kid and child refer to the same set of people—and that set does not include him. I'm not sure if ego-centrism plays into this situation or if it is some odd generalization problem with the word. The other thing I noticed is that he is "a <his name>". I wonder why he's using an indefinite article there.

Sunday, July 7, 2013

eBook preview for Utopia

Since I knew you were dying to see it: here's a preview of the eBook for More's Utopia. Right now I'm charging $1.99 for the PDF, which strikes me as lame and necessary at the same time. Lame because paying for files sucks. Necessary so that I can get a handle on how much interest there is for this idea. All that said, I tried to set a pretty high preview percentage—30%, which is more than Scribd had it set at—so that you can get a pretty solid idea of what it is. And so that if you need it for research purposes or something, it's there for you. You can still get hardcopy at Amazon. But I'll tell you how to get a free copy below the preview.



Ok, so if you're still reading, you want in on some sweet free book action. Here's the deal: first five people who live in a country served by Amazon (North America or Western Europe if memory serves), who e-mail me will get a copy to review. Here's the hitch: you've got to have a blog OR be willing to put your review on Amazon (and I'd really prefer that OR be and AND). You can get in touch with me via my profile which is somewhere on the right-hand side of the blog.