The Issues of the Issue: The Journal of Irreproducible Results, v52 #1
© Norman Sperling, Editor, February 5, 2013
JIR always looks for new angles. Longtime contributor Steve Groninger, a voracious reader, sends in several good catches of innumeracy. He finds Copernicus (or his translator?) saying "360° are equal to 2 right angles". Meanwhile, Herschel Knapp at UCLA points out that circles have 360° while triangles only have 180°, so circles are twice as hot as triangles.
Current issues make current articles. Twinkies are famous for not spoiling. Archaeology prof Alex Taub buried a pack at Wenatchee Valley College. Dug up a year later, he found a little spoilage, but not that much. I look forward to the return of Twinkies and especially Hostess cupcakes.
JIR also keeps up with the zombie apocalypse. For a useful indicator, A. L. Holm of the University of Michigan explored counts of websearch finds for "braaains" with various numbers of "a"s. The first supernumerary peak occurs with 3 "a"s, quantities decay till 11, then secondary peaks at 13 and 17, but it takes a surprising number to reach 0. I don't look forward to the return of zombies.
Also up-to-date is our article on texting, as seen by Lehigh prof Brian Pinaire. An idealist, he wants students to pay attention to what he's teaching. For a while I thought this was an age problem, with teenagers self-distracting. Then I saw their middle-aged parents doing the same thing. Should I text my students during class to remind them to pay attention to my lecture?
A longer look at recent trends reveals an accompaniment to several decades of Global Warming: Global Swarming! Pawan Dhar of Yokohama shows that as temperature has risen, so has the invention of new scientific directions.
That generates scads of new scholarly books. Many of us still use actual, physical books. Academic libraries are brimful of them. Longtime librarian Norman Stevens promotes an app for that: leave books anywhere they fit, and guide users to them by GPS.
A much shorter, more specialized form of literature is the "package insert" for drugs. Keenan Bora demonstrates how a treatment could be worse than its disease.
Timeless rather than timely is Andrew Olsen's exploration of the nether end of the spinal cord in human cognition. He indicates that people do often seem to think with their butt. I'm not going to touch that.
Immediately following that conclusion comes an expose of the role of a roll of toilet paper. It doesn't just indicate who's a winner and who's a loser, it determines which is which.
Neither of the 2 previous articles could explain the interview by which Tom Szirtes of Toronto got one of his best jobs.
David J. Burns of Xavier University, Cincinnati, proposes using a "Higgs Vacuum and Mass Transfer Device" for a wonderful particle-physics solution to clinical obesity and the Federal Debt. Higgs bosons confer mass. Extract fat from obese people, and then insert the mass into gold bars.
We are very pleased to publish a further examination of the Dreaded Sock Monster by Elaine Foster, near Melbourne, Australia. We're delighted to learn that she's recovering from some recent setbacks.
A followup of a different character explores the highly-publicized "Mozart Effect". Peter Lefevre of Caltech tested how rats would react to the "music" of the Insane Clown Posse. The lab assistants rebelled. The ethics committee rebelled. And the rats rebelled.
Some people like birds. Some people like cats. Cats prey on birds. Robert Haas summons up a bigger bird - an eagle - that preys on cats.
2 new cartoonists have found us. Sally Mills memorably pronounces on particle physics, and Michael Capozzola has a tasteful take on Star Wars.
For decades, JIR has struggled to find good illustrations. A minority of contributors illustrate their own articles. For the rest, we have to hunt. A new resource is yielding astonishingly appropriate resources: Wikimedia, a "sister project" to Wikipedia. They provided this issue with a leaky bucket, a zombie, boats, medicines, texting, library books, toilet paper, and the surprising picture on page 22. All we have to do is acknowledge the creative-commons sources and terms, and indeed we are very grateful for them. If you have some spare resources, and you also use Wikipedia and Wikimedia, consider enriching their articles, increasing their open media, or sending them some money.
Would You Like to Buy a Copy of the Voynich Manuscript?
© Norman Sperling, December 29, 2012
Part of a set on the Voynich Manuscript:
Great Stories from a Book You Can't Read: The Voynich Manuscript December 23, 2012
Voynich: Turkish? December 24, 2012
Voynich: 2 or More Handwritings? December 25, 2012
Voynich: Spiraling Into Folly December 26, 2012
Could 2 of Voynich's Oddities Cancel Each Other Out? December 27, 2012
Did Voynich Swindle Mondragone? December 28, 2012
There is said to be a published version, but unavailable, and cropped so much that people complain. There's an eBook version, a CD ROM version, and an online version. But how about a book you can hold in your hands?
I queried my audience and found 5 who said they'd consider buying a printed copy. I presumed using modern acid-free document paper instead of vellum, and a binding that opens flat. I surveyed their preferences:
For margins, they preferred either the original amounts, or 10-12 mm. (I expected them to want much wider margins, for making their own notes.)
Then I posited 2 potential versions:
* a Replica, reproducing the manuscript in its present form as faithfully as technology allows;
* and a Restoration, with the page-order rearranged as sensibly as possible, with blank pages left for the missing leaves, with script printed black-on-white for ease of reading, and with colors restored to original tones.
Along a continuum from Replica to Restoration, nobody wanted the ink contrast or illustration colors as faded as presently. Preferences ranged smoothly from "fully restored to our best guess of original", to halfway to the present fading.
Everybody wanted the paper color roughly halfway between white, and as-brown-as-present.
With electronic reproduction now making pages and printing so selectable, I wondered if people might want to custom-enhance unreality by inventing a new page order, and rendering lettering and illustrations in user-selected colors, including psychedelic. (About a mile from where I spoke, and about 4 blocks from where I teach, psychedelic tie-dye shirts are still sold by street-vendors on Telegraph Avenue.) But these 5 customers were way more sober than that, and wanted no such thing. They also wanted no enlargement, or just a little.
I suggested 3 kinds of binding. They strongly preferred "quality cloth-covered hardback" and "quality paperback". My imagined "custom vellum-covered hardback" found no favor.
Then I asked them to forecast "In the long run, per 100 copies sold, estimate the number picking:
* replica: 30%
* restoration: 42%
* psychedelic: 5%
* their own custom settings: 30%.
Yes, those don't add up to 100%, but that's what the folks wrote.
Averages of estimates for the proper prices:
* replica: $30
* restoration: $53
* psychedelic: $47
* custom settings: $70.
If you could tailor a copy to your preferences, what characteristics would you want? What would you pay? Compare that to Emperor Rudolph's 600 ducats, or the $160,000 that Voynich never got.
Did Voynich Swindle Mondragone?
© Norman Sperling, December 28, 2012
Part of a set on the Voynich Manuscript:
Great Stories from a Book You Can't Read: The Voynich Manuscript December 23, 2012
Voynich: Turkish? December 24, 2012
Voynich: 2 or More Handwritings? December 25, 2012
Voynich: Spiraling Into Folly December 26, 2012
Could 2 of Voynich's Oddities Cancel Each Other Out? December 27, 2012
Would You Like to Buy a Copy of the Voynich Manuscript? December 29, 2012
The book The Voynich Manuscript by Kennedy and Churchill (Orion, 2004), and some websites, repeatedly accuse Wilfrid Voynich of unethical dealing because the religious books he traded to the Catholics of Mondragone in return for 30 old manuscripts including this odd one, didn't cost a lot. Voynich, Kennedy, and Churchill all valued antiquarian things unusually highly. They didn't value those new books very much. The accusation makes several faulty assumptions.
From all we are told, nobody was forced into a deal. Nobody lied. They all had what they had, wanted what they wanted, and reached agreements. This is the principle of "a willing buyer and a willing seller": it just needs to make sense to the people involved in their own circumstances right then. How it would be regarded by others, elsewhen, with different circumstances, is not relevant.
I have experienced quite a number of things that I valued, selling for low prices, or not selling at all. In hurriedly clearing out our old house in preparing to sell it, we ended up giving away several thousand dollars worth of stuff. And I have experienced items fetching surprisingly high prices because they were worth a whole lot to someone else in their particular situation. Our house sold for a handsome profit that dwarfed the losses described 2 sentences ago.
Mondragone made no use of what they had, had no use for it, and had not even touched it for centuries. They did their religious duties, for which those 30 manuscripts were actually a drag. They also had no means to find out their specialty value (the antiquarian book dealers Voynich and Kraus didn't know, either: they speculated and lost). Mondragone had no experience in selling through specialists anyway, and no means to find and deal with dealers or collectors of antiquarian books, or they would already have done so.
Wilfrid Voynich acquired the knowledge to find Mondragone, exercised the energy and paid the cost to actually journey there, and took the risk to invest money with no surety of earning a profit. Voynich listened to them - what other merchant would? They wanted certain uncommon books they could actually use, but they didn't have money to get them, nor the knowhow to find and purchase them. We worldly people of 2012 could do that in a snap (well, a click), but buying their wants was beyond the abilities and resources of isolated members of a religious order in 1912, or they would already have done so.
Voynich took considerable trouble to fill Mondragone's shopping list and deliver to them what they really wanted - "concierge" service. Nobody else had, or would. Voynich performed several services that required his expertise and attitude, including the age-old commercial one of taking things from where they have low value to where they have high value.
A strongly parallel experience happened to me about 1990. A little, isolated college had an antique telescope. The occasional astronomy course was taught by a professor of something else. He saw an ad for a modern telescope, which would help him teach his course much better than the awkward old thing could. He was worldly enough to know how to buy the new one, but far from knowing how to sell the old one for enough money to pay for it. From a friend of a friend, he heard that I had studied antique telescopes. So he invited me to examine the old scope, appraise it, and sell it so he could buy the new one. Unfortunately, its lens was badly chipped, devastating its value. I never found a customer, no deal occurred, and I never heard from them again. I lost the value of that time and travel.
If I had succeeded in fulfilling that college's wants, Kennedy and Churchill would regard me as an unethical swindler for doing so. I regard Voynich as an enterprising, risk-taking expert bringing added value and new possibilities wherever he reached agreements.
Guidelines Aren't Laws
© Norman Sperling, June 19, 2012
Several panels I was on at BayCon last month tried to advise aspiring writers. Panelists would cite something from a story and point out how saying things that way made problems. I, for example, advocated for short, active sentences instead of long, passive ones tangled up in prepositional phrases.
We heard examples from many different authors, writing in many different ways. All those stories got published! Several, which had aspects that panelists didn't like, pleased scads of readers, and therefore pleased publishers. So, I told the audience, even those undesirable forms can work. For example, many writers, including my friends Terry Dickinson and Robert Sheaffer, write very well in passive voice. Do what you think works best for your story, and for yourself as a writer.
Book Publishing is Broken
© Norman Sperling, June 1, 2012
If you read the how-to business books that publishers publish, you'll learn many proven techniques: Seek innovations, seek new markets and niches, do variations that others don't do. Be nice to people, as nice as you can be.
Publishers publish such advice, but don't follow it.
Big integrated publishing companies used to handle almost all of the myriad functions that go into a successful book, from editing to illustration, layout, typography, relations with the printer, marketing, sales, warehousing, and shipping.
Hundreds of publishing companies have been bought out by 6 faceless, unfeeling, cost-cutting conglomerates, and evade as many of these tasks as they can get away with.
Instead of proactively figuring out what ought to exist, and then making it so, they mostly react to the inflood of proposals ... and let others filter them. Publishers are supposed to select their manuscripts, but delegate the biggest part of screening to literary agents. Most big, and many medium, publishers won't deal with authors directly but ONLY deal through agents. So a writer has to find an agent.
Finding an agent who will truly work for you is like finding a bank to lend you money: they're most willing when you prove that you scarcely need them. One agent told me that I'd need my website to get a certain big number of hits per week – but when I do, I should sell more online than physical bookstores would.
Publishers are supposed to help authors with illustrations. A few still do. Others, however, keep the illustrators from talking to the authors, guaranteeing incompetent pictures, unhappy authors, and baffled readers. Keeping illustrators and authors apart is utterly counterproductive, but some publishers do it.
Publishers are supposed to arrange for manufacturing the books, but an author-friend tells me of some who are delighted to slough that off to subcontractors – even to the author (who can use this for further employment, taking another piece of the pie).
With the latest short-run and publishing-on-demand services, there is no longer any need for warehousing, nor for guessing how many to print, nor for big investments in printing. I'm already publishing certain books that way.
Publishers are supposed to market, but now they require the author to submit a marketing plan with the book proposal. What aspect of being a good author qualifies one for any marketing at all?? Publishers squeal with delight when they see a good marketing plan. The more the author plans marketing, the stronger the book! Publishers used to have real marketing specialists. But publishers market absurdly narrowly: I know a big publisher that markets its parents' guides to coaching ONLY to the *sports* shelves of general bookstores, and expressly ignores all *parenting* channels, even after I pointed out to them that more customers are to be found as "parents" than in "sports".
Publishers are supposed to sell, but abandon much of that to chain stores, and Amazon, and aggregators like Baker & Taylor. Is there any use for aggregators that software can't do?
So big publishers don't define their products, they don't seek out authors, they avoid setting type, they subcontract illustrations, and avoid dealing with the printer, or doing most of the marketing. Most big publishers seem outright scared of ePublishing and eBooks. Small presses may pay more attention to authors but whereas big publishers don't do all the necessary jobs because they're *negligent*, small presses don't do all the jobs because they don't have enough *resources*.
Since publishers do so little, what do you need them for? Self-publishing manuals list all the tasks to do. All those jobs still need to be done. Do as many of them as you can and want to yourself, and hire out the rest. If you skip any, the job's not done and the results won't be professional. An author cannot edit his own writing. Suggestions are just a tweet away. Make sure *all* the jobs are done well.
Here are some books on self-publishing. They're wisely heavy on marketing, and not up-to-date on eBooks, but they do enumerate every step you need to take.
Tom & Marilyn Ross: The Complete Guide to Self-Publishing, 4th ed. Writer's Digest books 2002.
Dan Poynter: The Self-Publishing Manual 2002, and volume 2, 2009.
Marilyn & Tom Ross: Jump Start Your Book Sales. Communication Creativity 1999.
The Issues of the Issue: The Journal of Irreproducible Results, v51 #6
© Norman Sperling, May 29, 2012
Comedian Steve Martin wrote a play about how Science and Art approach similar questions from different angles. I saw a community theater production of Picasso at the Lapin Agile: in 1904, young Einstein and Picasso run into one another at a bar. I'd love to see it made into a movie. Our lead article is the script of an epilogue, set in a different bar 40 years later. They still regard space and time from very different angles, but come a bit closer this time. How would they, or current physicists and artists, interact this year? Thanks to David Carlberg for the script.
Our cover article celebrates cryptozoologists' ongoing search for undiscovered or unappreciated hominids. Enjoy this Irish expedition to examine "The Wild Ape-Leprechauns of Borneo". Is the orangutan the strange target, or the leprechaun? We welcome Pandareus von Grundenstein back to our author list.
Entrepreneur/adventurer Richard Branson pulled an April Fool joke by announcing "Virgin Volcanic". His new screw-propeller vehicle would swim through liquid lava to travel from volcano to volcano underground. On the back cover, look for the dramatic embodiment of his motto "screw business as usual".
JIR's decades-long exploration of academe continues with David Burns's grading of exams according to the time students hand them in. I've noticed something along those lines: students with little to say finish early, students with a lot to say need more time to say all that. Meanwhile - and we do mean "mean" - Subhabrata Sanyal attempts to measure the factors that make him cranky.
Cartoon character "Popeye" is so popular that people overlook his obvious physical peculiarities. S. D. Hines examines him medically and finds facial dysmorphism, microophthalmia, distal limb hypertrophy, a mono diet, and intermittent explosive disorder. What other popular characters should be examined?
Jeff Jargon takes aim at genetically-modified foods not by minimizing the differences of those currently on the market, but by exploring future extensions. He offers a pitless cherry, all-white-meat chicken, and (noting the great taste of a bacon cheesburger) a graft/hybrid cow/pig. His "chipoodle", a chihuahua/poodle hybrid, was hailed as "the most nervous, yappy, high-maintenance canine ever conceived."
Hybrid cars obviously combine electric and internal-combustion features. Nancy Niemeyer mixes in the kitchen mixer.
How would a statistician write a dating advertisement? Joeri Smits shows his bid. No word about how well it has worked. How would such an ad be written for other specialists? Like you?
Common basket filters for coffee makers are cheap and ubiquitous. The bottom ones in each stack are also infamous for collapsing. I suspect that's because, the way they're formed in bunches, upper ones have pleats arched in a way that resists collapse. Lower ones have pleats arched so weakly they invite collapse. Danila Oder explores the resulting muddy coffee as "grounds" for murder.
Is it "rocket science" that's so famously difficult? Engineer Rod Hatcher says it's actually "rocket engineering" that's the really hard stuff. I think both sides are right, and making rockets work is still a horrendously complex and difficult accomplishment.
Richard Mead greatly simplifies physicists' ongoing to-do over Higgs Bosons. He spotted 7 of them huddled in a corner of his sock drawer. I hate to think what might lurk in mine.
Other topics include paper-folding, inside-out underwear, famous quotations and who didn't say them, and more goofy-named advisors and web domains.
Establishments mentioned in this issue:
* The Melbourne Institute of Precipitate Isotrophism
* Department of Regression to the Grand Mean
* University of Unreality
* University of Imaginary Numbers
* Alaskan Neurologic Center for Subaqueous Sesquiology
* Polikeness School of Nutritional Sciences
* Denver Nucleic Agency
* Plunder Island Probiotic and Bionutritional Research
* Organization for Useful Cognitive Help (OUCH)
* Bureaucratic Invidious Negative Officialdom (BINGO)
* Acquaintances of Ministerial Informal Governmental Activities (AMIGA)
* Ghastly Repulsive Invidious Non-Governmental Offices (GRINGO)
Journals mentioned in this issue:
* The Journal of Unpleasant Student Experiences
* The Journal of Plant Sociology
* Acta Comic Toxigens
* The Journal of Abnormal Locomotion in Toddlers
* International Journal of Salad Experimentation
and, as unclassifiable as its author:
Director Supreme of the Gene Dream Team
Authors come from Australia, Canada, England, Israel, and Norway, and the American states of Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Georgia, Indiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Ohio, Vermont, and Washington.
Rejectomancy
© Norman Sperling, April 7, 2012
At FogCon last week, I listened to a panel about writers getting rejected. Of course everybody hates rejection, but practically all writers endure a whole lot of it before their stories start getting accepted.
"Rejectomancy" is the writers' art of divining why a story was rejected. The editor doesn't always say, and the reasons given aren't always the whole story.
Some editors, tired of tedious editing, won't correct bad grammar to take a good article. I'm willing to "clean up" an article if I think readers would like it. I'm also willing to format in our admittedly-quirky style, rather than forcing writers to do it just for this one magazine ... which might reject their article anyway.
I asked the writers what a rejection note should say. The responses came fast, furious, and emphatic:
* Tell what would improve it.
* "Do these 3 things and I'll buy it."
* "Please send more", but only if you really mean that.
* Tell them if they're close, even if that makes rejection feel worse.
The most emphatic point, which I really needed to hear: decide FAST. I'm terribly guilty of not getting to submissions. So instead of writing up this blog post right away (I'm also behind in blogging) I'm digging into JIR's undecided submissions. It's pretty easy to recognize the 2/3 of articles that are good for JIR. But now I should explain rejections, with constructive advice. A few are "This isn't Science humor, which is what The Journal of Irreproducible Results is about." The others take some explaining.
If you've submitted something to JIR and I haven't responded, rattle my cage, and I'll get to it really soon. normsperling [at] gmail.com.
The Book on Y2K
© Norman Sperling, March 7, 2012
I would like to read a comprehensive book about Y2K, especially a competent description and analysis of the aftermath. I haven't been able to find such a book. Does one exist?
Broadening to the big issue of legacy software would generalize it from a single event to an ongoing situation. Legacy code is a real issue for many companies because a lot of original code was not optimal:
* it was written as a first try,
* under great pressure,
* in an under-funded company,
* thinking months ahead, not decades.
Inelegance is the least of its problems.
A lot has been learned about superior ways to do things since then, but later editions all have to work with the original. This weighs down products from many big companies.
A software engineer who had worked at Oracle told me that Oracle did indeed find and fix what would have failed.
I might like to retail a good book on this to readers of JIR and my websites, and customers along my Great Science Trek. If the book hasn't yet been written, who would be a good author?
The Issues of the Issue: JIR v51 #5
© Norman Sperling, December 23, 2011
The noticeable uptick in the national economy, encouraging though insufficient, is mirrored by JIR subscriptions. We're getting a few more than before, though not enough for prosperity. Part of this comes from general interest in recent scientific-press studies of (truly) irreproducible reports. Science-media critic Charlie Petit even used JIR in his lead when he commented on that - thanks Charlie!
Now in the postal system is JIR v51 #5. It's full, as always, of science humor. An MD using the pseudonym "Fizzy McFizz" wrote "All Research is Actually Made Up", supporting a conclusion that some draw from the reproducibility challenges. Burlesquing expansion on small-number statistics, Paul Monach of Boston University compares a category in which he can find 2 examples, to a huge population surrounding them.
While the Zen approach continues to interest people, Eric Levy shows that the Un-Zen life - seeking immediate gratification - seems closer to what they actually do.
Our cover article is "Ants are Superbeings!" by Australian researchers Elaine Foster and R. A. J. Reynolds. It points out many of ants' superior abilities, including their social behavior which acts in some cases like a super-organism. Serious entomologists ("ant"omologists?) are considering this, too. For one take, read Mark W. Moffett's spectacularly illustrated 2010 book Adventures Among Ants, from University of California Press.
We thank the talented young artist Marlin Peterson of Washington state for our cover art. He's a scientific illustrator who seeks to reproduce the results of Science that can't be photographed. Enjoy his website at www.marlinpeterson.com. The picture shows Argentine ants colonizing new ecological niches. The Argentine ant, Linepithema humile, is very remarkable indeed, and I'm sure we haven't heard the last of it. What remarkable things do the ants around you do?
Conferencemanship occupied some of JIR's earliest contributors, and still concerns our authors and readers. In this issue, P. Alexandre tells "How to Answer Questions" while maintaining (an illusion of) superiority.
Comedian Norm Goldblatt ties up beer, pi, the Higgs Boson, the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, ET, and religion while having "Beer With An Alien". I've had a meal with Norm myself, but we didn't get to any of those issues.
Trevor Kitson, our most prolific contributor from New Zealand, apologizes to Rudyard Kipling for his chemistry takeoff on "If".
What is the proper opposite of the Vulcan Blessing, "Live Long and Prosper"? Logician John Mariani of Lancaster University, UK, explores the possibilities. "Fail And Die Soon" stops agony too soon to be a big curse. "Die Soon Or Fail" goes in the right direction, but "Live Long Or Prosper" is "far more elegant, far more logical, and much, much nastier."
Our friend Larry Lesser of UTEP is back with a new song. Taking his cue from James Taylor's excellent Fire & Rain, Lesser talks technical in Combustion & Precipitation. And I pun right back at him in an Editor's Note.
2 contributors send up dysfunctional bureaucracies: Harry Stern of Kennesaw State University in Georgia satirizes social work's "community disorganization", while R. L. Zimdahl critiques university administration, having been part of one for many years. I'll stick to my own standards: when there's good will and good management, any system works; where there isn't, no system can work.
A question for you: experience has taught that I catch a lot more errors when I proofread paper printouts, rather than the computer screen. A little is due to the screen's less-accurate renditions of character spacing, but that doesn't explain most of my "catches". Do others experience this too? Or the reverse? Why does this happen?
Pearson Grabs Copyrights
© Norman Sperling, November 18, 2011
The Journal of Irreproducible Results receives many requests for permission to reprint items, and grants almost all of them. We are delighted to find wider audiences for our wit, and hope that intrigued readers will look us up and subscribe.
Big publishers usually have "standard" forms with "boiler-plate" legalese compiled by lawyers. In trying to cover every base to their client's advantage, they vastly overreach, often thereby ruining the deal.
JIR's most-requested item is Jerry Zar's hilarious poem, Candidate for a Pullet Surprise. It's a wonderful send-up of word processing spell-checkers. JIR has had fun with computer foibles for many decades now.
After you read it, you'll understand why we invariably reject 2 boiler-plate provisions:
* they almost always request permission to make an audio recording, but this would sound "normal" and completely destroy the reason for using the poem.
* they usually request permission to translate into certain, or "all" other languages. While similar poems could be constructed with the homonyms of other languages, they would not be translations of this one.
Now an arrogant new piece of boiler-plate has arrived:
"In the event that use of a Selection by Pearson or its affiliates exceeds this license granted to Pearson, or any other terms or obligations between Pearson and you, Pearson's sole obligation to you and the rights holder shall be to pay for such additional use or uses in accordance your or the rights holder's standard fees for such use, and the terms and conditions of this Permission Request and License shall apply to such additional uses."
So, once they get permission to use any selection, no matter how restricted, they can blithely use it any way they please, in any further publication, without asking, without limitations, and (unless they are caught) without even paying. This is a grab of copyrights almost as wide as Google's! Everything in the Universe and The Journal of Irreproducible Results emphatically reject this legalese in Pearson's form, and urge all other owners of copyrights to reject it in no uncertain terms. If Pearson violates contracts and agreements and laws, Pearson must pay the full legal penalty.
Furthermore, Pearson is an ever-changing conglomerate of other companies. It buys and sells publishing and education companies. (I wonder if they have any officer who can even list all the original companies which merged into corporations which eventually conglomerated into Pearson.) It could buy something, merge it with the unit holding this particular permission, then spin that off to some other entity about which the original copyright holder knows nothing. What an easy way to grab a lot more rights than any author intended to grant!
Such a practice threatens publishers ... including Pearson! It should be in their own best interest to:
* squelch this offensive overreaching legalese,
* send everybody who ever signed on to it a legal declaration that they abandon this provision and will never invoke it,
* apologize to authors and publishers,
* and replace whatever managers originated and approved this provision with thinking, feeling humans.
