Revenge is a dish, etc.
Apr. 7th, 2003 01:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sanpaku_backupA review of the US history textbook that I worked on for my now-defunct former employer, in this month's Journal of American History.
I fuckin' love it, and not just because he said nice things about the things I wrote and bad things about the stuff I didn't. I love it because it proves what myself and many others said all along: "uh... won't people notice that this sucks?" Yes, indeed they did. He pointed out so many of the abundantly manifest flaws in the whole enterprise. If the bastards still existed I would walk in there and do a little "I told you so" dance.
I dropped a little note to the author telling him what it was like to watch the sausages being made. I told him not to send it on to Bob, but that if he knew where Bob is now, there are some furious professors who adopted the textbook who would probably pay good money for that information. I hope Bob found himself a good bunker in Iraq somewhere.
I fuckin' love it, and not just because he said nice things about the things I wrote and bad things about the stuff I didn't. I love it because it proves what myself and many others said all along: "uh... won't people notice that this sucks?" Yes, indeed they did. He pointed out so many of the abundantly manifest flaws in the whole enterprise. If the bastards still existed I would walk in there and do a little "I told you so" dance.
I dropped a little note to the author telling him what it was like to watch the sausages being made. I told him not to send it on to Bob, but that if he knew where Bob is now, there are some furious professors who adopted the textbook who would probably pay good money for that information. I hope Bob found himself a good bunker in Iraq somewhere.
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no subject
Date: 2003-04-07 02:10 pm (UTC)What the...? That's totally fucking stupid!
I wonder whether college students would be as patient as their instructors if they had trouble locating something in the text, or if they would simply give up.
This isn't even a question. Of course they would give up. Sheesh.
An online textbook without an index or a search engine? This has to be some kind of a joke. This is what it was like working for Thomson. A constant feeling that the people in charge were so totally clueless that it didn't matter how smart or capable the rest of the staff was, because everything good they did was going to be ruined by idiots anyway.
Re:
Date: 2003-04-07 02:15 pm (UTC)"Well, you know, we devised a very sophistimicated modular information delivery system that empowers the student learning -- STOP LOOKING BACK THERE! Just look at the pretty flashing lights, ALL RIGHT?"
Yeah, I know that at some point there was a site search function that they had that didn't work. You would type in "Washington" and get listings for the French revolution but not the American. Shit like that. They never fixed it. I wonder if they just eliminated it rather than have it so obviously not work.
no subject
Date: 2003-04-07 05:41 pm (UTC)