Category: writing (Page 3 of 4)

Slice of rocky road cake on a white plate

Reviewing a manuscript in two hours

2023-03-01 / Luis

Today I declined to review a manuscript for a journal because the English language in the title and abstract, which is the only part I received, was quite poor. The manuscript sounded more or less interesting, but the time and effort to deal with it was something that I could not afford and simultaneously maintain my sanity.

I can spend, roughly, two hours in a review. There is too much going on in the world to spend longer than that in a low return activity. If I can’t finish it in two hours I will postpone it and the manuscript will quickly disappear under a pile of newer paper.

I see my job as judging the plausibility of the manuscript. Does it make sense? Can you even get that type of results coming from your data? Does it fit in the broader context?

I will not fix the writing: that’s not my job. A proper editor should fix that.
I don’t care about the format of the references and won’t check if all of them are in the list. That’s a job for editor/publisher. I have only 2 hours.
I won’t derive all the equations or check the computer code. I have only 2 hours.
I will check that you’re using the right or close-enough methods. I will point out when the methods are wrong or silly inefficient.
I won’t write huge lists of changes, but only the most relevant ones.
I’ll check if the conclusions make sense with respect to what you did.

As I have only 2 hours, I won’t take on a manuscript that requires fighting with the writing to figure out what’s going on. I will spend longer, some times much longer if I am reading and evaluating the work of students, but not for a random person in internet.

I don’t like the current publication system, which is a part of a larger system that feels like a pyramid scheme. The incentives are wrong, we are pushing people to publish too much, there are many more people trying to publish and their careers depend on making it in a system with a false sense of scarcity: there should be no more page limits for an “issue”.

Someone may say, but 2 hours is not long enough to “properly review” a manuscript. Well, these are my rules, if you don’t like them… tough luck.

Literature Clock showing texts that match computer time.

Flotsam 15: inference

2023-01-31 / Luis

Before I lose the link—as I’m deleting toots & tweets two weeks after I post the—I should save the address for “Introduction to Modern Causal Inference” by Alejandro Schuler and Mark van der Laan. It is a book draft that looks quite readable.

Also love Xanthe Tynehorne, Esq.’s Compendium of Curious Words. Weird enough to make it interesting.

Count me fascinated by the Literature Clock by Johs Enevoldsen, which presents a text from a novel, poem, etc with the time of your computer clock.

I have kept on adding links until 5th February:

This Bayesian Data Analysis course, by Aki Vehtari, based on the classic BDA3 book (link to the free online version) looks really interesting. Even more so if you already have done some Bayesian stats work/study before.

Against Copyediting: Is It Time to Abolish the Department of Corrections? by Helen Rubinstein got me thinking about how we “correct” while editing texts, in my case mostly writings by postgrad students.

Crane in front of building, iPhone + RNI Films B&W filter (2017-12-10)

Why not film?

2018-01-11 / Luis

“Why don’t you try film?”, he asked.

“I can’t afford the time and expense required to work with film”, I muttered. Perhaps a truer statement would be that, right now, is not a high-enough prioritary to allocate the time and resources to go for film.

My connection with film started in 1980. I got shooting using a Pentax MX, with a fantastic 50mm f1.4 which I still use, and I learnt to process and print in my high school’s darkroom. A group of us and an enthusiastic teacher put together that insanely hot, bare bones room.

Changing film was like getting a new sensor for a digital camera. Light sensitivity, contrast, grain (sensor noise), etc could be drastically different when using black and white. Response to colour could completely change the mood of a shot. However, one was stuck with this alternate sensor for the length of the roll (often 24 or 36 shots).

But let’s face it, modern cameras are technological marvels, produce crazy sharp images, just a bit… aseptic. And here comes the film nostalgy, which is channelled via film emulation: putting the sensor I had in mind behind that aseptic image.

I do not use film emulation while taking pictures, but I imagine a type of film while shooting. In my head, the picture that I see/feel is black and white low/medium/high contrast, or a gritty underexposed portrait, or a cool colour negative, or even a vivid slide film. Some time later I will take the cold digital phone picture and use RNI Films (one of the multiple companies that make reasonable film emulations) and obtain a photo which looks like what I had in mind. Most of my photos these days use film emulation. PS 2023-04-17 16:50 NZST: I’m now using Rawtherapee to process many of my photos, relying on its emulation filters.

This process is not perfect, but it works and I can express myself in a meaningful way. Hard to ask much more from a piece of software.

Note: Image The crane, iPhone + RNI Films (2017-12-10)

Cicadas

2011-01-27 / Luis

These last two weeks the soundscape has been invaded by cicadas, sometimes deafening, sometimes slightly highlighting the silence. I am not used to them and the surrounding humidity; it is forty three and a half degrees South!

How do I explain this? I am at the Guaitecas‘s latitude, but in the middle of nowhere. I can travel to the West for thousands of kilometers over water, pass below Australia, below Asia, below Africa and have nowhere to stop (except for water). Because of some reason I do not understand, I find this distance relaxing, but most of the time there is no precise combination of temperature and humidity for cicadas. I can travel towards the East for thousands of kilometers over water and have nowhere to stop until reaching the Guaitecas.

Sometimes I am fascinated by so much water: Where does it come from, what is it going to happen to it?Is there anything special on this gigantic cross of parallel and meridian or is it just an accident full of cicadas?

The answer is, the answers are [transmission interrupted].

Written slightly South from Christchurch, 43 degrees and fifty minutes latitude South.

Preamble to the instructions on how to wind a watch

2010-04-07 / Luis

Think of this: when they present you with a watch, they are gifting you with a tiny flowering hell, a wreath of roses, a dungeon of air. They aren’t simply wishing the watch on you, and many more, and we hope it will last you, it’s a good grand, Swiss, seventeen rubies; they aren’t just giving you this minute stonecutter which will bind you by the wrist and walk along with you. They are giving you–they don’t know it, it’s terrible that they don’t know it–they are gifting you with a new fragile and precarious piece of yourself, something that’s yours but not a part of your body, that you have to strap to your body like your belt, like a tiny, furious bit of something hanging onto your wrist. They gift you with the job of having to wind it every day, an obligation to wind it, so that it goes on being a watch, they gift you with the obsession of looking into jewelry-shop windows to check the exact time, check the radio announcer, check the telephone service. They give you the gift of fear, someone will steal it from you, it’ll fall on the street and get broken. They give you the gift of your trademark and the assurance that it’s a trademark better than others, they gift you with the impulse to compare your watch with other watches. They aren’t giving you a watch, you are the gift, they are giving you yourself for the watch’s birthday.

—Julio Cortázar, from “Cronopios and Famas”