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Month: August 2016
How many books can an Academic expect to sell?
With monographs, you’re pretty much selling to university libraries. And the books are priced to match: north of $150. If you still 300 copies, you’re doing well. Answered 2016-08-29 [Originally posted on http://quora.com/How-many-books-can-an-Academic-expect-to-sell/answer/Nick-Nicholas-5]
What are some examples of translations of literature that are better than the original?
Germans have long thought that the Schlegel & Tieck translations of Shakespeare are better than the original. The conceit of Shakespeare being a translation from the original Klingon is an echo of that. Not necessarily better, but certainly smoother is the best known translation of Cavafy, by Keeley & Sherrard. A lot of Cavafy is […]
How can we build a microservice using Go?
Like you build a microservice in any other programming language, but with the advantage that concurrency is baked into the language. You’ll need a messaging system as your backend for services, that can talk to Golang. Kafka will, and so will NATS. You will need a HTTP server front end in Golang, that receives RESTful […]
Why aren’t brown eyes romanticized unlike other eye colors?
Several culture-specific factors, as others have pointed out: scarcity, attitudes towards ethnic minorities, constructs of beauty, yadda yadda. I conducted the extremely scientific experiment of searching mavromata “brown-eyed girl” and galanomata “blue-eyed girl” on the Greek lyrics site stixoi.info. Brown-eyed win 87 to 20—despite blue-eyed Greeks being rather rare. And there is a definite cultural […]
Among all the dictators that ever existed, which one would you deem to be the worst and why?
People loathe the pissing contest between Hitler and Stalin that always arises with these questions, but it’s curiously absent from this thread. So: Stalin. Because with Hitler, at least you knew who the enemies were throughout his reign. With Stalin, the enemies changed depending on what side of bed he got up on. If both […]
How old were you when you first flew on an airplane and what was it like?
I was 8: it was the flight on which we returned to Greece from Australia for four years: 1979. Singapore Airlines, I believe. I don’t remember much about the last time I flew to Sydney, let alone anything from the ’70s. But I do remember: Cool exotic beverages, the like of which I had never […]
How many countries have you been to?
I assume there’s a prize at the end of this? No? Well, I wouldn’t win it anyway. Australia Greece Cyprus USA Austria Canada Netherlands Belgium France New Zealand Turkey Armenia Italy UK Germany Grade: B-. Could do better. Answered 2016-08-24 [Originally posted on http://quora.com/How-many-countries-have-you-been-to/answer/Nick-Nicholas-5]
Why did Australia choose to limit parenting roles in their survey to mother and father instead of gender neutral options?
http://mashable.com/2016/08/05/same-sex-parents-slam-census/?utm_cid=mash-com-Tw-main-link#FPWYDDaXDiq5 Inertia. Census questions are a slow moving beast, and getting them updated is extremely difficult. The question on volunteerism in this year’s census was a request from Peter Costello, three censuses ago. The Australian Bureau of Statistics could not afford to spend the money to get rid of it. There is plenty of cowboy […]
Who do you think, of all famous people (dead or alive), deserves a biopic film?
Frederick Douglass. I mean, I’m white Australian, and I’m flabbergasted that Hollywood has still not gotten there. Maybe it’s because I’m white Australian. Epic Rap Battles of History is… a start, but he deserves a lot more: Answered 2016-08-19 [Originally posted on http://quora.com/Who-do-you-think-of-all-famous-people-dead-or-alive-deserves-a-biopic-film/answer/Nick-Nicholas-5]
Do people in other countries “hate” their capital city?
The reason why we in Australia built Canberra in a middle of nowhere sheep paddock was precisely that the two main cities, Melbourne and Sydney, hated each other. NSW and Victoria were quite independent colonies before Federation; and Australia is a federation, as in decentralised state, precisely because of that independence. (As with other federations, […]