Pier review

I want also to say this:

Have you noticed how like two different peer reviewers will have totally different reactions to things?  Ok, Ok, often they both don't like the same thing.

But dudes. Often Reviewer A hates something and Reviewer B doesn't care about it, but hates something else. That happens a lot too.

I am just saying. Pier review is not all that helpful, I think we can all get behind that sentiment. But what about peer review?

peer review is censorship

Have you ever noticed in somebody's book where in the intro they totally disavow some term/concept, like, 'there is a literature on term/concept X, and some of it is relevant to this project, but X is also totally not applicable to the cases I'm looking at, and so I would never use term/concept X, I am not going to write X never, ever.'

And then in the chapters of the book they basically prove that concept X does indeed apply to their cases. But they never use the actual term X. You know?

That's because of peer review. The peer reviewers told them to take out X. So they did--sort of.

That is totally going to be me. 

Could be worse

Just to update this situation: the book manuscript suffered disaster in the wacky, wacky land beyond the Misty Mountains that is the academic publishing industry. But not nearly the worst kind of disaster.

I have heard much worse. I should not complain, really.

Things are bad for book manuscripts in the land of academic publishing.

 Yeah, that bad.

(For anyone who does not recognize that volcano, it's in Mordor. Recent conversation with CC while watching a certain HBO series:

Me: Do you know what is going on even though you did not watch the books? Do you want me to say who that guy is?

CC: No, I know.

[long pause]

CC: Is this the one where they are going to meet elves to get some kind of jewels?

Me: Uh, do you mean rings?

CC: Yes!

Me: No. This is the other one.)