Re: Open Choice Singular Limits.

[Ari Belenkiy <belenka@mail.biu.ac.il>]

Well, it is like 'Richard Feinman' with one little "n" missing. 
No offence intended.

Ari Belenkiy

Mathematics Department
Bar-Ilan University


----- Original Message -----
From: "Richard Feinman" <RFeinman@downstate.edu>
To: <liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu>
Sent: Monday, July 10, 2006 10:24 PM
Subject: Open Choice Singular Limits.

> Q: What's worse than biting into an apple and finding a worm?
> A: Finding half a worm.
>
> Michael Berry, in a wonderful, if serious physics,
> (self-archived) article in Physics Today (
> http://www.phy.bris.ac.uk/people/berry_mv/the_papers/Berry341.pdf
> ) carries the old joke a little further:
>
> Discovering one-third of a maggot would be more distressing
> still: The less you find, the more you might have eaten.
> Extrapolating to the limit, an encounter with no maggot at all
> should be the ultimate bad-apple experience.  This remorseless
> logic fails, however, because the limit is singular.
>
> If open choice publishers provides a subscriber discount for
> issues that contain open access articles, then, of course, the
> more such articles published the greater the discount until, in
> the limit of all open access, subscribers will be paying a very
> low price, indeed.  Of course, now everybody besides the
> subscriber will also have access but that really doesn't change
> the savings to the subscribers.
>
> In the apple case, as Berry explains: A very small maggot
> fraction (f << 1) is qualitatively different from no maggot
> (f=0).
>
> So there are singular limits in journal publishing too.  Or are
> there? RF
>
> = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
> Richard D. Feinman, Professor of Biochemistry
> = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =