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I'm not putting a dent in studio sales by downloading a movie. They hardly make anything on the DVD sales compared to ticket sales.

That's not quite right. DVD sales are extremely profitable. Slate has a breakdown of the way studios make money. For 2004, they have a loss of $2.22 billion on $7.4 billion in ticket sales compared to a profit of $13.95 billion on $20.9 billion in video sales.

His speech subroutines are really sub-par.

The Poetry of Donald Rumsfeld

The Unknown
As we know,
There are known knowns.
There are things we know we know.
We also know
There are known unknowns.
That is to say
We know there are some things
We do not know.
But there are also unknown unknowns,
The ones we don't know
We don't know.

--Feb. 12, 2002, Department of Defense news briefing

and my favorite

Clarity
I think what you'll find,
I think what you'll find is,
Whatever it is we do substantively,
There will be near-perfect clarity
As to what it is.

And it will be known,
And it will be known to the Congress,
And it will be known to you,
Probably before we decide it,
But it will be known.

--Feb. 28, 2003, Department of Defense briefing

The karma whore - If some one else has already block quoted TFA, he can always be counted on for a link to wikipedia.

+h3 1337-5p34k!|\|6 h4x0r - vvh4+3v3r !5 541) !|\| 7331 50|\|)5 pr0f0|\|).

The troll - The evolution of this species has more to do with Godwin's Law than Darwin's.

The /. humorist - All his post are belong to his welcome new Natalie-Portman-covered-in-hot-grits overlords.

The tag-along - Though incapable of original thought, this poster can flog any subject through mimicry until all humor and purpose has been beaten out of it.

A good article from Slate about a guy and his failed coffeeshop business. Not quite the same, I realize, but still very insightful.

But why did they do it? It wasn't sociopathy...They were out for revenge, and by that point it didn't matter to them whose blood was spilled.

He is disgusted with the morons around him. These are not the rantings of an angry young man, picked on by jocks until he's not going to take it anymore. These are the rantings of someone with a messianic-grade superiority complex, out to punish the entire human race for its appalling inferiority. It may look like hate, but "It's more about demeaning other people," says Hare.

Harris' pattern of grandiosity, glibness, contempt, lack of empathy, and superiority read like the bullet points on Hare's Psychopathy Checklist and convinced Fuselier and the other leading psychiatrists close to the case that Harris was a psychopath.

It begins to explain Harris' unbelievably callous behavior: his ability to shoot his classmates, then stop to taunt them while they writhed in pain, then finish them off. Because psychopaths are guided by such a different thought process than non-psychopathic humans, we tend to find their behavior inexplicable. But they're actually much easier to predict than the rest of us once you understand them. Psychopaths follow much stricter behavior patterns than the rest of us because they are unfettered by conscience, living solely for their own aggrandizement.

None of his victims means anything to the psychopath. He recognizes other people only as means to obtain what he desires. Not only does he feel no guilt for destroying their lives, he doesn't grasp what they feel. The truly hard-core psychopath doesn't quite comprehend emotions like love or hate or fear, because he has never experienced them directly.

"Because of their inability to appreciate the feelings of others, some psychopaths are capable of behavior that normal people find not only horrific but baffling," Hare writes. "For example, they can torture and mutilate their victims with about the same sense of concern that we feel when we carve a turkey for Thanksgiving dinner."

FBI after incident report done with the input of psychiatrists and psychologists reached a totally different conclusion http://www.slate.com/id/2099203/.

Harris is the challenge. He was sweet-faced and well-spoken. Adults, and even some other kids, described him as "nice." But Harris was cold, calculating, and homicidal. "Klebold was hurting inside while Harris wanted to hurt people," Fuselier says. Harris was not merely a troubled kid, the psychiatrists say, he was a psychopath.

In popular usage, almost any crazy killer is a "psychopath." But in psychiatry, it's a very specific mental condition that rarely involves killing, or even psychosis. "Psychopaths are not disoriented or out of touch with reality, nor do they experience the delusions, hallucinations, or intense subjective distress that characterize most other mental disorders," writes Dr. Robert Hare, in Without Conscience, the seminal book on the condition. (Hare is also one of the psychologists consulted by the FBI about Columbine and by Slate for this story*.) "Unlike psychotic individuals, psychopaths are rational and aware of what they are doing and why. Their behavior is the result of choice, freely exercised." Diagnosing Harris as a psychopath represents neither a legal defense, nor a moral excuse. But it illuminates a great deal about the thought process that drove him to mass murder.

Bullies aren't why Columbine happened. I've suffered bullies as have most people in their lives and we've yet to go on some killing spree. There are millions of examples of people who've played video games and not turned violent, the same is true of those that have been subjected to bullies.

>The mass media would have labeled Mother Theresa a terrorist if they thought it would drive up ratings.

What, that showboating fanatical little Albanian fraud who sucked up to con-men and dictators but barely treated the poor?

Here you go:

"Mommie Dearest"

The pope beatifies Mother Teresa, a fanatic, a fundamentalist, and a fraud.
By Christopher Hitchens
Posted Monday, Oct. 20, 2003
http://www.slate.com/id/2090083/

[....]
MT was not a friend of the poor. She was a friend of poverty. She said that suffering was a gift from God. She spent her life opposing the only known cure for poverty, which is the empowerment of women and the emancipation of them from a livestock version of compulsory reproduction. And she was a friend to the worst of the rich, taking misappropriated money from the atrocious Duvalier family in Haiti (whose rule she praised in return) and from Charles Keating of the Lincoln Savings and Loan. Where did that money, and all the other donations, go? The primitive hospice in Calcutta was as run down when she died as it always had been--she preferred California clinics when she got sick herself--and her order always refused to publish any audit. But we have her own claim that she opened 500 convents in more than a hundred countries, all bearing the name of her own order. Excuse me, but this is modesty and humility?

The recall of Gary Davis was just about as dirty a move as I've seen in politics

Congratulations on learning to read and write at such an early age.

By the standards of American politics, the recall of Gary Davis was squeaky clean. He was very unpopular; California law provides for recall elections; the procedure was followed, and he was duly recalled. The voting system (which the ACLU attacked) was exactly the same as the voting system under which Gary Davis had been elected.

You might find it interesting to research some truly dirty moves in American politics, all of which, I assume, occurred before you were born:

1. Chicago Mayor Daley's role in the 1960 presidential election. I couldn't find a nonpartisan American source on this; the BBC has an article, though. Incidentally, even many pro-Democrat accounts, e.g. this, conclude that "fraud clearly occurred in Cook County".
2. Gerrymandering, by both parties, in all House elections in some states. Here is a short account of gerrymandering in Texas - by the Democrats in 1991 and by the Republicans in 2003. Perfectly legal. Happens in several other states.
3. Voting irregularities in Ohio in the 2004 presidential election. I don't have a URL, but since you're obviously a dyed-in-the-wool Democrat I'm sure you'll believe it without one. My recollection of the news at the time is that in districts which were likely to vote overwhelmingly for Kerry, there weren't enough voting stations, so people had to queue for several hours to cast their votes. Not surprisingly, many of them gave up.

There is LOTS more dirt in American politics. By the time you're old enough to vote, a smart kid like you will have figured that out, I'm sure.

• Investors don't like plunking down money without a very solid concept of what it is they are paying for.
• Start with a drawing (any flavour of CAD will do) of the design down to the nuts and bolts that hold it together. That will give you a good idea of the raw materials that will be needed to build the contraption.
• Spec the code that will need to be written for your microcontrollers. Don't write the code. Just write the high level logic that would be used to write the code. This will be good for estimates on time to flesh out the code. You need good coding estimates to plan when you can deliver the first prototype.
• Read one of the most mocked quotes of Donald Rumsfeld a few times. You are going to have to write down the things that do do not know. Things that might go wrong, things that you'll have to "figure out", things that you will need help with, etc. You (obviously) cannot write down the things you do not know, but a little risk management goes a long way towards getting funding. People with money like to know the "known unknowns".
• Profit is a Good Thing(TM). Explain in one paragraph (should be REALLY easy considering what you're talking about) how this investment will make money. Yes, it should be shared with everyone. But your initial investor will need to make his money back over a limited period of time. Selling a few of these to make your investor some money will be a necessity.
• Outside help is always good. Someone else to talk over the guts of the thing. You can't do everything by yourself, and you might get to spend a few nights with your family instead of slaving away at a life-long project... :) Fire me an email if you'd like.

Stereotypes are part of human psychology because, more often than not, they are statistically the right thing to think. If you buy into Bayesian reasoning, every statement has a "prior" value - a degree of belief assigned to it before any actual information on that statement has been gathered.

It is the experience of most individuals that true computer 'geeks' are rare among females, and therefore it is especially surprising to find one. Many of the few female CS majors I knew while doing my degree were anything but computer geeks (indeed I think they were very much bothered by them).

In most situations these stereotypes help an individual because a male geek is less likely to start spouting unappreciated computer nonsense out to a random female until and unless he has reason to believe (sometimes incredulously) that she would "get" it.

Another factor is that it seems (though this is a bit contraversial) that while the average intelligences of males and females are the same, that the standard deviation is somewhat higher for males. So there are fewer "genius" level females, but also fewer "idiot" level males. There is a hypothesis that this may be explained by X chromosome-linked genetic factors, which have much higher variation when a single gene is present (in males) than in females. Another explaination is that males are born in a ratio that's totally unnecessary, which explains why males are much more likely to engage in risky behavior, and possibly even express genetic traits in a more risky fashion. This article has a bit more along those lines, though I cannot vouch for its authority.

I really hate how political correctness has surpressed studies of these types of things - I'm very much a feminist and believe it is important to continue to advance the rights of females, after all even conservatives should see that it's important to make the best use out of your population. I really hate seeing someone get in trouble for saying these things are issues that should be studied.

Slate article from 2004 about electronic voting machines in another democracy http://www.slate.com/id/2107388/

Happens all the time in any non-dead language.

Chuck

You're quite right of course. If the "resistance" in Iraq confined its attacks to America soldiers, they would be freedom fighters. In reality, attacks on American troops are rare. They mostly target other Iraqis who simply aren't the "right" type of Muslim. That barely even qualifies as terrorism; it's more along the lines of a slow, decentralized holocaust.

New data reveal, surprisingly, that the vast majority of the Iraqi insurgents' attacks are still aimed not at Iraqi security forces or at civilians, but rather at U.S. and coalition troops. In other words, as much as was the case a year or two ago, the Iraqi insurgency is primarily an anti-occupation insurgency.

The statistics--compiled by the multinational military command in Iraq and reproduced in a report released Wednesday by the Government Accountability Office--raise anew a basic question in the debate over the future of U.S. policy toward Iraq: Is the presence of American troops doing more harm or more good?

Imagine if the French resistance in WW2 had schismed into seperate Catholic and Protestant factions, and they'd spent all their time killing each other instead of collecting useful intelligence for the Allies

The following snips are from Slate's recent article on the long tail:

"At Slate, our inventory is our articles. We publish 20 or so stories every weekday, but we also have a backlog of about 33,000 pieces in our archives. Because those stories are freely available to our readers, a chunk of our traffic each day comes not from our "hits"--current pieces that are promoted on our home page, which typically draw tens of thousands of readers--but from older pieces with narrower appeal. "

"Why did the piece pull in such consistent numbers? Google. When readers type "Girls Gone Wild" into Google's search box--seeking intellectual succor, no doubt--Levy's piece is the fourth hit. The story here, of course, is not that Levy's dispatches got 2,354 hits last Tuesday; Slate as a whole pulled in about 1.9 million hits that day. The story is that that traffic was free--we paid for the piece years ago, and we didn't expend any additional man-hours last week assigning, editing, or producing it. That means Levy's dispatches provided 2,354 chances for our advertisers to reach our readers--and pay us for the privilege of doing so--without costing us a thing. " Whole article is here: http://www.slate.com/id/2146301/

I think you're right, they seem to be missing the point of the "long tail." (By they, I mean I've read something like this recently at Slate.com.) The long tail seems to be taken to task for not being "big" - but it's not supposed to be big, it's the left-overs for the niche merchants and individual artists.

...is going fairly well. I cannot say that I've follow this closely from across the pond, but a recent Slate article praises the judge for not falling for the government line, doing exactly the opposite of what this other judge did (ie he said that the "We have to be careful for our national security!" stuff is a bunch of hooey).

And here I was lead to believe (by various slashdotters, you know who you are!) that when it comes to litigation, the EFF was nigh incompetent. Looks like they're doing better than the ACLU, although it might just be a different judge thing.

You should understand that the torture methods used by the CIA are employed to save lives.

And when Nazi scientists experimented with freezing treatments on Jewish concentration camp inmates it was also to save lives (in this case the lives of Luftwaffe pilots falling into the North Sea). Equally if you follow the arguments of Steven Levitt oon abortion saving lives (in this case of people not being murdered), you could take the same view. However in both cases the cost of saving those lives is too high.

There are too many problems with torture to go into but lets begin with a copule:

1. It does not produce the truth, it produces confessions. If that is the aim then, moral considerations aside, it is effective. But for the "war on terror" we are torturing poeple to gain the truth. People under torture will say what they think the torturer wants to hear, not necessarily the truth, just so that the torture can stop. Hence the use of torture was very useful for Stalin in retrieving confessions for show trials

2. The other issue is what you do with innocent people who were tortured. There certainly will be some.

3. Historically torture has been abused when it has been applied. ...that preschool world just isn't the one we live in

I'm sorry you seem to inhabit a preschool world, when the CIA are white knights protecting us. The evidence of the last couple of years would seem to suggest that they are not entirely benevolent and that they not entirely competant (which also leads to innocent people being detained).

I think you need to consider the implications of your position. You are effectively saying that you could see Jesus pouring the water on the cloth over somone's face, knowing that they think that they are drowning.

BTW your resume link on your homepage (http://www.afn.org/~afn31208/resume.html) 404s.

He's a hypocrite for cherrypicking his morality, while expecting the government to force it on others who don't share it.

If you're actually interested in his actual hypocricy, not just the morality of his gambling vice, the reason it's more than just an ad hominem criticism of that powerful politician is very clear.

Dude, don't ruin our childish fanasies with your boring "facts"! It would be so cool, like... TYRANNOSAURS IN F-14s!!!!

I still bust out at that comic. Ah, Bill Waterston, I miss your genius.... Full comic here

The ads star an actual senior managing director of the company, a man named Yukawa Hidekazu, who looks much like what you imagine Japanese salarymen look like. In the first, Yukawa eavesdrops on two kids saying, "Sega video games suck. Playstation is much better." Melancholy, Yukawa heads to a bar, gets drunk, and on his way home scuffles with some thugs, who beat him up. The commercial ends with him collapsed in the doorway of his house, as an offscreen voice exhorts, "Come on, Mr. Yukawa, get up!"

In the second ad, Yukawa is on a remote mountaintop, dressed in a business suit, talking to a group of seemingly friendly children who tell him that Sega has changed for the better. "Really?" he asks, at which point the children's eyes turn black and they scream, "No, it's a joke! We don't need Sega--we want Playstation!" The earth then opens beneath Yukawa and swallows him, just before he wakes up on the floor of his office to realize that his secretary has caught him daydreaming. The ad ends with him reflecting on his nightmare.

And oh what it does for Winona Ryder's figure!

Why SHOULD a director have this so-called right to dictate that others view the precise film he made?

Actually, this precedent has been up and running for 30 years in the US, and was set by a 1976 case brought by the Monty Python team, fed up with US networks butchering the early series. Cited in the Slate article on this case. See also VARA.

Actually, I doubt that it did have anything to do with them being bullied (especially since they weren't constantly bullied). It probably had more to do with the fact that Harris was a psychopath and Klebold was depressed and suicidal.

http://www.slate.com/id/2099203/

Tim Wu just had an article on Slate last week about how China is trying to grow their own film industry.

One of the interesting points: China has to orient (no pun intended) their films to an American audience because rampant piracy in China means that there isn't enough of a local market to support Chinese films.

I've heard the same thing from Chinese video game makers, they have to make games that will sell in places where copyright is to some degree respected because they would starve trying to live off the money they can make in their home market.

If everyone pirated everything we would have no Lord of the Rings movies, no video games like Halo or Grand Theft Auto -- we'd still have small indy films and subscription games like WoW, but piracy only works now because it's a group of parasites feeding off media that the rest of us pay for.

Ahh yes, I remember buying a Palm IIIx organizer through Mobshop around 1998. It was as cheap as any other site, and if I could just get 7 friends to buy one, the price would drop an additional $3.74. They even offered to spam my friends for me. This of course is a recipe for having 7 fewer friends.

Mobshop were so pathetically grateful for my business they sent me Christmas cards and swag until they folded. Not a sustainable business model.

Before Amazon and eBay dominated, there were lots of alternative approaches to selling bulk lots of goods on the Internet; for example OnSale.com tried Dutch auctions, reverse auctions, etc. Slate has a good article on the economic theory behind it all.

The problem with such bulk schemes is everyone involved is gambling that somewhere in the supply chain there's a warehouse overstocked with goods, i.e. that distribution is inefficient. I think the real power of such auctions is only apparent when manufacturers sell direct. They reap the most benefit from economies of scale and tailoring production to demand. Imagine if Amazon was just a showroom for purchases built-to-order and shipped directly from the manufacturer. You'd buy an organizer through Amazon for $150 with a firm shipping date from the manufacturer, and a promise that if more people order before then, your price will go down. To motivate you further, Amazon could provide you a spiff code such that if family and friends bought more, you'd get a share in Amazon's slight commission.

ShowroomShipDirect, TailoredLeanProduction, and PSC (Personal Spiff Code) are all © skierpage, contact me for licensing.

I have always expected that there would be a movement where a man and woman get married and pick a new family name. It just seemed logical to me. Neither party has to take the other's name, and they also get to share a common family name which would symbolise the bond. Hasn't happened yet, but I still figure it might

There was a Slate article on hard labor recently. The context was military punishment, but maybe it's relevant? Maybe not. Either way, I think I'll go double check my grant proposals ...

So your solution is..

Solution? I didn't mention a solution. I was describing the problem.

There is no solution. You can't make other people do what you want. Therefore, you can't make them be good friends. Therefore, you can't solve the problem of people not being able to have good friends.

There are some ways to partly stop causing the problem, but there's certainly no way to solve it.

You know maybe if we spent more money on trying to educate the masses they wouldn't be such clueless fucktards.

Yes. Profanity and mass-condescension are sure to make things better. Also taking other people's money to enforce your worldview on the "clueless". Very progressive.

Maybe they would demand facts from their news outlets. They would elect representatives that actually represent them. They wouldn't buy into all the mindless consumerborg bullshit.

Do you know Jane Smiley? Her attitude can be summarized: We hate middle America so much, why won't they vote for us? I think you'd like her.

SEGA Base

Essentially, I get from this that a lack of co-operation between the American and Japanese branches were it's biggest problem. (Oh, and Nintendo screwing them over with the Congress didn't help either.)

The Dreamcast would have had to have been a spectacular success to pull SEGA out of its financial doldrums, and the people at SEGA seemed to know it was a longshot (see the following article):

"Come on, Mr. Yukawa, get up!"

The ads star an actual senior managing director of the company, a man named Yukawa Hidekazu, who looks much like what you imagine Japanese salarymen look like. In the first, Yukawa eavesdrops on two kids saying, "Sega video games suck. Playstation is much better." Melancholy, Yukawa heads to a bar, gets drunk, and on his way home scuffles with some thugs, who beat him up. The commercial ends with him collapsed in the doorway of his house, as an offscreen voice exhorts, "Come on, Mr. Yukawa, get up!"

In the second ad, Yukawa is on a remote mountaintop, dressed in a business suit, talking to a group of seemingly friendly children who tell him that Sega has changed for the better. "Really?" he asks, at which point the children's eyes turn black and they scream, "No, it's a joke! We don't need Sega--we want Playstation!" The earth then opens beneath Yukawa and swallows him, just before he wakes up on the floor of his office to realize that his secretary has caught him daydreaming. The ad ends with him reflecting on his nightmare.

Stephen Landsburg, a libertarian economist, is one step ahead of you. A while back he proposed a method of doing this, and further, assessing how much should be paid. Basically, every time something is patented, the government opens it to bids -- people and companies bid on the patent. Then, the government flips a coin, and if it wins, it pays the patentholder the highest bid (which, keep in mind, a business made) and "liberates" the patent. If it loses, the winning bidder pays and gets the patent. Now, you can modify the formula for payment as you wish in order to get more or fewer patents liberated. The point is to have some way of knowing how valuable the patent is and thus what the compensation should be.

Does a 500-pound bomb really weigh 500 pounds?

No. Zarqawi got hit with two different weapons--a laser-guided bomb called the GBU-12 and a satellite-guided bomb called the GBU-38. They weigh 606 pounds and 552 pounds, respectively.

Both weapons are considered "500-pound" munitions because they're based on a standard 500-pound bomb known as the Mk 82. The body of an Mk 82 is augmented with a fuze, a guidance system, and other accessories like wings and tail fins; all of these add to its total weight.

But the Mk 82 itself packs only about 200 pounds of explosives. It gets the rest of its weight from a steel case, about half an inch thick, that helps to penetrate targets and provides material for fragmentation.

The "500-pound" designation doesn't give you much information about how powerful a given weapon might be. It's more useful for figuring out how many bombs will fit onto your aircraft.

The greatest one of all however is Filmspotting (formerly Cinecast), a movie podcast which frankly is the best reviewers in all of media. A normal review contains what, 3-4 minutes of discussion, maybe 6-7 if it's an article. The Filmspotting guys routinely talk for seventeen (17!) minutes about a movie, incredibly smart and intellectual discussion that really dives deep into actors, scripts, direction, theme, etc. of every movie it reviews. That is what makes podcasting great, by not being contrained by a corporation, people are free to create their own formats, and have complete creative control. Most often that means it's gonna suck, but when it doesn't you get something like Filmspotting which is frankly unparalelled in quality.

Here's from my last response to an atheist thinking Religion was the solution for mores:

I'm sure the last thing you want to do is sit in a cafe and read, but here's a couple more links: http://www.tdcj.state.tx.us/stat/executedoffenders .htm
(got remorse? nope. one of the final statements is from somebody who can't wait to meet his victims in heaven. word. I can actually admire that level of forgiveness but what does it do for bad people?)
W's gov't funded intensive Christianity prison program increased recidivism. ("Faith-Based Fudging" via http://www.annotatedrant.com/)

And more if you're into this whole partisan thing. . .
Not sure what Christianity is supposed to do. It's not exactly rational. In the Congo: A journey into the most savage war in the world (child witches! bulletproof soldiers! religion gone wild)

In fact, Bush's usage is so common that it appears in at least one dictionary. Merriam-Webster's, by far the most liberal dictionary, includes the pronunciation, though with a note identifying it as "a pronunciation variant that occurs in educated speech but that is considered by some to be questionable or unacceptable." A 1961 Merriam-Webster's edition was the first to include "nucular"; the editors received so many indignant letters that they added a usage note in the 1983 version, pointing out its "widespread use among educated speakers including scientists, lawyers, professors, congressmen, U.S. cabinet members, and at least one U.S. president and one vice president." They even noted its prominence among "British and Canadian speakers." taken from http://www.slate.com/id/2071155/.

Language evolves. Deal with it.

Your evidence---all of it---is either old and discredited (like the above) or old and irrelevant (like the claim that presidential palaces were off-limits to inspectors, which was not true about the pre-war inspections). What you're doing isn't mental gymnastics; it's mental sticking your fingers in your ears and shouting "Lalala I can't hear you!1!"

It's equally amazing the mental gymnastics some will go through to avoid facing the fact

Deception and Agendas are aplenty, and we will not know whether or not you are right
for some time, but...consider Iran's step to withdraw from the non-proliferation treaty.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/49819 40.stm

If you want to send a message that you are totally above board you would NOT subvert
inspections by nearly 100% EU inspection teams, Iraq did this as well.

Playing shell games, delaying inspectors from the EU, and declaring numerous massive
presidential palaces off limits. Having huge stockpiles of "pesticides" that fit
dual use in ammo dumps and bunkers with aerial camouflage .

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.a sp?ID=13168

Former Iraqi officers speaking of the chemical weapons, and their coverup over
intercepted phone calls in Iraq prior to the 2nd gulf war .

http://www.slate.com/id/2078196/

17 UN resolutions that were ignored time an time again .

The shell game, deceptions, and intimidation used against the inspectors and
lack of "Full Inspections".

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/ne ws/2002/09/08/wirq208.xml

http://www.pm.gov.uk/output/Page277.asp

If Iraq and Saddam were innocent , why then the elaborate deceptions,
intimidation, hauling top soil away...

To me ...

It's equally amazing the mental gymnastics some will go through to avoid facing the fact

Ex-MislTech

The simplest example of this is the escalator problem: economists had a hard time figuring out why anybody would walk on an escalator - their cost-benefit analysis didn't work out.

This comment intrigued me... I tried searching it down, and the only relevant hits were references to this Slate article about the economics of walking on stairs vs escalators. Steven Landsburg is an interesting guy, and has some nice articles on the pricing of coffee, popcorn and free internet... I'm surprised I hadn't come across this "Everyday Economics" secion before... Thanks for getting me onto them.

A side point, though; this article doesn't seem to be what you're mentioning, or at least, it seems to arrive at the opposite conclusion - that people do use a standard cost-benefit model, only with different benefits... Is there another reference which you were thinking of?

Not only that but big chain renters like Blockbuster and retailers like Walmart will base their purchases on opening weekend success - doesn't do well the first weekend? Chances are good you'll never see it at Walmart and only after time at Blockbuster. Tie that in with the fact that Walmart (the largest single retailer of DVDs and CDs in the USA) only stocks the top movie titles (ie: no catalogue (old stuff) sales for studios or record/publishing companies), and you can see why profits are down and why they need to take these measures to tow the line.

The The Hollywood Economist is an excellent read.

The reason leaking has become such an party game (pun intended) is because the whole clasification game has been so abuses. As you can see here http://www.slate.com/id/2136480/ much of what was reviewed had no need to be clasified. IIRC, the National Archive has documents going back to around 1914 that are still clasified. (OK, I'm going to go out on a limb and tell the world: Archduke Franz Ferdinand is still dead and Germany lost!) It is not against the law to disclose that the government is vilating the law. From the article, ""No information ... shall be classified in order to ... prevent embarrassment of a person, organization, or agency."

people who think they should rule are actually the least qualified to do so.

And that goes double for people who think that God wants them to be president.

As you correctly surmise, I'm not an american (nor do I wish to be), so if I'm wrong, can you explain to me what happened here? He obviously didn't go through any channels, he just declassified it, and gave it to the media. And as I said, it's very common for presidents to tell their staff to "leak" stuff to the press (although I guess it isn't as common to leak declassified stuff).

Sounds like middle-manager woman has a dirty mind.

You took the safe way out, but you could have just as easily worked up some fake indignation & gone the whole "how dare you suggest... I'm a professional... I should report you" route. Might give her some pause before she gets 'offended' the next time.

Both are valid options, I just hate giving those people the satisfaction.

Your story kinda reminds me of the NY Times "scumbag" blowout in their crossword puzzle. First linky from Google: http://www.slate.com/id/2139453/

Long story short: Some people will get offended even when they know that's not how you meant it.

[G]amers... are acting irrationally. Very few people resell their consoles despite the high auction prices. Having grabbed a scarce console, gamers only think about using it rather than profiting from its resale. As a result, only a few consoles are up for sale and only the most desperate buyers compete for them. If more people put their consoles up for auction, the price would drop.

Just like GW Bush is yours.

Heh, I usually like slate.com, but their recent article Love Thy PlayStation, Love Thyself
Why you should make a $500 game console your life partner. was a bit over the top.... sure it was tongue in cheek (I don't think they're really arguing it's more cost effective than a good marriage) but it's kind of weird how they ignore Nintendo and lump Xbox 360 with the PS2 and TurboGrafx 16...

"The PS3, after all, has been built expressly to keep mind-blowing novelty coming and coming and coming. Periodic infusions of novelty--new games--will keep the endorphins flowing."

Uh, yeah.

Anyway, I hope the PS3 blows up in Sony's face... it's a lame-ass way to try and subsidize a win in a format war. At least they finally aren't limited to 2 controllers w/o a multitap....

(and no, I have no idea how authorotative is spelled)

It's the legal argument of the United States, Great Britan, and France, that 688 is indeed relevant to 678...

Yes, and it's a BS argument; 688 has nothing to do with Kuwait, and 678's authorization of military force was for the U.N. to use force to resolve that situation, not for member nations to intervene in Iraq's internal affairs. (I don't think it's been France's argument for a long time, either.)

You'll note that, back in 1991, the legality of the no-fly zones wasn't questioned, even Saddam Hussein acknowledged their legitimacy until 1998

There was objection long before 1998. The New York Times editorialized against them in 1992. Iraq objected before 1998: "Iraq does not recognize the no-fly zone because it was not a UN job," Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz, 1993. Also in 1993, the U.N.'s legal department announced that it could find no authorization for the NFZs.

Objections were muted, though, since the U.S. and Britain would simpy veto any condemnation of the NFZs.

but to call it illegal in 2002 what was praised as a humanitarian mission in 1991 is absurd.

Many people were not praising it as a humanitarian mission.

[Fox News] is hardly a bastion of Conservative thought.

What a joke. Especially since the bias has been admitted by Fox itself.

But perhaps you're right...perhaps I should peruse Powerline, Opinion Journal, American Spectator or National Review. As I am a bit short on time, could you please provide links to articles in said blogs and magazines reporting the discovery of WMDs in Iraq or proof of links between Saddam and Al Qaeda?

After all, these publications couldn't possibly be muzzled by the 'liberal media conspiracy', or else you wouldn't be placing so much faith in them, would you? Surely these publications will be 'trumpeting' these important facts...

Thanks in advance.

"The President is merely the most important among a large number of public servants. He should be supported or opposed exactly to the degree which is warranted by his good conduct or bad conduct, his efficiency or inefficiency in rendering loyal, able, and disinterested service to the nation as a whole. Therefore it is absolutely necessary that there should be full liberty to tell the truth about his acts, and this means that it is exactly as necessary to blame him when he does wrong as to praise him when he does right. Any other attitude in an American citizen is both base and servile. To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. Nothing but the truth should be spoken about him or any one else. But it is even more important to tell the truth, pleasant or unpleasant, about him than about any one else."