Monday, December 29, 2008

Should you buy books on Ebay?

Some interesting consequences.  I don't know what to think of this.

Deadweight loss

Interesting article about deadweight loss at Christmas.  I've always thought gift certificates or cards are a bad present.  I was wrong.
Intrigued by this mismatch between wants and gifts, in 1993 Joel Waldfogel, then an economist at Yale University, sought to estimate the disparity in dollar terms. In a paper* that has proved seminal in the literature on the issue, he asked students two questions at the end of a holiday season: first, estimate the total amount paid (by the givers) for all the holiday gifts you received; second, apart from the sentimental value of the items, if you did not have them, how much would you be willing to pay to get them? His results were gloomy: on average, a gift was valued by the recipient well below the price paid by the giver.
The most conservative estimate put the average receiver's valuation at 90% of the buying price. The missing 10% is what economists call a deadweight loss: a waste of resources that could be averted without making anyone worse off. In other words, if the giver gave the cash value of the purchase instead of the gift itself, the recipient could then buy what she really wants, and be better off for no extra cost.
Non-cash gifts from extended family were found to be least efficient
Perhaps not surprisingly, the most efficient gifts (those with the smallest deadweight loss) were those from close friends and relations, while non-cash gifts from extended family were the least efficient. As the age difference between giver and recipient grew, so did the inefficiency. All of which suggests what many grandparents know: when buying gifts for someone with largely unknown preferences, the best present is one that is totally flexible (cash) or very flexible (gift vouchers).

Sunday, December 28, 2008

Obama and Warren

A cogent post about Obama's choice of Rick Warren for the inauguration.

By the historical standards of presidential hubris, Obama’s disingenuous defense of his tone-deaf invitation to Warren is nonetheless a relatively tiny infraction. It’s no Bay of Pigs. But it does add an asterisk to the joyous inaugural of our first black president. It’s bizarre that Obama, of all people, would allow himself to be on the wrong side of this history.

Obama and exercise

I just keep liking this guy more and more.
It's a schedule he started as a 22-year-old student at Columbia University in New York, and it immediately transformed him. In his 1995 autobiography, "Dreams From My Father," Obama said he was a casual drug user and an underachiever until he decided to start running three miles each day. He stopped staying out late, fasted on Sundays and became a voracious reader, spending most of his time alone in his apartment reading classic literature and philosophical texts.
Physical fitness yielded mental fitness, Obama decided, and the two concepts have been married in his mind ever since.

Saturday, December 27, 2008

Drugs and doctors

A damning book review, written by an editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, against the medical profession and pharmaceutical industry. 

The problems I've discussed are not limited to psychiatry, although they reach their most florid form there. Similar conflicts of interest and biases exist in virtually every field of medicine, particularly those that rely heavily on drugs or devices. It is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published, or to rely on the judgment of trusted physicians or authoritative medical guidelines. I take no pleasure in this conclusion, which I reached slowly and reluctantly over my two decades as an editor of TheNew England Journal of Medicine.
The medical profession is truly losing the trust of the public.  Consider the rising rate of people opting out of immunizing their children.  After reading articles like this, you can almost sympathize.

Thursday, December 18, 2008

Anthony McGill is playing at Obama's inauguration

A great clarinetist I went to high school with is playing at Obama's inauguration with Yo-Yo Ma and Itzhak Perlman. 

Sunday, December 14, 2008

Bubbles

Fascinating article about financial bubbles and human psychology, complete with experiments.

Saturday, December 13, 2008

Austenbook

http://www.much-ado.net/austenbook/

Mouse euthanasia

There was a mouse in my kitchen sink this morning.  I trapped it in a yogurt container.  I'm not sure what to do with it.  I looked up "humanely kill mice".  I found a surprising amount of literature.  Apparently freezing (I was going to just leave it outside in the trash) is not recommended.  Apparently it's very painful.  I think I'm going to try a small animal gas chamber.  Seems simple enough.  Kind of like a science experiment too.  I don't have the guts to grab it by the tail and bang it against a table, as most people suggest.

.....

Hmm.  Not sure I'd recommend that method.  I just put the yogurt container in a big ziploc bag with a glass of vinegar.  Then I undid the lid, and dropped about a tablespoon of baking soda into the vinegar. I was very surprised to see how much CO2 came out.  The gallon ziploc was full within about 5 seconds. It definitely did the trick, but perhaps it's a little elaborate.  I should have just put a mousetrap in the sink.

Monday, December 08, 2008

Funny

From the Wikipedia article on AJAX (Asynchronous Javascript and XML):

"Despite the name, the use of JavaScript and XML is not required, and they do not have to be used asynchronously."

Sunday, December 07, 2008

svn peg revisions

I needed a peg revision for the first time today.  I deleted a directory from a repository, say foo at revision X, and created a new one with the same name.  Then I deleted the new one and wanted the old one back.  I'm now at revision Y.  When I tried to

svn copy -r X foo ./foo

I got the error

svn: File not found: revision Y, path 'foo'

What a strange error message!  Why revision Y?  Anyway, svn is confused.  The solution is

svn copy -r X foo@X ./foo

Friday, December 05, 2008

Alice Walker to Obama

http://www.theroot.com/id/48726