Whimsley

USB Christmas

The number amd variety of things you can plug into the USB port on a computer is getting ridiculous. A search for "USB Power" on the wonderful Engadget gives a stupendous list of improbable items, including:

1. USB powered gloves
Posted by Thomas Ricker on 10/31/2005
Anything, and we mean anything that can be made... can be made better with a little USB power. Add a bit of camouflage and you'll understand why we're lovin' on these new craptastic USB heated gloves

2. USB-powered Verilux Natural Spectrum Book and Travel Light
Posted by Evan Blass on 10/17/2005
Oftentimes when we are in and around our local library sucking down free WiFi, we notice several people (not the ones sleeping in the over-stuffed chairs, mind you) peering into strange stacks of

3. USB-powered Deco Lights
Posted by Ryan Block on 9/24/2005
When Alek's online Christmas decorations control system turned out to be a hoax, a light must've gone off in someone's head. Yup, you guessed what comes next in the long line of illustrious

4. Logitech intros V20 USB-powered laptop speakers
Posted by Donald Melanson on 8/29/2005
Logitech just introduced a new pair of speakers designed for use with laptops. We can't tell you anything about the most important part -- how they sound -- but we do know that the V20s will set you

5. Thanko’s USB-powered iShaver
Posted by Ryan Block on 8/11/2005
Is it powered by electricity? Because if it is, we want to see it powered by USB. And if it isn't... we want to see it powered by USB. So thanks, Thanko, for your latest, the iShaver. Probably works

6. Boynq USB-powered light
Posted by Thomas Ricker on 6/4/2005
Doubtful anyone who needs (or more importantly, is willing to use) the Boynq D-Light USB-powered Lamp is going to look good embalmed in a pasty orange glow. But here you have it, another whacky

7. USB-powered lava lamp
Posted by Peter Rojas on 5/24/2005
We're pretty sure that the sheer geekiness of plugging this into a USB port kills whatever swinging bachelor pad/hippie love nest vibe you might be trying to create, but Lava World International is

8. eMagin USB powered OLED 3D visor
Posted by Barb Dybwad on 3/16/2005
The promise of the near view display is there, though prior implementations have been poor. A head-mounted screen should theoretically provide the equivalent to a very large disply viewed from a few

9. The USB-powered thermal wrist protector
Posted by Ryan Block on 2/22/2005
A USB-powered thermal wrist protector/strap on Engadget that facilitates one's ceaceless habit of sitting in front of the computer, researching, purchasing, and using USB-powered gadgets via

10. The USB-powered blue-glo Mac mini Skirt
Posted by Peter Rojas on 2/16/2005
Ok, so at the end of the day it's still just an acrylic pedestal for the Mac mini, but Plasticsmith must know how to get on our good side, because now they've busted out a USB-powered version of

11. The USB-powered piezo negative ionizer
Posted by Ryan Block on 2/9/2005
They call it aeroionotherapy--some believe in it, some don't--and it's supposed to relieve you of restlessness, anxiousness, depression, and high blood pressure if you charge the air in a room with

12. The USB-powered desktop fan/clock radio
Posted by Peter Rojas on 1/27/2005
By this point it seems like pretty much everything that can be turned into a USB-powered gadget has been (not to mention a few things that probably should never have been led down that path), so

13. USB-powered fake flowerpot speaker
Posted by Peter Rojas on 11/29/2004
You know, it's hard enough already trying to convince people who drop by the house that we're not insane, so the last thing we're going to do is completely confirm that by plugging this USB-powered

14. USB-powered air humdifier
Posted by Peter Rojas on 11/26/2004
You'd probably want to keep lots of moisture away from your PC, so that you won't, you know, destroy it, but if you can't quite resist, a shop in Japan is selling a USB-powered air humidifier. Would

15. The USB-powered Santa
Posted by Peter Rojas on 11/17/2004
Be honest, do you really need to put up any other Christmas decorations besides this USB-powered, drum playin' Santa Claus which regales you with Jingle Bells, Joy to the World, The First Noel, and

16. USB-powered Christmas Tree and snow man
Posted by Peter Rojas on 10/25/2004
It really wouldn't be an Engadget Christmas without this USB-powered snow man or Christmas Tree on your desk, would it?

17. The USB Power Pack
Posted by Peter Rojas on 9/30/2004
You know us. We can't resist anything USB-powered. We're totally suckers for it, which is why we we're giddy at the prospect of this portable battery pack which we picked up at Compact-Impact that

18. Mini Power Minder, a new kind of USB power
Posted by Ryan Block on 9/15/2004
We can't think of too many examples of times when we need to shut down a bunch of stuff at the same time as our computers since most anything connected to them needs recharging anyway (excepting

19. USB-powered gadgets!
Posted by Peter Rojas on 6/10/2004
The New York Times has just uncovered this crazy new trend: USB-powered gadgets! Anyone else heard of this before?

20. The Cleanlon USB-powered air purifier
Posted by Peter Rojas on 6/4/2004
Somehow we missed this from the other day, but the New York Times actually reviewed one of those USB-powered air purifiers. The only thing about reviewing the Cleanlon is that they couldn't tell if

21. USB powered frangrance diffuser
Posted by Peter Rojas on 5/10/2004
What's scary is that this isn't even the first one of these: it's a USB powered fragrance-oil diffuser (basically a fancy Glade Plug-In) from Osmooze called the USB P@d that actually let's you

22. USB-powered fragrance-oil burner
Posted by Peter Rojas on 3/6/2004
The fact that it's sold out implies that somebody has been buying this, but we've been scratching our heads at the prospect of Arvel's USB-powered fragrance-oil burner, which is supposed to help make

23. Socket Mobile Power Pack
Posted by Dan Wu on 12/3/2004
Socket's Mobile Power Pack has 7200mAh of juice in its battery, allowing you to charge cellphones, Pocket PCs, Palm devices, Nintendo GBA/DS, and digital cameras, but the best part is that it has a

24. The Buffalo BSKP-CU201/BK Skype conference phone
Posted by Thomas Ricker on 11/25/2005
Those Skype handsets are coming fast and furious these days. Now Buffalo brings us the ingeniously named BSKP-CU201/BK handsfree USB kit which features an integrated speaker and omnidirectional mic

25. Azio Dual-Link Charger does USB, car lighter
Posted by Marc Perton on 10/11/2005
We've seen a handful of hydra-headed chargers, which let you juice up your cellphone via USB, car cigarette lighter or other power sources, and we suspect that Azio's Dual-Link Charger isn't that

... and that's just the first 25 of the 156 in the list. A flashing pencil sharpener, an aquarium, a humidifer, a battery charger, noise-cancelling headphones. The world of gadgets is getting weirder and wonderfuller.

Environmental and Urban Economics blogs

Two interesting-looking blogs I've added to my feed list at bloglines:

• Environmental and urban economics by Matthew Kahn.
• Environmental economics by Tim Haab and John Whitehead and guests.

Winner Take All in Books

Two depressing things for any fiction writers out there.

The wonderful Miss Snark (literary agent) More more more! describes how:

publishers demand that writers sell increasing quantities of subsequent books they publish. Book one can sell five thousand copies, book two six thousand but by book five you've got to sell forty thousand. If you don't, the publisher doesn't renew the contract. It's very similar to get promoted or get out in the military. If you don't make a certain rank by a certain age, they ask you to retire.

The reason is increasing returns (in the form of fixed costs) in the book publishing industry:

The reason publishers want zillion copy sellers from one writer instead of ten writers each selling one-tenth of a zillion is because of unit cost.

Unit cost is the cost of each book sold. Add up all the cost for printing, editorial time, design time, and a percentage of the fixed cost like heats light and water and voila and voila: what it costs to make a book happen. That cost is almost same if you sell 3000 books or 30000 books.

The end result of increasing returns is a winner-take-all market. It is the search for the next blockbuster rather than the building of a set of steady sales. It is wealthies woman in Britain if you write Harry Potter and zilch otherwise. And it is not healthy for book readers.

The point is confirmed by a piece in the December edition of Quill & Quire, in which agent Denise Bukowski argues that "There has been a sea change in the fiction marketplace" in which life is getting tougher for most mid-level and even good-selling authors.

Fact: Foreign rights to American novelist Edward P. Jones's bestseller The Known World, which last year won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award, were not sold until after it had won those awards.

Fact: U.K. star Andrea Levy;s Small Island, which not only won the Orange Prize but also was recently declard "The Best of the Best" of the first 10 years of the prize, was turned down all over New York. Picador finally picked it up for a pittance as a paperback original, after it won the prize.

The reason is partly the big chain structure of today's book industry.

And in the U.K. one bookselling chain rules the market, and one man does all the buying for it: he has refused publishers' sales reps access to his stores. Consquentuly, many boks are available in the U.K. over the Inernet.

I presume she is referring to Waterstone's. Is there a chance that online book sales will counter this trend to fewer bigger books? Let's hope so.

We'll Have to Do Something About the Rich

An excellent piece by Jonathan Friedland in tomorrow's Guardian (hey, it's before midnight where I am) about the growing gap between rich and poor in the UK. (Link: Guardian Unlimited | Columnists | It may be beyond passe - but we'll have to do something about the rich.)

The phenomenon of growing inequality is present in Canada too. Increasing wealth and income at the top, flat or declining wealth and income at the bottom (in absolute as well as relative terms) and as a result changes like this:

When Margaret Thatcher came to power in 1979, just under 6% of national income went to the top 1%. That figure stood at 9% a decade later, but under Tony Blair it has risen to at least 13%: a tiny group taking nearly an eighth of our collective wealth.

The hook is a paragraph about London bankers ordering the most expensive cocktail they could concoct -- which came to £333 a glass. "The bankers ordered two rounds for their table of eight. Their final bill for the night: £15,000." Does this matter? Friedland asks. Yes, he answers himself, even though it is unfashionable to say so...

... the story about the £333 cocktails emerged in the same week as Shelter reported that children were being forced to sleep in kitchens, dining rooms and hallways because of cramped housing affecting 500,000 families in England alone. Of these, three in four said that the lack of space was damaging their children's education or development; many spoke of depression and anxiety. And the scale of the problem has remained unchanged since 1997

He finishes up by predicting that "this issue's coming back. Just watch". I agree -- left to itself the inequality spiral continues, and at some point it is going to lead to big social unrest. Sooner or later, we'll have to do something about the rich.

Identity Crisis

Philip Pullman's essay as part of The Guardian's piece on the possibility of laws to curb the promotion of religious hatred is, like much of what he writes, thought provoking and original. (Norm Geras discusses it as well.)

Part of Pullman's essay is emphasizing the distinction between what we are (identity) and what we do. He starts this way:

1. What we are is not in our control, but what we do is.

2. On the other hand, and simultaneously, what we do depends on what we are (on what we have to do it with), and what we are can be modified by what we do.

3. What we do is morally significant. What we are is not.

The distinction is important, and he goes on to argue that

But to criticise the religion of someone who makes that religion the primary marker of their identity will be, specifically, to criticise them. It will be criticising what they are, not what they do. And if it comes to the courts, will the law be capable of distinguishing between a rational analysis of theology and an incitement to brutal violence? Home Office Minister Hazel Blears doesn't think it will: she has said that she can't predict how the courts will act. Better safe than sorry, is the implication.

The inevitable consequence for literature - as many others have pointed out - will be that publishing decisions will increasingly be made not by editors, as they used to be; nor by accountants, as they now are; but by lawyers. And my learned friends will be throwing the pall of their caution over the theatre as well, to the impoverishment of all of us.

Pullman is on the money. There is, however, a missing piece here, or at least one that is not explicitly brought to the fore. In their brilliant description of Economics and Identity (which I describe in Chapter 11 of The Book), George Akerlof and Rachel Kranton bring ideas of identity into game theory and economics. Their model emphasizes how "identity" comes with a set of "prescriptions", which indicate the behaviour that is appropriate for someone of a given identity, or the ideal behaviour associated with a given identity.

Depending on the circumstance, someone may identify themselves in different ways -- by gender, by profession, by religion. The prescriptions associated with these identities depend on the circumstace, but they are rules that are internalized, and there is a cost in the form of anxiety when the rules are violated.

So in addition to what you are and what you do, there is also the matter of what "people like you" do -- the rules associated with your identity. And it is in this area that much of the debate over religion comes.  To criticize a religion is to criticize its prescriptions -- whether this means that Catholics should not divorce or Sikhs should cover their head, or one of a myriad of others. The struggle within many religions over "what it means to be Muslim/Christian/whatever" is a struggle over alternative sets of prescriptions.  It is insufficient to say this is "what you do" because once the prescriptions are internalized there is a real cost to not following the rules. The prescriptions are what connects "what you are" to "what you do".

So Pullman has it almost right, but not quite. It is, as he says, "all very complicated" and it is essential, as he says, that debate over "what it means to be" of one religion or another (or one nationality or another, and so on) continue without censorship, but it would be simplistic to suggest that criticisms of "what people do" can be made separately from criticisms of "what people are."

Rebel Sell Snarky-Tees

I imagine I'll have a lot to say about Andrew Potter's Rebel Sell blog. The site, and the book, are insightful and yet frustrating. Potter and co-author Joseph Heath acknowledge, like too many on the left don't like to acknowledge, that the collective action problem is a real one, and make a lot from it in their book. They also emphasize the uncomfortable truth that "cultural rebellion, of the type epitomized by Adbusters magazine, is not a threat to the system -- it is the system".

Their argument is useful because it makes it clear that rebel chic is not the same as real change. The point, I thought when I read the book, is that if we want a just society then we need to focus on actions that lead to real change rather than engaging in individualistic pseudo-protest.

But then they go and do something like Snarky-tees. At this point it starts to look as if they (or at least he -- the blog is Andrew Potter's but not Joseph Heath's) are more interested in ironically mocking the culturally rebellious (and making a buck in the process) than in promoting real change. It looks like despite their protestations to the contrary (see page 342 of the paperback edition), when it comes to it, they don't have a problem with driving the modern consumer economy, they just want to drive it a little further.

A new eugenics?

Interesting letter by the always-worth-reading Margaret Somerville in the Globe and Mail this morning, following an article by the rarely-worth-reading Mararet Wente on abortion and disability. She says:

Re Margaret Wente's Disabled Kids Are The Abortion Debate No One Wants To Have (Nov. 17): Whatever our view of the ethics at the individual level of parents-to-be screening their embryos and fetuses for genetic and developmental abnormalities and discarding those that are genetically or developmentally "defective," these decisions at a societal level will have the effect of wiping out certain groups of people, such as those with Down syndrome or achondroplasia (dwarfism), or who are profoundly deaf or manic-depressive.

And as genetic knowledge expands, other groups are likely to be reduced. Female embryos and fetuses are already being eliminated, and some fear a similar fate if the genes for homosexuality are identified. The cumulative effect of individual decision-making is wiping out certain groups, a situation that would never be tolerated as public policy.

Are we creating a "new eugenics" -- deliberately eliminating genetically undesirable people from society? Those favouring screening finesse this question by arguing that an individual's choice regarding the nature of their child is not a eugenic decision and comes with their "absolute right to reproductive autonomy". They say eugenics is practised only when a choice is made in relation to a group or class or by someone who's not the future parent. But is that sophistry?

And where the government supports screening programs to avoid, as a recent article in the medical journal The Lancet euphemistically puts it, "live-born children with preventable physical or metnal handicaps," is this really the adoption of public policy of eugenics?

I wouldn't pretend to know how to balance this particular tension between individual reproductive rights and the collective consequences of individual choice, but I can't imagine there is a clean solution to this messy problem. Somerville has written on this stuff a lot (see The Ethical Canary, for example) and Thomas Schelling (Choice and Consequence) has some insights into this, as into so much else.

Healthcare Delivery

The healthcare debate south of the border is ferocious, of course. It is good to see one of my favourite blogs, Brad DeLong's Semi-Daily Journal keep on delivering the goods on the issue, even if this time BDL is just passing on the latest Paul Krugman New York Times column on the issue.

DeLong's was the first weblog I tracked regularly, and it is still one of the best. I have no clue how he keeps posting several times a day on average for (pause to see how long it has been going) well, a few years at least on everything from his main theme (economics, wot wiv him being an economics lecturer and all) to America's Stupidest Dog to many other things. Anyone reading here should probably go there instead.

Voting With Their Feet?

This blog is a shameless attempt at promoting my forthcoming book, "No One Makes You Shop At Wal-Mart", which the fine people at Between the Lines are publishing next spring.

The book is an argument against a certain kind of thinking -- a very common way of thinking I call MarketThink. MarketThink is the belief that (in the absence of government action) the world really does work according to the rules of the idealized free-market. MarketThink is the claim that, as long as we can exercise individual choices, the invisible hand of the free market guarantees that we get what we want.

The title of the book comes from one particular phrasing of that claim. Wal-Mart has commonly been criticised for the damage its edge-of-town stores do to city centres. In response to these criticisms, one of the arguments that Wal-Mart's supporters make is that "no one makes you shop at Wal-Mart", and that if people really felt that Wal-Mart was bad for their cities, they would not patronize it.

An example of this kind of thinking comes from Ron Galloway, director of the new film "Why Wal-Mart Works & Why That Makes Some People Crazy", who said on CNN's Showbiz Tonight on October 31 that "138 million people vote with their feet to go to Wal-Mart. And Americans are pretty smart. And I think Wal-Mart, if Wal-Mart were really doing something genuinely wrong, the American people would be able to figure it out and not go."

What is wrong and why? Well, that's what this blog is about.