Archive for June, 2006
June 28, 2006 at 8:26 am · Filed under Uncategorized
At Language Log, they’re having trouble with the economics of penumbral book trade pricing:
I’m still puzzled. I would have neither any moral nor any practical objection to the operation of supply and demand in such cases — but it seems that the supply is basically fine. The book is far from being out of print, copies are available from the publisher at list price, Amazon and Barnes & Noble will be restocked shortly… Perhaps there are automated pricing algorithms that scan the bookstore sites and kick in whenever an out-of-stock situation arises? Or do Amazon and B&N sell lists of books that customers ask for but they are (temporarily) unable to ship?
One glib answer: When the data don’t fit your hypotheses, how long should you wait until you question the hypothesis? Which is to say [quoting myself], “Who told you the economics of price formation was about individual cases, or even begins to apply in illiquid markets like books and collectible markets?” [to which could be appended numerous riffs on that subject, which I'm not gonna bother moving over from the Old Blog just now. Maybe to make a subtle point about access, bottlenecks, and change costs?]
Two more reasoned ones:
First, my wife’s, which is intrinsically smarter and more rational than mine: No doubt these sellers are using drop-shippers for their order fulfillment. That’s two layers of margin that need to be added to every item. Call that a 100–200% increase, in the end. People who do not know what drop shippers are, are provably not “more familiar with the book trade,” at least in the modern form appropriate to this situation. People in the publishing business, or bookstore owners, are I suspect left in the dark about how things happen in the penumbra.
Second, my edgier and (surprisingly) more succinct Complexological/Economological take: You see a price being asked. You do not see the price that has been obtained. If the person got 181–200% markup, and sold out, then clearly you would be wondering about the gougers asking 220% markups.
I can call high prices from the vasty deep.
Why, so can I, or so can any man; But will some sucker pay when you do ask for them?
June 28, 2006 at 8:08 am · Filed under Uncategorized
The Little Professor explains ‘Why Protestantism is “older” than the Roman Catholic Church’:
A commenter below asked, very sensibly, how the Victorians could argue that the Roman Catholic Church was “novel” in comparison to the Church of England. A quick glance at any handy timeline would, indeed, seem to suggest that Catholicism came first. There was, however, a very different historical narrative available to our Victorians–one that they had in fact inherited from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries…. Let’s see how my sermonizers explain what appears to be a paradox.
June 28, 2006 at 7:58 am · Filed under Uncategorized
Again, via Moon River. Geopolitical boundaries. Crisp. Very sharp lines. Makes you think, hopefully.
June 28, 2006 at 7:44 am · Filed under Uncategorized
Moon River points to a stunning TV clip of a man Flying. Be sure to explore the associated links to ground and downwash effects, to preserve the illusion of pedagogic value. But also feel free to say, “Damn! I wish I could do that without crapping my pants.”
June 27, 2006 at 9:39 am · Filed under Uncategorized
We had a tree man here last night, walking our little lot in our quiet subdivision in Ann Arbor and shaking his head as he surveyed the damage. We have two ash trees, one a lovely purpose-planted shade tree (about as old as would be expected if it was planed when the elm trees all died), and a volunteer, planted in a corner by a squirrel or a bird on a wire.
Like every other ash tree in the US, they are going to die.
I was appalled to hear my neighbor say they other day that she had never heard of the Emerald Ash Borer before. I suppose she’s not much of a gardener, or maybe not much of a newspaper reader, or something. But anybody walking down the streets, driving in the country, or hiking for a 100-mile radius around here will see the signs of carnage. Bare branches on all the tallest trees in the woodlots, literally hundreds of new stumps and piles of chips along the streets of the suburbs, dead twigs planted along the sidewalks downtown.
All with the telltale D-shaped holes in them.
We are advised (not by my tree man, but by the local governments [PDF] and other, more “professional” tree services, the kind that have logos on their trucks and sell chemical treatments by the ml and who haul away all the chips when they’re done to sell them as mulch) that the only way to hold back the “wave” of Ash Borer infestation is chip every ash tree in sight in the city (at a cost), and burn the resulting chips.
Maybe they don’t get out much. Maybe they’re deluded fools. Maybe they’re in cahoots, the government and the tree services. Clearly, they act as if they have never witnessed one of these bugs (as I have) scamper out of sight when I was more than three meters away — these are not ladybugs or gypsy moths, but are rather quick, fast, smart, travel long distances easily and are as a result ubiquitous.
More than likely they have no idea what to do. There are many smart young biologists attending to this problem, and I wish them the best of luck. But the government fails so often to act decisively and swiftly, let alone on the basis of scientific advice, that I can only hope their work does not end up going to waste.
About one tree in five in the urban or the rural sections of our region is an ash tree. There is an effectively unlimited supply of the insects in those reservoirs, and barring total deforestation, or discovery (or engineering) of a super-effective parasite or predator that eats the bugs or larvae, there is no way to eliminate them.
My tree man points out, with much disgust, that a dozen or so companiesin the area are hawking expensive “preventive” chemical measures, none of which are guaranteed. His keen insight: If these preventives are so neat, then why not give them to the city, demonstrate conclusively their effectiveness, and then sell them to the surrounding threatened areas of the country? Or, if you’re a city presented witha dozen alternatives, why not demand that all of them be used in randomized trials, and publish the results?
Alas, this is not the way the world works. They study, they watch, and in the end move much slower and with less cunning than the bug.
Looking out the windows of my house, I see eight ash trees, and twenty-seven other trees (locusts, spruce, white pine, fruit, oak, maple, &c). That’s about 25% deforestation. From this bug.
Down the road a piece, in Chicago, they have Asian Longhorned Beetles. They eat maples, among other things. I see eight maples out my window — they’re the other tree that was planted along the streets back when the elms died….
If you live in the northern US (east or west), and own land that has trees on it that you like, I would advise your attention to the matter.
June 25, 2006 at 5:50 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
You keep doing the same thing over (June 24 2004) and over again (June 25 2006): 
June 25, 2006 at 3:16 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
So, as promised, I’ve launched the first of what will probably be many auctions of books we’ve scanned for Distributed Proofreaders. Bidding starts at $0.04 for the actual physical copy of Stories of Later American History used to produce Project Gutenberg eText #18618.
The entire amount of the winning bid will be donated to the Distributed Proofreaders Foundation, the new 501(c)(3) non-profit organization which supports the DP community.
What makes this book in particular distinctive? Nothing whatsoever, except that it was on the top of the pile.
June 25, 2006 at 1:56 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
We attended a book auction yesterday. Dead book dealer. Probably 8000 volumes were being sold, about half of which were children’s books. Lots and lots of different children’s books.
So, why are there so many children’s books? I mean, it’s not like the ultimate consumers are going to get to kindergarten, compare notes, and say, “What a rip-off! My mommy read me that Exact. Same. Book! Those cheap bastards!”
Of course, I know the answer. It’s a rhetorical question. We all know it’s because monsters from the Land of Dreams need to prepare susceptible and imaginative young minds for the coming invasion.
June 25, 2006 at 1:50 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
I have about seventeen million of them here, just now, under the ill-advised pile of evergreen pruning I left on our patio for a week while it rained. Write a 50-word or shorter essay on why they’re icky, otherwise I will send you one million, on the presumption that you must really dig them and want them to cuddle.
June 25, 2006 at 10:22 am · Filed under Uncategorized
One of the growing stacks of books in our house that needs to be pared down—though it arises from important and useful work—consists of those we’ve already scanned and contributed to Project Gutenberg by way of Distributed Proofreaders. I’m writing an auction listing today for one book (not yet for sale), Stories of Later American History. We scanned it, we ran it through DP to create a new authoritative edition, and now you can download it and read it and use it however you want.
In a fit of experimentation, I’ve included the Gutenberg eText number in the auction title, and some explanatory text and a link to the Gutenberg site.
We’ll see how it plays out. I know eBay allows links of some types, but not to third-party sites.
Update: In reviewing eBay’s ridiculously restrictive linking policies (”We’re just a venue,” my ass), I’ve decided I have to back off direct linking, and suggest Google search. I wish I could link there, but apparently I can’t. Maybe I should host the entire content of the book on my website, and link there? Hmm….
To compensate for eBay’s stupidity, I’ve decided to donate the entire proceeds of the auction to the Distributed Proofreaders Foundation, the non-profit organization funding the Distributed Proofreaders volunteer community. We’ll see how this plays out.
June 24, 2006 at 7:48 am · Filed under Uncategorized
Books are only useful insofar as they serve to start conversations. Good books are those that remain useful long after they’re published.
Crucial thing most traditional publishers don’t understand? Some books become useful.
How useful is an old textbook? An old best-seller? An old book nobody ever read when it came out?
Bet the last one wins.
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