I don't know that I've ever written a blog post directed to just one reader before, but here goes.

Hey Toast! Who Is Jimmy Choo?

And for everybody else reading (OK, both of you...), the NY Times Magazine also had a great article about phones as art, though I think that this trend isn't a recent phenomenon.

[Bad pun alert.]

God forbid ATLA ever gets its hands on one of these.

I have a permalink (over there in the left columnn) to Robert L. Kocher, but I do not have one to The Laissez Faire Electronic Times, even though pieces like this one by John T. Wenders make me think I should add LFE to my permalinks.

In a general sense, the idea of any voluntary activity or organization being "non- profit" is a conflict in terms. All voluntary activities must be beneficial, or at least expected to be beneficial, or no one would undertake them. In common use, then, non- profit has come to mean non-monetary-profit. But even in this sense, one can make a pretty good case that often there is no such thing as a non-monetary-profit activity either. Accounting legerdemain is simply used to classify profits as costs. A lot of people have become very wealthy running or working for non-profit organizations. Yet, fiction or not, the idea of non-profit organizations and activities is widespread and probably growing.

The entire piece is just over 2,000 words, all of which are worth reading.

I-95 was bad this weekend, but at least it wasn't this bad.

Maybe we could stop the explosion in the white tail deer population by getting Alan Greenspan to declare an irrational exuberance for deer protection?

	Start With				End With

Year 0	500,000		40% Growth gets you	700,000

Year 1	700,000		40% Growth gets you	980,000

Year 2	980,000		40% Growth gets you	1,372,000

Year 3	1,372,000		40% Growth gets you	1,920,800

Year 4	1,920,800		40% Growth gets you	2,689,120

Year 5	2,689,120		40% Growth gets you	3,764,768

Year 6	3,764,768		40% Growth gets you	5,270,675

Year 7	5,270,675		40% Growth gets you	7,378,945

Year 8	7,378,945		40% Growth gets you	10,330,523

Year 9	10,330,523	40% Growth gets you	14,462,733

Year 10	14,462,733	40% Growth gets you	20,247,826

USA Today has an interesting and fairly balanced article about satellite TV hacking that includes an awful lot of links to hacking sites.

Finally, a self help book written for me.

Interesting piece today in The Hartford Courant about Roland W. Betts, W's "First Friend". Rolando, as President Bush calls him, offers some advice that I've heard from many wealthy people.

During a two-hour conversation in his cozy, memento-filled office in New York City this fall, Betts leaned back in a moment of reflection. "If I were speaking to students at Yale, I would tell them to immerse themselves in what they love. Immerse themselves and the success will come," he said, breaking eye contact and staring into the middle distance. "Never do anything for the money; that's just sick."

Time and again this theme shows up, do what you love and the money will follow.

And don't forget to make all those needed connections while you are obtaining your Ivy League degree(s)....

Updates will be sparse to non-existent until after the holiday weekend.

Happy Thanksgiving to all.

Eugene Volokh asks "WHAT LIBRARIES SHOULD DO AS TO DISCREDITED BOOKS"?

Where I work we have a very simple solution to marking out of date/obsolete technical documents, we use a large "OBSOLETE" ink stamp that has a spot to fill in your name, date, and reason why the stamped document is now obsolete.

Perhaps librarians could take a clue from our ISO 9001 approved practice, creating a stamp to be applied to discredited works. I propose something like this:

And in practice it could be used like this.

I am going to burn in hell for this one, but here goes.

So, are you one of those people who believed that "pictures never lie"?

[Link via The Ville]

I wonder if this might have the potential to end up like this.

Here's an interesting new political blog.

Nick Daum enjoyed the part of the Yale Revenge of the Blog that he attended so much that he started his own blog.

Looks like Glenn Reynolds has yet another BlogChild.

(Interestingly he has chosen the same template as the Unablogger.)

I just liked this juxtaposition

John Hiler of Microcontent News compares the addictiveness of blog reading and writing to gambling.

I'm reminded of a sci-fi book I read years ago (the title of which I forget right now) in which people spent their days at home acting in large radio soap operas, playing roles with other participants who were staying in their homes.

I sit now missing the intellectual rigor of law school just a bit. Jack Balkin is debating Mickey Kaus on a fine point of how libel law interacts with the blogosphere.

OK, how bad could he really be, he's quoting Mel Brooks' and Carl Reiner's 2000 Year old man.

Maybe Kaus is a bad risk and that is why his quoted price for libel insurance was so damn high.

(What do you expect, real jokes on a site called "The Comedian"? I live in Connecticut for God's sake, insurance comedy is big up here.)

Mickey Kaus pretty much lost me when he talked about a Republican riot during the 2000 election count debacle in Florida. He used it as an example of how Republicans are just a lot angrier then Democrats, and that if Gore had won Floriduh there would have been more riots.

I am now listening to a man who lied to me. I happened to home the day of the "riot" in Florida, watching it all on the various cable news outlets, and it was no such thing. It was a lot of angry, loud, yet extremely well behaved Republicans protesting illegal behavior.

A big topic of the panel discussion was trust and track record, and Kaus has lost my trust.

Mickey Kaus of The Kaus Files delivering
"A lot of half-baked ideas that he
expects us to finish, just like a blog."

Also, he notes that there is "No such thing as 'half an idea' to a blogger," and no one wonders “If anybody had this idea before.”

Question One: Will blogging displace traditional media?

A. -- No.

Question two...

LawMeme is doing such good blog by blog coverage of the panel that I'll take a break. Mickey Kaus is coming up.

Denis Howell of Bag and Baggage.

Blawgs as marketing legal services. Use a well written Blawg to showcase talent, build trust, and make information accessible to potential clients. It can be scary for practicing attorneys to allow people to "look under the hood" of the legal process, but in the end you can hope to bring in paying business by building a presence on the web.

Keeping a site updated often helps improve Google ranking, which can lead to more exposure.

Caution: Computing in bed can be hazardous to your health.

Jenny Levine - The Shifted Librarian

Librarians act as “connectors” (a term from “The Tipping Point”), that is, they put people with information.

Name of her blog is "The Shifted Librarian" because now information finds her, not the other way around.

By syndicated sites using RSS, she is now able to keep up with 170 websites on a daily basis.

Information can now follow people 24/7 on wireless PDA links using aggregators. What will the impact of this be?

Blawgs - Increasing accessibility of the law to non-lawyers. How Appealing is mentioned by name, as having posted a fix to a footnote in an opinion, an opinion that was fixed after a series of events kicked off by his post.

Oh, and for what it's worth, I've made about $35 this month from selling my stuff on CafePress.com and from my links to items on Amazon.com

A quick plug for Reynold's book: The Appearance of Impropriety and his talk is over.

Libel and the blogger - "Most bloggers are judgment proof. Sue a homeless guy!" -- P.R.

Professor Reynolds answers some questions
about Blogs vs. Big Media

“Big playground for guys like me, and there are a lot of guys like me.” -- P.R.

Multimedia blogging may be coming, but it is a lot more work, and a lot harder.

Posts are, I should make it clear, quick and dirty notes on Professor Reynold's talk.

Dynamic character of blogging, does it tempt libel, or improve the value of a retraction.

Also, the contingent character means initial reports are taken lightly.

Repeat readership of most blogs improves value of retractions.

If an entry is on a blog for a long time, uncorrected, it is likely true, as it would have been corrected if wrong.

Traditional media constantly asks Prof Reynolds how to make money doing this, they see it as a way to get rid of the boss.

Because it is cheap to blog, you don’t have to make money to do it.

Big media is imitating blogosphere now, but it seems more like those old state sponsored Soviet rock bands than the real thing.

Blogs avoid homogeneity by linking to other ideologies, avoiding the theory that sites only link to reinforcing viewpoints. Not an "echo chamber".

Newspaper is a lecture, blogs are a conversation.

(MS Word doesn’t know blog as a word…)

Blogs are cheap, “Thin Media”. So is the revenue. Unlimited bandwidth for $36 a month.

"How did Salon get $75Million in debt?"

LawMeme is covering itself here.

Prof. Reynolds takes the podium

Opening by Professor Jack Balkin. Professor Reynolds was introduced by Ernie Miller, editor in chief of LawMeme.

Well, I've arrived at Yale Law School's Revenge of the Blog today. Here's my first snapshot.

I want to focus in a on a little sliver of Senator Daschle's whining about talk radio.

"If entertainment becomes so much a part of politics," he said, "and if that entertainment drives an emotional movement in this country among some people who don't know the difference between entertainment and politics and who are then so energized to go out and hurt somebody, that troubles me about where politics in America is going."

Hmmm, blurring the line between politics and entertainment, eh? Do you think he means things like

• Inviting Julia Roberts to testify before Congress about a disease that strikes young girls?
• Having Michael J. Fox & Muhammed Ali testify about Parkinson's disease?
• Drooling over Christie Brinkley as she spews forth about nuclear energy while draped before the Environment committee?
• Propping Backstreet Boy Kevin Richardson up before the U.S. Senate subcommittee on environment and public works to talk about coal-mining?
• Anthony Edwards testimony on Autism?
• Having Senator Joe Lieberman attempt to get an assistant director credit on everything Hollywood produces, trying to make sure it meets with his content approval?
• Elton John's appearace, while dressed in a Versace suit, grubbing for more money for his pet cause?

Just who really is guilty of blurring the line between entertainment and politics Senator Daschle?

John McCallum, Canada's Defence Minister, is an asshole. I don't know much about the man, but given his reaction to a parody song satirizing the Canadian Forces failure to replacing its aging Sea King helicopters, he had this to say.

"I think it's a serious business," he told journalists. "I think that humour is not in very good taste when one thinks of the men and women of the Canadian Forces who fly in those helicopters, and their families."

Apparently it is OK to send servicemen and women out to do their jobs in dangerously antiquated equipment, but for God's sake don't joke about it. The song was made by people who actually do have to fly in these heaps, so the Minister's comments seem entirely self-serving.

BTW, here's the lyrics of the genuinely funny song.

Sea Kings in the Sun
(Sung to the tune of Seasons in the Sun)

Goodbye papa please pray for me
My helicopter's crashing in the sea
I honestly don't mean to pout,
but my future is in doubt,
My co-pilot just fell out.
Goodbye papa it's hard to fly,
When my airframe is cracking in the sky,
For every hour in the air,
it takes them 30 to repair,
We fly these things on a dare.
We've had joy, we've had fun,
We've had Sea Kings in the sun,
But the engines are on fire,
and the Sea Kings must retire,
Goodbye Chrétien my stingy one,
You could have bought the EH-101,
Instead you blew 500 mil,
Just to cancel out the bill,
Now I need an airsick pill.
We've had joy, we've had fun,
We've had Sea Kings in the sun
We'll be lucky if we reach,
a crash landing on the beach.

Click here to hear the song

UPDATE:The CBC has a good summary of the history of Canada's Sea Kings.

I happened across a pretty damn funny list on Amazon.com entitled So You'd Like to... create a TiVo from scratch using only plumbing parts.

With the big Bachelor finale airing tonight I thought today would be a good day to again mention Heather Havrilesky's One ring to rule them all, a wonderful analysis of the wedding porn genre. Here's a taste to tempt you to read the rest.

While even recently canceled "Ally McBeal" sweats and fantasizes in her own disturbing Skeletor way, wedding porn takes all the dirtiness out of romance. Each scenario is meant to get our hearts (but not our parts) fluttering. This isn't about sex, it's about shopping. For men. Maybe, just maybe, there's some passing reference to a nice butt, but the comment is made from a great distance, like the appreciative but almost clinical observations of a mother in her mid-60s who considers herself out of the game. Instead, we're supposed to get hot over the fact that Prince Charming has his own posh bachelor pad, that he buys fresh flowers and nice dinners, that he's earnest and doe-eyed. "Sweetness" is the Holy Grail, the ultimate turn-on. Can this man fuck his way out of a paper bag? Maybe not, but he recycles!

Great, now states are waging class warfare under the guise of vehicle tax enforcement. In detailing how rich people go to Oregon to register their cars, and to avoid taxes, while poor folks don't have the means to so easily break the law, a Nevada spokesman says:

Since Nevada has a large number of high-end vehicles, she says, ''this is a big-time money loser, and it's not being done by people who can't afford it.''

And then there's the useful-idiots, folks who would tell the master about their fellow slaves misdeeds.

Meanwhile, Christopher Lively prowls his Washington, D.C., neighborhood of Glover Park several nights a week with a laptop computer. His target: cars with out-of-state plates hogging valuable parking spaces. ''It's not just parking, it's revenue for the city,'' he says. ''It's people hoping to pay lower, out-of-state insurance premiums and end up raising my bills. It's people who don't want to get their cars inspected. It's people avoiding jury duty. And sometimes, it's people trying to avoid paying D.C. income taxes.''

Lively, 39, is a property manager and elected neighborhood commissioner who has pressed for city action to stop the license plate scofflaws. He even became a reserve police officer to help.

Lively and three neighbors have accompanied police officers three nights a week since 1999. Police spot the suspected vehicles, and the volunteers run the plate numbers through the computer. The officer must issue the citation. The district launched a citywide enforcement program this summer.

Some people disapprove of Lively's efforts.

''They ask me, 'Why aren't you out fighting crooks,' '' he says. But most residents ''smile, applaud me and say thanks for doing a good job.''

I forget the icon I made in honor of Tony Pierce's Bus Blog.      

The .ico form of the image is available here. (See previous post for storing .ico's)

I've been playing around making small images, and I wanted to learn how to make image maps. Here's the result of my first project where I made three .ico files, linked them to my blog favorites bookmarks, did a screen capture, then made the following image with a link map on it.

You should be able to click on the "bookmarks" within the image to get brought to the proper link.

Should be.

If anyone wants the .ico files I used to make this they can be downloaded here, here, and here, respectively. Simply right mouseclick the appropriate "here" and choose "Save Target As". (Non IE users are on your own.)

Reading Kim du Toit's daily rant is a bit like picking a scab. You know you shouldn't do it, it really doesn't feel that good to do it, yet it is somehow satisfying in the end.

Today Mr. du Toit makes a much needed announcement that the discussion-ending-corollary to Godwin's law is hereby repealed. This has needed saying for a while, and Mr. du Toit says it very well.

With the world in the current shape that it is, I doubt very much that Godwin's law itself will be repealed any time soon.

Now you two kids hug and make up or
I am going to turn this party around!

I signed up to attend the Revenge of the Blog Conference at Yale Law School next week. Should Yale make internet access available to me I will blog live reports of the event. (And, technology willing, I will post photos as the event unfolds.)

From the "Who Knew?" department comes the fact that Roman Catholic Canon Law forces a mandatory retirement age of 75 years for ArchBishops.

I note in passing that his Holiness Pope John Paul II turned 82 on May 18.

Latest addition to the "City of Evil" line:

Newsflash for USA Today's headline writer -- It isn't the Democrat's sales pitch that is crummy, it is their product.

And Democrats themselves.

I've written before about the various cross-border market differences between Canada and the United States, both in the realm of automobiles, drugs, and timely healthcare services. I grew up in a town where Canadian shoppers would litter parking lots with the wrappers, receipts, tags and bags that came with their cheaper-in-the-US goods. They ditched all the packing material in order to hide their purchases from prying customs inspectors' eyes looking to collect GST, PST and who-knows-what-T. Locals from my side of the border would head north shopping for cars and clothes.

Due to varied marketing strategies and regulatory structures the two countries often have quite disparate pricing structures for equivalent goods and services. Canadians on average earn less, and get to keep less of what they earn after taxes, than Americans. Still, Canada represents a sizable, wealthy market that businesses do not want to give up on by pricing themselves out of reach of its consumers so they price accordingly.

Since my trip to the Maritimes this summer I've suspected that there might exist an exploitable US-Canada pricing differential on DVD movies. My wife and I stopped into a Canadian discount store and I observed that prices on pre-recorded movies seemed to be, Canadian Dollar to American Dollar, not enough higher to cover the difference in the value of the currency. I filed this away, though at the time I did not see much utility in it because I did not see any movies that interested me.

A few years back I helped fund one of my hobbies by arbitraging a product from France to eager domestic buyers. Due to a scarcity of the product in the U.S. market I was able to cover shipping from Europe, ebay fees and domestic shipping and still turn a profit. Such ‘amateur’ arbitrage efforts can be seen on ebay every day of the week, evening out market disparities across the world. Did I miss an opportunity not loading up on DVD's north of the border?

The idea to exploit this market inefficiency came up again after it was brought to my attention that some items in the Amazon Canada store are quite a bit cheaper than in the regular U.S. Amazon.com, when the effects of currency exchange are included. Though I'm not sure I'm not sure it is enough of a price differential to create a viable arbitrage opportunity, but it bears watching.

For example, Canada's Amazon offers the 4 DVD set of 24 - Season One, $53.94 CDN ($US 34.35) versus its $44.98 U.S. price. Granted, shipping internationally will set you back a tick under $7.00 Canadian versus the "free" Amazon shipping so long as you stay in your own country. (Minimum order for free shipping of $25 US, $39 CAN, some exceptions apply.)

The difference becomes even more shocking when you start to look at higher priced items, such as the six DVD set of Band of Brothers. It goes for just $89.67 CDN versus its comparatively astronomical price of $77.99 US. Converted to US dollars the Canadian price represents $57.11 US, an over $20 savings off of the US price. It might just be that the story of some US soldiers in WWII isn't valued as highly in Canada as it in the US.

This affect does not appear across the board on all items.

On many items, it appears that pricing is simply set by scaling the US price by an inflated exchange rate. Witness for example Watchmen, a character from which this blog is named. Dot-Com has it for $13.97 American while Dot-See-Eh has it for $23.07. The two prices suggest an exchange rate of 1.65:1, not a good deal (today) for someone buying from the dot-see-Eh. I suspect this might be a function of what they bother to stock in Canada versus items that have to be shipped in from the US to then sell in Canada, but my supposition is 100% pure speculation (accept no substitute).

Granted some of this has to do with the particularly weak position of the Candian dollar, but there has to me more to it than that. I believe that companies are willing to make less per unit in order to price articles for sale to Canadians.

[Hint: If you want to try this out for yourself you can save an extra $10.00 Canadian (off of a $25.00 purchase) using coupon code "CANADATELUSM" (Don't include the quotes)]

(At the time of writing this post $1.00 US is worth $1.57 CDN.)

UPDATE: Add to my list the DVD set of the third season of Sopranos. US $74.99 versus CDN$ 77.99. The Canadian price represents an over $28 US savings before shipping, around $23 including shipping.

F.B.I. Snipes at A.T.F.

Portent of meaningful change or mere bureacratic posturing in preparation for homeland security restructuring?

In what can only be described as a parody of itself, the NY Times editorial board today crosses over into to the lunatic fringe. Perhaps last weeks Republican victories were too much for its weak grasp on reality to handle.

Two people are accused in the Washington area sniper case — John Muhammad, who is 41, and Lee Malvo, 17. One is an adult, the other a juvenile. Yet the government has consistently ignored the fact that Mr. Malvo deserves consideration appropriate for someone his age.

Now don't get me wrong: If the police really did inappropriately deny Mr. Malvo effective assistance of counsel by disallowing his court-appointed guardian from tending to Mr. Malvo's interests, then certainly a wrong has been committed.

The Times has lost it, however, because it still refuses to acknowledge that evil exists and that some people are simply no damn good.

I wonder if they would offer-up the same editorial slant should a 17-year old U.S. Marine get accused of a human rights violation?

Sweet.

Why would Trent Lott agree to a deal like this with little Tommy? Newsmax would have us believe that he did it to avoid "any heavy legislative lifting until next year".

Despicable. It's not like these fools have ever had to do any real heavy lifting at any time in their lives. Now that Republicans have taken back the Senate they are going to allow the likes of Chairman Leaky to hold power for a few more months out of sheer laziness?

If true this is despicable.

Simply Despicable.

After lurking for many months below their radar, my "Ithaca is The City of Evil" merchandise has been discovered by Ithaca lefties, and reported upon here and here. Strangely, their discovery has lead to a surge in orders, so I guess there really is no such thing as bad publicity

In some cases, it would seem, agents of the state do participate in assisted suicides. (secondary story in article)

[Link via C&S.]

'No Gloating' Rule in Effect at White House

Can you even imagine such a gracious statement being made by a blood-dancing President Clinton?

Let me add to Howard Bashman's understatement of the day that the Republican sweep will allow some welcome (by the retirees) retirements from the Supreme Court of the United States.

Add this Reuter's headline to Instapundit's list of biased headlines about the Republican sweep:

Republicans Seize Control of Congress

Seize!?

I cashed in last night at around Midnight EST, did I miss some late night election violence?

In a (somewhat) lesser reported story, James Traficant was able to garner 15% of the vote from his prison cell. Fifteen percent!

After a sweeping Republican victory across the nation, here's what lead the news in The City of Evil.

Democrats retained control of the 125th Assembly District seat Tuesday night, with Barbara Lifton capturing 58 percent of the vote.

And little else.

In what I can guess came from a lost world series bet of some sort, this weeks Daily Probe was taken over by monkeys, apes & gorillas.

I'd love to be able to report that I made it out to vote today, but I can't vote today. I've been disenfrachised by the World Wide Web. (Or at least one poorly coded portion of it.)

I moved into a new home, in a new town, back in late September. Like a good little subject I changed my address with all the relevant state agencies, including the DMV, using its online address change page. Silly me, I thought that by properly not checking the box marked "If change of address is NOT for voter registration purposes, check here" I would be updating my voter registration.

Turns out I was half right. The DMV studiously cancelled my old voter registration, but neglected to forward the information to my new town before the deadline to vote today. I called the registrar of voters a day too late to check on the paperwork and I was told there was no way to put this right.

Sure enough, I received a cancellation in the mail from my old town, and I've been promised that my registration will be automatic in the new town, just not anytime soon.

I guess these idiots never heard of committment control. Had they held off on cancelling the old reservation until they were sure the new one was in place I would have been fine. I guess it was just my bad luck to move at the wrong time of year.

Arrrgh!

Wondering what the FBI was doing when it wasn't catching the beltway sniper? Harassing gun owners, that's what.

I take credit for this (Entry #6). I've seen that guy plug stuff all over the blogosphere, often completely inappropriately. TechCentralStation didn't seem to care, but ScrappleFace had a pretty funny response.

UPDATE: Anil Dash had been tracking Mr. Brody further and longer than I.

Product placement gone wrong, horribly wrong. Every television on the set of The Sopranos this season has been transformed into a "Philips" brand television.

UPDATE: An alert reader notes that this firm has bragged about placing Heineken on The Sopranos, and it also reps for Philips.