Season's Greetings!

A Calvin Christmas Thought

Not enough?

More Calvin with Snowmen!

Xmas Spirit?

Hmm. From the New Yorker:

Since the early nineteen-nineties, Joel Waldfogel, an economist at the University of Pennsylvania, has been doing a series of studies in which college students are asked to put a value on the presents they receive. Waldfogel’s main finding is that, in general, people spend a lot more on presents than they’re worth to those who receive them, a phenomenon that he calls “the deadweight loss of Christmas.” A deadweight loss is created when you spend eighty dollars to give me a sweater that I would spend only sixty-five dollars to buy myself. Waldfogel estimates that somewhere between ten and eighteen per cent of seasonal spending becomes deadweight loss, which means that billions of dollars a year is now going to waste.

But, on the upside...

A study by the economists Sara Solnick and David Hemenway shows that we value unrequested gifts more than presents we ask for, because we assume that the former show more thought.

So,

Waldfogel’s studies also suggest a very different solution: if most of the presents we buy are going to be less valuable in monetary terms than in sentimental ones, then there’s no reason to believe that the more expensive gift is a better gift. In fact, the more we spend at Christmas, the more we waste. We might actually be happier—and we’d certainly be wealthier—if we exchanged small, well-considered gifts rather than haunting the malls. Calculating the deadweight loss of Christmas gifts is a coldhearted project, but it leads to a paradoxically warmhearted conclusion: the fact of giving may be more important than what you give.

All quotes from James Surowiecki

Calvin Cont'd

Winter Calvin cont'd

Christmas Calvin!

How to Navigate Public Transit in Toronto

Cool.

Another "You Ask, I Answer"

One excerpt:

Nearly 100 Americans are dying every month. The United States is spending $2 billion a week."

And the total?

The United States has made a massive commitment to the future of Iraq in both blood and treasure. As of December 2006, nearly 2,900 Americans have lost their lives serving in Iraq. Another 21,000 Americans have been wounded, many severely.

To date, the United States has spent roughly $400 billion on the Iraq War, and costs are running about $8 billion per month. In addition, the United States must expect significant "tail costs" to come. Caring for veterans and replacing lost equipment will run into the hundreds of billions of dollars. Estimates run as high as $2 trillion for the final cost of the U.S. involvement in Iraq.

Ouch. But there you go J-Mac.

Online Music

A competitor to Pandora along with last.fm This one matches by mood, gauging your it on the axes of Positive/Negative and Calm/Energetic. Pandora looks for similarities between your faves and other songs within the music itself. Not sure what Last's method is yet. So far, I'd say that musicology plays more familiar music - which is a good and bad thing.