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.

Edward Muybridge Revisited

Fun to watch, but further proof that

What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun. Is there anything of which one can say, "Look! This is something new"? It was here already, long ago; it was here before our time. There is no remembrance of men of old, and even those who are yet to come will not be remembered by those who follow.

See here.

Classic Year End List

To think of Tony Montana battling it out with Lara Croft, or SuperMario speaking with Mr. Monopoly...

I'm still full...

I think my belly might actually be distended... Phew.
It's the second time in a month where I've eaten over 16 ounces of steak in one sitting. I wouldn't recommend sitting near me for a while.

More national nonsense

Wow. I'm crankier about this than I thought I would be. Again, AC quoting Forsey:

"Some people think that we should be willing to swallow any kind of nonsense in order to 'preserve the unity of Canada.' I am not interested in a Canada that would be just a splash on the map, with a six-letter word scrawled across it. The only Canada I want to preserve is a Canada that can do something: for its own people, for the hungry two-thirds of the world, for the survival of the planet; not a phantom that can only watch helplessly as we all tumble down a steep place to destruction."

Ok, but what about Canada as a Nation?

Andrew Coyne punishing the NCR's gasbags:

The hollowing out of the national idea -- of a vision of Canada as a coherent national entity, capable of acting with a single national purpose -- is now complete. We are well on our way to Belgiumhood, and that suits our political class just fine.
On this, as on so many other questions, the “Quebec consensus” is a fraud.

But fine: some Quebecers think they are. People are entitled to believe what they want to believe. Quebec nationalists are entitled to argue that Quebec is a nation all they want. But somewhere, sometime, somebody has to put the other proposition: that Canada is a nation; that Quebecers are a part of that nation; that they have as much or more in common with other Canadians as they do with each other. Ordinarily, I would expect my prime minister, at least, to do that.

But my prime minister did not do that. My prime minister could discourse at length on his profound conviction, never voiced until now, that Quebecers are a nation, but never once could he say that Canadians are -- only bark out meaningless applause lines like “Canada is the greatest country in the world.”

..."this can only fan the flames it claims to extinguish. The message the Parliament of Canada is about to send to Quebecers is this: that, as a nation, they have more in common with each other than they do with other Canadians, whom they will increasingly see as another nation altogether; that their relationship with that other nation must, accordingly, be as that they maintain with other nations -- cordial, businesslike, to be sure, but distant; and that, like any self-respecting nation, they can on no account submit to be governed by another nation -- as represented, for example, by the majority of the Parliament of Canada.

Quebec, a nation?

This from CalgaryGrit captures the painful absurdity nicely:

So, in short, everyone ends up looking like an imbécile. And, as a consequence, Michael Ignatieff looks less ridiculous in comparison. So he and Jean Charest are probably the only winners in this sorry, sorry spectacle we should not have had to go through.

My Boss' Boss' Boss...

Yup. Pat McG. Not that he dropped by the office while he was here. In fact, I don't think he's ever been "by the office." His admin mentioned that he might (two-three years ago), and mgmt went into a flurry of "clean your desk" memo's with side-order of "dress smartly." As it turned out, I think he went to Canoe with some other people and then flew out again.

Marketing Meta-data and web 2.0

Interesting. Wonder how much attention Nikon and Canon pay to this trend - especially seeing Nikon's most recent N80 ad campaign - where they gave Nikons to people to see what they would shoot, and post their picture next to their own picture in magazine ads.

Detail: Grassi Lakes