A few weeks ago I decided to buy some new music. More specifically, I needed a more difficult collection of relatively short pieces to use for practice sight reading during my occasional bouts of piano playing. After consulting a variety of online piano forums and blogs, I settled on purchasing a copy of the Henle Album from the fine folks at G Henle Verlag. It's a steal at about $10, it's beautifully engraved, and it's meticulously edited.

Prior to this purchase, I had never so much as heard of Henle. (Relatively speaking, I'm not an especially talented pianist, and so I don't have a whole lot of exposure to the world of music publishers.) So I spent a few minutes poking around their website to learn, for one, what it meant that everything they sold was labeled as "urtext."

I also learned that as recently as 2000, Henle hand engraved all of their sheet music. That is, as recently as ten years ago — at about the same time I purchased my first digital camera — Henle still employed people who cut lines, staffs, sharps and other musical notation into sheets of lead with delicate metal instruments to produce printed sheet music. In fact, they still have a short film on their website documenting the process. It's almost unbelievable.

On the one hand, the fact that the company stuck to their now-antiquated methods of production for so long makes me wonder about the company's management. But on the other, there is something remarkable about a company so committed to producing the most elegant, most functional printed music that they would keep employing people to engrave music by hand, in spite of the emergence of digital publishing tools.

Earlier this afternoon I read an interview with Loren Brichter, the man behind Tweetie and Scribbles, on The Setup. In the interview, Mr. Brichter notes that, while the Mac OS X flavor of his Twitter client has advertising unless users pay $19.95 to register the application, many of the people who opt to register their copy of Tweetie don't bother to turn off the advertising that in effect "pays" for the free version. At first, I this seemed very strange to me. I usually despise advertising. (Long live the TiVo!)

But as I thought about it, I realized that not only do I not mind the advertisements injected into my Twitter stream in Tweetie, I actually like having those ads in my Twitter stream. For unlike most other advertising, the Fusion ads in my Twitter stream are informative; I've learned about a variety of useful software products and web services, such as WuFoo. And when I've seen a particular advertisement before, or I find the good or service it promotes irrelevant to me, the injected ads don't blink, honk or otherwise try to take my attention of off my Twitter feed.

Which leads me to propose these two criteria for determining the goodness of an advertisement:

(1) A "good" advertisement conveys novel information
(2) A "good" advertisement imposes minimal costs to the consumer

Note that a given advertisement can meet and fail the first criterion at the same time, as whether an advertisement conveys novel information (or not) depends on who consumes the advertisement.

For instance, a banner ad for the Kindle on The New York Times' website might satisfy (1) for a 40-something doctor who spends her weekends kayaking, but who can't tell the difference between a DIMM and SIM. The same ad, however, might fail (1) if it's consumed by a 30-something advertising executive who paid $399 for the original Kindle the day it went on sale, and who has since upgraded to Kindle 2. In the first case, the banner ad conveys something novel: the doctor had no idea that Amazon.com sold an electronic reading device with over-the-air purchasing functionality. But in the second case, the ad tells the advertising executive nothing he didn't already know.

It's also interesting how the second criteria manages to capture some of the differences between print and electronic media. Advertisements in print magazines generally bug me far more than advertisements online, partly because ads in physical printed magazines add additional mass. I've always wondered why people subscribe to magazines like Vogue, even if the content is interesting, just because every issues has so many advertisements that its weight is often measured in pounds rater than ounces.

If I were more adept at constructing economic models, I could easily see this developing into a nice little paper with a title like "Optimal Advertising Theory."

From time to time the fine folks who run our dining commons allow a student or two to play deejay for the evening, regaling diners with whatever bizarre blend of music they wish. I've rarely been thrilled with the musical selections made by these individuals, though I'd be the first to admit I have far from typical preferences when it comes to music. (There's also not quite right about eating dinner to the sounds of a dance anthem.)

What really bugs me about most of these would-be deejays, though, is not so much the music they play, but the quality of the recordings of the music they play. More often than not, it's apparent they either ripped the song from a CD seven years ago or, more likely, downloaded it from some metaphorical Internet back alley without looking at the encoding information.

Back in the dark ages, when dial-up Internet connections were the norm and music players measured their capacity in megabytes rather than gigabytes, this tradeoff between sound quality and file size made sense. It was impossible to squeeze more than a few dozen songs onto a Diamond Rio (remember them?) with a quarter gigabyte of storage. Even the original iPod — with 5 gigabytes of storage at $399 — would only hold about 500 songs encoded at 256 kbps. Portability and flexibility came at the price of inferior audio quality.

Today, however, when even the most inexpensive iPod comes with eight gigabytes of memory and even a basic laptop ships with a capacious hard disk whose capacity is measured in hundreds of gigabytes, this tradeoff makes no sense. In fact, the two largest retailers of digital music — Amazon.com and Apple — now sell tracks encoded at 256 kbps, and many classical labels sell tracks encoded in a lossless format. So why do people persist in tolerating low-quality recordings?

Most people I ask this question say something to the effect of, "This music sounds good enough to me." Which drives me crazy. Anyone who claims they can't hear the difference between a track encoded at 128 kbps and 256 kbps should have their hearing checked. (Or buy a pair of halfway decent speakers.) I don't see why we should settle for less when having more has virtually zero cost.

It's that time of year again. The time of the year when I try to find a pirated copy of the latest album from Les Enfoirés, the French musical group that raises money for the folks at Les Restaurants du Coeur. Not that I want to pirate the music. I'd be more than happy to pay $10 or even 10€ for the album. That is, if I could find a channel to purchase a legitimate digital copy of the album outside of France without a French credit card. And, as I've blogged before, it's not exactly easy to find a pirated copy of the album, given that the proceeds from album sales go to help the impoverished. It's absurd to think I can read newspapers from around the world without a hitch and browse the Web on my iPhone, but I can only obtain this music, which was probably created using digital tools, by physically importing a jewel case and plastic disc from France.

On a related note, I just obtained a copy of Ellie Goulding's new album "Lights," which has just gone on sale in the UK to great success. It's actually not bad, and it's also very difficult to obtain through legitimate channels in the United States without paying $50 for an imported copy. I also recently downloaded an interesting album of world music titled "Un cri dans l'ébène" from a group called Titom, which can be found in the iTunes Store and at Amazon.com. It reminds me vaguely of the soundtrack to the British drama-comedy television series, Monarch of the Glen, though nowhere near as cliché or cloying.

(Addendum: Apparently "Un cri dans l'ébène" is a collection of traditional music from the French region of Bretagne, princiapally that played at the Fest Noz. Remarkable how similar it is to traditional Scottish music.)

Many people have heralded Tom's Shoes, the company that donates a pair of shoes to a child in need for every pair they sell to "normal" consumers, as a good example of a business with both a social and profit goal. Certainly, the philanthropic nature of Tom's Shoes is laudable. But I feel like the company focuses on its social mission to the detriment of actually making high-quality shoes. Or at least it appears that way. For, even after spending a good twenty minutes perusing their website, I couldn't find a single page that took the time to explain why their product is something I might actually want to buy for my own enjoyment and utility, not just the utility of others.

Who would buy a pair of shoes for him or herself exclusively to help the impoverished? It makes no sense. The fact that a potential Tom's Shoes customer expects to receive a pair of shoes for herself implies that she intends to gain something from the transaction other than the "warm glow" of having given an impoverished Argentinian a pair of shoes. If all she cared about were the social good created, she ought simply donate her money to a charity.

It seems exceedingly idiotic for me to spend $70 on a pair of Tom's Shoes that are uncomfortable, not especially durable or likely to have manufacturing defects. If I never wear the shoes, I've wasted the labor and human capital inputs of the designers, marketers and managers, and the materials inputs that go into making what amounts to a pound of refuse. Not to mention I would probably go buy another pair of high-quality shoes, since I'm not a member of the barefoot movement. (Perhaps from Tod's, whose name differs by one letter, but whose ethos is perhaps the antithesis of Tom's. It's a coincidence I find amusing.)

Contrast the Tom's Shoes model to the Whole Foods model. I don't shop at Whole Foods purely because they have a philanthropic bent. I shop there because they provide superior quality foodstuffs for my various culinary concoctions, and because they staff their stores with people who don't look nonplussed and scowl when asked for directions to the lemongrass. Yet they do manage to effect quite a bit of social good — certainly more than any ineptly managed, naïve, idealistic nonprofit ever could.

I don't particularly mind companies that sacrifice some profit for social good. But I do have a problem with companies that don't produce products worth buying.

I really should go to bed, but I'm so incensed that I doubt I'll fall asleep if I don't put this out now.

But first a little background. I'm not a big fan of "scented" products. I don't want my clothes to smell like "clean breeze" (whatever that is), or my disinfectant wipes to smell like "lemon." At the same time, most products billed as unscented, while not perfumed, still have a scent, usually something I like to call "industrial solvent." Which is why I keep a dispenser of lavender-scented liquid hand soap from the folks at L'Occitane en Provence on hand. It's just scented enough to trick the mind into believing it's not some kind of horrible industrial cleaning agent, but not so scented that I feel my throat constrict when I wash my hands. (Forgive me for not choosing a more "macho" scent or product, but I have a difficult time believing anyone, let alone superficial attractive women, could possibly like — much less tolerate — a product like Axe. Frankly, I'm a little embarrassed I even know what that product is.)

Which brings me back to the story. As I entered the bathroom on my floor to brush my teeth just moments ago, I noticed that I had left my pretentious French soap on one of the bathroom sinks earlier in the day. So I walked over to the sink in question, thinking I would bring the soap back to my room after ridding my mouth of plaque. To my annoyance, however, someone had defiled my soap dispenser by spitting into the dispenser! Needless to say, that perfectly good container of soap is now in a trash can.

On what planet is it acceptable for people to spit into containers of soap? Surely not this one.

As I exited the library yesterday, I noticed a placard on the checkout desk that announced the Bates College library had acquired a Kindle. I'm going to be blunt: I can hardly think of something more idiotic a library could do, save perhaps for burning its collection or committing its binding supplies to the aid of terrorists in a glue stick-powered takeover of the government.

First of all, there's the cost of the Kindle hardware itself, about $260, or enough to buy about 10 "real" books, even at publishers' list prices. So, right of the bat, the library has sacrificed the ability to grow its collection by at least 10 volumes. And any savings associated with the fact that the Kindle can access public domain works, like Pride and Prejudice or Othello, is offset by the fact that the library probably owns at least two copies of such famous public domain works.

Second, there's the huge opportunity cost of buying a book for the Kindle. The nature of Amazon.com's DRM on Kindle books means that only one person at a time will be able to read whatever collection of books the library purchases for the Kindle. Contrast this to the conventional arrangement, in which different books can be lent to different people at the same time. It's as if one particular shelf or stack of the library's collection had to be checked out at all at once, and only one person could check out that stack or shelf at a time.

It would make far more sense, assuming Amazon makes the technology and licensing available, for the library to purchase copies of electronic copies of books and magazines that students who happened to own a Kindle could access, much as Sony does today with many public libraries.

And all this is not to say I don't like my Kindle. It's a great device for linear reading, where one starts on page one and moves sequentially to page n. But the Kindle is a device to read content, not a piece of content itself. People don't go to their local libraries to check out televisions; they go to check out DVDs.

Earlier this week, I dropped a box of crackers, spilling a mess of crumbs onto my floor. As someone who cares, perhaps too much, about tidiness, I immediately sought out a vacuum cleaner to remove the noxious foodstuffs. The first vacuum cleaner I found failed to clean up anything at all. In fact, I'm convinced that particular device made my floor dirtier. And I haven't been able to find another vacuum cleaner in my dormitory to even try. So I've now had a variety of crumbs laying on my floor for more than a few days, something that makes me quite uncomfortable.

As such, I began exploring the idea of buying my own vacuum cleaner. But because I like to buy quality, I have a hard time justifying such a purchase. Even a low-end Miele vacuum runs at least $300 or $400, which seems to me an excessive amount to spend given the size of my dorm room and the infrequency with which I need to vacuum. By my own rough estimates, I would spend less money by paying a cleaning service $20 a week to vacuum for me until I graduate, as opposed to investing in my own vacuum cleaner. Yes, I suppose such a device would probably prove useful for many years to come — the Miele Polaris I looked at comes with a seven year warranty — especially as I transition to a slightly less austere living arrangement.

But this really comes back to a more fundamental question: why doesn't the college provide the residents of its residence halls with proper, working vacuum cleaners? Do they want to encourage students to become slobs? The college has no problem providing all-you-can-eat printing on high-speed laser printers in the library and labs. I can't help but wonder why the College doesn't just provide or tack an extra $2 onto our already absurd "comprehensive fee" to give me the ability to clean my floor.

Newsweek has a story this week about the blurry line separating true climate scientists — the sorts of people with doctorates who build huge models to run on supercomputers — and the activists, so-called climate change "deniers" and advocates for change alike. The story mentions James Hensen, a pioneering climate researcher at NASA, who has become so impassioned about the issue to resort to civil disobedience tactics to convince politicians and other officials to take action. But I'm beginning to think these advocates are allocating their efforts inefficiently. Europe's cap-and-trade scheme has done little to curb carbon dioxide emissions. The Copenhagen climate talks accomplished virtually nothing. And the public has little appetite for even weak climate change mitigation policies, such as President Obama's proposed cap-and-trade system. This leads me to believe climate change activists would see more success by channeling their energy toward making carbon-free energy cheaper, instead of seeking a policy-driven solution.

As Bill Gates put it in his TED talk last week, if we can make carbon-free sources of energy cheaper than carbon-emmiting sources of energy, climate change skeptics will make no difference in our ability to protect the environment. Instead, when people go to buy a car or an HVAC system, they'll buy the cheaper, non-polluting option, and the planet will move closer to a climate change solution as people naturally reduce their consumption of carbon-emitting goods and services.

Admittedly, this kind of market-driven solution would be more effective with government involvement. Carbon dioxide emissions due to the consumption of goods and services are what economists call an externality; that is, the cost of carbon dioxide emitted by a gallon of gasoline or a flight from London to Madrid is not included in the cost of the carbon-emitting good. As such, economic theory tells us that we would be better off by internalizing that eternality by, for instance, imposing a "carbon tax" on goods like gasoline. This has the fairly obvious effect of accelerating the market-driven switch to carbon-free goods and services.

But, despite the best efforts of activists, I see little chance of the US government providing this sort of policy jumpstart to a market-driven solution to the climate change problem.

Which makes me think climate change advocates should be channeling their efforts toward driving down the cost of carbon-free goods and services relative to their polluting counterparts, rather than trying in vain to reach a policy-driven solution. I realize that support of business is anathema to the beliefs of many people advocating for climate change legislation. But unless the political climate changes, I honestly believe advocates would be more effective in staving off global warming by helping startups and researchers gain funding to develop and bring to market their ideas for cheaper, cleaner goods and services.

This will be short. There's still more liquidity analysis to do.

At any rate, as I skimmed my Twitter feed and various news blogs, I couldn't help but notice a huge volume of people whining, moaning and groaning about the new Facebook redesign. So I visited my Facebook account — something I try to avoid — to see what everyone was complaining about.

It looks almost exactly the same. Sure, Mark and his pals have made a few adjustments to the placement of controls and to the application's design. But nothing looks so completely different that I can even begin to imagine why people feel obliged to rant and rave about the new look.

If anything, this supports my thesis that most normal computer users would prefer a computing appliance, such as the iPad, to a full-blown general purpose computer.