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."

Readers with good memory may recall that last summer I spent some of my spare time working on a piece of software I tentatively named Notable Notebook. Such persons may also recall that I had ambitiously claimed a feature-complete version would go online for a small private beta sometime at the end of 2009. That, of course, never happened. So I thought I'd provide a status update of sorts on the project.

The primary difficultly facing further Notable development is the highly fragmented nature of my time, between classes, homework and other obligations. I find it difficult to solve "big" problems in disjointed 30 minute blocks of spare time. Hence, the project has not really advanced, at least in any easily perceptible way, since the end of August 2009.

Which is not to say I've abandoned the project. In fact, as a result of my school's somewhat peculiar schedule, I may well have a month and a half between mid-April and early June to sit down and make some real progress. Naturally, I'll post any news here.

As I've mentioned before, I've spent some of my time this summer working on a Rails application, tentatively named Notable Notebook. I'm not quite ready to let people try it out for themselves, but, with summer's end approaching, I figured I would put together a video walkthrough.

I apologize for this screencast's many defects. Enjoy. (As much as is possible.)

Watch the Video

It occurred to me that there's another compelling reason to improve the fidelity of our phone calls: fewer cell phone-related accidents on the road.

While I'm too lazy to find even an article on Wikipedia to back this claim up, I will assert that the amount of cognitive power required to understand an audio recording is inversely proportional to the quality of that recording. In other words, people have to use more of their brainpower to understand a poorly made recording than to understand a high quality recording.

If we take this to be true, it becomes clear that improving the fidelity of phone calls would reduce the number of cell phone-related driving accidents. The real danger posed by cell phone use while driving is not the physical distraction of fumbling for the phone or awkwardly holding the device against one's ear. In fact, studies — which I will conveniently not link to here — have shown that drivers using a hands free kit are no less distracted while driving than drivers who simply hold the phone to their ear. It's the cognitive distraction that causes problems. And, part of the reason that cell phone conversations are more of a cognitive distraction than, say, speaking to someone in the passenger seat, is the fact that drivers' brains must devote more of their cognitive power to understanding a low fidelity phone call than to understanding someone's un-garbled voice in the next seat over.

That said, I don't know whether improving the fidelity of cell phone calls would remove enough of the cognitive load placed on the brain by making the phone call to make driving-whilst-phoning safe. So it still might make more sense to ban cell phone use among drivers. But, at the very least, I have another reason to whine about the lamentable fidelity of phone calls.

A few days ago I mentioned my effort to write some methods for automated sentence parsing. Specifically, I had the goal in mind of creating sentence parsing algorithms that could still do a reasonably good job of text parsing even if the author omits common grammatical structures.

It turns out, writing such a set of algorithms is no walk in the park. In particular, I now see why the software I had been using failed so miserably when I threw it sentences without some key parts of speech.

At least in English, many words fall into one or more types of speech. For example, the word "cue." It could be a noun — a implement for playing pool, a signal, a hint — but it could also be a verb as in, "He cued the tape for playback," depending, of course, upon the context.

The context, as I understand it, plays a particularly important role in some algorithms. This class of parsing methods look at all the word pairs in a sentence and assign a part of speech accordingly. For instance, given the phrase, "a yellow duck," the parser would figure out that "yellow" cannot modify the verb "duck" (as in "duck and cover"), so it's likely "duck" is a noun and "yellow" and adjective.

Of course, this approach also failed rather miserably when I subjected it to real world inputs. The two algorithms I tried depended upon the presence of determiners in many cases to act as sort of "reference points," since, for example, "the" is only ever a determiner. This then enabled the algorithms to make good assumptions about the location of nouns, which in turn forces other words to be verbs, which more or less makes everything fall into place quite nicely.

But as I said, that didn't work. People don't write notes with sufficiently polished grammar to make such approaches work. (Though if I ever need to parse well-written work, I have code that does a pretty good job.)

So I'm trying my own heuristically motivated approach using word frequency data. While I'm working on some fancy probabilistic mumbo jumbo that involves a lot of math, at its core the approach is quite simple.

Take the word "young" as an example. I suspect most English speakers would immediately classify "young" as an adjective, which is true — most of the time. "Young" can also be a noun, as in, "The young were spared the worst of the battle's ravages." But, by analyzing a whole bunch of English writing, it quickly becomes clear that "young" is used far more frequently as an adjective than as a noun.

Thus, my algorithm takes that data and makes some initial assumptions when it looks at the words and phrases in a sentence. My hope is that, with these reference points in place it will become possible to make good guesses about the rest of the parts.

I also broke down and ordered a copy of Foundations of Statistical Natural Language Processing just to give myself a touch more background on the use of probabilistic methods in natural language parsing.

It's exciting, interesting and — most of all — incredibly frustrating.

A few weeks ago, I started working on a software package designed to make it easy to take notes. I won't go into the details here just now, but I do want to mention the key technology, which I hope will set my application apart: natural language text processing.

The idea, mostly unimplemented at this point, is to have the software take blobs of text (i.e., notes), run them through some fancy natural language analysis algorithms and automatically create relationships between notes in useful ways. So that, for instance, if I had written a note to myself saying, "Never buy Skippy peanut butter again -- it was too sweet," then if I were to compose a shopping list that included, "Buy peanut butter," the software would automatically add an annotation to the shopping list to remind me what sort of peanut butter not to buy.

Last night, I thought I had a first early, version working reasonably well. I've been using some freely available sentence parsing software with my own additions to analyze blocks of input. It was far from perfect, but it did manage to create most of the basic relationships I though it should. So I decided to test the system against some "real world" inputs by running some publicly published to-do lists from tadalists through my application.

It robbed me of my confidence. Not everyone it seems composes their notes using scrupulously correct grammar. In particular, most people omit the article before the nouns in their to-do lists, which really tripped up the sentence parser I was using.

This presents at once a huge challenge and an interesting learning opportunity. I really don't have a choice but to write my own sentence parser, to turn "The cow ate some grass" or "Buy box of dishsoap" into a tree structure that an unintelligent computer can understand. Even in the summer, it seems, I will spend a not insignificant amount of money on academic texts.

Society has dragged the recording industry into the 21st century kicking and screaming. Even today, the major labels seem incapable of coping with the reality that their their primary revenue stream — the sales of recordings — simply will not return to pre-Internet levels. Some would go so far as to say that we have no more need for record labels. That, in the age of MySpace and iTunes, bands no longer need a conduit to leech away at artist's compensation with onerous contracts. It makes sense to say music costs far too much, even with inflation and all that jazz. But to assert that record labels have no place greatly underestimates the value that a "good" record label adds.

While the recording industry doubtlessly adds value to works, the idea that people should pay as much for music with significantly lower distribution and production costs has no merit. Sure, the cost of pressing the nth recording of Tony Bennett's new compilation of Christmas music is close to zero. But digital distribution allows for so much more cost cutting — cost cutting much higher in the corporate hierarchy. There's no need to keep salaried dealmakers on staff to finagle the best prices out of overseas manufacturers. There's no need to pay supply chain experts to ensure the CDs arrive at Best Buy on time and in the right quantities. It's also worth mentioning that the same technologies that allow for digital distribution of music files also greatly reduce the cost of producing music, even in a professional setting. A struggling twentysomething artist producing music in a cramped Manhattan apartment likely uses the exact same software as a professional musician in a swanky recording booth.

And, even if that makes no sense, consider the alternative consumers have to buying music legitimately, whether digitally through something like iTunes or on a physical CD. Any consumer with a shred of intelligence and an Internet connection can download just about any music at almost no cost. (The odds of the RIAA filing a suit against a given consumer are extremely low.) With that kind of competition, the price of legitimate music should come down, even if iTunes, Amazon.com and other legal digital music distributors do offer a superior product in terms of the ease of navigation, consistency of service and security. Otherwise, as people have proven over the last decade, people will just pirate music.

So the price of music should come down. But why not sound the death knell for the record labels? In my view, the recording labels and recording industry need to rethink their role in the music production process. Digital distribution essentially removes all the barriers to entry for new musical talent. When the cost of keeping a few digital music files on a server somewhere is close to zero — whether or not the public buys three copies or three million copies — Apple has no reason not to make them available. Contrast that to physical distribution. Physical stores have physical limits to the number of CDs they can keep on shelves. Not to mention a musical group wouldn't want lots of unsold physical CD recordings sitting around unsold.

Thus, the record label really has no reason to exist if its purpose were to bring music from musicians' minds to consumers' ears. But that's not really what record labels do well. Ideally, a record label acts as a filter, separating mediocre music from the truly great.

Take Deutsche Grammophon (a Universal subsidiary, alas) as a functioning example. Scads of musicians have recorded Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 3. No doubt even more people of a certain skill level have made recordings of that piece given today's greatly reduced cost of recording. But, if I want to buy a recording of Piano Sonata No. 3, I will turn to Deutsche Grammophon's incredible library of classical recordings. I do this because I know that any classical musician recording with Deutsche Grammophon must be great: Deutsche Grammophone has a track record of picking only the most exceptional musicians to record under its banner.

That's the value that record labels add. They should accept the fact that, as has been the case in the last ten years, musicians will generate proportionally less income through the sales of recordings and proportionally more through the sale of rivalrous goods, like live performances. Record labels are no longer distributors. The record industry should embrace its role as a tastemaker. Just as some authors try to convince Oprah to make their novel the latest selection for her book club, record labels should offer artists their "seal of approval" for a fee — provided the music passes muster — which, if the label has any credibility, would influence buying habits. (Admittedly, the Oprah's Book Club parallel is not fantastic. Hopefully it conveys the general idea.)

Without a doubt, the recording industry needs to change its focus. Asking single mothers in Ohio to fork over hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages for sharing a few dozen music files makes no sense. It's mean spirited and patently ineffective. Instead, the recording industry should embrace its role as a sort of gatekeeper, an agent to help people distinguish good music from bad; to promote and notice otherwise anonymous talent.

Photo Wrapped Present by psmphotography

Rather than just expound upon the items I would like to receive, I thought I would expand this year's list to include items I deem worthy of gifting upon others as well.

Here goes.

Under $50

It's impossible to have enough Moleskine notebooks. They're pretty great for just about everything. ($10-$20 at moleskineus.com)

I find standard-issue black socks a little dull. Fortunately there's a designer by the name of Paul Smith. Great socks. ($30 at Paul Smith US)

For those who love to read, 2008 was a good year in books. Tom Friedman's latest, Hot, Flat and Crowded merits attention. There's also Nudge from Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstien at the University of Chicago, and Larry Lessig's great new book, Remix. I'd like to put my nose in a copy of Predictably Irrational and Snoop: What Stuff Says About You. Fiction-wise, I'm still angling for a set of the New Annotated Sherlock Holmes from Norton. ($10-$40 at Amazon.com)

Photographers will appreciate a Gorillapod. I've found mine surprisingly useful. ($25-$50 at joby.com)

After years of sampling Dutched cocoas (including a particularly pricey number from Fauchon in Paris), I have come to believe there's nothing better than Dean & Deluca's Bensdorp Cocoa. Great hot chocolate. ($12 for 14 ounces at Dean & Deluca)

Music lovers should own a copy of Fiesta with Gustavo Dudamel and the Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra of Venezuela. It's pretty amazing music. ($14 at Amazon.com)

I also found Alphabeat's This is Alphabeat amusing, if not fantastic. ($18 at Amazon.com)

Under $100

I'm a big believer in the fountain pen. Cross makes the ATX in a fountain pen and a variety of colors. Or for something a little more European, Waterman has the Hémisphère for just under three figures. ($85 and $95, respectively at Art Brown)

Any organization freak should own a copy of OmniGroup's OmniFocus. ($80 at OmniGroup)

Spending as much time as I do in Maine, I doubt I will ever reach my satiation point in terms of sweater ownership. Cashmere is always good. I'm a big fan of sweaters from Ted Baker, Michael Kors and J. Crew. ($90 and up at J. Crew, Bluefly and Saks Fifth Avenue)

Serious (or semi-serious) photographers might also like a 50mm prime lens for their digital SLR. ($100 or thereabouts at Amazon.com)

Under $200

While I principally like scarves because they're warm, they have been making something of a comeback in the world of fashion (or so I've been told). Drakes of London has great scarves in a variety of patterns and materials. (90 pounds sterling, or whatever that is at today's exchange rate, and up at Drakes of London)

Anyone in the market for a new digital camera should stop looking at Consumer Reports and buy the Canon PowerShot SD1100IS. And don't forget to throw in a 2 GB SD memory card! ($150 and $10, respectively at Amazon.com)

Under $400

I'm still angling for an 85mm prime lens for my Nikon camera. Great focal length for portraits, and and enormous maximum aperture setting for low light and great blur. ($380 at Amazon.com)

Anyone shopping for a new cell phone should skip the BlackBerry and buy an Apple iPhone. Far superior. Or, for those with an aversion to cell phones, the new Apple iPod touch has even more storage and the same great mobile OS. ($199 and up at Apple)

Splurge Gifts

I wouldn't say no to a 30" Apple Cinema Display. ($1800 at Apple)

People looking to upgrade their computing situation should go for the great new MacBook or the iMac. ($1199 and up at Apple)

Nor would I decline to accept a set of Globetrotter Luggage. ($1800 and up at J. Crew)

The BBC just ran a story about the TrueCall, a device developed by a group of British eggheads sick and tired of receiving unwelcome phone calls. The idea behind the device is quite brilliant, though not particularly original: numbers on a user-created white list go through normally, numbers on a black list receive a snippy recorded messages and unidentified callers must wait on hold while the end user decides what to do. Ad blocking browser plugins and some spam email filters work in much the same way.

With that idea in mind, it struck me that some kind of iPhone application might be able to do something similar. The iPhone, with its works (almost) anywhere Internet connection, could download a list of known telemarketers' phone numbers and display the incoming call to the end user depending upon its status. Then I remembered that Apple has yet to grant developers that kind of system-level access — namely the ability to tinker with the Phone application — to make such a system possible. Unfortunate.

In the interim, someone — perhaps me if I have enough time — should put together a plugin for Mac OS X Address Book that syncs one huge vCard file with the name "Telemarketer" and known telemarketers' phone numbers between Macs and a user-created telemarketing blacklist in the cloud. I would never need to answer another junk phone call again. Unfortunately, there's no way to have the iPhone answer the call and play a pre-recorded message.

When I lumbered out of bed this morning and hobbled to the bathroom to shower, I did not expect to spend ten minutes waiting to bathe. But I did. I spent at least ten minutes waiting idly for the poorly engineered, "environmentally friendly" combination of plumbing and water heating apparatuses to deliver water warm enough not to give me frostbite. This, like the cell phone problem I wrote about on a previous occasion, epitomizes the lack of thought people give to supposedly environmentally friendly ideas. It also underscores just how stupid our supposedly intelligent buildings are.

Even with a specially-designed low-flow shower head, I wasted at least ten or twenty gallons of water waiting for hot water. While I doubt the state of Maine has a shortage of fresh water, wasting that quantity of water seems contradictory to the aim of making a shower more environmentally friendly. It also raises the possibility that the hot water heating system operates inefficiently, and thus wastes energy, if it takes just under ten minutes to feed hot water into the shower.

The solution, as I see it, lies with intelligence. If the water heating system in my dormitory had a bigger, better, faster brain, it could undoubtedly save tremendous amounts of energy without sacrificing my time or my comfort.

I have often wondered, for example, why showers, sinks and baths have such imprecise temperature controls. One must fiddle with several knobs for a minute or so — wasting water and energy in the process — to find that "just right" temperature. On the other hand, a computer controlled water heating system could take a person's preferred water temperature, measured to degree Fahrenheit precision, and summon that person's desired water temperature and flow at the push of a button in much the same way some high-end cars store seat position and climate control preferences in drivers' key fobs.

What's more, if the software controlling the building's water heating system employed a Bayesian classifier, it could eventually predict hot water usage patterns to a reasonably high degree of accuracy and precision. Such a system would also reduce the amount of energy expended heating water, improve people's comfort by always having heated water ready and reduce the amount of water wasted before a person actually takes a shower.

Many environmental advocates object to the amount of lamb imported from New Zealand because the idea of transporting food all those thousands of miles offends their carbon conscious morals. These people, however, ignore the host of factors that make up a products carbon footprint, which, in the case of lamb, actually make imported New Zealand lamb more environmentally friendly than domestically produced lamb. Likewise, people living on the East Coast of the United States would actually act in a more environmentally conscious manner if they bought wine imported from Europe, rather than shipped across the country from California.

People need to think before they think green. These reactionary solutions to environmental impact issues, in many cases, create just as many problems — for the environment and for people's overall welfare — as they create. Not to mention they make me wait an intolerably long time to take a shower.

Last weekend, I attended Smith College's annual debate tournament, the first of the year for my debate team. Unfortunately, amidst all the debating hubbub, a large quantity of grease managed to find its way onto the collar of my coat. It was annoying, but I figured I would be able to wash the coat and remove the unsightly grime. Not a big deal.

Thus, I checked my coat's pockets for important documents, pens and currency, looked at the care tag and put it into the washing machine. In retrospect, it would have made a lot of sense for me to remove the coat's belt before putting it into the washing machine. But, mostly borne of my strong desire not to stare at a huge grease spot on my coat's collar, I just threw the it into the machine and hoped for the best.

An hour or so later, I removed the coat in question from the washing machine. To my great relief the disgusting gunk was gone. Unfortunately, however, I also noticed that one of the buttons had come off.

While the coat came with an assortment of replacement buttons, I have neither the thread, needle or sewing prowess to replace the long lost button. What's more, even if I had those three missing pieces of the puzzle, my coat's belt is constructed in such a way that the buttons on the belt are sewn to one of the two layers of gaberdine. So, even if I were to attempt the seemingly impossible, my handiwork would look really weird. The telltale signs of stitching would be visible on the back of the belt for one button and not the other. Living with such asymmetry would be unthinkable!

Then I thought about computers. I love computers, gadgets, technology and just about anything related to them, aside perhaps from the toxic electronic waste created by technology's rapid replacement cycle. Anyway, it occurred to me that, when my computer goes south, I can always send it back to the manufacturer to have it repaired. So, I thought, why don't clothing companies do the same thing?

As the cost of manufactured goods continues to fall, thanks to free trade and ever-improving manufacturing technology, companies of all sorts must rely more and more on the services provided with their products to stay in the black. BMW doesn't just sell you a car. They throw in free maintenance and roadside assistance too. Panasonic doesn't just sell you a plasma TV. They throw in a Concierge service, just in case the mess of buttons on the remote is overwhelming.

Especially with the rise of these so-called "fast fashion" chains, such as H&M and Forever 21, who offer designer-"inspired" wares before the designers have finished their final stitching, high-end designer brands — like the one responsible for making my coat — need something to differentiate themselves, aside from tastefully sparse boutiques and steep price tags. After all, it's not just starving artists and penny pinching college students shopping at those stores. I have no doubt that the some of the same people snapping up armfuls of merchandise at H&M's rock-bottom prices will walk three blocks to Saks and do the same.

If some brand decided to launch a complementary "garment support hotline," with complementary repairs, both by mail and in retail stores à la Apple's Genius Bars, they would have my business in a heartbeat.

A few weeks ago, I decided to add yet another item to my to-do list: start an online magazine. While, for competitive reasons, I will refrain from discussing the exact nature of this online magazine, founding an Internet venture has led me to the state of Delaware. Or, more specifically, incorporating in the state of Delaware.

From what I've read, two states — Delaware and California — have much more extensive bodies of state laws governing corporations and LLCs, which can be helpful. What's more, those extensive bodies of law have a wonderfully pro-business lilt. For example, Delaware LLCs pay a flat $250 annual income tax, regardless of how much money the LLC makes. Corporations pay a relatively modest 8.75% income tax, but — and other Internet ventures must love this — only on taxable income generated in the state of Delaware. It's genius. So genius, in fact, about 60% of the Fortune 500, countless Internet start-ups and even some foreign companies trying to avoid local red tape call Delaware home, at least in a legal sense. Delaware incorporation also, according to what I've read, helps should the company ever want to obtain venture funding.

This makes me wonder, though, why other states don't try to emulate California and Delaware. The states must benefit in some way from having such a concentration of corporate activity within their borders. Given that Delaware and California rank 9th and 11th respectively in terms of per capita family income, the public doesn't seem to suffer too greatly from decreased state-level regulation. Though, I suppose building a large body of corporate law requires time, or at least lots of litigation. And most states do have Delaware-esque corporate tax rates.

More on the magazine soon.

Image courtesy Eggybird

But, as the credits began to roll, I asked myself why all historical television series -- or at least all historical television series worth watching -- are dramas. Humor, to the best of my knowledge, existed in the 1940's. As I continued to think, an idea popped into my head, call it "The Bourgeois Next Door": one part "Desperate Housewives," one part "Rome," one part "Arrested Development."

The plot would center around some 18th century nobleman in Europe, say an Earl named Earl, who discovers one day that he has not a farthing to his name. Unable to extort enough money quickly enough from the serfs in his earldom to pay his creditors, Lord Earl sells the bulk of his land to the wealthy bourgeois on the adjoining estate.

Then, faced with the prospect of maintaing his and his family's lavish lifestyle and maintaing his standing at Court, Lord Earl uses his standing as a respectable gentleman to obtain a loan to start a highly profitable mercantile enterprise of some sort.

Of course, all that sounds rather dull and historical -- the perfect denouement for some sappy 17th century love story where the wealthy son of the Lord Earl can marry the beautiful girl from the village. But there is a twist.

As strange as it sounds, many people -- especially members of the titled aristocracy -- looked down upon the sort of "self-made man" or entrepreneur that most of the world, especially Americans love so much. To actually work for money was the ultimate faux pas for a 17th century noble.

So, "The Bourgeois Next Door" would be colored with the hilarious exploits of Lord Earl as he tries to hide his massive, wildly successful mercantile exchange enterprise from his family, his friends and the rest of the nation.

Just a thought. I highly doubt I will write the pilot script in the near future.

Image courtesy Steve Webel

Thus, in a bid to stay on the cutting edge of eco-chicness, a number of organizations have deployed incentives designed to encourage consumers to shy away from their single-use grocery bags and, instead, opt for the more environmentally conscious reusable alternative. Whole Foods, for one, decided to stop providing its customers plastic bags. Other chains, such as Swedish housewares retailer IKEA, have opted to charge customers a nickel for each single-use bag at checkout.

Let me begin by making a few disclosures. First, I love Whole Foods. I usually make at least one trip a week to my local Whole Foods Market location. Second, I love IKEA. Ingvar Kamprad should receive an award for being such a brilliant and wonderful person. Third, I believe the world would be a more sustainable — albeit only very slightly more sustainable — if shoppers brought their own reusable grocery bags to the store.

Yet, I would characterize the efforts of Whole Foods and IKEA as feeble and pointless, so far as weaning consumers off plastic bags goes.

Whole Foods accomplishes virtually nothing by only eliminating plastic bags. Sure, paper bags are recyclable. Paper bags also require far more energy to manufacture than paper bags. Therefore, in terms of environmental impact, means paper bags begin life having already done more to kill polar bears than their plastic brethren. Further, just because paper bags can be recycled does not mean customers will actually recycle them.

Without a doubt, a Whole Foods shopper probably has a higher propensity to recycle than John Q. Consumer, but keeping single-use paper bags on offer still puts thousands of bags in landfills.

If, on the other hand, Whole Foods took a European approach, and offered customers no complementary bags whatsoever, I have no doubt everyone would migrate very quickly to reusable bags. What's more, Whole Foods would probably make a killing on its line of high-margin reusable grocery bags, made from recycled plastics, naturally.

IKEA does no better with its nickel-a-bag initiative. Even the prototypical cash-strapped twenty-something shopping for an inexpensive set of flatware probably won't mind parting with a nickel or two to carry her assemble-yourself BENNO CD tower to the car. A nickel is not enough motivation.

Charge $5, on the other hand, and I suspect far fewer people will buy and use one of IKEA's much-promoted reusable blue bags.

People respond to incentives. But some incentives encourage more of a response than others.

I love Costco. It's impossible not to like a store simultaneously peddling diamond jewelry, table saws and grand pianos. Yet, some manage to overlook the warehouse chain's low prices, reasonable membership fees, quality merchandise and reasonable employee compensation. And, more often than not, their distain for Costco stems from the chain's "limited" selection. Their favorite toothpaste is nowhere to be found. Frosted Flakes are an inadequate substitute for Cocoa Puffs. Or the world will come to an end because they cannot part with Puffs for Kleenex.

To be sure, I find Costco's limited selection annoying at times. (Though, I suppose, I'm probably in the minority hoping Costco one day stocks cases of fountain pen cartridges.) But the more I consider Costco's strategy, the more I recognize its brilliance.

From a traditional economic point of view, Costco can offer lower prices, making consumers happy, and help its margins, making employees and stockholders happy, by stocking only a few products. The huge orders it places gives it a great deal of leverage in negotiating fantastic prices on toothpaste or breakfast cereals, much the same way Wal Mart has run traditional toy store chains into the ground with its ability to negotiate great prices on Buzz Lightyear action figures.

More importantly, though, I suspect Costco sells more and makes consumers happier by offering fewer choices. A Costco shopper on the hunt for a fancy new high-definition television set, for instance, can quickly make his or her choice, as the average store only carriers two or three sets in each size. John Q. Customer simply considers the size of his TV cabinet, weighs the prices, looks at the sets to evaluate picture quality and snaps one up.

This has a few effects. First, more people hand Costco more of their hard earned cash. Barry Schwartz, in his excellent tome The Paradox of Choice, notes that consumers faced with an abundance of barely differentiable choices often resolve their problem by not choosing at all. A limited selection tosses that problem out of the window.

Second, Costco makes its customers happier about their decisions. Schwartz makes the point that, with so many other possibilities, consumers not euphorically satisfied with their new food processor or seersucker shirt think one of the countless other food processors or seersucker shirts might have been better. Here it's important to note, in addition to only stocking a certain number of products, Costco also spends a great deal of time ensuring the few products it stocks are great products.

I also like to think Costco's stringent process for weeding out bad products helps consumers make better choices in the first place by nudging them, perhaps forcefully, away from inferior products. By simply not stocking questionable, if dirt-cheap, digital cameras, Costco eliminates consumers' misguided temptation to sink below a certain quality baseline at the sake of price.

Do I think Costco's formula needs some improvements? Sure. Those delicious giant muffins they hawk in the bakery department have probably made more than a few people more than a few pounds heavier. All, in all, though, through brilliant choice architecture, Costco manages not only to improve its own fortunes, but the fortunes of its customers too.

Watching this lovely little video last night, I had a brilliant idea.

In the her five-minute talk at TED, Alisa Miller outlines an interesting problem facing America. On the one hand, ever more Americans have an interest in what she calls, "overseas news." Opposite that, the American news media spends fewer and fewer dollars collecting and reporting that so-called "overseas news" because international coverage costs a fortune. In an era when most newspapers struggle to subsist, much less maintain vast numbers of foreign bureaux, this is understandable, but troubling nonetheless.

A little more digging produced an equally interesting cartogram from the Online Journalism Blog, which also provided a little more insight.

As far as I can tell, the amount of coverage a particular news outlet gives to a region is predicated on the language spoken there. It hardly seems surprising to learn L'Humanité, an infamously liberal, once-communist French-language daily, spends much of its time coverage France and French-speaking regions of Africa. Nor does it challenge logic to discover The Australian focuses its coverage on the United Kingdom, South Africa and India, all regions with concentrations of English-speakers.

So, I thought, why not hunt down a glut of polyglots to translate news from foreign sources and repackage the content online in some sort of editorial context? After all, such a model would allow the editors to find the right balance of global coverage, therefore no region of the world would receive a disproportionately small amount of coverage, and, by simply translating existing coverage rather than sending reporters everywhere from Sao Paulo to Shanghai, the huge cost barrier disappears.

Naturally, I failed to take intellectual property rights into account.

For, as I quickly recalled, translations of copyrighted works (i.e., the articles published by foreign news outlets) were not free to commercially exploit. One needs to obtain permission from and, in most cases, pay some kind of royalty to the rights holder.

In many cases, this extension of copyright protection makes sense. Joanne Rowling might have had less of an incentive to publish if she knew any foreign-language translations of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban would not net her a penny, while some unknown Vietnamese translator made a fortune with his translation of her work.

Of course, foreign news outlets would only stand to gain from licensing English-language translations of their stories to my theoretical international news aggregation service. But even if they were intelligent and agreed to license their content, I suspect my theoretical start-up firm would be unable to afford the licensing fees.

Which more or less sinks my idea. Without content, I would have no way to amass a following of readers sufficiently large to provide the revenue to pay for the content. A Catch-22 if ever one existed.

After watching a week of protests and violence in Burma, the public has decided that the United States and the rest of the Occidental world needs to impose sanctions on the military state. But sanctions — at least on the part of the United States and Western Europe — will do nothing to affect the military government. Burma, a very resource-rich nation, will manage to find at least one country or corporation to buy its natural gas and oil. As most analysts have pointed out, China's influence is likely the only reason the Burmese military has not done more to quash protest. Russia — not exactly a staunch ally of the West — also has no interest in putting pressure on Burma: the Burmese military regime sources most of its military equipment from Russian aerospace and defense contractors.

On the other hand, the Burmese people have very little contact with and even less access to the outside world. According to the CIA World Factbook, Burma has a whopping two radio stations and another two television stations. Less than 31,000 people — out of 43 million — have access to the Internet from a whole 42 Internet hosts. (Compare that to the 195 million in the United States.) The Factbook also mentions that the Burmese telecommunications infrastructure, "barely meets minimum requirements for local and intercity service for business and government."

In fact, the protests in Burma were catalyzed by an increase in fuel prices, which proved too much for the already cash-strapped Burmese people. They came about not, as one might have expected, because the Burmese were unhappy with their military overlords.

Bearing that in mind, I think the United States and European Union ought to impose reverse sanctions on Burma. We should encourage our citizens to tour Burma and expose the oppressed, information-deprived population to human rights, freedom and the social contract theory of government. We should feed and encourage a Burmese hunger for Western literature, entertainment and journalism. If a modest increase in fuel prices can spur action that merits above-the-fold coverage in The New York Times, then it does not seem inconceivable to think that the Burmese, with the right information, might have their own American-style revolutionary war.

For a backward country, we need to adopt a backward strategy.

The Saddest Graph of All

So I asked myself, "Where else do people 'hang out' online?" MySpace came to mind first, but the idea of supporting such a terrible service and its owner, the infamous News Corporation, deterred me. Facebook, on the other hand, is the clean, high-net-worth alternative to the somewhat dodgy slum that is MySpace. And, as a Facebook user, I have noticed the slick little text advertisements that pop up on the left side of the screen.

A little exploration took me to the Facebook Flyers page, which allows one to purchase advertisements both on a per-impression and a per-click basis. Curiously, though, the per-click system does not allow advertisers to specify which networks or groups see the ads, while the per-impression system does. It seems like a waste to advertise my small business, which operates only in the Portland, OR area, to every Facebook user in the United States. Admittedly, I have a great deal of exposure — in the first minute Facebook displayed my ad to over 2,000 sets of eyes — but it strikes me as extremely inefficient not to offer locally targeted advertisements.

Nonetheless, I have much higher hopes for the Facebook campaign. In the first fifteen minutes of its existence, three people have already clicked through.

Greener pastures ahead?
Image courtesy L'Etrusco

Certainly Barack Obama would do a better job than our current president, but even his plan stops far short of what is truly necessary. In a speech he delivered early in 2006, just after the president's State of the Union address, Mr. Obama advocated that the United States, "raise fuel economy standards by 3% a year over the next fifteen years, starting in 2008." In practice, Mr. Obama's policy would take a GMC Suburban, which currently manages a meager 11 miles to the gallon, and push its fuel economy up to an unimpressive 17 miles per gallon. Hardly something to write home about.

On the other side of the Atlantic, however, England's Liberal Democrats have proposed a much more radical, and much more appropriate, set of policies designed to combat climate change. Their policies, simply put, aim to make the United Kingdom a carbon-neutral country by the year 2050. In practice this includes a proposed ban on all petrol-powered vehicles starting in 2040 and specialized "green mortgages" designed to incentives the construction of eco-friendly homes. Admittedly the pace of the Lib Dem's proposed reforms are much slower than might be ideal, but such a policy does a far better job of correctly identifying the scope and the immediacy of climate change.

Unfortunately, though, the Lib Dems have little chance of putting their policies into effect, at least for the foreseeable future: they have neither the numbers in the British Parliament nor sufficient support from other MPs. Still, their policies signal a marked departure from the ineffectual and rather wishy-washy policies set out by other political parties or individual politicians, especially those in the United States, with regard to the environment. I still have reservations about the current crop of presidential hopefuls here in the states, but, given the somewhat unexpected and decidedly bold shift in policy overseas, the seeds of hope have been planted in my mind. Much can — and undoubtedly will — change in the next fourteen months.

Iowans have more power than they ought to. Their caucus — the first in the nation — has so much influence on the race to the White House that any politician even contemplating a stab at the presidency has no choice but to back ludicrous policies, simply because they appeal to Iowans. More troubling still, the politicians who generally consider presidential runs are senior politicians, who also happen to greatly influence the broader policy of their political parties. As a result, the entire legislative branch winds up supporting some truly idiotic ideas because the Iowans like them.

America's policy vis-à-vis ethanol epitomizes this problem. Rather than integrate the American ethanol market with the global ethanol market, the United States has built the Great Trade Wall of Iowa. Essentially, any ethanol coming from any other country has such an enormous tariff imposed upon it by the government that it becomes woefully uncompetitive with other, US produced, ethanol. Naturally, Iowa produces a great deal of corn. The same corn, in fact, used to create corn-based ethanol fuels. Good for Iowans, terrible for the rest of the world.

For, while injecting some cash into the Iowan economy is not necessarily a bad move, a de facto US monopoly on ethanol in the US has disastrous environmental, political, security and economic effects to every person on earth. Brazil, for one, has already worked itself into a tizzy over the fact that they, effectively, cannot sell their sugar-based ethanol products in the US, straining our diplomatic ties with that particular southern neighbor.

In the mean time, other US states have taken notice of this phenomenon and have, accordingly, scheduled their primaries to take place earlier in the year. California, for one, will now hold its primary on 5 February 2008, while New Hampshire — whose state constitution mandates that its primary be first &mash; has moved theirs back to 22 January, just a few weeks into the new year.

The net result is even more attention drawn to the so-called political "horse race" (i.e., who trumped whom in the latest poll) and away from a discussion from actual issues. I cannot remember the last time (or any time) Meet the Press had a panel of medical school professors, say, on the program to discuss which candidates possessed the best healthcare policy. Instead, the Chris Matthews Show features its segment, "Tell Me Something I Don't Know," where the assembled panel of journalists digs up some new piece of dirt on a politician and assesses its impact on their polling.

So, I propose the United States have one day in a presidential election year where every state in the nation simultaneously holds its primary. Preferably, this date would fall somewhere in the middle of the year — say on Saturday — and take place on a Saturday, to encourage people to participate by removing their obligation to take time off from work. I say the date is 5 April 2008, the first Saturday of that month. And, for a little extra zeal, why not give the day a catchy, interesting title to attract younger voters and shrug off that pesky air of stodginess? Say hello to Swashbuckling Saturday, the day America chooses its presidential candidates.

The candidates would likely not actually engage in swordplay (though, admittedly, an épée between Obama and Guilliani would be interesting) or physically hurt one another in any way. They would, however, no longer support the ludicrous policies that benefit a handful of states with influential primaries, in favor of looking more macroscopically at which policies best serve the entire country.

Detractors might argue that this would prompt candidates to visit states with population centers, like New York or Ohio, instead of focusing their attention on smaller states, like Iowa. In all likelihood, such detractors would be correct. But to view that as a something undesired would be foolish. It makes infinitely more sense to have the populations of California and New York — whose combined population weighs in at around 56 million or nearly 20% of America's population — dictate national policy than the much smaller population of Iowa.

Hopefully, by removing Iowa's stranglehold on presidential positions, this country would finally adopt policies on their merits, rather than on their impact to Iowans. Yes, in the short run, Iowans will suffer. But, in the long run, the increased competition will force them to innovate, which has rarely hurt any economy. Swashbuckling Saturday would probably have a small impact on the media, but it would, at least, confines their coverage of the horce race to one, rather than dozens, of different days.

It Should Be Obsolete
One of the two devilish devices that would not let me close the door

But the infernal infrared boxes have now become my enemy. Today, after taking an AP test and failing to find a good bakery at which to eat lunch, I came home to grab my backpack. That exercise was intended to permit the quick retrieval of my school-related effects so that I could make it to school in time to begin my chemistry lab. Then the garage door would not close.

Despite my repeated attempts to nudge, clean and otherwise realign the infrared receivers on either side of the door, it simply would not acquiesce to my will. I suppose, especially as I do not live in a neighborhood with a high crime rate, I could have left the door open. But given my luck over the past two months, I decided against it.

Unlike some people, however, who would simply expound upon their hatred and leave it at that, I have a solution that would — if implemented — save the annoyed and the threatened in one fell swoop: ultrasonic sensors.

New cars from manufacturers like Audi and Mercedes-Benz use a series of small ultrasonic sensors on the front and rear bumpers to alert inept parkers of their distance between vehicles. Similarly, such sensors could discern the distance between the bottom of a garage door and any objects on the ground. That way, whenever the ultrasonic waves detected something more than two inches high on the ground, the garage door opener would stop.

With said system, nothing requires alignment — so I would have made it to my chemistry class — and children everywhere would still be able to frolic safely in our nation's driveways, at least, without the looming dangers of garage doors.

Now if only I could find someone to manufacture this.

Online Beautification
Adobe's nifty new online tool, Kuler, should help the design-blind create web, video and print projects with colors that click.

Kuler allows anyone, including artists and creative professionals, to create and share five-color pallets that can be used in web, print or video projects. Think Flickr for colors. You can search Kuler's library of color pallets based on primary color or even based on tags or themes assigned to the color combinations by the pallet's author. Then, once you've discovered a suitable set of hues, you can either cut out the hexidecimal color values or even download a Creative Suite compatible swatch file. It's one of the most amazing online tools I have ever used.

Of course, even with thousands of pallets in their database, Kuler may not have what you want. So, should you want submit your own set of colors, Kuler's "Create" interface has a number of tools that help users follow basic rules of color harmony, which should put everyone on the path to color-based enlightenment.

Pay Kuler a visit. It's pretty great.

Last night, as I guzzled a bottle of water, I came up with an idea, which is either brilliant, encourages unhealthy behavior or simply weird: "Overachiever Magazine." It would fill the void that exists between superfluous teen magazines like "Teen Vogue" or "Seventeen," on one end, and serious publications (which, unlike Teen Vogue, have some actual value) like "The Economist" or "Foreign Affairs" on the other. After all, what sleep-deprived straight-A student wouldn't want seven suggestions for more soothing slumber? I could consult professional stress-reduction experts and have an "Overachiever of the Month," in the same way that "Teen Vogue" features some up-and-coming anorexic toothpick person in its glossy Photoshopped pages.

It could revolutionize the world of print publications. Or, for that matter, online publishing.

But as lucrative as this venture sounds, I cannot help but think that it would make a somewhat worrying problem even worse. Speaking from experience, I do not need the lure of more activities or scholarly pursuits to fill my time. I barely manage to sleep enough to stay alive — much less manage to lay down for the prescribed eight or nine hours every night &mdash and ten quick activities to help me reader faster and comprehend more would not help. In that sense, "Overachiever Magazine" would be almost as bad as other teen magazines that push people to develop eating disorders because of the unrealistic cosmetic ideals they extol. Of course, it is much harder to die joining another club at school. Induce fatigue, sure. But not death.

It seems like a fairly lucrative idea that would appeal to a growing number of American teenagers. Granted, the concept might have more merit in India or China, where, from what I understand, people are under much more pressure to become overachievers to begin with. Perhaps I should give Time Warner a call.

Rather than provide a printed copy of my "Holiday Wish List" to those who want it, I have posted it online to help preserve our forests and limit my consumption of costly color ink.

$20 & Under

Perhaps Jonathan Safran Foer's Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
Or Jules Verne's Vingt Mille Lieues Sous les Mers
Maybe Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray
David Kamp's The United States of Arugula
And a copy of The Economist Style Guide
Along with assorted Moleskine Notebooks and Cahiers

$60 & Under

Possibly a Cross Tech3 (Pencil/Pen²)
Oxford University Press' The Oxford Book of English Detective Stories
Or Oxford University Press' The Oxford Dictionary of Literary Quotations
Maybe Aaron Hillegass' Advanced Mac OS X Programming
And an All-Clad 8" Stainless Steel Skillet

$100 & Under

One Casauri Portfolio Valise
An Apple Wireless Mighty Mouse
Or an M-Audio Nova Microphone
Possibly a Thermoworks IR Gun Industrial Infrared Thermometer
Or a Thermoworks Super-Fast Thermopen

$200 & Under

For recording an M-Audio MobilePre USB
For listening a pair of HarmonKardon SoundSticks
For cooking an All-Clad 10" Nonstick Stainless Steel Skillet
And for keeping warm some cashmere sweaters
A crazy scarf
Or something more conservative

$200 & Up

Conceivably one Wacom 6x11 Intuos3 Graphics Tablet
Some stylish Paul Smith Stripped Shirts
Or a Nikon 85mm f/1.8D AF Nikkor Lens

I may have more thoughts as time marches forward, but for now, 'tis all.

With the holiday season upon us once again, it is time for me to contemplate the gifts I will be distributing to the kind people whom I feel deserve them. This year, I have devised a near-perfect scheme for this gift distribution process : make fancy dipped chocolates. I say near-perfect, though, because I have been hindered by an unfortunate calamity.

You see, crafting these delightful dipped delicacies involves the creation of a substance called
"ganache." Ganache is the substance inside the dipped chocolate, composed primarily of cream, butter, and, of course, chocolate. However, as anyone who has ever attempted to synthesize said substance knows, it is a very precarious process. Heat the mixture two degrees too many and you wind up with a congealed mess of sludge rather than a smooth, velvety ganache. Of course, those purveyors of culinary knowledge, the French, have a secret to combating congealment: invert sugar.

By adding invert sugar to the ganache, the tiny crystals which from inside, and subsequently create that voluptuously smooth texture, are far more likely to form.

With this knowledge in hand, I became determined to track down some invert sugar to save myself from wasting copious amounts of money on ten-dollar-a-pound Callebaut chocolate.

However, even armed with the internet and my trusty copy of Chocolate Obsession, I was unable to find invert sugar in quantities less than fifteen pounds. This is far more than I actually need, especially when you consider that I may use one pound should I decide to make two hundred chocolates.

All of this leaves me in a very uncomfortable situation. With Christmas on the twenty fifth and Hanukkah beginning the same day, it is becoming more and more vital that I find a supply of invert sugar. I am really quite baffled as to why it is such an elusive substance. Anything which possesses near magic properties ought to be more popular, or at least available in smaller quantities. After all, I would much rather spend sixty dollars on six pounds of chocolate than on a tub of invert sugar.

Earlier today I enjoyed an episode of Real Time with Bill Maher, which my TiVo had recorded the previous night. The entire three-person panel was British, providing a very interesting spin of the discussion. At some point during the discourse, one of the panelists mentioned how forty-three would not be able to last even five minutes if the Congress had an equivalent of Prime Minister's Questions. The idea of having the President thrown before Congress and subjected to brutal questioning sounds mighty fun. For one thing, it would show people just how much of a dunce the current commander-in-chief really is. Of course, I could just be misunderestimating him.

However, the potential benefits of Presidential Question Time reach far beyond making George W. embarrass himself live on C-SPAN. For one thing, it would probably generate a lot of interest in politics. Watching Prime Minister's Questions in the House of Commons is far more entertaining than falling asleep to Bill Frist's explanation of some nonsensical graph about weasel populations in Kansas. During Prime Minister's Questions energy is high, insults are fired back and forth, and occasionally the chamber gets invaded by angry disillusioned fathers in super-hero outfits who throw purple powder at people. Presidential question time could give MTV a run for its money.

Subjecting the head of state to grueling questions on a regular basis would also ensure the president elect is both competent and articulate. While the possibility would still exist another Gee Dubaya to get "elected," but their chances being effective would be less than zero. On the flip side of this, a President who could really command the floor during questioning would have considerably more credibility than otherwise.

So George, es-tu prêt ?

After my rather hectic day at school, very few things could possibly be more relaxing in the evening than some delicious hot chocolate and some Debussy. Something about the impressionistic style of Debussy's music relaxes one in no time. My favorite work by Claude Debussy simply has to be his Suite Bergamesque. Of course, the hot chocolate I prepared did not hurt either. The trick to the hot chocolate comes in the form of Bensdorp Cocoa from Holland. I buy mine from Dean & Deluca. Quite excellent stuff.

After reading an article about the direct correlation between youth cellphone usage and smoking in Japan, I came up with a solution to combat the growing girth of many Americans. I must admit though, before I get into the plan, that it is incredibly ironic that someone who has never even been remotely overweight devised a solution to the weight loss problem.

So here is my idea : using a complex yet-to-be-determined mathematical formula, an amount of time a person must move prior to being allowed access to weight-gaining activities, based on their habits would be generated. If properly executed the potential dieter would only need to make minimal change to get the diet working.

First they would need to buy my specially designed wirelessly networked computerized pedometer, which would track their movement. Then, they would place power regulators on devices, such as their TV or DVD player, to limit access. On their computer and other devices with programmable interfaces, software would be designed to check how much they moved prior to allowing access. Finally, a piece of software would be installed on a networked computer to orchestrate the entire ordeal.

All of that - combined with a potential change in diet - is a brilliant way to force people to lose weight, or just stop watching TV. Of course a certain amount of will power needs to be in place to stop the dieter from just deleting the software or putting their pedometer atop a front-load washing machine.

At the present time I have five blog entries I am yet to publish because I keep revising them. It really is an amazing phenomenon. This whole blogging thing has made me a much better writer.

When I started this thing back in 2002 I would sit down at my computer, rattle off a few sentences about this or that and publish the article to my blog. Writing an entry might have taken me fifteen minutes, at the most. Now, however, I pay very close attention to my writing. In fact, most of my entries take more than a hour to write. It might ruin the spontaneity of writing on a blog, but I find the entries are far better when I have spent a good deal of time contemplating them.

Looking back at older entries, I almost feel embarrassed at how awful the writing is, because my writing has improved so much in three years. I doubt my blog can take all the credit for making me a better writer, but it certainly contributed. When I look back at this entry six months from now I will probably have to fight the urge to edit or delete it because the writing will be so abysmal compared to what I write then.

I really doubt a majority of the people my age writing in their lamentable LiveJournals or monotonous myspace.com musings. Regardless, I think this is an example of just another way technology can enrich and enhance the lives of people everywhere.

Buried deep inside the minds of far too many Americans is something I am going to call, "clean table syndrome." Symptoms of this disease include a fear of anything non-decorative on top of tables or a fear of anything at all on the surface of a table.

It may seem far fetched, but it is far too true. What is up with America's obsession with clear surfaces ? Why bother having a table if you are not even going to put anything on it ?

Just consider the idea. Every home design magazine that shows a kitchen shows off the kitchen with absolutely nothing on top of the counters, except for a tastefully placed pot or jar of flour. It makes me wonder how the people cook. Do they put down plastic over the surfaces, cook, and then incinerate the plastic ? There is no point in bothering to have fifty feet of counter space if it will not be used.

Maybe, though, this is all a plot by some secret consortium of cabinet makers. There is probably a direct relationship between the amount of things on a counter and the amount of storage space needed to store the items which might have occupied the counter.

In short, people everywhere need to put things on their tables. What other point is there of having one ?

I really do not get it. For some reason or another watching movies - any movies - seems to have strangely profound effect on me. However it only seems to work when I can unequivocally focus on the movie. If someone nearby is eating and getting crumbs on the floor, or is talking, the depth of thought inside of me just doesn't occur.

At any rate, I just saw Star Wars : Revenge of the Sith (not a bad movie by the way) and this terrific thought process kicked in. Enraptured in the film, I examined the problem being faced by the Republic and the Jedi. As a supporter of the ideology of democracy I felt slightly unhappy when, albeit fictional, a progressively less democratic republic crossed the line and turned into an authoritarian state. Then I considered how I might have approached the situation and create a solution to the problem.

Then it hit me.

Inside each and every person there are solutions to the most pressing problems posed to people. If everyone actually applied themselves to some sort of serious task, then every problem on the face of the earth could be solved. Amazing things could happen if everyone just innovated ! But there is no question that innovation is happening at far too slow of a pace. It is not being properly stimulated by all of the possible stimuli.

Look at stem cells. A potentially HUGE innovation. But we are caught up in this faux-moral debate created by people who are blindly following an institution which simply wants to maintain its power. Look what happened when America really innovated. When John F. Kennedy stood up and said, "We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard," it put the cogs of innovation into motion. Not only did we do the incredible and eventually send a man to the moon, but we inspired a generation of people to innovate.

The space program also brought about lots of things which have improved the quality of life everywhere. The satellites which came about can now be used to do everything from track tsunamis to provide satellite images over driving directions to link formerly isolated people together into a global network. Other things, like the microwave oven (originally used to dry spacesuits) and various synthetics (teflon comes to mind) changed life everywhere.

If innovation happened at its fullest then every problem on earth could be solved. From finite supplies to oil to the common cold. However, one real barrier to this is innovation are overly bureaucratic governments. I am, though, in no way, advocating (coming back to Star Wars) for a totalitarian or anarchist government. Government plays a key role in innovation and must be in place. Take a look at countries which have a totalitarian state. The Soviet Union was run by a totalitarian state, but, as it turns out, they innovated far less than the United States. Government is definitely a help, not a hindrance, to innovation.

I'm having trouble putting the rest of my thoughts into words. Perhaps I'll post something else a little later on.

Ahhh ! I wish I had some kind of device to record all of my thoughts. They are just pouting into my mind. It would also be nice if I could keep my mind in this thought-churning semi-euphoric state. My head hurts.