February 2005 – Page 3 – Knowledge Problem

Wsj’s Risky Proposals And Sweetheart Deals For Valentine’s Day

Lynne Kiesling Today the Wall Street Journal had a story about students writing poetry inspired by WSJ stories (subscription required) for Emily Farrell’s English class in Wallingford, Pennsylvania. The story included excerpts from some of the poems. My favorite: The thing about technology is A public with mobile cellphones That is Internet based and Googles …

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Another Thought About The Sugar Industry

3 Comments / Economics / By Lynne Kiesling

Lynne Kiesling If Splenda is made from sugar, won’t the sugar industry continue to benefit from sales of it because they are providing the crucial input? Clearly they are unlikely to get paid as much per pound for sugar as an input as at retail, so in order for their profits to stay up Splenda’s …

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The Sugar Industry Attacks Splenda

4 Comments / Economics / By Lynne Kiesling

Lynne Kiesling Doug Bandow wrote a nice column on the sugar industry’s attack on Splenda last week: You can never get enough from consumers and taxpayers. That apparently is the sugar industry’s motto. Collect subsidies. Ban trade. Outlaw your competitors. Let the American people pay. I could go on for days about the deep and …

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Alex On Copenhagen Consensus

2 Comments / Environmental policy / By Lynne Kiesling

Lynne Kiesling While we’re in an earthy vein here, I recommend Alex’s recent post at Marginal Revolution on the purported dissent from the Copenhagen Consensus. So the mild dissent comes from concern that the person who did the study overestimated the costs of climate change. Interesting.

Conservation Through Private Initiative

Environmental policy / By Lynne Kiesling

Lynne Kiesling In a new Reason study, Michael DeAlessi explores how private individuals and the organizations they form have provided beneficial wildlife and land conservation, and how they use performance measures to promote these incentives: Human ingenuity and the entrepreneurial spirit underlie most conservation success stories. Under private ownership and stewardship, problem-solvers become remarkably resourceful …

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Encaustic Tile

Language / By Lynne Kiesling

Lynne Kiesling Sitting here at O’Hare, 6 AM … today’s A Word A Day word is encaustic: encaustic (en-KO-stik) adjective A method of painting using pigments with wax fixed onto the surface by heat. [From Latin encausticus, from Greek enkaustikos, from enkaiein (to burn in), from en- + (kaiein) to burn. Some distant cousins of …

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Creators Bridging Two Genres: Beethoven And Mill

5 Comments / Music / By Lynne Kiesling

Lynne Kiesling Last night the KP Spouse and I went to Fidelio at the Lyric Opera. I have been looking forward to it for a long time, because I really like Beethoven. Unlike Lucy in Room With A View, who says that her mother asks her not to play Beethoven because it makes her peevish, …

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Moving From Posted Price To Auction

13 Comments / Economics / By Lynne Kiesling

Lynne Kiesling Institutional change is a slow process, rife with inertia, rent seeking, status quo bias, and transaction costs. Ray Gifford commented yesterday on an illustration of inertia: the persistence of “face value” on concert tickets. Ray tells of dissatisfaction with U2’s fan club pre-sale of concert tickets, wonders why tickets still even have “face …

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Tcs Article On The Long Tail

Economics / By Lynne Kiesling

Lynne Kiesling To continue Mike’s comments, and perhaps to illustrate the point of the article, Ed Driscoll has an article in Tech Central Station today about Chris Anderson’s “long tail” meme. One of the things that I found interesting in this article is when Driscoll points out that the tail is more influential than you …

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More On Social Networks And Recommendations

3 Comments / Economics / By Michael Giberson

Michael Giberson Chris Anderson at the Long Tail says there is a problem with using social networks to generate recommendations: The problem with social software as a recommendation network has its roots in the problem of social software itself. “Friend” is a pretty blunt instrument when it comes to describing relationships, especially in matters of …

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