Eideard

Lots of normal people would pay $23 for a book. But $23.7 million (plus $3.99 shipping) for a scientific book about flies!?

This unthinkable sticker price for “The Making of a Fly” on Amazon.com was spotted on April 18 by Michael Eisen, an evolutionary biologist and blogger.

The market-blind book listing was not the result of uncontrollable demand for Peter Lawrence’s “classic work in developmental biology,” Eisen writes. Instead, it appears it was sparked by a robot price war…

Eisen watched the robot price war from April 8 to 18 and calculated that two booksellers were automatically adjusting their prices against each other.

One equation kept setting the price of the first book at 1.27059 times the price of the second book, according to Eisen’s analysis, which is posted in detail on his blog.

The other equation automatically set its price at 0.9983 times the price of the other book. So the prices of the two books escalated in tandem into the millions, with the second book always selling for slightly less than the first.

The incident highlights a little-known fact about e-commerce sites such as Amazon: Often, people don’t create and update prices; computer algorithms do.

Individual booksellers on Amazon and other sites pay third-party companies for algorithm services that automatically update prices. Some of these computer programs purportedly work very well, getting sellers up to 60% more sales because they underbid the competition automatically and repeatedly…

“It’s pretty much like the stock exchange. What you see there is the prices changing all the time — but they never change drastically. Sometimes it’s a dollar here a dollar there — maybe $10. For a book, it probably would be pennies.”

Often producing as much useless “value” as many of the computer trades made for hedge funds and mutual funds. All you can hope for as a retail investor is to focus on what you calculate is the real value of equity over time – and let the rest of the market spin wheels in artificial endless loops.

Our stock markets will not do anything about it. I doubt Amazon will do anything about the same absurdity in their own mosh pit.

Daylife/AP Photo used by permission

Politicians, Bollywood figures and other mourners paid homage to Indian holy man Sathya Sai Baba Monday amid fears of a fight over his $9 billion trust legacy.

The spiritual leader’s body lay in an air-conditioned glass casket with gold plating in the main meditation hall of his Prasanthi Nilayam ashram to let the expected hundreds of thousands of followers pay their last respects, officials said.

Sai Baba, 84, died Sunday of multiple organ failure in a hospital near the south Indian ashram…

Giant screens placed near the ashram gates projected images of his body, evoking cheers and tears among the people waiting to get inside, The Indian Express reported.

Sai Baba was known for conjuring jewelry, food and vibhuti, or sacred ash, out of the air, which devotees saw as proof of his powers and skeptics called sleight of hand.

His gentle demeanor, Afro-style hair and embrace of many belief systems beyond his eclectic blend of Hindu and Muslim beliefs attracted an estimated 6 million active and 33 million passive followers, including former presidents, generals, film-industry luminaries and sports stars. His Sathya Sai Organization, which seeks to help people recognize the divinity within them, maintains more than 1,200 Sathya Sai Baba Centers in 130 countries worldwide…

Sai Baba left no trust heir, raising fears of a custodial “succession war” over who would now manage the $9 billion.

He left enough money behind to fund a small country. Who knows where it will go, now?

Mac users are more politically liberal, more urban, younger and more educated than their PC-using counterparts, according to a new survey by affinity aggregator Hunch.

The results of a survey of 388,315 Hunch users posted Friday in Hunch’s visually arresting style identified 52 percent of respondents as self-described PC people, 25 percent as users of Apple’s Macintosh computers and 23 percent as neither. Hunch cross-referenced those results with dozens of other questions it asks users to answer.

The details of the findings seem to fall along the lines that many people would have had a, well, hunch about in the first place. Mac users are chic, design-oriented and like hummus and San Pelligrino. PC users get around in jeans and chase down patty melts with Pepsi or Orange Crush…

Among the more provocative findings:

► 58 percent of Mac people are “liberal,” as compared to 38 percent of PC people
► 67 percent of Mac people have completed a four-year college degree or higher, as compared to just 54 percent of PC people
► 52 percent of Mac people live in a city, while PC people are 18 percent more likely than Mac people to live in the suburbs and 21 percent live in rural areas
► Mac people throw a lot more parties than PC people
► Mac people are more confident about their verbal abilities but less confident about their math abilities than PC people
► Mac people are more likely to see random people as “similar,” whereas PC people are more likely to see them as “different”.

There are dozens of articles spinning the Hunch data. I admit I chose this one just for the headline – to bust the chops of the few family members who haven’t yet left the Wonderful World of Windows.

Here’s the original study.

Gene Sperling and Tim Geithner
Daylife/Getty Images used by permission

The Obama administration is preparing to inject an unpredictable new variable into its economic policy clash with Republicans: a plan to overhaul corporate taxes.

Economic advisers have nearly completed the process initiated in January by the Treasury secretary, Timothy F. Geithner, at President Obama’s behest. That process, intended to make the United States more competitive internationally, has explored the willingness of business leaders to sacrifice loopholes in return for lowering the top corporate tax rate, currently 35 percent…

So far, administration officials have been encouraged by support among business leaders for the tradeoffs needed for rate reduction. Whether that survives the legislative process in Congress is another matter.

Since the essential function of Republicans is to lobby for their personal sources of funding, devising loopholes for whichever corporate mafia they’re “made” for – I expect there will be little cooperation from the Republican Party.

“The question is, Is the business community going to support this because it’s a win for the economy over all?” said Gene Sperling, director of Mr. Obama’s National Economic Council. “Or, is it going to get held up because each business will decide whether they’re a temporary winner or loser compared to the status quo…?”

The current system taxes only about half of business income, because many enterprises, particularly small ones, are organized to pay taxes under the income tax code for individuals. The Republican chairman of the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee, Rep. Dave Camp of Michigan, says corporate taxes should be changed only in tandem with an even more politically daunting overhaul of the tax code for individuals.

Which is how most of the thugs in Congress think of balancing the budget. Screwing the middle class, taking back entitlements fought for by generations of working people is the way these hacks prefer to maintain their welfare plan for the Pentagon and “Free Enterprise”.

Even the concept of Congress as corporate flunkies should be foreign to anyone of conscience in this land of capitalism – but, that ain’t how it works. If your company gets big enough, successful enough on its own, sooner or later the most important task becomes budgeting for the purchase of politicians.

Photo: Copenhagenize

A fertility clinic in Copenhagen wanted an easy way to transport biological materials in insulated storage through the city, and so commissioned the construction of the Sperm Bullitt.

The Sperm Bike is, like the company’s sperm donations, a Danish product and constructed around the Danish Bullitt cargo bike from Larry vs Harry.

Producing the Sperm Bike was no easy task. It was constructed by the Danish company 10 Tons – who specialise in zoological and botanical models as well as paleontologic reconstructions, including full-size whales and dinosaurs.

With the tail, the bike is 2.9 metres long and fully-loaded with… um… sperm… it weighs 50 kg.

Thanks, Ursa

Chilean rescuers have saved two tourists who got into trouble on an Andean mountain and raised the alarm by calling an emergency number in the US.

The two – an Italian and a Czech – used a satellite device to send their location to a rescue centre in Texas.

Local teams then had to contend with heavy snow, rain and high winds to reach the pair, who were sheltering on the slopes of the Quetrupillan volcano.

After the rescue, the tourists said they were lucky to be alive. “It was very serious. At times we thought that we were going to die,” said Czech Phillip Kunk. Italian Analissa Lombardo said it was the most frightening experience of her life.

The two were taken a local hospital to be treated for symptoms of hypothermia…

They entered the national park on Monday, planning to walk along a trail that usually takes five days. But they got into trouble by the early hours of Friday, and raised the alarm with Texas rescuers.

The Americans then alerted the Chilean authorities, and a rescue team was despatched to the area, near the resort town of Pucon.

This is one of those terrific solutions that finally becomes affordable. The usual satellite phone costs way too much for most adventure trekkers; but, a few firms now maintain a communications service for small, portable – affordable – phones that are only good for [a] sending an emergency alert and [b] identifying where you are.

No long conversations with the family dog; but – as in this case – the folks providing the service contact the authorities where you are cramped and send help.

Heron Lake without a plane crash

A single engine fixed-wing plane has crashed into Lake Heron, about 20 miles south of Chama in northern New Mexico.

Lt. Eric Garcia with the New Mexico State Police says the accident happened around 10:30 a.m. Sunday.

A dive team and personnel from the Tierra Amarilla Fire Department were called to the scene where the plane was found completely submerged.

Officials say no survivors were immediately found. As of evening, search teams were still looking in rainy and overcast conditions. The exact number of occupants is not known.

State police say a few kilo-sized packages of cocaine were retrieved floating among the wreckage.

Ah-hah.

Fort Davis wildfire from McDonald Observatory in the Big Bend country near the Rio Grande river.

Thanks, Bubba

Ricko Gee

Two days before a west Houston bank heist, a 19-year-old bank teller named Estefany Martinez posted a cryptic status update on her Facebook page: “Get $$$…”

What looked on surveillance video to be a classic bank robbery — with armed, masked suspects and terrorized bank tellers — turned out to be an amateurish inside job, allegedly orchestrated by two 19-year-old tellers with the help of a boyfriend and an older brother.

Using an incriminating trail of Facebook posts left by Estefany Martinez and her 18-year-old boyfriend, Ricky “Ricko Gee” Gonzalez, detectives arrested four suspects this week on bank theft charges, alleging they made off with $62,000.

Their Facebook pages held not-so-subtle clues: Two days after the robbery, Martinez posted: “IM RICH …” followed by a rhyming expletive.

“WIPE MY TEETH WITH HUNDEREDS …” her boyfriend allegedly posted the day after the heist. He also boasted of wiping another part of his anatomy with $50 bills…

“I’ve always heard that you shouldn’t post pictures of yourself on Facebook smoking pot or drinking because employers are now looking at Facebook pages,” Martinez’ attorney said. “But I never knew there should be a warning not to post about a bank robbery that’s been committed…”

The celebratory Facebook posts started shortly after they divided the loot at Rivera’s apartment, officials say.

“U HAVE TO PAST THE LINE SOMETIMES!! TO GET DIS MONEY!!” Gonzalez posted on his Facebook page the day after the theft.

RTFA for the silly details.

We get to say this one more time: becoming a crook doesn’t require brains or education.

A former president of the Maryland State Medical Society, Dr. Sroka has practiced family medicine for 32 years in a small, red-brick building just six miles from his childhood home, treating fishing buddies, neighbors and even his elementary school principal much the way doctors have practiced medicine for centuries. He likes to chat, but with costs going up and reimbursements down, that extra time has hurt his income. So Dr. Sroka, 62, thought about retiring.

He tried to sell his once highly profitable practice. No luck. He tried giving it away. No luck.

Dr. Sroka’s fate is emblematic of a transformation in American medicine. He once provided for nearly all of his patients’ medical needs — stitching up the injured, directing care for the hospitalized and keeping vigil for the dying. But doctors like him are increasingly being replaced by teams of rotating doctors and nurses who do not know their patients nearly as well. A centuries-old intimacy between doctor and patient is being lost, and patients who visit the doctor are often kept guessing about who will appear in the white coat…

Yup. Let’s address law and healthcare legislation and ignore the number of greedy buggers whose choice to enter medicine is grounded almost exclusively on income vs. effort.

Indeed, younger doctors — half of whom are now women — are refusing to take over these small practices. They want better lifestyles, shorter work days, and weekends free of the beepers, cellphones and patient emergencies that have long defined doctors’ lives. Weighed down with debt, they want regular paychecks instead of shopkeeper risks. And even if they wanted such practices, banks — attuned to the growing uncertainties — are far less likely to lend the money needed…

Of course “fewer unnecessary tests” is also a crock as anyone who has investigated rising medical costs should know. Cripes, I’ll even include an anecdote. In a good deal of pain on a weekend, I went to a private emergency clinic. After batteries of tests including a skull X-ray they gave me painkillers and suggested I see my regular doctor on Monday. The bill to Medicare, my supplemental insurance and me was over $800.

My doctor resolved the cause as a previously unexperienced allergy – treated with OTC medication, by the way. He chuckled over the private emergency clinic as “they certainly know how to manage their profit centers”.

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