You may know, because they are relatively famous examples, that in British citizens wishing to enter inner London streets during peak times have to pay a toll. This was enacted based on the economic premise of marginal benefit. In case it’s been a while since you took Econ101, marginal benefit is the amount of money someone is willing to pay for a service. If they pay less then that, they feel they are getting a good deal. If they pay that price, the believe it is fair. They refuse to pay a price above that price. In other words, if your marginal benefit from a bag of chips is $0.50, you will cease to want a bag of chips if they cost $0.60. If you still want it at sixty cents, then that was your real marginal benefit. Therefore, the British government figured that they just had to raise the price high enough that a majority of people wouldn’t use the roads and then congestion would vanish. It has mostly worked out right.

By this time next week I will have been married for around six hours. We would have been married under God and with all of my relatives as our witness. We would have had some fun, albeit muted fun, at my reception. If things to go plan, we would have been at our wedding night hotel for about two hours now. In about six and one half we’d have to start getting ready to fly to New York. And twelve hours from this time next week, I should be in New York City, resting or helping get things ready for the New York Wedding. Of course, I’ll volunteer to help, but often times in their culture, this is women’s work to be done. That’s fine with me, I’d certainly try for a nap if I could get one because even we were sleeping at this time next week, we’d still only have six hours of sleep after running around all day. Wedding days are notorious for using up not only all the energy you have, but also your energy reserves. Hopefully I can sleep on the plane to New York, but I don’t usually have good luck sleeping on planes. I have to make sure to find my travel pillow before I go.

Video game fans may recall the dissapointment when, last year, uS courts forced Bnetd servers to shut down. Bnetd, short for Battle Net daemon, was created by some hackers who had become very upset with Blizzard’s Battle.net. There was rampant cheating and latancy problems. They did what any hacker would do when confronted with a software problem - develop new software that fixes is. They created their own servers to play Warcraft (and Diablo, etc) on and life was good. that is, things were good until Blizzard too,k them to court and won an injunction against them. The judge had cited that law which I hate so much, the DMCA, as one of the reasons why this software was illegal. Also, he said, Blizzard’s license (which you have to agree to or else can’t play the game) says that you can’t do this. Aha! I knew I should have been reading that crap instead of just clicking next to install my favorite software.

I haven’t Googled myself in a while, so I decided to see what would come up with my first and last name. What a paper trail I’ve left since the last time I was here.

Item number 2 on page 1 was a link to my book at Lulu.com, the self-publishing company. Items 3 and 4 were links to my ICQ page (I had forgotten about that!) Item 6 went to my webpage on Tripod.com Item 8 was a question I had asked on the Octave List-serve

I recently found something interesting - a record label which releases all of its music under the Creative Commons license. In particular you are allowed to copy the music as long as you don’t make money off of it. One of their strategies? If you rip a CD for a friend and they really like the artist, they will buy the music. I think this is true as I have recently bought “Mmmhmm” by Relient K, “Dichotomy A” by GRITS, and other CDs I could have easily downloaded. Below is a letter written by one of the founders/owners of the record label - Fading Ways which I loved. I will reproduce it and write comments where appropriate.

I used to to love Anime. I don’t hate it now, but I don’t have as much zeal for it as I used to. Two things happened. First of all, anime is very expensive. Most DVDs have four episodes and cost $24 dollars. Usually it takes 6 DVDs to complete a season or $150 + tax. That’s a lot of money. Second, now that it’s mainstream it’s hard to tell the good anime from the bad anime. Back when I first started watching, it was just starting to become mainstream. There weren’t many titles available and whatever existed was pretty darned good. Studios couldn’t release crap over here or it wouldn’t sell. Basically there was awesome anime and hentai. Now there’s so much anime that best buy almost has an entire aisle dedicated to it in Ithaca. I remember when it was a few shelves and resided next to the porn. I hated being in that section. Now it’s usually by the sci fi movies.

I was walking away from the Tv playing in the lunch room when I noticed the sharp reduction in television volume when I had turned around. Instantaneously I noticed what had been in front of me for nearly 23 years or rather what had been beside me. Human ears are uniquely shaped to funnel in sound most efficiently from the direction in which the person is facing. By contrast, if you’ve ever seen a deer’s ears you know that they face sidways and can swivel to a certain angle towards the front and back. I thought a little more and came to the conclusion that this was just another example of predator/prey biology. Lions, bears, and other predatory animals I could think of also had them facing forward. Elephants were another gargantuan example of prey having ears that faced to the side. This, of course, makes it harder for predators to sneak up on prey from behind. Of course, prey already have the advantage of having their eyes close to (or on, in some cases) side of their head, allowing them to see to the side and, in some cases, backwards. I cannot figure out, however, why it would be advantageous for predators to have their ears facing forward. Perhaps, the same way that having both eyes facing forward allows for stereoscopic vision, having the ears facing forward gives the predator a 3D auditory experience. I can’t see a real benefit for this in humans, but for animals with hearing far stronger than we do, perhaps it provides them with additional details about their enviroment. Just another example of the wonderful design of the Creator who strives, it seems, to make an equal playing field. Neither predator nor prey seems to have an advantage - and that’s a good thing. Otherwise either the predators would eat all the prey or the prey would multiply too numerously. Neither outcome would be good for the environment.

what do you do when the one thing you have been waiting for all day is denied to you? Sleep and hope that tomorrow brings better luck

And just seven until I see my bride-to-be again. I wish this time would fly by a little faster. Unfortunately, work has been a little slow. I’m in a place at work where I think I may be close to finishing up my project, but I have been making a lot of requested revisions and, as such, have to meet a lot with people. They happen to be a little busier than me, so this has been stopping me. Perhaps today I’ll ask for another project to keep me busy. I think I’m more anxious about the wedding because the wedding means that I’ll get to see Danielle again. If she were living in Tampa, I probably wouldn’t be as anxious, maybe only seventy percent of my current level. The only part of my day that’s flying by right now is the afternoon because I have so much work to do to help my parents get the house ready for the reception next Friday. (and it actually has to be done by the rehearsal dinner on Thursday) So my days drag on while my evenings and nights go by way too quickly.

If I were someone else, I’d cry. I don’t cry for much, though, so I’m not. Today I got some luggage as a wedding present from my grandmother who passed away during Spring Break. She actually had a little piggy bank where she had been saving up money for my wedding present. It came out to be enough for the suitcase and an overnight bag. I am sad because she was so important to me and she’s missing from my wedding. That’s why I put more pictures of her in my wedding video than anyone else in my family. I miss you so much Abuela. Danielle misses you too! Thanks for the presents, I’ll enjoy them a lot.