Vox Clamantis

Happiness

Aside from Disneyland, the happiest place on earth appears to be Denmark (Reuters):

LONDON - If you’re looking for happiness, go and live in Denmark.

It is the happiest country in the world while Burundi in Africa is the most unhappy, according to a report by a British scientist released on Friday.

...

The main factors that affected happiness were health provision, wealth and education, according to White who said his research had produced the “first world map of happiness”.

No surprise about Burundi. Poverty (per capita GDP of US $700) and ethnic conflict (a twelve year war between the Hutu and Tutsi's) do not make for happiness, stability or anything nice. For Denmark see Alex Tabarrock's interesting post.

The US looks like an anomaly in this data set:

“Smaller countries tend to be a little happier because there is a stronger sense of collectivism and then you also have the aesthetic qualities of a country,” White said.

While we have some strong sense of shared ideals (freedom and all that) we are one of the only large, diverse countries that shows up as being even moderately happy. The trend in the rest of the world may be to move to smaller, less ethnically or racially diverse countries. Certainly the current creation of states is at least somewhat arbitrary, as Austan Goolsbee pointed out in last week's Economic Scene column in the NYT:

Straight lines are usually the sign of an arbitrary colonial mapmaker. Natural barriers like rivers and mountains seldom look tidy. Taking the measures of partitioning and neat borders, their study [Goolsbee is referrring to a study by Easterly, Alesina, and Matuszeski he referenced earlier] compares the performance of countries with natural borders to those with artificial ones and finds, overwhelmingly, that artificial nations suffer terribly -- lower income, horribly ineffective and corrupt governments, less respect for the law, low literacy, limited access to clean water, poor health care, you name it.

Photo Books

This post is mainly for my own future reference, but if it helps you, so much the better. I'll add reviews as I use each product. From the NY Times:

The print-on-demand business is gradually moving toward the center of the marketplace. What began as a way for publishers to reduce their inventory and stop wasting paper is becoming a tool for anyone who needs a bound document. Short-run presses can turn out books economically in small quantities or singly, and new software simplifies the process of designing a book.

Here are the different programs. You can see the NY Times article for a few brief details, but they don't review these products. Caveat Emptor.

blurb.com
picaboo.com (directed more for families with kids)

Shared Ink NYT: Chris Hickman, the founder, said that each of his books was printed and stitched together by “two bookbinders who’ve been in the industry for 30 or 40 years.” The result, he said, is a higher level of quality that appeals to professional photographers and others willing to pay a bit more. Books of 20 pages start at $39.95.

Lulu.com is a combination printer and order-fulfillment house that prints both color and black-and-white books, takes orders for them and places them with bookstores like Amazon.com.

Lulu works from a PDF file, an approach that forces users to rely on basic word processors or professional design packages. If this is too complex, Lulu offers a marketplace where book designers offer their services. Lulu does offer a special cover design package that will create a book’s cover from an image and handle the specialized calculations that compute the size of the spine from the number of pages and the weight of the paper.

A 6-by-9-inch softcover book with 150 black-and-white pages from Lulu would cost $7.53  per single copy.

There are of course the standards: iPhoto, Kodak, Snapfish and Shutterfly. I've ordered several books through iPhoto, and for the most part they're excellent. Mac only though. Shutterfly is okay. I just ordered a small book from them. The software isn't as easy as iPhoto and the results were iffy. The picture quality was fine, however the last page of the book had color information and some technical gibberish that detracts from the book: it looks like a proof page. Considering what you can get through Lulu, if you've got the patience, a small, so-so book from Shutterfly for $12 just doesn't compare.

Whatever you choose, these all make fantastic gifts and people will think you've spent much more on them than you actually have. They're much better than scrapbooking, in most cases they'll last much longer, and they'll get all your digital photos off your hard drive, which is good since you probably don't back up your photos, do you?

Southwest: Still Shrewd After All this Time?

In late 2004, Andrew Samwick, over at VoxBaby (man, that name should have been mine, dangit), wrote a fantastic post about all of the little things Southwest does well. For instance,

First, Southwest doesn't pre-assign seats. Seating is open, and the seat you get depends on how close to the front of the line you are. People who would obviously not fare well under these rules, like families with young children and those with medical conditions, get to board first. In my experience, I have found that as long as I am in the second (of three) boarding groups, I can get a window or an aisle seat. This is as we would expect, since two thirds of the seats are window or aisle seats. Yes, I admit that the anxiety sometimes gets to me, but consider the payoff. In exchange for imposting a little anxiety on me--a basically organized and prompt person--this policy makes Southwest an unappealing choice for people who like to show up late. You have heard the quip, "If you never miss a flight, then you are spending too much time in airports." Guess what. Catering to those people makes it very difficult to operate an airline efficiently. Better that they fly someone else.

Southwest gets the incentives right. They don't make money while their planes are on the ground, so they've devised a good way to make sure people are where they're supposed to be when they're supposed to be there. Unfortunately, since Andrew wrote that article, this policy has been eroded. I recently flew on Southwest and didn't worry about showing up on time, or at least I didn't worry as much as I used to. See, 24 hours before you fly you can go online and print out your boarding passes. This means that I no longer have an incentive to show up early to ensure that I get in group A or B. Now I know I can get a window or aisle seat without all the rush. Though I have no data, I'm sure Southwest is spending more time on the ground now than before.

Now Southwest is experimenting with different boarding strategies. The Malamud Effect?

Wired has a nice article on different boarding strategies and some of the mathematical simulations that drive this research. I remember neat little graphics in the magazine that are missing from the online areticle though. Regardless, it's good and you should check it out.

Penalty Kicks and such

A commenter is not a fan, and I can't say I am either. Now, I don't mind that a player gets a PK after being fouled while taking a shot on goal. That seems fair to me. What bothers me, and perhaps the commenter, is when games end with a shootout. After two hours of play we get shot after shot on goal. That seems abrupt to me. Way too abrupt. We need some way of balancing out the game - spacing out the action if you will.

So how do we get around this? Most of the time it doesn't matter; it's fine if the game ends in a tie. In a playoff situation it clearly matters though. I see few alternatives since it's generally so difficult to score, especially if a team focuses on defense as much as the Italians or Ukranians. And after two grueling hours, it seems unfair to keep the players on the field any longer.

Perhaps changing the rules and incentives is one place to start? I'm not sure the offsides rule is really warranted. Perhaps removing it would lead to more action at either end of the field and thereby result in more goals and more action, which is what we want anyway. That would reduce the use of shootouts at the end of the game. And higher scores might be good for their own sake. That's not a great solution, but I don't see any clear answer besides some sort of "golden goal" first team to score during overtime sort of a deal.

While we're at it, how about a few team timeouts? Then players won't have to fall on their face to get some rest. Less faking, more playing. Plus, in good capitalist spirit, we would get more of those awesome adidas ads.

And let's add one more ref. One for each half of the field. In the Portugal-UK game, the ref mistakenly called a ball out of bounds. This wasn't too surprising since the guy was some 40 yards away and struggling to keep up with the players' pace. Just a few thoughts...

The World Cup, a follow-up

I know, I'm an American, I shouldn't knock soccer any more, but the Post had a couple of good articles earlier this week that I've meant to highlight, so here goes,

...there was a sense that, in many ways, this World Cup was a bit disappointing.

Scoring was at its lowest since the abominable 1990 tournament, but of greater concern, free-flowing soccer was largely absent and teams bogged themselves down with cautious tactics.

Even the Brazilians, who have brought joy to the game for decades and promised a carnival of creativity and goals, did not distinguish themselves from inferiorly talented teams. And what does it say about the play when Portugal, heavily criticized for its diving and complaining, was voted the tournament's most entertaining team?

Portugal, really? See my earlier post about faking it. The senior guiding lights of this World Cup were all dissapointing. There's no need to say anything about Zidane at this point, but even Ronaldo looked like all those years at the beach and bar are catching up to him.

A Scanner Darkly

Mesmerizing. It gave my brain a good whacking; I felt drunk leaving the theater. The animation was a lot to take in. Cnet's got the details on the technique (rotoscoping).

Basically, this is a trippy anti-drug movie that will attract stoners from all over the country who want to experience its hallucinogenic special effects. All the actors are great and there's certainly no lack of irony seeing Robert Downey Jr. in this movie. I haven't read the book, but this seemed like a good adaptation. A few things in the movie could have used a little more explanation, like the scramble suit, but so it goes. Recommended, you know, for the right audience.

Doh!

My first reaction was to laugh, but then I sighed. I've done the same. Use your words, but use them carefully.

The World Cup

I've never been a huge fan of futbol, but I've watched most of the world cup games these past few weeks and have enjoyed them, aside from watching team USA play [so you're watching world cup, does that have anything to do with your lack of recent blogging? - ed. touche.] As a lazy fat rich American, I can choose from so many sports to watch that soccer is usually not my first choice. But I think the problems are deeper than that. So let me tell you what I think is wrong with futbol, and how it can be improved.

First, while it is a great game and great sport, the history of soccer is a nasty tale of nationalism, corruption, racism, and in some cases genocide. There's even a war named after this "sport." And racism isn't some remnant of the distant past, it is alive and thriving today.

Moving beyond these obviously huge problems, I see a few other problems. Let's talk about sportsmanship. American kids are taught at a very young age that good sportsmanship matters more than winning. We hate wimps and whiners like John McEnroe. Players like that represent all that is wrong with professional sports. Unfortunately, soccer depends heavily on acting and on influencing refs calls.

Franklin Foer writes:

Starting in the 1960s, the Italians began practicing a highly defensive strategy called catenaccio, the lock-down. This formation adds an extra layer of defense, a sweeper, bringing up the rear of an already robust back line that marks man-to-man. Offense doesn't usually receive many resources in this arrangement. Goals are scored in bursts of counterattack, with the ball quickly sent up the field in flashes. This way, goals come with great rarity, usually only once or twice a game. With so few opportunities to score, and so little margin of error, players must do whatever they can to gain the upper hand. Thus, the greatest cliche of Italian soccer - the impassioned two-handed mamma mia pleading with the referee.

And it's certainly not limited to the Italians. In today's game between Britain and Portugal, one of the Portuguese players laid down after allegedly getting hit in the face. The replay clearly showed that no one was even near his face and the ref rightly ignored this acting. Yet Britain was nice and stopped a quick run up field by kicking the ball out of bounds to halt play momentarily. Part of this is just a reflection of the rules and how players respond. In order to take a break and grab a quick sip of water, players need to halt play somehow. Hence they fake pain. But it goes deeper. Shortly after this play, Britain was on another fast run up field when the same Portuguese player feigned injury again. Britain didn't stop play this time, and the fans booed at this supposed lack of sensitivity.

I'll admit that basketball players occasionally exaggerate their falls to get a foul, but it's much less prominent and much more innocuous. As long as the current incentives remain in place, players will continue to behave as they do. I don't think this style of play meshes with our views on sportsmanship, and I think this will always limit the appeal of soccer in the states.

I've got more to say, but I'll save it for another post.