Dave's Whiteboard

In a recent New York Times article, Richard H. Thaler talked about dollar auctions.  In business schools and economics classes, a professor will offer to sell a dollar (or a twenty-dollar bill) to class members via an auction.  The catch is that when the auction ends, the winning bidder pays up and gets the money–but the second-highest bidder also has to pay up, even though he or she gets nothing.

Under that rule, with stubborn bidders, Thaler says, the total paid for $20 can exceed $50.

The original dollar auction as invented by Yale’s Martin Shubik (who described it in this 1971 article [PDF]).  Escalation of commitment is the concept under which, after people have begun bidding in such an auction, they’re increasingly reluctant to stop.

Thaler’s real topic is the website Swoopo.com, an auction site practically printing money on the escalation-of-commitment principle.  Items go on auction at an opening price of one cent.  Some items have a minimum bid of one cent; I found others with a minimum of 12 cents.

There may be other minimums–but the price of each bid is 60 cents.  Got that?

I watched one instructive auction for about three minutes as I started this post.  The item?  Lego Duplo set 5609, a construction play set.  As I’m writing, you can buy this on Amazon for $104.13 with free shipping.  Swoopo said the item was worth “up to $110,” which is reasonable.

Each time someone bid, the minimum increase was twelve cents — but each bidder had to pay Swoopo 60 cents per bid.

In the three minutes I watched carefully, there were at least 60 bids–probably more; I missed some as I was making hash marks.

The winner bid $41.76–but placed 56 bids, which added $33.60 to the price.  So the net net, as they say, was a price of $75.36 for the winner, a savings of about $29 off the Amazon price, or $34.64 off the value stated on Swoopo.

The point is that the winner wasn’t the only bidder.  A price of $41.76, at twelve cents per bid, means 348 bids.  At 60 cents apiece, that’s $208.80 in bid charges.  Add the $41.76 cost to the winner, and Swoopo took in $250.56 for a $110 toy.

That’s some margin.  Or, as Thaler puts it in his article, “the difference between Swoopo and Best Buy is that at Swoopo you end up paying for stuff in the other guy’s shopping cart.”

I don’t mean to criticize Swoopo (necessarily).  I do recall the magician Penn Gillette, who often performs in Las Vegas, responding to a question about whether he gambles while he’s there.

“No,” he said.  “I’m too good at math.”

My parents, one Christmas, gave me an album by Peter, Paul and Mary.  Ignoring the question of how Mom and Dad knew who these people were, I didn’t like Peter, Paul and Mary.

Or so I thought.

By the following year, I wanted a guitar.  And I guess I learned informally, because I didn’t take lessons, and I didn’t know anyone who knew guitar.  I had found Earl Robinson’s Folk Guitar in Ten Sessions, which was more about accompanying singing than fancy fingering.

So: listening to Yarrow, Stookey, and Travers pulled me into a web of songs.  Some were traditional, some were contemporary, but for me they related in a way that other kinds of music hadn’t.  Related in the sense of having a connection, and related in the sense of giving an account of things outside.

I started learning about other kinds of music, about the “folk process” through which tradition song gets transformed, about social relevance.  And I learned that making music was not something only professionals did, or only other people: making music was an invitation.

I don’t know if Mary played an instrument.  Her voice helped carry the heart of a song: the braid of sounds and story.  Chan fhiach cuirm gun a còmhradh — it’s no feast if there’s no talk — and there’s not much of a song if there’s no connection.

In an interview, Mary said, “I’m not sure I want to be singing Leaving on a Jet Plane when I’m 75, but I know I’ll still be singing Blowin’ in the Wind.“  She died yesterday, three years short of that, but the connections remain.

A summertime side trip…

My car radio has a USB connection, and I have a couple of USB drives full of music.  Mostly they’re whole albums, but some of the albums are anthologies, so I’m never quite sure what old audio friend will show up.

Like the Ian Tyson classic Someday Soon, sung here by Suzy Bogguss:

When he comes to call
My pa ain’t got a good word to say
Guess it’s ’cause he was just as wild
In his younger days…

Or Shannon McNally’s Pale Moon (this isn’t the best audio, but it’s a live performance):

…I’m on the ground in N.Y.C.
the city of perpetual motion
the city that never sleeps
that’s all right, baby,
I wasn’t tired anyway…

Ian Tyson always reminds me of another Canadian icon.  Here’s Gordon Lightfoot singing about what was at that time the largest Great Lakes freighter.  (The video has news footage–the sideways launch of the Fitz from Great Lakes Steel, outside Detroit, on August 7, 1958. )

There is enough water in Lake Superior to cover the entire land mass of North and South American with one foot of water. (Wikipedia)

The dimming lights of the auto industry pain me–I grew up in Detroit (and not in a Detroit suburb).  When UAW president Walter Reuther died in a plane crash, they held the funeral in the Henry and Edsel Ford Auditorium.  It was broadcast live, and included a performance of Joe Hill. This video isn’t from the funeral, but was the clearest version I could find.

From San Diego up to Maine,
in every mine and mill,
where workers strike and organize,
That’s where you’ll find Joe Hill,
it’s there you’ll find Joe Hill.

Andrew Maynard, an expert on new scientific technologies,  has a post reprising the notion of the two cultures (science and humanities, with a chasm between them).  He offers a one-question poll and sees the results as indicating that the chasm isn’t necessarily that vast.

Ruth Seeley offers a similar poll from the humanities side.

I liked both polls, though as I commented to Ruth, I’m not sure her topic is necessarily comparable Andrew’s.

Ruth knows this isn’t a serious disagreement; we’ve had several enjoyable exchanges. The two polls did give me an excuse to test a polling plugin (a piece of code for WordPress blogs like this one).

Other than messing around in the tool aisle, I was shooting for a question like Maynard’s that touches on more fundamental concepts.

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Okay; now you can scroll down to the comments and check. Then, if you would, the bonus round: a second poll to help analyze the answers:

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There’s an image on the Citizenship and Immigration Canada website:

An amendment to the Citizenship Act went into effect today.  I took the quiz that the image links to, even though I knew how it would turn out:

1. Have you ever renounced your Canadian citizenship?  
   Nope.
2. Was your Canadian citizenship ever revoked for fraud?  
   No.
3. Where were you born?
   The Inverness hospital–oh, “in Canada.”
4. When were you born?
   (In my case, the right answer is:
   “Between January 1st, 1947, and February 14, 1977.”)
5. At the time of your birth, were your parents foreign diplomats in Canada?  
   No (unless under really deep cover).

So I passed.

Under the new law, “Citizenship will be automatic and retroactive to the day the person was born or lost citizenship, depending on the situation.”  So I’ve zipped back to 1958 when my parents became naturalized U.S. citizens.  At the time, I gained U.S. citizenship through them and automatically lost my Canadian citizenship.

Oh, there it is.  And retroactive, too, so I’ve been Canadian all along.  (You had doubts?) 

I read once that Stephen Hawking claimed time travel would never be possible.  He offered as proof the fact that we haven’t been invaded by tourists from the future.  (I used to think, well,  maybe we’re just the time-travel equivalent of someplace no one wants to visit. )  I guess Canada and I have showed him.