via daring fireball, an economics professor explains a dollar auction:

Economics professors have a standard game they use to demonstrate how apparently rational decisions can create a disastrous result. They call it a “dollar auction.” The rules are simple. The professor offers a dollar for sale to the highest bidder, with only one wrinkle: the second-highest bidder has to pay up on their losing bid as well. Several students almost always get sucked in. The first bids a penny, looking to make 99 cents. The second bids 2 cents, the third 3 cents, and so on, each feeling they have a chance at something good on the cheap. The early stages are fun, and the bidders wonder what possessed the professor to be willing to lose some money.

The problem surfaces when the bidders get up close to a dollar. After 99 cents the last vestige of profitability disappears, but the bidding continues between the two highest players. They now realize that they stand to lose no matter what, but that they can still buffer their losses by winning the dollar. They just have to outlast the other player. Following this strategy, the two hapless students usually run the bid up several dollars, turning the apparent shot at easy money into a ghastly battle of spiraling disaster.

sound familiar? ghastly battle of spiraling disaster, indeed.

apparently john mccain doesn’t quite get how those internets work, with all the tubes and whatnot.

or at least his staff doesn’t.

turns out that they stole their my space page design, and linked back to the original page for their artwork. which meant that the poor original designer had to foot the bill for the bandwidth for the images every time someone hit john mccain’s my space page.

but, it gets better. that also means that, if you substitute a new image on your server, it will magically appear on john mccain’s my space page.

which the designer did. you can see the results here.

for those of you too lazy to click through, here’s what the image says:

Dear Supporters,

Today I announce that I have reversed my position and come out in full support of gay marriage…particularly marriage between passionate females.

John

ok, so i could do without the straight-boy take on hot lesbian sex.

but you have to admit, this is brilliant.

hopefully mccain’s staff has learned their lesson.

that’s one way to look at the results of this poll, which compares the reactions of americans to their counterparts in other countries.

from the article:

People in Latin America were most worried while U.S. citizens were least concerned with just 42 percent rating global warming “very serious.”

The United States emits about a quarter of all greenhouse gases, the biggest emitter ahead of China, Russia and India.

Thirteen percent of U.S. citizens said they had never heard or read anything about global warming, the survey said.

how sad is that? 58 percent of americans don’t think global warming is a very serious problem. and 13 percent of americans have never even heard of it.

the story isn’t perfect. i’d like to know how many americans rated it a “serious” problem as opposed to “very serious”. still, we have a long way to go in this country to catch up to the awareness level of other countries.

on the other hand, as i’ve said many times, the earth ain’t going nowhere, and life on earth ain’t going nowhere either. the virus known as people might, though.

i swore i’d never embed a youtube link on my site, but this one is just too good to pass up. it was made before the election, and with the exception of the ned lamont bit, it turned out to be remarkably prescient.

brilliantly assembled, set to an outstanding george michael classic, and guaranteed to bring a smile to your face.

unless, of course, you are loyal to the minority party.

wow, it’s good to say that.

what’s missing from the nonstop election coverage today?

i’ll tell you what.

it’s a discussion of how far down the ticket the sweep went. this daily kos story is called “dems kick ass in state legislatures”.

it’s not just a victory on the national level. it’s in state houses, and i expect that it goes down to the county and city level as well.

people were just plain fed up.

news alert one just hit my email inbox: Tester defeats burns for the montana senate seat. great news, but not unexpected.

news alert two followed two minutes later: rumsfeld to resign.

damn! damn! finally we’re getting somewhere!

some random thoughts, blatantly stolen from various uncredited sources this morning:

karl rove was the mastermind of the largest electoral setback for republicans in quite some time. go karl. not such a wizard now, dude.

america’s message to george w. bush: shut the fuck up.

this is the first morning in the long march toward eliminating the evil influence of christian evangelicals in this country. christians like me are no longer going to stand for their nonsense.

the power has shifted from the south of america to the coasts, with a sprinkling of midwest for good measure.

not that i ever would have, but i’m glad i didn’t move to canada. if you actually did move to canada, shame on you. but you should come back now.

lost in the noise of this election: katrina. let’s not continue to forget it.

assuming that the democrats’ lead in virginia and montana senate races holds, the democratic party will have pitched a shutout. actually, make that a near-perfect game, except that they walked senator-elect bob corker from tennessee.

the country’s message to democrats: clean up the mess. be sensible. don’t overreach. you have a mandate for change, but it’s limited in scope.

there is so much to celebrate this morning. the house has returned to democratic control, and, much more improbably, there’s a good chance the senate will too.

but the news i’m cheering the most is from arizona. that very republican state became the first state in the country to reject a gay marriage ban.

the importance of this cannot be overstated. combined with much narrower majorities passing gay marriage bans in other states, and with the court decision in new jersey, it looks like we may have turned a corner in the battle for marriage equality.

my sense is that many arizonans possess that western conservatism, that libertarian-ish barry goldwater-like streak that says “stay outta my private life”. and those people combined with the social liberals to provide a majority to defeat the gay marriage ban.

there’s a road map there, and a great lesson for those in the marriage equality movement. that’s a winning argument that can be duplicated elsewhere. the dynamics of this victory will be, and should be, studied to an infinitesimal degree of precision. every nuance of meaning needs to be extracted.

and you combine the arizona victory with the defeat of the anti-abortion law in south dakota, and the passage of the stem-cell research proposal in missouri, and you have a formula for driving nutty evangelicals, well, nuttier.

it’s a good, good, morning in america.

two stories you may have missed:

andrew sullivan writes about the deliberate u.s. pullout from an area where a u.s. soldier is being held captive. does this not pretty much define “cut and run”? if this happened under the watch of a sitting democratic president, the hue and cry would drown everything else in the media. why is this not a bigger story?

from the story:

under this commander-in-chief, the U.S. military has both practised torture and abandoned a missing soldier in action. The commander-in-chief has ultimate responsibility for both decisions. he is directly responsible for betraying the honor of the armed services he is duty-bound to lead. So is Rumsfeld. So is Cheney.

and in today’s new york times (free registration required to view), a story about how the government put documents on a public website that comprise directions on building nuclear weapons.

from the story:

The documents, roughly a dozen in number, contain charts, diagrams, equations and lengthy narratives about bomb building that nuclear experts who have viewed them say go beyond what is available elsewhere on the Internet and in other public forums. For instance, the papers give detailed information on how to build nuclear firing circuits and triggering explosives, as well as the radioactive cores of atom bombs.

“For the U.S. to toss a match into this flammable area is very irresponsible,” said A. Bryan Siebert, a former director of classification at the federal Department of Energy, which runs the nation’s nuclear arms program. “There’s a lot of things about nuclear weapons that are secret and should remain so.”

gee, i thought the whole republican thing was that “the adults would now be back in charge”.

that may change, assuming we can all get our votes to count, which is certainly somewhat in doubt.

early voting has begun in florida, and there are problems already.

people’s votes for democratic candidates are being recorded for their republican opponents. of course, election officials are assuring people that the errors can be fixed on the spot.

if, of course, you are savvy enough to catch the mistake, and aggressive enough to alert the people in charge, and persistent enough to make sure your vote is recorded properly. sure. lots of elderly voters are going to have the wherewithal to go through that.

right.

and why is it that, when we read these stories, the error never favors the democrats? i certainly try to avoid paranoia, but you have to wonder.

here’s the quote from the linked story that strikes fear into my heart:

Broward Supervisor of Elections spokeswoman Mary Cooney said it’s not uncommon for screens on heavily used machines to slip out of sync, making votes register incorrectly. Poll workers are trained to recalibrate them on the spot — essentially, to realign the video screen with the electronics inside. The 15-step process is outlined in the poll-workers manual.

the 15-step process.

here’s a true story: on one of my relatively recent visits to the polls, i went up to the proper table and the poll worker asked my last name. she then looked at a copy of the alphabet she had written on an envelope, so that she would know where in the book to find my registration information.

you read that correctly. she didn’t know the alphabet well enough, and had to write it down for reference.

i have other new york voting horror stories, and i assure you that this is not an isolated incident–it’s a typical incident.

and these are the people that are going to initiate a 15-step process to calibrate an electonic voting machine?

i’m really angry about this.

and if you really want to get completely frightened, here’s an online guide to stealing elections. the guide was assembled to make the point that stealing an election is now easier than ever, due to the “improvements” implemented after the 2000 election.

this country is going to hell in a handcart. we need to get the u.n. in here to monitor the elections. like they do in fledgling democracies, countries that seem to be doing a better job of having elections than the united states.

i’m really afraid for what will happen to this country if there are widespread problems with electronic voting. it could be the push over the edge into some really widespread, destructive protests, and we don’t need that.

or, maybe we do.

this is as cogent a summary of the peril we face as a country as i’ve seen. i’ll reprint it here in its entirety, for convenience. or watch the video embedded on the link. it’s brilliant.

And lastly, as promised, a Special Comment tonight on the signing of the Military Commissions Act and the loss of Habeas Corpus.

We have lived as if in a trance.

We have lived… as people in fear.

And now — our rights and our freedoms in peril — we slowly awake to learn that we have been afraid… of the wrong thing.

Therefore, tonight, have we truly become, the inheritors of our American legacy.

For, on this first full day that the Military Commissions Act is in force, we now face what our ancestors faced, at other times of exaggerated crisis and melodramatic fear-mongering:

A government more dangerous to our liberty, than is the enemy it claims to protect us from.

We have been here before — and we have been here before led here — by men better and wiser and nobler than George W. Bush.

We have been here when President John Adams insisted that the Alien and Sedition Acts were necessary to save American lives — only to watch him use those Acts to jail newspaper editors.

American newspaper editors, in American jails, for things they wrote, about America.

We have been here, when President Woodrow Wilson insisted that the Espionage Act was necessary to save American lives — only to watch him use that Act to prosecute 2,000 Americans, especially those he disparaged as “Hyphenated Americans,” most of whom were guilty only of advocating peace in a time of war.

American public speakers, in American jails, for things they said, about America.

And we have been here when President Franklin D. Roosevelt insisted that Executive Order 9-0-6-6 was necessary to save American lives — only to watch him use that Order to imprison and pauperize 110-thousand Americans…

While his man-in-charge…

General DeWitt, told Congress: “It makes no difference whether he is an American citizen — he is still a Japanese.”

American citizens, in American camps, for something they neither wrote nor said nor did — but for the choices they or their ancestors had made, about coming to America.

Each of these actions was undertaken for the most vital, the most urgent, the most inescapable of reasons.

And each, was a betrayal of that for which the President who advocated them, claimed to be fighting.

Adams and his party were swept from office, and the Alien and Sedition Acts erased.

Many of the very people Wilson silenced, survived him, and…

…one of them even ran to succeed him, and got 900-thousand votes… though his Presidential campaign was conducted entirely… from his jail cell.

And Roosevelt’s internment of the Japanese was not merely the worst blight on his record, but it would necessitate a formal apology from the government of the United States, to the citizens of the United States, whose lives it ruined.

The most vital… the most urgent… the most inescapable of reasons.

In times of fright, we have been, only human.

We have let Roosevelt’s “fear of fear itself” overtake us.

We have listened to the little voice inside that has said “the wolf is at the door; this will be temporary; this will be precise; this too shall pass.”

We have accepted, that the only way to stop the terrorists, is to let the government become just a little bit like the terrorists.

Just the way we once accepted that the only way to stop the Soviets, was to let the government become just a little bit like the Soviets.

Or substitute… the Japanese.

Or the Germans.

Or the Socialists.

Or the Anarchists.

Or the Immigrants.

Or the British.

Or the Aliens.

The most vital, the most urgent, the most inescapable of reasons.

And, always, always… wrong.

“With the distance of history, the questions will be narrowed and few: Did this generation of Americans take the threat seriously, and did we do what it takes to defeat that threat?”

Wise words.

And ironic ones, Mr. Bush.

Your own, of course, yesterday, in signing the Military Commissions Act.

You spoke so much more than you know, Sir.

Sadly — of course — the distance of history will recognize that the threat this generation of Americans needed to take seriously… was you.

We have a long and painful history of ignoring the prophecy attributed to Benjamin Franklin that “those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

But even within this history, we have not before codified, the poisoning of Habeas Corpus, that wellspring of protection from which all essential liberties flow.

You, sir, have now befouled that spring.

You, sir, have now given us chaos and called it order.

You, sir, have now imposed subjugation and called it freedom.

For the most vital… the most urgent… the most inescapable of reasons.

And — again, Mr. Bush — all of them, wrong.

We have handed a blank check drawn against our freedom to a man who has said it is unacceptable to compare anything this country has ever done, to anything the terrorists have ever done.

We have handed a blank check drawn against our freedom to a man who has insisted again that “the United States does not torture. It’s against our laws and it’s against our values” and who has said it with a straight face while the pictures from Abu Ghraib Prison and the stories of Waterboarding figuratively fade in and out, around him.

We have handed a blank check drawn against our freedom to a man who may now, if he so decides, declare not merely any non-American citizens “Unlawful Enemy Combatants” and ship them somewhere — anywhere — but may now, if he so decides, declare you an “Unlawful Enemy Combatant” and ship you somewhere – anywhere.

And if you think this, hyperbole or hysteria… ask the newspaper editors when John Adams was President, or the pacifists when Woodrow Wilson was President, or the Japanese at Manzanar when Franklin Roosevelt was President.

And if you somehow think Habeas Corpus has not been suspended for American citizens but only for everybody else, ask yourself this: If you are pulled off the street tomorrow, and they call you an alien or an undocumented immigrant or an “unlawful enemy combatant” — exactly how are you going to convince them to give you a court hearing to prove you are not? Do you think this Attorney General is going to help you?

This President now has his blank check.

He lied to get it.

He lied as he received it.

Is there any reason to even hope, he has not lied about how he intends to use it, nor who he intends to use it against?

“These military commissions will provide a fair trial,” you told us yesterday, Mr. Bush. “In which the accused are presumed innocent, have access to an attorney, and can hear all the evidence against them.”

‘Presumed innocent,’ Mr. Bush?

The very piece of paper you signed as you said that, allows for the detainees to be abused up to the point just before they sustain “serious mental and physical trauma” in the hope of getting them to incriminate themselves, and may no longer even invoke The Geneva Conventions in their own defense.

‘Access to an attorney,’ Mr. Bush?

Lieutenant Commander Charles Swift said on this program, Sir, and to the Supreme Court, that he was only granted access to his detainee defendant, on the promise that the detainee would plead guilty.

‘Hearing all the evidence,’ Mr. Bush?

The Military Commissions act specifically permits the introduction of classified evidence not made available to the defense.

Your words are lies, Sir.

They are lies, that imperil us all.

“One of the terrorists believed to have planned the 9/11 attacks,” …you told us yesterday… “said he hoped the attacks would be the beginning of the end of America.”

That terrorist, sir, could only hope.

Not his actions, nor the actions of a ceaseless line of terrorists (real or imagined), could measure up to what you have wrought.

Habeas Corpus? Gone.

The Geneva Conventions? Optional.

The Moral Force we shined outwards to the world as an eternal beacon, and inwards at ourselves as an eternal protection? Snuffed out.

These things you have done, Mr. Bush… they would be “the beginning of the end of America.”

And did it even occur to you once sir — somewhere in amidst those eight separate, gruesome, intentional, terroristic invocations of the horrors of 9/11 — that with only a little further shift in this world we now know — just a touch more repudiation of all of that for which our patriots died —

Did it ever occur to you once, that in just 27 months and two days from now when you leave office, some irresponsible future President and a “competent tribunal” of lackeys would be entitled, by the actions of your own hand, to declare the status of “Unlawful Enemy Combatant” for… and convene a Military Commission to try… not John Walker Lindh, but George Walker Bush?

For the most vital, the most urgent, the most inescapable of reasons.

And doubtless, sir, all of them — as always — wrong.

Joe Scarborough is next.

Good night, and good luck.

november elections can’t come fast enough. i used to think that, if the democrats get control of congress, they should just get on with the business of governing, and not tear the country apart with investigations of the bush administration’s past dealings.

now i’m not so sure. there’s a lot to be undone, and there needs to be some accountability.

howard kurtz, in his washington post media column, sums it up rather well:

Start with a war in Iraq that has gone seriously south. Cut to a devastating hurricane and the government’s botched response.

Then you have the Hammer getting hammered, as Tom DeLay gets indicted, gives up his majority leader post and then resigns.

The Abramoff scandal blows up, claiming a number of Hill staffers and, ultimately, Ohio congressman Bob Ney, who pleads guilty and says he’ll quit. California congressman Duke Cunningham quits after accepting more than $2 million in bribes, including a yacht.

Just when the plot is in danger of flagging, Mark Foley–who heads the Exploited Children’s Caucus, a detail that no B-movie producer would buy–is exposed as a gay hypocrite who cyberstalks former teenage pages. And House Speaker Denny Hastert and his top lieutenants offer conflicting accounts of what they knew and when they knew it.

As the Foley saga starts to fade, the FBI conducts raids in a probe of whether Pennsylvania congressman Curt Weldon tried to help clients of a lobbying firm run by his daughter and an ex-aide.

Sprinkle in the Woodward book, the Ricks book, the Isikoff-Corn book and now a book by former White House faith-based guy David Kuo who says his ex-colleagues privately referred to evangelicals as “nuts.” Not to mention North Korea setting off a nuclear bomb.

And some conservative pundits are saying the Republicans deserve to lose the House.

Has anything gone right for the GOP?

you tend to forget individual events as the next one rolls around. it’s amazing to see them all listed like this.

if the democrats blow this somehow, i think all hope may be lost.