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Lynne Kiesling

One of the things I like about publication is that I don't ever seem to lose that childlike fascination that Steve Martin had in The Jerk when he saw his name in the phone book and declared "I'm somebody!"

With that same childlike fascination I am pleased to announce that you can now pre-order my forthcoming book on electricity restructuring at Amazon. And I just put the edited page proofs in the mail to the publisher yesterday. Here's a summary of what it's about:

Over the past 50 years the US economy has experienced economic dynamism and technological change at a dizzying pace, driven substantially by innovation in digital communication technology. This dynamism has had limited effects in the electricity industry, and institutional change within the industry to adapt to these changes has been variable. Many states in the U.S. do not participate in open wholesale markets, and even more states have either no retail markets or have implemented such a restricted and politicized version of retail markets that potential retail market entrants still face substantial entry barriers. This book explores institutional design and regulatory policies in the US electricity industry that can adapt to unknown and changing conditions produced by economic, social, and technological change.

Whereas the dominant regulatory paradigm has traditionally been centralized economic and physical control based on natural monopoly theory and power systems engineering, the ideas presented and synthesized by Kiesling compose a different paradigm - decentralized economic and physical coordination through contracts, transactions, price signals, and integrated intertemporal wholesale and retail markets. Digital communication technology, and its increasing pervasiveness and affordability, make this decentralized coordination possible. Kiesling argues that with decentralized coordination, distributed agents themselves control part of the system, and in aggregate their actions produce order. Technology makes this order feasible, but the institutions, the rules governing the interaction of agents in the system, contribute substantially to whether or not order can emerge from this decentralized coordination process.

This book will be of interest to students and researchers engaged with electricity regulation and deregulation in the US, as well as institutional economics and technological change in industry.

Although they didn't get the title quite right; it's Deregulation, Innovation and Market Liberalization: Electricity Regulation in a Continually Evolving Environment.

Lynne Kiesling

And it's called Anathem. It's an interesting made-up word, reminiscent of both "anthem" and "anathema". The marketing blurb:

Since childhood, Raz has lived behind the walls of a 3,400-year-old monastery, a sanctuary for scientists, philosophers, and mathematicians--sealed off from the illiterate, irrational, unpredictable "saecular" world that is plagued by recurring cycles of booms and busts, world wars and climate change. Until the day that a higher power, driven by fear, decides that only these cloistered scholars have the abilities to avert an impending catastrophe. And, one by one, Raz and his cohorts are summoned forth without warning into the Unknown.

Why do I feel like he's writing about me and my friends?

Seriously, I can't wait to get my hands on this.

If you want to ask Neal any questions about the book, the publisher is taking question submissions through today.

Lynne Kiesling

I am studiously trying to ignore the presidential season, but Alex Massie's Wodehouse-ian gloss on Hillary Clinton (and, tangentially, Mike Huckabee at the end) really made me laugh, and has enough of a grain of truth in it to be insightful.

In my sourer moments I find myself persuaded that Bertie Wooster's verdict on aunts also applies to politicians: "It is no use telling me that there are bad aunts and good aunts. At the core, they are all alike. Sooner or later, out pops the cloven hoof."

Never is this more the case than during a Presidential campaign. The sheer ghastliness of the front-runners is something to behold. ...

Dipping into The Inimitable Jeeves last night, it struck me that, for a certain kind of chap, Hillary is the Honoria Glossop of the presidential campaign. It's not just that Hillary's now infamous "cackle" is dangerously reminiscent of Miss Glossop's laugh "that sounded like a squadron of cavalry charging across a tin bridge."

Do, please, go read the whole thing. And if you've not read any Wodehouse, you should do that too, sooner rather than later!

See also the comments on the thread and Stephen Bainbridge's post on the matter for discussion of whether or not there's latent misogyny here; some interesting comments, some utterly humorless folks with little familiarity with Wodehouse's writing and characters.

While we're on the topic of Wodehouse, the DaVinci Code of the Woosters is pretty darn hilarious as well.

Lynne Kiesling

The attention has taken a turn for the literary here in KPLandia ... perhaps it's the upcoming PBS broadcasts of the ITV productions of all of Jane Austen's novels. Here's a great find for those of you who like to multi-task and listen to audio books (during exercise, knitting, driving, etc.): LibriVox.

LibriVox is a volunteer project in which volunteers read books that are in the public domain; you can download them as MP3s to listen to. How awesome is that? You can listen to Persuasion, if, like me, you love Jane Austen. Fancy some philosophy? How about David Hume's Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding? There's also poetry: Walt Whitman, e e cummings (yes, I'm a pretentious pedant for doing it all lower case, so what?).

Or for you economists out there (and you NU folks taking my History of Economic Thought course this winter), how about Alfred Marshall's Principles of Economics? Or John Stuart Mill (of his own free will, after half a pint of shandy ... sorry, sorry!)?

Sadly, though, no Adam Smith. I'd just love it if someone with a lovely Scots brogue would volunteer to read Wealth of Nations and Theory of Moral Sentiments. Hmmmm, here's a thought ... David Tennant reading Adam Smith. I might never take my headphones off again ...

Lynne Kiesling

A delightful little holiday diversion: T.C. Boyle's short story I Dated Jane Austen is available to read at his website, complete with woodcut comic illustrations.

Michael Giberson

There's been a lot written about game-fixing in basketball lately, but not much about an obvious game fixing episode in World Cup Quidditch.

That is to say, not much written about quidditch match fixing until now. Phil Birnbaum fills the gap at the Sabermetric Research blog.

And then there was the suspicious episode in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets during the big Gryffindor vs Slytherin match. As we only learn later, Dobby, the Malfoy's house elf, enchanted a bludger to chase after Harry and in trying to dodge the bludger Harry fell and broke an arm. I wouldn't be surprised if Lucius Malfoy himself had a little wager on the game.

Lynne Kiesling

Very good. Lots of action, plot twists and resolutions. Does justice to the Arthurian and hero themes, without overdoing it (to my taste). Not perfect. But well worth the price of admission.

I'm sure I'll think of more later, but these are my initial thoughts. More below the cut, with spoilers ...

Lynne Kiesling

It's 5 PM out here in Montana, where I am at the moment, and I've finished the first ten chapters. More after the fold, with oblique spoiler references, so don't click through if you are concerned.

Michael Giberson

Today I did something new. Something I’ve never tried before. I walked into the local Barnes and Noble bookstore and bought a diet book.

I’ve never really though of myself as overweight. For most of my life I haven’t been overweight. For the last few years, however, I have thought of myself as needing to lose a few pounds -- unlike Lynne, I am no triathlete -- and over the past few years I have added pounds rather than losing a few.

I got naked earlier today and stepped on a scale: 198.4 pounds. A quick BMI calculation online produced a 27.3. The number puts me smack in the middle of the “Overweight” category.

Lots of people try lots of diets. Over the last few years I have heard people talk about their low fat, South Beach, low carb, Atkins, high fiber, unprocessed foods, more veggies, weight watchers, and how to take it off and how to keep it off diets.

Two things I’ve noticed about people on diets: they can’t seem not to talk about their diets; and, except for the people in TV commercials, none of them seemed to be having fun. And while I get that not everything in life has to be fun, the general tenor of the discussions tended to put me off the idea. Plus, many didn’t seem to work.

My feeling about the matter was, I’m happy for lots of people to try lots of different diets, and if something actually works, word will get out, and then I’ll give it a go. I’m a big fan of experiments, especially when other people are paying the costs and I can sit around and wait. I guess I’m ready to join the lab rats.

Wandering through the bookstore, I came across Seth Robert’s paperback edition of The Shangri-La Diet. (Previously mentioned on KP here and here.) I’ve been thinking about the “SLD” half-seriously since David Tufte’s one-year anniversary post at voluntaryXchange. Picked the book up, scanned through, read the Stephen Dubner quote on the back cover (and front cover, and again inside – apparently they really liked the Dubner quote.)

The second quote at the beginning of Chapter 4 caught my eye: “It appealed to my essential laziness.” (The quote was by-lined “A Blogger’s Reason for Trying the Shangri-La Diet.” Now you know that I stole my title.) I think for me the “laziness” aspect is part of the appeal for me – it looks astoundingly easy to do. But in addition to my essential laziness, the book also appeals to my essential curiosity. It is a little quirky. Roberts is interesting. I’d like to give it a shot.

So I’ve bought the book. I’ll probably start in a few days. If I’m lucky, I will drop 25 pounds or so and never have to buy another diet book again in my life.

Michael Giberson

As observed at Freakonomics, my home town of Falls Church, Virginia is (at present) leading Amazon.com's contest to be the "The Harry-est Town in America.” Freakonomics puts it concisely:

Whichever town pre-orders the most copies of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows will receive a $5,000 Amazon gift certificate, to be directed by the winner to a local charity. The numbers are calculated on a per capita basis using the latest census, and a city must have a population of more than 5,000 to qualify.

I can believe Falls Church tops the list. Lots of over-educated parents, above average incomes, and relatively literate children: the demographics are in our favor. When the local Borders bookstore hosted J.K. Rowling for a book signing a few years back, the line stretched out the door and fully around the strip shopping mall for maybe a quarter mile. Some customers queued in costume.

Still, I wonder if Amazon is doing the math right. A few years back Falls Church was reported as leading the state in per capita alcohol consumption. Like Amazon, the Virginia Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control was adding up sales and dividing by census numbers, and Falls Church was on top. (Apparently, instead of seeing this as an economic development bonus -- Number one in schools and booze! -- some people in the city leadership were embarrassed. In the Washington Post the headline was "Falls Church Aghast at Dubious Alcohol Statistics" (January 3, 1998). Surprisingly, "some people in the city leadership" were correct.) As it turned out, the Virginia ABC summed up sales in state-owned alcohol stores by postal designation and divided by the census numbers. However, Falls Church, the Northern Virginia postal designation includes a population in Fairfax County about ten times the size of Falls Church city, an independent Virginia jurisdiction. That substantial slip up in data analysis gave us a leg up in the per capita standings.

I wouldn't be suprised if Falls Church has legitimately captured numero uno on Amazon's HP7 list, for good or ill it is that kind of place. But I also wonder if some magical math might be boosting our good fortunes, too.

(And, by the way, if Amazon really wants to make a charitable gift, shouldn't they be directing their attention to the communities at the bottom of the list, not the top?)

Lynne Kiesling

Speaking of music, the leader of my current favorite band, Franz Ferdinand, has written a book called Sound Bites, which is largely a compilation of his food columns for the Guardian. Alex was a chef before he was a rock star, and he writes with a lot of humor about his culinary experiences while touring and from his past. Hear him talk about the book and the band on this recording of his Fresh Air appearance from early January; read more about the book in this Washington Post article (hat tip to my friend Diane for this one!).

Michael Giberson

On September 12, the AEI-Brookings Joint Center will be hosting a presentation of Cass Sunstein on his new book, Infotopia: How Many Minds Produce Knowledge. Their announcement indicates that Professor Sunstein “will present an optimistic account of the human potential to aggregate information without resorting to prejudice and preconceptions.�? Just judging by the capsule summary, it appears like Sunstein has adopted a more positive view of matters than offered in his previous book, Republic.Com. (The BusinessWeek review of Republic.Com said Sunstein “fears that the Internet is contributing to a fragmentation of public discourse that is undermining democracy.�?)

Sunstein was just beginning his book last year when he spent a week guest-blogging on the Lessig blog, talking about prediction markets and information aggregation, Wikipedia, Hayek and other topics. (Of course, the problem of “how many minds produce knowledge�? and related Hayekian insights are fundamental to our thinking here at the Knowledge Problem. Some of Lynne’s reaction to Sunstein’s guest-blogging remarks be found here at KP as well as in the comments at the Lessig blog.)

Commenters at the AEI-Brooking event are two George Mason University economists – Tyler Cowen and Robin Hanson. I think of both of them as optimists, about the human potential to aggregate information and about much else too, but each in his own way. Should make for an interesting program.

Lynne Kiesling

Joanna at Fey Accompli has a nice post on Dr. Seuss and the political themes in his children's books. I've always been disturbed by The Lorax, even when I was too young to understand why. Very interesting post.

Michael Giberson

At Marginal Revolution, Tyler Cowen points to a USA Today story about Penguin Books' new Great Ideas series. The books offer extracts, the USA Today story called them "samplings", from great non-fiction. The first twenty books include work by Seneca, Machiavelli, Rousseau, Schopenhauer, and Orwell.

The Penguin website invites visitors to vote on which of the twenty books "you feel has had the most impact on the world." As of my visit, the voting was close between Darwin/On Natural Selection and Marx and Engels/The Communist Manifesto, each receiving around 20 percent of the vote with a slight edge to Marx and Engels.

Of course, I have no idea which of the twenty books you feel has most affected the world, but on the narrower question of which book has most affected the world the nod would have to go to Darwin's On Natural Selection.

Lynne Kiesling

John Moser has tagged me with the bibliophile meme (and he did so on a good day, as I am feeling contemplative):

1. How many books do I own? I estimate 1000, split between home and work pretty evenly and not counting the 500 or so additional books contributed by the KP Spouse. And that doesn't count my 40 or so cookbooks, even though I actually only use about six of them (mostly Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking).

2. What was the last book I bought? Practical Matter: Newton's Science in the Service of Industry and Empire, 1687-1851, by Margaret Jacob and Larry Stewart. I am in the middle of reading Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle, which in combination with Joel Mokyr's work on the origins of industrialization in the dissemination of useful knowledge through scientific societies during the Enlightenment, has piqued my interest in Newton and in Enlightenment science in general. Plus Newton was a character, a bit of a freak, so his life is intriguing.

3. What was the last book I read? Understanding the Process of Economic Change by Douglass North. This is a very ambitious book. North puts forth a hypothesis that weaves together human cognitive processes, belief systems, culture, institutions, and economic growth. It's a really complex set of issues and relationships, and I think he's done a good job of articulating it clearly. It crystallizes the reasons why institutions matter, and why we see different outcomes of similar processes in different places.

4. What are the five books that mean the most to me? This one is really tough.

-Adam Smith, Theory of Moral Sentiments. Yeah, you thought I'd say Wealth of Nations, but I think ToMS is even more important and broad in its implications for how real live free and responsible individuals live together in civil society.

-F. A. Hayek, Constitution of Liberty. A broad articulation of the knowledge problem, of the difficulties of Cartesian rationality, and the importance of the formal and informal institutions that enable free and responsible people to live together in civil society.

-Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice. The best piece of English-language fiction. Ever. Period.

-Joel Mokyr, Lever of Riches. In addition to being a work of virtuosity and of great importance for understanding our modern plenitude, this was the first work in which I ever participated as a scholar. Joel taught my graduate economic history course from the notes for the manuscript, and our lively discussions in class taught me how multi-directional scholarship and learning are when they are done well.

-Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged. Like John, I have deep problems with strict Objectivism, but reading AS, Fountainhead, etc. while in high school shaped my future questioning of authority, my empiricism, my value for independent thought, and my confidence in the originality of my ideas. That last one has taken a couple of decades to develop, but I can trace it to reading Rand in high school.

'Nuff about me. I'm tagging Mr. Seat, Knitress, Courtney, and Rob.

Michael Giberson

Reading books chronically understimulates the senses. Unlike the longstanding tradition of gameplaying�which engages the child in a vivid, three-dimensional world filled with moving images and musical sound-scapes, navigated and controlled with complex muscular movements�books are simply a barren string of words on the page. . . .

Books are also tragically isolating. While games have for many years engaged the young in complex social relationships with their peers, building and exploring worlds together, books force the child to sequester him or herself in a quiet space, shut off from interaction with other children. . . .

But perhaps the most dangerous property of these books is the fact that they follow a fixed linear path. You can�t control their narratives in any fashion�you simply sit back and have the story dictated to you. . . . This risks instilling a general passivity in our children, making them feel as though they�re powerless to change their circumstances. Reading is not an active, participatory process; it�s a submissive one.

That�s an excerpt from Steven Johnson�s new book, Everything Bad Is Good for You, taken from Malcolm Gladwell�s review in the New Yorker.

Johnson is kidding, by the way. More or less.

Lynne Kiesling

Jonathan Wilde has this wonderful and annoying tendency to articulate things about which I have been ruminating before I have fully formed my ideas. In this post he does so about Neal Stephenson's "radical libertarian views ... he writes about libertarian themes - technological empowerment, data havens, free banking, polycentric law, anonymous digital cash, holocaust prevention, Enlightenment ideals, cryptography, and distributed power - in novels that appeal to the mainstream without being overtly preachy."

Yeah. What he said.