Ever wonder what your feedback rating on ebay is worth? A kennedy business school professor did and researched it. His conclusion:

Zeckhauser’s research has determined that a person’s good reputation is not only valuable, but it’s worth about 7.6 percent in a retail transaction.

You can read the full text of the article if you want, though the above pretty well sums it up 😉

Glad to see that my fastidious behavior on ebay is likely paying off though, I really do try extremely hard to maintain my rating. Unfortunately this sometimes extends into behavior I wish I didn’t have to rely on, like not leaving negative feedback on a transaction that I wasn’t happy with for fear that the other party will leave negative feedback on me.

It also suggests to me that this whole notion of ‘persistent karma’ has some real legs. Imagine a world where everything you did online (and ultimately in real life) contributed to your karma profile. Blast a flame mail on an email list, get a bunch of negative karma. Help out some shmoe who can’t get his network routed correctly, get some positive karma. Curse out an old lady in traffic and cut her off, negative karma for you! Then when you go to do business with someone (say you’re hiring a plumber) you can check out their karma profile. This is the slashdot model writ large, and I am vastly oversimplifying, but you probably get the idea.. I’m not the first one to imagine it – Cory Doctorow over at boingboing even wrote a novel that covers the concept that you can download for free, check his website if you’re curious, and buy his novel if you think it’s cool. But more importantly t(to me anyway) – kick the idea of persistent karma around in your head too – what do you think? Good idea? Or horrific orwellian lack o’ privacy future? I’m fascinated by the whole notion and will be writing more of it here over the next couple of months.

I think I’ve actually blogged this site at least once before, but it has been so long that I had actually forgotten about it until someone pointed it out to me this afternoon:

American Science and Surplus

Has all kinds of stuff, from the practical (lazy susan bearings to make your own tv stand) to the unique (a bag full of high quality plastic lenses used originally in disposable cameras) to the bizarre (a robot shaped vaguely like an alligator that can climb walls using suction cups on its feet), the site is well worth a browse whether you’re looking for something or just looking to procrastinate 😉

This morning sucked. It was warm and rainy on Sunday so I got up blisfully unaware that the temperature had dropped by at least 40 degrees. I walked outside in a light coat and leather gloves, coffee in hand, and was like ‘damn! cold!’ Then I discovered my door was frozen shut, spent 10 minutes trying to prise it open to no avail, ran back inside to get tools thinking ‘damn it’s really cold out! I ended up spending 20 minutes working at the door with a claw hammer and a screwdriver, meanwhile my hands froze into claws. I didn’t damage the car, amazingly, and it did start.

Why don’t I have de-icer you ask? I do. It was trapped in the backseat of the car ;-( I don’t think it would have helped though, the ice that was causing the door to stick was down in the weather stripping.

Ok you impatient bastids, I spent my entire saturday slaving over the pictures of my trip to Belize. You can stop pestering me about it, they’re up and you can scope em out. Head on over to the gallery section from the links at the top or bottom of the page.

Play 20 questions with a computer. I’m betting on the computer. I thought of goldfish and it guessed correctly before it even got to its 20th question. Color me impressed.

Hurrah for my mental faculties, I actually remembered. Of course it took me several hours….anyway, the third book I read on vacation was just fantastic. I had read one other Furst novel and really enjoyed it but had forgotten about him until this xmas when my Dad got me several of his books. The one I read in Belize was The World at Night: A Novel. In short, it’s awesome. Furst is just an absolutely brilliant stylist and he focuses carefully on the historical minutia of the era. If this book doesn’t transport you back to 1939-1940 Paris then nothing will. The plot is almost secondary to the simple experience of wandering around in occupied Paris. Pay no attention to the mediocre reviews the book got on Amazon.com, I can’t reccomend this one highly enough.

I managed to read three books while I was down in Belize. Ahh, the joys of vacation 😉

First up was Startide Rising by David Brin. This was a hugo and nebula award winning science fiction novel. It’s an action adventure set in a universe where all intelligent life has come into it’s own under the tutelage of ‘sponsor’ species, except for the original and long lost ‘pregenitors.’ All species aside from the humans that is. A crew of humans and recently raised into sentience dolphins stumble across a cache of pregenitor spaceships, the first encounter with the pregenitors in galactic history, and the earthship is running for it’s life from a host of alien species all dedicated to capturing the earthlings and discovering the location of the hidden pregenitor ships.

It all sounds great, and the overarching story is ok, but the book falls apart in the details. The character interactions are contrived, there is a completely impossible to swallow ‘rebellion’ brewing amongst the dolphin crew, and the characters are cardboard archetypes, not actual folks you believe in. Plus the writing suffers from a lack of logic at times (best example I can think of: james bond type character encounters alien, thinks to himself that he’s only seen this species once before, then manages to read the alien’s facial expressions and deduce he is lying. Umm, riiiiight. Was it the frown that gave it away? What’s an alien frown look like anyway?).

Anyway despite all the problems the book is still ok, it’s a fast paced space opera and if you can look past the thin characters and plot problems it’s still a fun read. I would give it a c+.

Next up, I read David Sedaris’s ‘Holidays on Ice. I had heard Sedaris a few times on NPR and liked what I heard, so I brought this along. It turned out to be devastatingly funny, especially the story about santa’s elves at Macy’s. Sedaris writes semi-autobiographical stories filled with caustic sarcasm. It’s a quick read, I finished it in the 6 or so hours of fly time between Belize City and Boston, and it’s cheap as well. Highly recommended, I give it an A.

I’ll have to post on the third book (best of the bunch btw) until I get home since I cannot recall the author’s name. Spy novel stuff along the lines of John Le Carre, set in WWII france. It was perfect, best book I have read in quite a while. More later on this one.

A couple of you recently expressed concern that the comments here are worthless since I don’t seem to read them. Trust me, I do. Every time I log into the Moveable type interface I am presented with a report on who has posted what comments, and I always read them. I just sometimes don’t respond inside the comments thread is all. Keep the comments coming!

You’re going to have to be patient folks. I spent 2 hours last night culling through the literally hundreds and hundreds of photos I shot in Belize, trying to winnow the collection down to a manageable 100 or so. I have to cull through it again tonight cause I only managed to get it down to like 150. Then I have to run them through photoshop, the snorkling ones especially because of the low light situation when shooting underwater. I still hope to have stuff up by this weekend but don’t hold me to it.

And just to make you feel jealous, here’s one of me lounging on the dock by the water sipping beer and imagining never having to return to -15 degree weather.

Anyway, I’ll post a screenshot gallery by the end of this weekend. I had a great time – got free round trip tickets out of the deal, was bumped to first class, had an amazing nighttime cab ride through the heart of the jungle, went spelunking in an underground river, snorkled amazing coral reefs, ate great food, explored Mayan ruins and more. I’ll write it all up soon, I promise.