One of the minor ideas in the book is that there’s basically this huge repository of data, so big that many things are pretty much impossible to find. People make a living off of scavenging through the data to try to find a new bit of info that had been lost and sell it to the highest bidder. Could the Alexa model eventually lead to something similar where people somehow make money by finding information that no one else could?

And so we find ourselves joining together to fight a $90 billion company bent on unilaterally changing copyright law to their benefit and in turn denying publishers and authors the rights granted to them by the U.S. Constitution.

It’s worth remembering that the gatekeepers will always oppose something that circumvents their authority. Industries built on controlling access will always oppose competition and come up with reasons why the competition is inferior or immoral or both. It’s simply in their interest to do so. Disruptive technology is not pleasant for old business models. History has plenty examples of fire being forced back in the bottle because the old industry was scared. US vacuum tube manufacturers didn’t like transistors, so the US lost the electronics industry to Japan.

Internet behemoth Google, plans to launch their Library project in November. It plans to scan the entire contents of the Stanford, Harvard and University of Michigan libraries and make what it calls “snippets” of the works available online, for free.

The creators and owners of these copyrighted works will not be compensated, nor has Google defined what a “snippet” is: a paragraph? A page? A chapter? A whole book? Meanwhile Google will gain a huge new revenue stream by selling ad space on library search results. Selling ads on its search engine is how Google makes 99 percent of its billions.

Did they ever even think of searching Google’s current databases to see what a “snippet” might look like? Guess what…Google Scholar already allows content searches on copyrighted academic publishing! Check out one of their searches to see what a snippet looks like. Google’s web searches provide snippets on web pages as well, which also happen to be copyrighted material. Looks like a couple of sentences, at most, to me.

Plus, the delineations they suggest are arbitrary anyway. Some books have chapters that consist only of a paragraph. Jack Kerouac’s On The Road novel was originally written as one long paragraph. So just making the delineations they propose for a snippet won’t necessarily be meaningful.

Our laws say if you wish to copy someone’s work, you must get their permission. Google wants to trash that.

Because, I’m sure that no one has ever made a copy of a page in a library book without getting the author and publisher’s permission first, right? No?! Oh…right, because our laws have fair use provisions.

Google’s position essentially amounts to a license to steal, so long as it returns the loot upon a formal request by their victims. This is precisely why Google’s argument has no basis in U.S. intellectual property law or jurisprudence. Just because Google is huge, it should not be allowed to change the law.

Google Chief Executive Officer Eric Schmidt has argued the “fair use” provision in copyright law allows Google to scan copyrighted books and put them on their Web site without seeking permission. He compares this to someone at home taping a television show and watching it later. Taped TV show are watched in millions of households every night and is quite legal; rebroadcasting that show to make a buck is not.

Next time Dr. Schmidt watches television, he should keep his ears open for the common disclaimer “rebroadcast of this program without the express written consent of” the broadcaster is “prohibited.” Google’s plans are tantamount to the same thing, profiting from someone else’s work without permission. It isn’t up to the broadcaster to track down someone profiting from their work, why should it be up to publishers and authors to do so?

Has anyone ever watched the TV Guide Channel? What’s their business model? Provide snippets about copyrighted work and make money by surrounding it with their advertising.

Ever read a book review in a newspaper or magazine? Don’t they provide an extended snippet about the work and make money by advertising nearby the article?

What’s Roger Ebert do for a career? Give snippets of movies while his employer gets paid by surrounding the snippets with advertising.

Is Google fundamentally changing the law by providing snippets of copyrighted material and making money by advertising nearby? Can anyone explain how Google Print it fundamentally different than these examples I’ve given?

Google envisions a world in which all content is free; and of course, it controls the portal through which Internet user’s access that content. It would completely devalue everyone else’s property and massively increase the value of its own.

I think Google’s vision is where all content is searchable. This is actually Microsoft, Yahoo!, and a ton of other companies’ visions as well. Google just seems to be leading the pack at the current moment.

The underlying assumption is that this is a zero sum game…if Google’s making the money from providing the book search, then publishers and authors are losing money. I think that such a service actually stands to create more wealth for authors. I’ll bet that authors whose books don’t show up on the NY Times top 100 bestsellers would love to have a more accessible way to circumvent the gatekeepers and let people find their work and what it’s about.

I have copyrighted work indexed by Google in the form of this web page and my papers I’ve published. I’m happy that people have a means of finding my work. It helps market my work by allowing interested people to find it.

The company contends it will allow authors of copyrighted works to “opt-out” of the free online library by notifying Google they don’t want their works online. Most authors and publishers do not know who bought their books. And have you ever tried to get a live person on the phone at an Internet company?

This is silly…do they really think that Google will ignore such requests? Have they tried the system? Doesn’t seem like it…seems like they’re just trying to scare people. The current search engine system (not just Google) operates on an opt-out policy for copyrighted material (i.e., web pages). For example, if you search for a topic on this blog, you’ll see that we’ve specified a policy where our work can be indexed, but not archived in Google’s cache. If the whole Internet was forced to operate on an opt-in policy, it would be impossible to find anything and people would only opt-in to a couple of the largest search engines, thereby centralizing knowledge.

Obviously, from history classes, we know that the immediate reasons were that the Europeans had guns against the Native Americans’ bows and arrows, Europe had the transportation necessary to cross the ocean, and Native American germs had a minimal affect on Europeans, whereas Native Americans proved extremely susceptible to European diseases. The question is how did the societies advance prior to this point to end up in such an asymmetric situation.

Much more below the fold.

First off, the book could have probably been about 150 pages shorter (it’s just less than 450 pages), without affecting the central ideas. The parts about plant domestication could have been shortened significantly…I found them rather boring (though, the animal domestication is another story). Also, when he gets to like the fifth case study of people movement over time, it gets a bit tedious.

Obviously, one answer to this question is that the Europeans were genetically superior to the societies they overtook. The book goes to great lengths to show, convincingly, that this was not the reason. I’ll just kind of summarize bits and pieces of the book that I found interesting.

First, there used to be a lot more species of big animals (i.e., greater than 100 pounds) native to all continents, not just Eurasia and Africa. Why big animals are important will be evident shortly. Why, in the Americas and Australia (and the South Pacific islands), did these animals become extinct? The author accepts the hypothesis that in Africa and Eurasia, people had animals and millions of years to co-exist, so a fear of humans was in place by the time people developed more advanced hunting techniques. By contrast, humans came to the Americas and Australia much more recently, relatively advanced hunting skills intact, and the animals didn’t have time to adapt evasion techniques in response. Point is, Eurasia and Africa had many more species of big animals that didn’t go extinct.

So, one thing the greatly increased a society’s ability to advance was when it moved from being hunter-gatherers to farmers. Two salient features emerge from this transition. First, populations become more dense. Nomadic people can only keep up with one infant at a time. For instance, most hunter-gatherers, in practice, spaced births about four years apart (via abstinence, abortion, and infanticide). By contrast, sedentary people would have children about every two years because multiple infants was no longer infeasible. Second, in a hunter-gatherer society, everyone has to get food, pretty much. By contrast, in a farming society, surpluses can be generated, freeing some people to do non food-related activities, like art or politics. Thus, farming societies brought denser, faster increasing populations where people could focus on organizing society. It’s interesting to note that the first people probably made this transition due to domesticated plants growing out of the latrines of hunter-gatherer groups (between this and the fact the it is a good carrier for germs, poo has played quite an important role in human development ).

Here’s an interesting random fact from the book: 80% of the modern world’s farming food tonnage comes from only a dozen crops. They are: wheat, corn, rice, barley, sorghum, pulse soybean, roots or tubers potato, manioc, sweet potato, sugarcane, sugar beet, and bananas.

Domestication of big animals was the next thing that allowed societies advance. Prior to the Industrial Revolution, this was the only non-environment dependent method of making human labor more productive (e.g., things like wind, water, etc. were dependent upon a society’s location, whereas animals can be moved). So, only fourteen species of big animals have ever been domesticated. Oddly, despite modern efforts to domesticate more species, many of the currently domesticated species have been so for thousands of year. The major five species are (which are widespread): sheep, goat, cow (or ox), pig, and horse. The minor nine are (which remain predominantly localized): Arabian (one-humped) camel, Bactrian (two-humped) camel, llama/alpaca, donkey, reindeer, water buffalo, yak, Bali cattle, mithan. The key point of the list is that 13 of the 14 are from Eurasia (llamas being the exception). Despite, all their species, Africa has none. So, this area was the earliest to benefit from domestication.

Immediately, people tend to say, what about elephants. So the author defines domestication as being selectively bred in captivity (thereby modifying them from the corresponding wild species). By contrast, elephants are captured and tamed. So, the next interesting part is why haven’t other species been domesticated. The author points to six characteristics that are necessary for domestication.

• Diet: they usually must be herbivores (or at least omnivores, in the case of pigs) because it is not efficient to breed carnivores since that requires breeding herbivores on which they can feed as well.
• Growth Rate: Animals have to grow relatively quickly or it is not worth the farmer’s time. This excludes gorillas and elephants which may take 15 years to reach adult size. It is more efficient to catch and tame such animals.
• Problems with Captive Breeding: The cheetah would have been a wonderful species to domesticate, however they have an elaborate mating ritual which involves males chasing the females across many miles in order for her to, uh, become horny. This doesn’t work well in captivity. Obviously, domestication doesn’t work if animals don’t reproduce easily.
• Nasty Disposition: My personal favorite disqualifying factor. This excludes grizzlies bears, for example, since they have an irritating tendency to kill people. Similarly, if Africans were able to domesticate an army of hippos, they probably would have had an amazing advantage on horse-based armies. Alas, hippos are some mean dudes that kill more people in Africa than any other animal. And, zebras? They have a nasty tendency to bite humans and not let go. More zookeepers are injured by them than tigers each year.
• Tendency to Panic: Some animals, such as gazelles, tend to panic easily and bang themselves against walls with lots of power.
• Social Structure: Animals that have a hierarchical structure are easier to domesticate because the human can essentially take the top leader position within their group very naturally. By contrast, animals like cats are very independent and not well adapted for having a leader.

The next important advance in society is germs and the immunity thereof. New pandemics come in to being when a virus successfully adapts itself from one animal species to another. When dense population with lots of domesticated animals arose, there was also much more opportunity for viruses to find a successful evolution to infect humans. Measles, tuberculosis, and smallpox have all been traced to cattle DNA, flu to pigs and ducks, and others to dogs and birds. AIDS from monkeys is a recent example. Once a new strand has emerged, it spreads quickly in these dense societies and people either die or recover quickly from it. The ones who recover are the ones who continue to reproduce and pass immunity on to the offspring. In this way, a society becomes largely able to recover from a particular virus. Thus, Europeans and their dense societies, developed many new germs and the corresponding ability to recover over time.

Note also that indigenous germs worked against Europeans as well. Because of the tropical climates in Southeast Asia and the Pacific islands, new germs (and methods of food production) existed to which the Europeans had low immunity. Hence, they never established a large scale European population in these areas.

So, why did some societies advance so much more rapidly than others? First, the availability of domesticatable plants and animals was a major factor. Very few species are domesticatable, so having access to the ones that were was a major advantage. Second, Eurasia is long east-west, whereas America is long north-south. The former is more conducive to movement of crops and livestock since climate is much more correlated with latitude than longitude. Third, because of Eurasia’s greater population, the competition and probability of innovation increased in this area. There are simply more potential inventors.

This, however, still doesn’t explain why Europe and not China or the Fertile Crescent (a.k.a. the Middle East) became the dominate peoples to colonize the rest of the world. The Middle East proved more ecologically fragile that Europe and, hence, when its crops and animals were eroded, it lost any advantage. Europe, by contrast, had higher rainfall and vegetation that reproduced quicker that the Middle East and has been able to sustain its relatively fertile environment into modern times.

For China, the author seems less sure, but speculates that China’s political unification in 221 B.C., may have hurt it in this regard. For example, China was more advanced in shipbuilding than Europe. However, a political fight (involving eunuchs!) in China caused the winning faction to dismantle the shipping industry since it was associated with their opponents (Similarly, the UK lost their lead in electricity to the US and the US lost the fruits of inventing the transistor to Japan due to political, not practical, reasons). Because of the unification, there was nowhere for the Chinese explorers to turn. By contrast, when Christopher Columbus wanted to sail, he just kept trying different countries and rulers until eventually he found one willing to take the chance to show up their competition. Once the experiment was successful, other countries followed suit.

China also dismantled all clocks after leading the world in clock-making and which could have lead them to an industrial revolution. Also, in the 1960s and 1970s, China’s political unification resulted in the Cultural Revolution closing school systems for five years, which obviously doesn’t help a country. Thus, some lack of centralization seems to help. However, India’s inability to become leaders despite being less centralized than Europe suggests that there may be some optimal level of centralization.

Very interesting book if you’re looking for an intellectually stimulating, somewhat verbose book to read.

The basic idea of Freakonomics is that a University of Chicago economist goes through some case studies based on his research that use statistical data to debunk conventional wisdom. For example, based on statistics, a child is almost 100 times more likely to die due to drowning at a house that has a swimming pool than she is to die from being shot at a house that has a gun. So, letting your children play at a friend’s house with a swimming pool is much more dangerous than allowing them to play at a household with guns.

Something else that I found extremely interesting is the economics of drug dealing. He did an extensive study of records kept by a crack dealing organization. Turns out that their system has much more income inequality than nearly any legal capitalistic system. There was a board of directors, each of which makes about $500,000 per year. Below the board were local leaders (think franchisee for a restaurant chain) that bring in about $100,000 per year. Next in the hierarchy were three right-hand men for the local leader whose annual paycheck comes out to about $7 per hour! Then, you have the actual foot soldiers (about 75-100 per local leader) which do the dealing who make…drum roll, please…$3.30 per hour. So a vast majority of those involved in organized drugs are making less than minimum wages even considering that their income is tax-free!

Freakonomics looks at this phenomenon of the drug world in the context of the four significant factors in determining wages for a given job: (1) labor supply, (2) special skills required, (3) unpleasantness of the job, and (4) demand for services fulfilled by the job. (Which, for example, explains why a hooker usually earns more than an architect…for the fourth point, the authors point out that an architect is much more likely to hire a prostitute than vice versa)

They also look at correlations between parenting and the academic progress of elementary school kids. A lot of the correlations are rather rather surprising. The factors strongly correlated with test scores include:

• The child has highly educated parents.
• The child’s parents have high socioeconomic status.
• The child’s mother was thirty or older at the time of her first child’s birth.
• The child had a low birthweight (this is a negative correlation…children with low birthweights do poorer in academics according to the data).
• The child’s parents speak English in the home.
• The child is adopted (another negative correlation).
• The child’s parents are involved in the PTA.
• The child has many books in his home (this is probably an indicator, not a cause, as evidenced in the next list).

And for factors that don’t show a strong correlation with a child’s test scores?

• The child’s family is intact.
• The child’s parents recently moved into a better neighborhood.
• The child’s mother didn’t work between birth and kindergarten.
• The child attended Head Start (the government pre-school program).
• The child’s parents regularly take him to museums.
• The child is regularly spanked.
• The child frequently watches television.
• The child’s parents read to him nearly every day.

Finally, the last thing I wanted to mention was the authors’ study of correlation between names and economic status. It turns our that, many times, children’s names begin in high-education families and then trickle down to being used in lower-education families. So, based on the current list of names that are highly correlated with higher education parents, the book speculates on the most popular kids names a decade from now (the current list is heavily dominated by Hebrew names along with a few traditional Irish ones).

Their speculation for the most popular girl names in 2015: Annika, Ansley, Ava, Avery, Clementine, Eleanor, Ella, Emma, Fiona, Flannery, Grace, Isabel, Kate, Lara, Linden, Maeve, Marie-Claire, Maya, Philippa, Phoebe, Quinn, Sophie, and Waverly (props to all of you who recognize the last name as being from The Princess Bride book ).

Their speculation for the most popular boy names in 2015: Aidan, Aldo, Anderson, Ansel, Asher, Beckett, Bennett, Carter, Cooper, Finnegan, Harper, Jackson, Johan, Keyon, Liam, Maximilian, McGregor, Oliver, Reagan, Sander, Sumner, and Will.

If you found this post interesting, you should check out the book as it has a lot more entertaining data!

1. Prisoner of Azkaban, Half-Blood Prince (tie)
2. Goblet of Fire
3. Sorcerer’s Stone, Order of the Phoenix (tie)
4. Chamber of Secrets

One thing I like about this series is that it is obvious that Rowling had the entire story in her mind when she started writing the books, rather than just kind of making it up as she goes. For example, Chamber of Secrets didn’t seem that great when I first read it, but its importance has become obvious in later books in such a way that it had to have been planned in advance.

The Half-Blood Prince does a great job of combining mystery, battles of good and evil, and significant revelations.

OK, there spoilers galore are below the fold for those of you that haven’t read this far in the series (or have only watched the movies). If you’re reading this on an RSS feed, stop reading now if you don’t want to know the spoilers.

So, this is basically some of my thoughts about how the series is going to end. My main revelation is that I think Snape is going to turn out to be against Voldemort in the end. Even though he is perceived as betraying Dumbledore’s steadfast trust in this book, I believe that there’s an even larger story arch that will result in Snape (willingly) be integral in helping Harry destroy Voldemort.

At this point in the series, with Dumbledore gone, there are basically three “super-wizards” left: Harry, Snape, and Voldemort. I think that it will be revealed that Snape had to kill Dumbledore to prove his loyalty to Voldemort to facilitate the Dark Lord’s destruction at a later point. I wouldn’t be surprised if the revelations about Snape’s family origins play a bigger part in why he turns out to be against Voldemort.

Rufus Scrimgeour is one character that I didn’t know what to make of, but I think he’ll play a major role in the last book. I wouldn’t be surprised if it ends up being something like Rufus and Voldemort versus Snape and Harry.

Another major mystery is the “R.A.B.” character that has evidently been trying to collect Voldemort’s Horcruxes. Is this a character to which we’ve already been introduced by another name or will it be someone new? Very interesting.

I was surprised that Neville didn’t play a much bigger role in The Half-Blood Prince. After being elevated from a minor character to a major player in The Order of the Phoenix, he appears to have gone back being a minor character, for this novel at least.

Finally, the last interesting situation this book brings in Malfoy and his family. There are definitely signs that him and his mother may break away from Voldemort. I wouldn’t be surprised if they end up sacrificing themselves to stop Voldemort in the end.

I swore he looked exactly like actor Bruce Campbell of Army of Darkness and Bubba Ho-Tep fame: