The Mathematics of ... Auctions (via a&l daily) Going Once, Going Twice By the time an auctioneer shouts "Sold!" most bidders have already gone too far The phenomenon that bidders in auctions pay too much can be seen at Ebay every day. The irrational behaviour of bidders is probably an important reason for Ebay's success. Another striking example were the state-organised UMTS auctions in Europe for the new mobile telephone technology networks where many companies paid much more than they will ever get back from future clients. The Nash equilibrium which implies that there is only one optimal strategy in a competitive game assumes rational participants knowing that their opponents are rational as well and cannot explain this. A new approach by the economist Thomas Palfrey called quantal response equilibrium takes into account that people are risk averse in the sense that they prefer to bid too much to losing the item altogether. The last paragraph of the article illustrates the problem of predicting what the other bidders think strikingly: "Even the most rational people can be predictably irrational, Palfrey concludes. In some business schools, professors make an exercise of auctioning off a dollar to their students, stipulating that both top bidders will have to pay. The best strategy is simply not to bid, Palfrey says. 'But then it's tricky, because if everyone else realizes this, then why don't I bid 10 cents? It would be irrational for anybody else to bid 11 cents. Well, the problem is that some clown out there is going to bid 11 cents.' Once the bidding gets going, he says, often only the professor can stop it." Further reading: The 29 page scientific paper Quantal Response Equilibrium and Overbidding in Private-Value Auctions for the geeks. Could the exaggerations (in both directions) at the stock market also be explained using this theory? In a bull market stock prices usually go up too much and in a bear market they go down too much. The efficient market hypothesis which states that all the information available now is in the current prices never convinced me. Not only that it is tautological and does not really explain anything, it also does not take into account misinformation and irrational behaviour which is very common. There definitely is an irrational hysterical element here as well. People don't want to miss the boat when prices go up (men are greedy) and hop on the train when prices are already too high and they sell their stocks when prices fall so that prices fall even more and even more people sell. The stop-loss limits which are nowadays carried out by computers even enforce this phenomenon. I have to dig deeper into this.

When It's Over I decided to delete this entry as it was too personal.

The Mathematics of ... Auctions (via a&l daily) Going Once, Going Twice By the time an auctioneer shouts "Sold!" most bidders have already gone too far The phenomenon that bidders in auctions pay too much can be seen at Ebay every day. The irrational behaviour of bidders is probably an important reason for Ebay's success. Another striking example were the state-organised UMTS auctions in Europe for the new mobile telephone technology networks where many companies paid much more than they will ever get back from future clients. The Nash equilibrium which implies that there is only one optimal strategy in a competitive game assumes rational participants knowing that their opponents are rational as well and cannot explain this. A new approach by the economist Thomas Palfrey called quantal response equilibrium takes into account that people are risk averse in the sense that they prefer to bid too much to losing the item altogether. The last paragraph of the article illustrates the problem of predicting what the other bidders think strikingly: "Even the most rational people can be predictably irrational, Palfrey concludes. In some business schools, professors make an exercise of auctioning off a dollar to their students, stipulating that both top bidders will have to pay. The best strategy is simply not to bid, Palfrey says. 'But then it's tricky, because if everyone else realizes this, then why don't I bid 10 cents? It would be irrational for anybody else to bid 11 cents. Well, the problem is that some clown out there is going to bid 11 cents.' Once the bidding gets going, he says, often only the professor can stop it." Further reading: The 29 page scientific paper Quantal Response Equilibrium and Overbidding in Private-Value Auctions for the geeks. Could the exaggerations (in both directions) at the stock market also be explained using this theory? In a bull market stock prices usually go up too much and in a bear market they go down too much. The efficient market hypothesis which states that all the information available now is in the current prices never convinced me. Not only that it is tautological and does not really explain anything, it also does not take into account misinformation and irrational behaviour which is very common. There definitely is an irrational hysterical element here as well. People don't want to miss the boat when prices go up (men are greedy) and hop on the train when prices are already too high and they sell their stocks when prices fall so that prices fall even more and even more people sell. The stop-loss limits which are nowadays carried out by computers even enforce this phenomenon. I have to dig deeper into this.

Resurrection The Flaming Lips did Knives Out (mp3 via elasticheart) at Morning Becomes Eclectic on Thursday (whole show in real audio). This brilliant bleak song had almost been killed for me by too much listening to it. Thom Yorke's mumbling detached sad voice is something I can only take in small doses. After a while it starts to annoy me. And Radiohead's original version of the song is too polished, too stream-lined for my taste. Though the guitars have an unbelievable fluid lightness about them which collides heavily with the grave singing. The Flaming Lips give the song a fresh touch. After the piano intro the drums join in and some nice squeaking distorted guitars which are all over the song. Wayne Coyne's voice which isn't too far from Yorke's fits well and is much more intelligible. He sings to us and not to himself like Yorke. What probably irritates me most about Yorke is the coldness of his voice which sounds like he is singing out of his his own grave. At the end the cover becomes a soundtrack to a film not yet directed. About the beauty of alienation or something like that. The spacey keyboards take over and repeat the musical theme of the song. The song finishes with guitar feedback sounding like slow sirens. Bliss in a post 911 world. By the way John Darnielle aka The Mountain Goats wrote some interesting stuff about Knives Out on his site Last Plane to Jakarta.

Link sidebar update This was long due. For now I only did the music blogs. In detail: In

• waking ear with good concise writing on music I like, e.g. Wilco, Sonic Youth and Interpol.
• vain, selfish and lazy: Fred Solinger with some interesting condensed link rich posts.
• monosyllabic: a mixed bag of private and indie music posts. Excellent reader-friendly design.
• shazam: David Howie needs some more readers.
• technicolor: Jess Harvell with a new blog on indie. He has been posting like hell recently.
• no rock and roll fun: Loads of music news daily, mainly pop.
• the rub: page title - the unbearable lightness of boring. The post length is perfect for my attention span.
• restate my assumptions: Dan Emerson is 17 and from the UK and writes on music and film.
• stumblings in the dark: Australian blog on electronic music mainly.
• double americano: Brandnew blog by Wendy K on UK indie, alt.country etc.
• land of a thousand dances: Mike Daddino currently listens to Merzbow.
• flaskaland: Barbara compiles the best online articles on music.
• fluxblog is a return to form. Radiohead seems to be a favourite.
• popshots fakebook: Sometimes I am an idiot. Out
• alacran: sorry I don't speak Dutch.
• listen missy: not my cup of tea really. - popshots: what happened to the music David?
• mostly music: I never read this classical music blog from Brazil with loads of private stuff.
• the modern age: Strokes, White Stripes, Sigur Ros etc. are bands I almost hate.
• den of ubiquity: the posts are too long, my attention span is too short.
• musicrag is on summer holiday.
• instant enemy is an empty page.
• gygax is coming soon.
• soft music for stupid people doesn't update enough.
• jiffysquid, quicksilver shapeshifter, in review, let's build a car, sink and collating bones are on hiatus. I hoped to have less music blogs in the side bar than before the operation and it worked! They are even in alphabetical order now, like my CDs. There are 55 of them. Keep on bloggin'! P.S. Most of the music weblogs (plus some other non-pinging music sites) can also be accessed via my handy blogroll powered by freshblogs (last updates on top).

Mineral Waters of the World "mineralwaters.org is a non-profit consumer web site that offers information about and around bottled water. Over 2'500 brands from more than 100 countries are presented with their contents. Have a look a the list of brands, sorted by country or sorted alphabetically. Alternatively, search the water that fits your needs in specific mineralisation. " Evian is the most viewed water but the most controversial as well. Some people think it is the best water in the world, others hate it. My favourite comment: "I wouldn't piss on this if it was on fire. Trash." It only gets a user rating of 3/5. It took me some time to get used to it, compared to German waters like Gerolsteiner or salty Apollinaris it lacks sodium and minerals in general. Definitely a good water for babies. The argument some people bring against waters with lots of minerals and sodium that they do not go with wine is convincing. Or do you like wine with salt? On the other hand in some cases like when you sweat a lot mineral rich waters make sense. And they have more taste. Nevertheless a water like the Spanish Agua de Carabaña with 26,882 mg/l sodium and 54,980 mg/l sulphate is probably fine for a bath but I would not drink such stuff.

Julia My interpretation of the lyrics I posted three entries below. The song starts low-key with the singer on the left and the guitars on the right channel: "Half of what I say is meaningless, but I say it just to reach you Julia" is a rather mysterious opening line. The singer makes clear that he does not sing the song for the big audience but to reach one person, a woman called Julia. Everyone else trying to find meaning will be only half successful (I'll try nevertheless). But why and how can Julia be reached with words of which only half are meaningful? Something about this Julia is bizarre from the beginning on. After this introductory verse the two channels are melded (mixed) and the volume goes up. The following tune is a soothing lullaby. Simple, calm and extremely tender. Melancholic and wistful. A dreamy very intimate song. Julia has been calling the singer (how she did that is not explained) and he replies with a song of love. She is everywhere where he looks, in all three elements: water (oceanchild, seashell), earth or matter (moon, sand) and air (sky, cloud). In the middle of the song the serene melody is interrupted: "Her hair of floating sky is" and then higher "glimmering" and higher again "shimmering" the pitch going down again "in the sun". These lines indicate that Julia is ethereal and high up in the sky. In the next and the second last verse the singer wants Julia to touch him. But she is far away like the moon and the clouds. The descriptions "sleeping sand" and "silent cloud" make clear that Julia cannot speak and therefore cannot reply. The verse in between those two "When I cannot sing my heart. I can only speak my mind" points again into the direction that words are not so important but the singing and therefore the tune come from deep inside. P.S. Julia Lennon died in a car crash in 1958 when John Lennon was 17 years old. He wrote Julia for the Beatles White Album in 1968. P.P.S. With Yoko Ono who was eight years older than Lennon he had found a lover who also served as a mother ersatz and apparently participated in writing the lyrics to Julia.

Referral faking According to my Sitemeter people came visiting my site via Cornered Whispers and (title pending). What leaves me puzzled is that none of these sites has a link to mine, not even a random link like via the Indieblogs webring or via Blogsnob textads. I can really live without these fake referrers. They are worse than spam. I look at them, search for the link to my blog with no avail and usually can't refrain from reading a little to see if they are interesting. Needless to say most of them aren't. What a waste of time. Actually wouldn't it be a good promotion for my weblog to link to hundreds of others weblogs, to click on all the links and then to remove them again? The titleless blog from above had at least a nice motto by Aldous Huxley: "Maybe this world is another planet's Hell."

Further reading

• Five IQ Tests (via daypop top 40). If you score 126 or more in one of the tests you can become member in the elite club called International High IQ Society.
• Great idea to connect blogs and to understand where they came from: BlogTree.com - Weblog Genealogy. My inspiring parents were Robot Wisdom, not.so.soft, wherever you are, josh blog, badgerminor, Wortwerkstatt and sofa blogger (via daypop top 40). As I just found out on my blogtree page I already have a child: largehearted boy.
• videos.antville.org: links to cool music videos (via daypop top 40)
• A stupid question Beatles: Classic or Dud?
• Which obscure band are you? (via parallax view) I was Mouse on Mars, to which I have hardly ever listened.
• Some very good writing on music at Waking Ear (via Stevie Nixed). My favourite of Murray Street was as well Rain on Tin. The concert version was especially brilliant and went on forever.
• An open knowledge project like everything2 but music centered is rootnode (via waking ear). Another good open internet music site where everybody can contribute is - The Ectophiles' Guide to Good Music organised by artist which I found when looking for Robin Holcomb who was compared to Joni Mitchell in the book I read about her.
• The Church Of Me (scroll down the entry is called Who's a Liar, Marcello's permalinks don't work) on the postpunk band Gang of Four of which I still haven't got any of the early albums. The album to buy seems to be A Brief History of the Twentieth Century (The EMI Compilation) which apparently contains everything interesting they have ever done.
• Better late than never. I discovered Mark Sinker's interesting long essay on noise & music: The Noise Piece (Director’s Cut) and The Noise Piece (Director’s Cut Part Two)
• Recently I mentioned a story in German about a physics exam with Niels Bohr as the clever candidate. Apparently it was all false according to Urban Legends Reference Pages: College (The Barometer Problem) German:
• Ist Pi völlig "normal"?. Höchstwahrscheinlich sind die Nachkommastellen von Pi gleichverteilt. In der interessanten Diskussion geht es darum, ob Pi als Zufallszahlengenerator brauchbar ist und darum, dass alle Werke der Weltliteratur incl. meines Weblogs irgendwo in Pi vorkommen.
• smi ist ein sehr lesenswertes Metablog. Die Posts sind häufig recht lang und zitieren meist aus vielen anderen Weblogs, da steckt eine Menge Fleiß-, Surf- und Lesearbeit dahinter.

The song I'd like to listen to now: "Half of what I say is meaningless But I say it just to reach you Julia,

Hum, calls me So I sing a song of love for Julia, Julia, Julia"