Reid / Abramoff

To: Josh Marshall
Re: "Stick up for Harry."

Did Nevada's other Senator receive Abramoff money? Yes, about a quarter of what Reid received.

P.S.
For nuanced parsing, see this Las Vegas City Life piece by Steve Sebelius.

Flogging Jews, Part II

To: Mickey Kaus
Re: Mel Gibson Plans TV Miniseries on Holocaust

David M. Halbfinger wrote:

Mr. Taylor, who likened "Flory" to ABC's critically acclaimed 2001 miniseries, "Anne Frank," cautioned that Mr. Gibson's level of involvement would not be determined until the miniseries is completed - which at this stage of any project is still a long shot - and he has seen it. "If it happens to be produced by Mel's company, it doesn't mean he's going to be out there flogging it like he did 'Passion of the Christ,' " Mr. Taylor said.

I don't know, maybe that's exactly what a Holocaust miniseries needs: Mel Gibson as a Nazi.

The Right Price: Not a Market Proposal

To: Adam L. Penenberg
Re: The Right Price for Digital Music

The problem with your proposal is that the function linking price to demand is just as arbitrary as iTunes standard $0.99. Without a limited supply of product, there is no such thing as bidding in the naive sense you propose. [Note: I mean "naive" as a descriptive, not a hostile, term.]

The maximum revenue (&, with a marginal cost close to zero, profit) will occur if the industry gets everyone to pay exactly the maximum they are willing to pay in order to obtain a song. Coltrane pieces might well sell for much more than the latest pop single because the fans are devoted, and, probably, richer.

In the absence of a remote, billion-node mind-reading device, figuring the price is an art, not a science, and only crudely amenable to market methods. One possibility would be to make use of former Slate contributor James Surowiecki's 'Wisdom of Crowds' idea (well, he popularized it): create a market in which people place bets on how many copies of a song will sell at a given price point, and use that to set the price (via maximizing the function n*p, where p is the price point and n are the number of expected sales at that point.).

The Day the Sea Came

To: Editor, The New York Times Magazine
Re: The Day the Sea Came

Allah has the easiest job in the universe. If he saves his people, they thank him for saving them. If he kills his people, they thank him for killing them. It reminds me of the military's attitude toward the Republican Party.