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Assorted links
1. Laura Miller's pieces for Salon.com.
2. The increasing use of German words in English; is it just the financial crisis?
3. One moderately fast reader.
5. Via Jim Swofford, do avatars consume as much electricity as do Brazilians?
6. Markets in everything; the usual, etc., nothing new here.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on January 12, 2009 at 11:32 AM in Web/Tech | Permalink
Comments
Tyler, the avatar link seems broken. But when found, I think the issue is simply that Linden Labs runs some very energy-inefficient servers. Newer server technology can save considerable energy.Many in tech is talking about energy efficiency now.
Posted by: StreetWalker at Jan 12, 2009 11:58:55 AM
As I writer whose name I do not recall said some years ago, the fact that English does not have a single-word counterpart to schadenfreud says something about the German mindset. Something not good.
Posted by: Peter at Jan 12, 2009 12:18:00 PM
All, What would the contract look like for the markets in everything auction?
Posted by: BeckySharp at Jan 12, 2009 12:38:28 PM
Family and marriage therapy? Seriously?
Posted by: disaggregated at Jan 12, 2009 12:47:45 PM
Or try the link from here: http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2006/12/avatars_consume.php
Posted by: Tyler Cowen at Jan 12, 2009 12:53:47 PM
On the increasing use of German words in English, it's more because that German lends itself to the wholesale creation of really cool words.
Oh, and then there's this:
The European Commission has just announced an agreement whereby English will be the official language of the EU rather than German which was the other possibility.As part of the negotiations, Her Majesty's Government conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a five year phase-in plan that would be known as "Euro-English".
In the first year, "s" will replace the soft "c". Sertainly, this will make the sivil servants jump with joy. The hard "c" will be dropped in favour of the "k". This should klear up konfusion and keyboards kan have 1 less letter.
There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year, when the troublesome "ph" will be replaced with "f". This will make words like "fotograf" 20% shorter.
In the 3rd year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be ekspekted to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible. Governments will enkorage the removal of double letters, which have always ben a deterent to akurate speling. Also, al wil agre that the horible mes of the silent "e"s in the language is disgraseful, and they should go away.
By the fourth year, peopl wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing "th" with "z" and "w" with "v". During ze fifz year, ze unesesary "o" kan be dropd from vords kontaining "ou" and similar changes vud of kors be aplid to ozer kombinations of leters.
After zis fifz yer, ve vil hav a reli sensibl riten styl. Zer vil be no mor trubl or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi to understand ech ozer. Ze drem vil finali kum tru! And zen world!
Posted by: Ironman at Jan 12, 2009 12:55:34 PM
So if this is moderately fast reading, what's very fast reading?
Posted by: Greg at Jan 12, 2009 1:04:41 PM
Ah one of my favorite quotes from Avenue Q.
"Nikki: Oh. Schadenfreude, huh? What’s that? Some kind of Nazi word?
Gary: Yup. It’s German for ‘happiness at the misfortune of others’.
Nikki: ‘Happiness at the misfortune of others’ That is German! "
Posted by: Raymond at Jan 12, 2009 1:53:43 PM
And I thought my 125 books last year was a lot...
Posted by: Andy at Jan 12, 2009 2:14:13 PM
But English clearly has a word for schadenfreude, namely schadenfreude. As far as I can tell, it is used at least as much in English as in German...
Posted by: Zamfir at Jan 12, 2009 2:15:16 PM
We've had competitions for any word imported from German (modern German) that is for an unambiguously Good Thing. We've been offered only two - delicatessen and kindergarten. Come on, chaps; rise to the challenge.
Posted by: dearieme at Jan 12, 2009 4:16:59 PM
"She added: "It's shocking that men will pay so much for someone's virginity, which isn't even prized so highly anymore.""
Tyler, have any idea why so many men would be willing to pay so much? I totally don't get it. Hymenoplasty is probably a cheaper route in either case.
Posted by: Noah at Jan 12, 2009 4:30:35 PM
You know what's really meaningful? That the French lack a word for entrepreneur.
Posted by: Barbar at Jan 12, 2009 4:36:10 PM
Tyler, do you also read that fast?
Posted by: londenio at Jan 12, 2009 5:53:59 PM
The spelling commission thing is a good idea, but several things are wrong:
* W and V should remain separate, since they mark separate sounds.
* Th and Z should remain separate, since they mark separate sounds. Actually, Th marks two sounds, the voiced and unvoiced. If anything, we should reintroduce the letters eth and thorn to mark those sounds, or spell one as Th and the other as Dh.
* Double consonants are important, since they can tell you that the previous syllable's vowel is short instead of long. That rule should be extended, not abolished.
Posted by: Joshua Holmes at Jan 12, 2009 6:43:33 PM
No love for Gemütlichkeit and Fahrvergnügen?
Posted by: ogmb at Jan 12, 2009 6:52:34 PM
Josh, mezinks you missed ze joke.
Posted by: ogmb at Jan 12, 2009 6:53:50 PM
To the above asserting that there are no (or very few) unambiguously good German (loan) words, let me suggest you avoid going to a fest where you have bratwurst (with sauerkraut), frankfurters (or a wiener), hamburgers, and strudel washed down with a lager (with hops grown in a fine loess) or some schnapps. I fear that the subsequent waltzing to the leitmotif of the song played by the wunderkind on his glockenspiel may inspire a change to your Weltanschauung so that wanderlust to travel to Germany fills your heart (or perhaps something else that requires an aspirin).
Posted by: Jody at Jan 12, 2009 9:00:55 PM
It's not that Second Life uses inefficient servers; it's just that their servers need to use a lot of CPU time (unlike, say, your average web server which is mostly just doing I/O).
Icelandic has also contributed a financial-crisis word: kreppa, which might make the jump to English around the time our economy is in the same state as theirs.
Posted by: at Jan 12, 2009 9:29:07 PM
One other points about Second Life from the comment thread: saying "an avatar costs such and so much when it's running" is like saying "a human consumes this much energy when he's driving a car." That's his peak usage, it doesn't mean that "drivers" consume ten times as much energy as your average American.
Posted by: Noumenon at Jan 13, 2009 12:51:43 AM
Has anyone thought to compare the CO2 output of an avatar to that of the standard metabolic output of a human?
After a bit of searching, I found a rough calculation for the daily output of the average human, which is 3.149kg of CO2 per day, here: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/3611885/Take-the-car-and-save-the-planet.html
So, if one follows the math, a human puts out 1.598 tons of CO2 per year, while an avatar puts out 1.17 tons. As interesting as this may be, it is essential to keep in mind that CO2 produced by humans was already in circulation, as it were, having originated ultimately from sugars fixed by plants, while the avatar added 1.17 tons that were not in circulation previously.
Posted by: Elliot at Jan 13, 2009 1:43:59 AM
Seems like there are problems with the avatar energy use calculations. He says:
Conservatively, a PC consumes 120 watts
But that's not conservative, that's a gross overestimate given that notebook computers now outsell desktop computers. The 15" notebook computer I'm using, for example, uses 30-35 watts (measured by a 'Kill a Watt' meter). Since his 'per avatar' measurement was 1/3 of a 200W server plus a 120W desktop, using a notebook reduces the total by half (from ~190W to ~95W).
Then there's the question of whether those watts are really 'wasted'. I live in a northern U.S. city, and for more than half the year, we're heating the house. Which means none -- zero watts -- of the power going to appliances I run is wasted since it helps heat the house. The story is different in the summer -- but in the summer when it's warm and there's light in the evening, I am much less likely to spend my free time in front of a computer. So we have to cut the PC contribution by more than another 50%. Similar considerations apply to the servers, too, BTW -- Carr adds the cost of AC to the server load, but doesn't subtract any savings in heating (assuming some of the server facilities are in northern climates).
And the last thing to ask is, what activities does the playing of "Second Life" displace? Reading? You have to take into account the cost of lighting (probably more power than my laptop uses). Watching TV? Probably more energy than the local computer + share of the server. Going out for in the evening? More energy intensive still because you have to account for the transportation, and you have to ding yourself both for your share of the energy used by the places you've gone out to AND also the energy used by the home sitting empty without you.
Posted by: Slocum at Jan 13, 2009 8:17:45 AM
@Jody: "waltz" - excellent.
Posted by: dearieme at Jan 13, 2009 11:56:31 AM
