Wild in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin.

"Wauwatosa police confirmed on Monday that a gun was fired outside the Mayfair Mall on Sunday in connection with an incident in which large groups of unruly youths ran through the mall, forcing an early shutdown."

"In Fifty Years We'll All Be Chicks: ... And Other Complaints from an Angry Middle-Aged White Guy."

A book title... on the list of things readers have bought via my Amazon portal...




... which I encourage you to use, of course, in case you're looking for a way to show your love for Althouse, the blog... and Althouse, the chick.

Now, I'm doing a search inside that book — it's by Adam Corolla — and — what can I look for? — shorts! What does Corolla have to say about men in shorts?

When the Patriot Act cam back in the news in 2005, every single one of my faggoty, lefty Hollywood friends squealed like a stuck pig. "I don't want the government eavesdropping on my e-mail exchanges or listening in on my cell-phone conversations." Everyone had their cargo shorts in a bunch over it. I was the only one I knew who was like, "Hey, Agent Double-O Douchebag, if the government intercepts any of your e-mails all they're going to find out is that you're not funny. And how about spending a little less time worrying about the government and a little more time focusing on your narcissistic disorder, the one that leads you to believe the government actually gives a shit about you."

It's dangerous for a comedian to do a riff about how other people are not funny. He'd better be seriously funny at that point or he's asking for it.

Anyway, cargo shorts... wear them, guys, to walk toward the future in which you will all be chicks.

I have to go Christmas shopping.

Wait a minute.



No. I have to go skiing.

(I am loving Amazon Primefor 2-day shipping! Instead of trying to collect everything into an order big enough to qualify for free shipping and ordering early enough to get things in time, I can order one little thing — seriously, I just bought a wooden spoon — and get it shipped in 2 days, free.)

(And when you use the search box here — and also, always in the sidebar — you will be making a contribution to me — something like 8% of your purchase price — without paying any extra for your item. It is much appreciated. I thank all my readers who think of me and make a contribution to my writing this way when they have some shopping they need to do.)

Gift ideas — food category.

I was searching around in Amazon for gifts and, bereft of ideas, decided to search for "food." (Ah! What searching for food has meant over the ages of human history and pre-history!)

Well, the first 7 items on the list weren't even food. The top 30 was mostly things like the Melissa & Doug Wooden Sandwich-Making Set, the Melissa & Doug Slice and Bake Cookie Set, and various other Melissa & Doug wooden food stuff. Why wooden toy food? — you might ask. Whatever happened to plastic toy food? I figure, when it comes to play food, wooden is like organic. You want the kids to have healthy fake food.

If you don't count jars of baby food* — organic, of course — you don't get any food when you search for food until you get to.... well, the list goes up to 50 without any food. Okay. I'll search the Grocery & Gourmet Food category. Again, baby food is huge. Obvious why, actually. Diapers are popular too. You know what you need. You need a lot. And it's hard to get out of the house. Those single-cup coffee packets are popular. Pet food. Astronaut Ice Cream. Iffy gift baskets.

Back to that pet food:

Pack of twenty four, 5.5-ounces per can (total of 132 ounces)
With ingredients that are fit for human consumption
Made in a human food facility
Boneless, skinless, white breast meat chicken in a sumptuous gravy
Grain free product
All food ingredients are fit for human consumption

What are they trying to say?

I need to get back to my search. If you're searching too, please use this portal:



____________

* A deeper search reveals baby food — organic, of course — that comes in pouches. Do they out-green the glass jars? Eh! Who knows? Glass jars, you can recycle, but recycling uses fossil fuels. Pouches... must be plastic, but they roll up into nothing. My advice is: Buy what you like! The same goes for Christmas trees.

Arm warmers.

You've heard of leg warmers. How about some arm warmers? The backs of my hands are always getting cold as I type up here in my remote outpost in the northland, with the thermostat set the way we like it — low.

And these are, seriously, gift ideas. If you don't like my ideas, at least don't forget my portal:

"Ann, You should bump up your Amazon link for us late shoppers.

"Like the Salvation Army ringer outside the grocery store, we need a reminder to leave a decent donation."




"Donation" is a misnomer. Just start your shopping search here and you'll be giving me a percentage without increasing the cost to you. (And that box is always in the sidebar, if you're ever looking for it.)

And thanks, as always, to everyone who shows some love for the Althouse blog by using that Amazon portal.

AND: Another way to show the love is to make a direct donation, as some very special readers have done.

It's very encouraging!

Shopping?

Shop the right way, through the Althouse portal:



IN THE COMMENTS: Emil exclaims: "Capitalist pig!" Well, yeah. I'm thinking, here, here's a slingshot flying pig With Oink Sound and a pig-faced silicone pot holder and a pig-shaped tabletop mini-vacuum cleaner and pig corn-on-the-cob holders and a pig-shaped cutting board and a pan for making pig-faced pancakes and kissing pigs salt & pepper shakers and a pig-headed kitchen timer.

This year, everybody's getting pig gifts! Pig Christmas!

Don't forget!

You can show your love for the Althouse blog by starting your shopping searches here:



You'll pay no more for your purchases, and I'll get a cut of the price, which I will appreciate fondly as encouragement to keep up my daily writing for you, dear readers.

Thanks, once again...

... for showing your appreciation for my diligent bloggerly scribblings by starting your shopping here:



On most items, Amazon is sharing 7% of the purchase price with me, so it's really quite a big deal... costing you nothing more than you'd pay anyway. So, if you've been enjoying the daily nuggets of interestingness on this blog, make it the jumping-off point for whatever diverse consumerism is on your personal agenda.

Hey, thanks to the person who bought the Shun Ken Onion Serrated 5-Inch Utility Knife and used my Amazon search box.

That knife costs $139.95. I don't have a knife like this myself, but I assume the reader knew what he or she wanted. And my point — my sharp point — is that the reader didn't pay anything extra for that knife he wanted, but I'm getting $9.80 of that. Think how cool it is that you can compensate me for my writing here if you just remember — when you're going to Amazon anyway, to buy something that you want to buy — to begin your search at my blog:



You don't have to come back to this post to find the box. There's also an Amazon search box in the sidebar. I don't want to be too annoying doing posts like this, but I would really appreciate it if regular readers who want to encourage me had it in their heads to go to Amazon through this blog. It really does encourage me!

"I just wanted to let you guys know that the more replies you people post, the more business and the more hits and sales I get. My goal is NEGATIVE advertisement."

Cheating and enraging customers so they denounce you on the web... as a business model, thanks to Google.

Online chatter about DecorMyEyes, even furious online chatter, pushed the site higher in Google search results, which led to greater sales....

[T]he owner of DecorMyEyes might be more than just a combustible bully with a mean streak and a potty mouth. He might also be a pioneer of a new brand of anti-salesmanship — utterly noxious retail — that is facilitated by the quirks and shortcomings of Internet commerce and that tramples long-cherished traditions of customer service, like deference and charm.

The linked NYT article begins with a story about a businessman who sounds like has crossed the line into making frauds and threats. The scheme fails if you get arrested! So strain out the vivid example that bulks up the article and imagine a business that just has crappy products and nasty customer service. Would that play Google so well? Should Google be saving these eyeglass customers from their own failure to check out the business before they order? They'd easily find the complaints.

Now, one reason the eyeglass business is playing this negative game so well is that people are Googling the brand names of eyeglass frames, and the negative comments against the company talk about how they believe they didn't get the brand they ordered. They say they got fakes. Let's think about what's going on here. Who buys expensive brand-name eyeglasses without trying them on? I bet most of these customers have tried them on — in local eyeglass stores. Then, instead of paying the price the shopkeeper wants, they go to the web to find a better deal. At that point, they are doing a search for a particular brand name. They see the price and jump at the notion that the local shopkeeper is cheating them. Aha! They think they're being smart when they are being very dumb.

If you read far enough into the (long) article, you get to the part where the reporter — David Segal — interviews the businessman — a guy named Vitaly Borker:

“Look,” he says, grabbing an iPad off a small table. He types “Christian Audigier,” the name of a French designer, and “glasses” into Google. DecorMyEyes pops up high on the first page.

“Why am I there?” he asks, sounding both peeved and amazed. “I don’t belong there. I actually outrank the designer’s own Web site.”...

Despite the fear he has inspired, Mr. Borker doesn’t regard himself as a terror. He prefers to think of himself as the Howard Stern of online commerce — an outsize character prone to shocking utterances....

“People overreact,” he pshaws, often because they’re unaccustomed to plain speaking, New York-style. Anyway, he adds, if somebody messes with you, and you mess back, “how is that a threat?”...

“The customer is always right — not here, you understand?” he says, raising his voice. “I hate that phrase — the customer is always right. Why is the merchant always wrong? Can the customer ever be wrong? Is that not possible?”

Black Friday on the Althouse blog.

Okay, I can help you and you can help me. I write for you every day, and you don't have to give me anything. But if you're shopping anyway, a cut of the price you would pay anyway will go to me if you use the links below — which helpfully give you some Althouse-tested gift ideas. If you already know what you want to buy, you can use the Amazon search box in my sidebar and that too will work as a contribution to this blog — again, without raising the price to you. So show some cheap free love for Althouse and click through from here.

Althouse's favorite movie.

Meade's favorite movie.

The Meadhouse blender.

The Meadhouse way to make coffee.

The camera Althouse carries around all the time.

Althouse's favorite Nikon lens.

The chocolate Althouse eats every day.

A device Althouse uses for drawing with the computer.

The book Althouse most enjoyed reading this year.

Possibly the only movie we bothered to see in the theater this year.

The trekking poles we use all the time.

My small-but-nice hydrating backpack.

My too-much-information scale.

The Meadhouse trail stove.

The soil knife Meade planted over 1,000 bulbs with.

The newest old stuff from Meadhouse's favorite artist.

I love my iPad.

The iPhone I'm getting when my old iPhone dies.

Some memoirs I read and liked: Patti Smith, Keith Richards, Hitch, Bush, Franzen, Orwell ...

And one I will read: Mark Twain.

How we squish and heat our sandwiches.

4 new trucks Meade wants to put on AllenS's wish list.

A game for a young person.

A game I like to play.

The original version of the game they'll make me play, which I'm ordering right now, because the wood pieces will give me $22 worth of pleasure over the plastic pieces in the game we have in the house.

So let's get the vintage version of this game I loved as a kid.

The hiking shoes Althouse likes a lot.

The clogs Althouse keeps by the door to step into and then kick off as soon as she's in the car.

The Meadhouse salad spinner.

Althouse's noise-canceling headphones.

Althouse splurges on lip balm.

My all-time favorite TV-comedy.

The official Meadhouse chips.

The official Althouse crackers.

Where we sit.

The Althouse desk lamp.

Expensive, but this has helped me so much and made daily life so pleasurable.

It works for me: night and day creams.

What I picked out when I went perfume-shopping with Palladian.

What Palladian picked out for me based on my love of smoke-flavored things.

The fragrance I picked out long ago based initially on the shape of the bottle and which is actually really great if you like roses.

The Meadhouse drinking glasses.

The Althouse sketchbook.

Gift card!

Lotsa gift cards!

The Meadhouse coffee: espresso ground and whole bean.

A casual, autumn observation about gender difference.

At the Farmers' Market today in Madison... I don't know why but...



... women seem to be delighted by pumpkins...



... and men could not care less...

Bemoaning the loss of blue laws in the NYT.

"Sunday Shopping Linked With Less Happiness."

Good lord.

" I was ten years old back in 1970 and clearly remember the loud boom that traveled across Lake Monona and awakened me in the middle of the night."

Another memory of the Sterling Hall bombing, which took place 40 years ago yesterday, from an emailer who would like to keep her name private:

I remember hearing all of my relatives talk about never shopping downtown again because people were being dragged out of their cars, windows were being broken, and tear gas deployed. I believe that East Town Mall also opened that year or soon after so between those two events, Madison's downtown shopping district was obliterated. I don't remember any fiery speeches about how wrong the students or administration was, just a general sense of fear.

Althouse in the NYT.

Talking about feminism and the First Lady. (A Bloggingheads clip.)

"The online dating industry is even bigger than the porn industry, and more than 30 percent of first dates end up in coitus yet its customers are much less satisfied than the customers of the porn industry."

"Let me break it down for you, those who go out, partake in a social activity and perhaps later on, sleep with a living human being feel more miserable than those who look at naked women, with fake breasts, online, all day, and alone…. But why?"

Hmmm. What I wonder is: Why is he surprised? Real people — in the flesh — cause a lot of trouble. Works of art — including bad but amusing art like porn — can be enjoyed at leisure and turned off at will.

***

I arrived at the linked blog post — "Algorithmic Online Dating and the Paradox of Choice" — after I Googled "The Paradox of Choice," the title of a book that I referred to yesterday. This notion that choice won't make us happy is — or I've been calling it — a liberal meme.

From the Algorithmic Online Dating" post:

[Barry Schwartz’s "The Paradox of Choice"] basically says if you need a jar of jam and you go to a supermarket that has 3 types of jams you’ll leave much happier than when you go to a supermarket that has 30 different types of jams on the shelf. This is a beautiful dilemma, in the first case your chance of buying the best jam available is 33 percent and even if you fail to chose the best jam there is 66 percent chance that you will get at least the second best jam or better. In the second case the likelihood of buying the best available jam is only 3 percent. So you’ll be less happier knowing that you have probably selected the jam that is not the best.

But what do I care about whether I'm picking the best of the 3 things the store happens to have? It might have 3 mediocre jars of jam. A store with 30 jams probably has some excellent jams in there. Is Schwartz saying that when you can only see 3 jams, you don't get any big ideas about how good jam can be, so you're happy with Smucker's, but when you see 30 jams, you imagine that jam can be really amazing, and you're left feeling hollow and hopeless when the Bonne Maman doesn't give you an orgasm?

The problem is that assortative mating is a very complex game theoretical problem. If you have watched the movie, beautiful mind, you probably remember that John Nash (Russell Crowe) talks about the best strategy to get the blond lady!

Here. Watch that scene.

Now add 5 million more online single guys to the pool of competitors and you got yourself an unsolvable game theoretical problem....

Why? First of all, the John Nash character in the movie was talking about the group dynamic in a real-life room in which 4 males encounter 5 women. If the men all go for the most beautiful one — "the blonde" — then no one gets anyone because the guys block each other's way to "the blonde" and simultaneously alienate the 4 less-than-most-beautiful women. By contrast, a dating site is virtual space in which you interact one-to-one without seeing your rivals and without letting your target see her/his rivals. If you arrange to meet in the flesh, the rivals won't be there. Of course, it's probably going to go badly, but whose fault is that?

The Nation promotes the anti-choice liberal meme.

A couple weeks ago, I pointed to "that trendy liberal theme: Choice won't make you happy."  Here it is again in "The Trouble with Amazon":

Many would argue that the efflorescence of new publishing that Amazon has encouraged can only be a good thing, that it enriches cultural diversity and expands choice. But that picture is not so clear: a number of studies have shown that when people are offered a narrower range of options, their selections are likely to be more diverse than if they are presented with a number of choices so vast as to be overwhelming. In this situation people often respond by retreating into the security of what they already know.

As Barry Schwartz, author of The Paradox of Choice, explains, "When the choice set is larger, people tend to make worse choices. They choose on the basis of what's easiest to evaluate, rather than what's important to evaluate...the safe, highly marketed option usually comes out on top."



This apparent anomaly of greater choice resulting in a narrower selection finds a corollary in Amazon's use of metrics to recommend titles based on previous purchases. The algorithms at work here are highly sophisticated and are widely credited with expanding consumer choice. Yet such metric-based systems can simultaneously increase the variety of books purchased by individual customers while decreasing the overall variety of books bought by everyone. This is because, as blogger Whimsley explains, "In Internet World the customers see further, but they are all looking out from the same tall hilltop. In Offline World individual customers are standing on different, lower hilltops. They may not see as far individually, but more of the ground is visible to someone."

The loss of serendipity that comes with not knowing exactly what one is looking for is lamented by ex-Amazon editor James Marcus: "Personalization strikes me as a mixed blessing. While it gives people what they want—or what they think they want—it also engineers spontaneity out of the picture. The happy accident, the freakish discovery, ceases to exist. And that's a problem."

In the Fragile Glass Shop...

... you need to be careful...



... but not about what you say.

"Is there the slightest possibility that SATC2 is actually satirizing the shallow absurdity of its protagonists..."

"... but a large fraction of its audience has not realized that they are the target of its mockery?"

Answer: no.