I am not able to decide myself what to use as the main distro, that is on the Acer laptop. I've now installed the GNOME version of Mint, while preserving my home partition, and everything runs fine (still not using the PPA kernel, thus it doesn't hibernate yet). I'm tempted to go back to the XFCE flavor of Mint, but I can't make my mind yet.

Both flavors are very snappy on this laptop (although with the GNOME one, I first had to: disable Compiz; remove Mono; remove Tracker; and with both flavors I had to disable the Bluetooth and WiCd, which I don't need/use), so once I try to turn back to the antique HP Omnibook (for the sake of its great keyboard), I feel sick: even when running GoblinX, it is painfully slow!

That bloody Celeron/850 with 256 MB of RAM was very fast while running Win98SE: whatever else was slow, except maybe for Slackware running a 2.4 kernel. I don't know what happened to/with modern kernels, but they're bloated like hell. I remember I wasn't very satisfied with Debian Sarge, nor with CentOS 4. While initially fast enough, they went slower with time — as if it were Windows, not Linux!

Now I am too bored to try to find something that runs fast on the antique laptop (NetBSD was not that bad, but I don't feel like...), and I can't make my mind about the Acer: Mint GNOME, Mint XFCE CE, ...?

Turning to reading.

— § —

Joseph Stiglitz is unexpectedly boring in yesterday's article from The Guardian: A crisis of confidence. A few truisms and common places:

 «Strong competition is an essential aspect of well-functioning markets.»

 «Even Adam Smith recognised that unregulated markets will try to restrict competition.»

 «If government appoints as regulators those who do not believe in regulation, one is not likely to get strong enforcement.»

 «Well-designed regulations may protect us in the short run and encourage real innovation in the long. Much of our financial market's creativity was directed to circumventing regulations and taxes. Accounting was so creative that no one, not even the banks, knew their financial position.»

— § —

Some time ago, I thought it's the cheapness of the European branch of Amazon, when I noticed how poorly packaged are the books sent by Amazon France, Amazon UK and Amazon Deutschland: with no shock protection at all, and without wrapping the books in plastic foil. Another European (French) bookshop, Alapage.com, disappointed me too with the cheapness of its packaging, especially as at some point in the past I've received something from them much better packaged.

I had a break in ordering from Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble (but B&N is increasingly expensive, both in prices and in international shipping fees), but I know they have sent me the books wrapped in plastic foil and the package relatively well protected against shocks. I therefore assumed the Europeans went cheaper.

Nay, everybody went cheaper lately! The latest packages I received from Amazon.com are "cheap & dirty". The books are simply "put there", no extra foil, no shock protection. Bloody bastards. I feel like never ordering from them again!

And Alapage has technical issues when processing my card: some time ago the transaction "failed", and I was politely asked to click again later. In the end, I had two identical transactions, but one from Alapage.com, and the other from... Wanadoo.fr! The one from Wanadoo had to wait 31 days before expiration... And very recently, a new attempt to buy from Alapage resulted in a another "failed, try again later", which cured me from using them.

— § —

A working alternative (except for new titles) would be to shop from sites like Abebooks.com (Abebooks.co.uk, Abebooks.fr, etc.) and Alibris.com. I had pleasant experiences with them in the past, provided that I took the time to examine the international shipping fees for each of the sellers, and that I had the chance to find new or as good as new copies.

For the record, I tried to buy from "verified sources" the second time, when possible. Here's the list of Abebooks.com/Abebooks.co.uk sellers I was satisfied of:

 Fairandfast — Lewes, SU, United Kingdom

 ajmbooks — Milton Keynes, Bucks, United Kingdom

 Farringdon Books — Essex, United Kingdom

 THESAINTBOOKSTORE — Southport, MSY, United Kingdom

 Books2Anywhere.com — Fairford, GLO, United Kingdom

As for Alibris:

 Armadillo Books, Norristown, PA, United States

In all the situations, the books were sent in bubbled envelopes, so they arrived in excellent conditions, and faster than the snail postal agreements cut by Amazon.com or B&N.

UPDATE: Still to be checked (still waiting for a book), a merchant listed on both Abebooks and Alibris, and also having its own website: Indoo.com, Avenel, NJ, U.S.A.

Unfortunately, some titles are not available through Abebooks or Alibris: not at all or not at good prices (counting the shipping fees too).

— § —

Have you noticed that John Kenneth Galbraith's “The Great Crash 1929” (see my previous post), initially “Temporarily out of stock” on Amazon.com, then “Available in stock on October 24”, are again “Temporarily out of stock”, even if it's not Oct. 24 yet?

What a success!

In the same time, the book is and always was available from B&N!

— § —

Looking for it, I discovered that (cough) uh... (scratch) you-know-who Ben Bernanke wrote some “Essays on the Great Depression” a few years ago!

That Bernanke!

— § —

A much, much better discovery was of another book: “The Great Depression: America 1929-1941”, by Robert S. McElvaine. (Still... “Usually ships within 1 to 3 weeks.”)

Accused of being filled with anti-Reagan judgments, the book is nevertheless extremely narrative of the actual American society of the time. At a glance, I could spot various interesting insights, so I'll quote a bit:

 «Advertisers planted and then harvested fears. Ads informed women that “health authorities ... tell us that germs are everywhere.” Fortunately, Lysol was available to protect the children. Another ad played upon the fear of mothers that they might not succeed. A “famous scientist” said: “Tell me what your children eat and I will show you the kind of men and women they will be! Grape-Nuts was the solution.”»

 «John Stuart Mill had expressed the nineteenth-century economic view when he said “if we only produce enough, consumption will take care of itself.” He was wrong. The key to the economy was now consumption. To stimulate sufficient consumption, advertising was essential.»

 «All the virtues of the age of scarcity were now questioned. Even before the war some advanced thinkers were spelling out the new values that would win far more converts in the twenties. “The non-saver is now a higher type than the saver,” economist Simon Patten wrote in 1907, “I tell my students to spend all they have and borrow more and spend that. It is foolish for persons to scrimp and save.” Advertisers spread this new consumer ethic widely in the prosperity decade: Don't tighten our belts, loosen them—the more we spend the more prosperous we'll be. Many Americans brought up on the old virtues converted to consumerism in the twenties.»

 «Starting from a tiny base in 1922, sales or radios had increased by 1400 percent in 1929. There was a similar, if not quite so spectacular, explosion of sales of such household appliances as vacuum cleaners, electric irons, refrigerators, and washing machines. ... But no product was more representative of the mass consumption culture ... than the automobile. ... Between 1919 and 1929 the number of motorcars in the United States leaped from fewer than 7 million to more than 23 million. It was during the 1920 that the automobile became a “necessity” for Americans.»

 «Rural America seemed to be making its last stand in the twenties ... It was a many-fronted war. ... A bill introduced in the Utah legislature in 1921 would fine and imprison persons (presumably females) who were caught in public wearing “skirts higher than three inches above the angle.” A proposed Ohio law would prohibit the sale of any “garment which unduly displays or accentuates the lines of the female figure.” The Ladies' Home Journal called for the “legal prohibition” of jazz dancing. ... And several states passed laws prohibiting the teaching of the theory of evolution.»

 «“You can't fix a dead horse with a monkey wrench,” the nature-loving industrialist [Henry Ford] observed. ... Ford went so far as to promote village industries at the same time he was building the enormous River Rouge plant.»

 «The nation's farm families, representing some 22 percent of the American people in 1920, received 15 percent of the national income in that year. Eight years later, farm families accounted for only 9 percent of national income. In 1929 annual per capita income of farm persons was $273; the average for all Americans was $750.»

 «In the prosperous year of 1923, more than one quarter of a sample of Muncie workers had been laid off, 15 percent for more than one month. During the first three-quarters of 1924, when “times were bad”, 62 percent of the same workers had been out of work, 43 percent for a month or more out of nine.»

 «In 1929 the American wage earner had a longer workweek than did his counterpart in other industrialized nations. The American enjoyed almost no protection against the constant specter of the unemployment. ... By 1929 the United States stood with two underdeveloped countries, China and India, as the only major nations allowing women and children to work at night.»

And so on.

What a picturesque fresco of the society!

— § —

Now, I like old times when it comes to the candid lack of computers, GSM phones, etc. This is why I enjoy reading Simenon's Maigret.

I've recently discovered (and ordered) a cute thing: Georges Simenon, Des entretiens exemplaires.

More info: Radio France — INA — Alapage (with audio samples).

Not being the cheapest, Le Livre Qui Parle has the advantage of a 5€ shipping fee to Romania. Acceptable.

— § —

Two more French reads in the end:

 "Les Etats-Unis ne sont pas un endroit où on peut vieillir avec confiance" — don't miss the two videos in mixed French (Québecois)/English sound: Comparaison des systèmes de santé canadien et américain; Health ranking English version.

 Au fait, le Luxembourg est bien un paradis fiscal...

— § —

Oh, wait. Bookmarks: as the first volume of Marx's Capital is too heavy — but there is a version of it even on Wikisource: Das Kapital, by Karl Marx —, the major lines of the same economical theories can be found in a much smaller work, also on Wikisource: Wage-Labor and Capital, by Karl Marx, translated by Friedrich Engels.

— § —

Oh, not again. I forgot to mention an older article of Francis Wheen, about Marx as The poet of dialectics. It goes well with this drawing by Thea Brine.