good debate tonight at the Drift festival

A large and attentive crowd was on hand at Overtoom 301 (near the Vondelpark) in Amsterdam, for my discussion with Tristan Garcia. Rik Peters did a skillful job of moderating the discussion. You can read the whole thing in print a few months from now if the mood strikes you.

Bizarrely, Tristan and I ended up dressed almost exactly the same. We both wore blue sweaters with the same white pattern near the top, and both wore blue jeans. That was entirely coincidental, but was such a weird coincidence that I hope someone got a photo of it.

my Lovecraft book is reviewed in the L.A. Review of Books

By Brian Kim Stefans, HERE.

Intrade.com facing liquidation

The Irish online news trading company may be shut down permanently (the website has been disabled for awhile) after financial irregularities were discovered– namely, a $700,000 cash shortfall that smells pretty bad indeed.

I will really miss Intrade. I never invested any money there; I thought of doing so, since there were a number of news stories where I thought the site investors were way over- or underestimating the likelihood of something happening, and I thought I could have earned a bit of income there. But U.S. law forbade credit card payments, and it was a bit of a hassle to send them a check, so I never got around to doing it.

More importantly, I enjoyed it as a reader. If I wanted to know how the 14 Republican Presidential candidates stacked up against each other, for instance, I’d go to Intrade to see what prices the traders will willing to pay for each of them. They were often wrong, of course, but it always gave an excellent picture of the conventional wisdom on any given issue.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the least efficient market on Intrade was for U.S. Supreme Court Justice appointments. It’s not just that no one had any idea who would be appointed, it’s that they traded as if they had solid information. Even hours before John Roberts was appointed Chief Justice in 2005, his stock price was minuscule, while the woman in Louisiana (whose name escapes me at the moment) had a sky-high price due to various (perhaps deliberately deceptive) leaks that she would be the choice.

The idea lurking in the background, of course, is that there might be inside traders in the system on any given bet. But in that case, Intrade would actually gain in predictive value. If nothing else, it gave a good glimpse into what educated people were willing to risk money on.

I know there are other such websites, but I always liked Intrade’s format the best, and I’ll miss it.

all the pieces in place for tonight

Tristan Garcia has arrived in Amsterdam (we had lunch today, along with Rik Peters from Amsterdam and Carol MacDonald from Edinburgh University Press), so all of the pieces are in place for our debate tonight. We agree on enough that the debate won’t be especially heated, but there are a few core differences that just don’t go away with time. We will each give 15 minute summaries of our respective philosophical positions, then the final half hour will be more debate-like.

As I may have mentioned in an earlier post (did I?) the transcript of tonight’s event will be published in written form within the next few months, in a specific journal that is easily accessible to anyone with internet service.

I’m headed to Berlin very early tomorrow for the Monday night Heidegger/McLuhan lecture (though Clement Greenberg will be just as big a part of that talk).