a thaumaturgical compendium

The spousal unit and I went to see Eddie Izzard’s show Stripped at Radio City Music Hall on Friday to celebrate our 15th anniversary. Before the show, Jamie said she hoped it was decent, and I warned not to set expectations too high. It was, I think, absolutely brilliant, far better than any of his other shows. Here’s a bootleg recording, but it doesn’t give a good feel for the show:

He didn’t read Wikipedia for our show, but Wikipedia and the Macintosh played a central role. He also did a bit on religion, intelligent design, and evolution (including a bit on Darwin’s famous book Monkey, Monkey, Monkey, Monkey, You! We are at the tail end of the tour (headed to the west coast from here), but if you get a chance to see it, definitely go.

I wish I could go to this. Tons of really good speakers. But $700 worth? I don’t know. Of course, this includes “unlimited networking,” and I don’t think they are talking about WiFi.

Is it at all ironic that a conference on decentralized and networked government is in-person, expensive, and in New York City?

One of my former students, Umut Gozen, has collected some interviews of faculty on a variety of issues, including the future of interactive technologies, here.

Just got a copy of the new collection of essays edited by Joseph Turow and Lokman Tsui. Looking forward to digging into it. This came out of a set of talks at Annenberg (East) a couple of years ago, and the essays tend to take a fairly broad view of the issues surrounding hyperlinking.

On re-reading my chapter, I’m not as thrilled as I might be. It’s clear I was writing it while thinking about the book I’ve been working on, but the argument comes out more muddled than it needs to be. Wish I’d focussed things down a bit more, but that’s water under the bridge. Glancing through some of the other articles, I see a lot of ideas similar to mine better expressed. There’s a nice group of authors there, and I’m lucky and honored to be in the same volume with them.

Normally I wouldn’t be so base as to suggest you “order yours soon!” but it looks like Amazon is running short on stock, so you might want to :). Of course, you can also order it directly from U of Michigan Press (for a bit more), and they have the table of contents and other information on their site.

To the caller, when I first answer, I am the inanimate Barbie. They do not know what I look like, who I am or how I feel. They can only imagine. It is my job to indulge their fantasies, to convince them that I am not a doll. I am their dream turned real. I view every question the caller asks me as a command for me to transform. If the ask if I am blonde, I become a blonde. If they ask how wet I am, I tell them that my panties are drenched. I respond to every sound the caller makes with an affirmation, I encourage them, I breathe life into their fantasy, I carve the doll out of flesh. I do not view myself as this doll, as the commodity. I am the manufacturer who creates her from the blueprint that the caller provides me. When the caller comes, it is positive feedback. Like an architect patting his contractor on the back.

Although few people know this, you were supposed to be paying taxes for all that stuff you ordered online if you had it delivered to New York State. That whole renewal of a the “tax holiday” for the internet? Doesn’t matter if you live here (or many places, it turns out).

And to make sure that you scofflaws out there who aren’t reporting your online purchases don’t keep doing so, a new law actually makes retailers charge the tax. So when you buy from Amazon, you get sales tax tagged on your purchase. Amazon has sued the state over this tax (saying that it is a regulation of interstate commerce), but for now, I have a more practical issue. There’s nothing that says I can’t go over to Jersey or Connecticut to do my shopping, and no reason I wouldn’t have things delivered there. Indeed, for Amazon, it makes sense for books to go to my office (in Connecticut) rather than my home (in New York). But what happens if I then bring one of those books home?

Or, what about those who do not have a legitimate address in Connecticut? Can they have their orders sent to a rented address (Mail Boxes, etc., etc.) and pick it up once a month. This certainly makes sense to me: the sale occurred “in” Connecticut, and you carried goods you own back to New York. The lines of cars with New York plates at gas stations Fort Lee suggest that many people engage in interstate arbitrage. I’m reminded of the tax hole that exists (existed?) in Portland, Oregon, which is just across the border from Vancouver, Washington. One state is sales-tax-free, the other is income-tax-free, making for an interesting cross-border flow. Yet, there are indications that any such workaround may not be legal.

So, next question. Would it be legal to set up a reshipping service in one of these neighboring states? Could I set up an operation that picks up goods from Newegg’s Edison, NJ warehouse and delivers things around New York City if I wasn’t Newegg. In other words, rather than buying goods delivered from Newegg, I purchase them undelivered (EXW, as it were), and then contract a separate entity to pick them up and deliver them to me in New York. That just feels wrong to me—it seems like it is a fairly direct an obvious attempt to evade a tax by decoupling the purchase and the shipping. And yet, if I hire a taxi to take me from New York City out to an address in New Jersey where I had something delivered, that doesn’t seem that strange, and on a large enough purchase—say, a television or a diamond ring—it would save a great deal in tax. That holds even when it is a question of choosing a sales tax in White Plains (7.88%) or Paramus, NJ (6%, or free for clothing) over that in New York City (8.38%), leaving aside the online issue.

Or, is your tax home determined by where you actually claim residence? That was the case when we bought our car in New Jersey. Because we lived in New York City, we were required to pay NYC tax. But this seems to be specific to automotive purchases.

Anyway, I find the whole thing too confusing. Do I have to worry now that by having books delivered to my office from Amazon, I’m illegally evading tax? Or, should I start having all my friends’ books delivered to my office and charge a “handling fee”? And we haven’t even touched eBay yet.

As an aside, I don’t think that online sales tax is necessarily a bad thing, but requiring online retailers or consumers to keep track of the tax policies of states and municipalities around the world is just stupid. If this is the way we are going, we need a federal “online sales tax”—or better yet, a federal “VAT” for all sales.