Links for 12-16-2009

• The author of the MPG illusion on why we misunderstand the meaning of miles per gallon (and why we shouldn’t completely hate the hybrid Cadillac Escalade) « - Interesting.
• Marginal Revolution: Markets in everything, Xmas edition - Hilarious.
• Why I gave up Photoshop - Inside Lightroom - I still use Photoshop but rarely. I may well just go with Elements rather than upgrading my full version at some point.
• The Frame: An ice storm coats the northeast - Some nice pics. (Of course, better if you're not among those whose power has been cut!)
• Holiday gift guide: Cookbook edition - Megan McArdle - "I've never been able to get into The Joy of Cooking; somehow, it's sensibility of comfortable shoes and stuffing olives into the gaping maw of Midwestern ennui oppresses me." I've never been a huge Joy fam myself though I couldn't explain why so snarkily.
• Screengrab Presents: The Best Stage-To-Screen Adaptations Of All Time (Part One) - The Screengrab - Hee hee. "Hair has always been my Camelot: an idealistic, romanticized fictionalization of an era that sounds good in theory but was kind of a drag to actually live through."
• Edge Master Class 2008: A SHORT COURSE IN BEHAVIORAL ECONOMICS—INTRODUCTION - Thaler's Behavioral economics stuff is very interesting. I had him as a professor at Cornell when he was still fairly early-on into this work. And his research seems solid, unlike the "popularizers."
• Technology Review: Are Social Networks Sinking? - "At least there has not been the same profligate investing that there was during the dotcom days. There is no counterpart to the excesses of investors who put $830 million into Webvan or $280 million into Kozmo.com."
• Sun closes pay-per-use utility computing service • The Register - This style of cloud computing went with virtual machines.