Assorted Links

1.  Want to be happy ... don't commute.

Contains this paragraph, which I agree with completely!

Money improves happiness only to a point, although you can get more happiness per dollar by spending money on experiences instead of possessions, spending on others, and buying many small pleasures instead of a few big ones.

I certainly don't think I've hit that "to a point", but I completely agree that spending money on experiences is so much better than on possessions.  At least that's the case for me.

2.  Another of Sowell's brilliant "Random Thoughts".

Has this tidbit:

Have you heard any gun control advocate even try to produce hard evidence that tighter gun control laws reduce murder rates? Does anyone seriously believe that people who are prepared to defy the laws against murder are going to obey laws against owning guns or large capacity magazines?

3.  Story on commissions for a song played on Pandora.

The story is interesting, but this comment, to me, was outstanding.

Your song was played to 1,159,000 times on Pandora (individual plays). This paid him $16.89 or 1.457 cents/1,000 times, but each play is only listened to by one listener

On Sirius it was played 179 times (to an unknown amount of listeners), paying you $181.04 or 101.14 cents/time. 69,416 times as much as Pandora. But to put it another way, if the average play on Sirius had more than 69,417 listeners, you were being stiffed by Sirius.

On terrestrial radio it was played 18,797 times (to an unknown amount of listeners), paying him $1,373.78 or 7.31 cents/time. This is 5,016 times as much as Pandora, but only 7.2% of what Sirius pays you. But here the average play only has to have 5,017 listeners for terrestrial radio to be stiffing you.

Now, since both Sirius XM and terrestrial radio are broadcasts, targeting multiple listeners at once, I’m not entirely certain that Pandora is cheating you out of anything – and it’s interesting that you’re not complaining about terrestrial radio only paying you a fraction of what Sirius pays you.

4.  Jayson Lusk on the John Stossel show.