Back to Real Bowling

One of the biggest changes on tap, once Kafalas.com relocates to the Ocean State next month, is going to be a downsizing -- no, don't worry, we're not talking personnel, but a downsizing of bowling balls, from 15 pounds to 2 pounds, 7 ounces (or possibly 2-pounds-6; we're not quite sure yet). I'm planning a serious foray back into the sport of candlepin bowling, which was a major interest -- no, it was the singular focus of my life -- from age 9 until 15-16 or so.

The other day, some public figure or other was talking about having been granted a rare opportunity to "go back and take the road not taken." Well, yours truly is going to try to do the same thing.

One thing I like about candlepin bowling is that it does not suffer from the artificial manipulation of lane conditions that has turned tenpins into a travesty. To give an example of the latter, when our local tenpin house, here in Flagstaff, replaced its old wood lane surfaces with synthetic lanes last fall, scores immediately shot up. Almost all league bowlers found that their averages were now 10-15 pins higher than before.

I hadn't bowled in a league in three years, being otherwise occupied by the NAU College of Business Administration, but since I was pretty much done by this summer, decided to join a summer mixed league, just for fun. And I found that, like most of the locals, my average skyrocketed, too -- despite the long layoff, I was averaging 208 on the easy lane conditions; this despite the fact that even when I had a busy schedule of leagues, practice, and tournaments, the best "book" average I'd ever had was 203. I recorded a 740 series, besting my previous high by more than 25 pins (I'm not sure exactly how many, because I don't remember exactly what my high series was -- I think it was either 712 or 714, something like that).

Roughly halfway through the summer, the lane-oiling machine went kaput, and the boss had to buy another one. Despite the lane mechanic's best efforts to program it with a similar oil pattern to that of the old machine, the pattern has turned out to be much different -- and much more difficult. I haven't managed even a single 600 series on the new pattern (although I'd have done it last night if I'd been able to throw one more strike in the last frame). Everyone's average has been dropping -- which, in my view, is a good thing, because the old pattern was ridiculously easy.

This illustrates the main problem with tenpin bowling these days -- it's all about the oil pattern (and, to some degree, the equipment you're using). Candlepin bowling is a totally different story, because the lanes are not oiled, or at least not in any particular way, and everyone uses pretty much the same equipment. Furthermore, there is no difference between scoring conditions for open, league, and tournament bowling (as in tenpins).

I'm looking forward to getting back into a form of bowling that still has some integrity, as a sport. There are no candlepin houses in Rhode Island, but there are quite a few within an hour's drive. So I'm going to take a shot at it. Wish me luck!

Urb's Blog

Just because Bush is wrong doesn't mean...

... there are no terrorists. Yesterday's arrest of a bunch of Pakistani Brits by Scotland Yard vindicates the observations, a couple of years ago, of financial journalist Annie Jacobsen:

http://www.womenswallstreet.com/series/series.aspx?cid=9

Basically, Jacobsen wrote that she observed what seemed to be a dry run for a terrorist attack on a jetliner. She watched a bunch of Syrians behaving in a strange, coordinated fashion that looked as if they were reconnoitering an airplane with an eye toward blowing it up. Jacobsen wrote a series of columns about it, received a bit of media attention (including a spot on MSNBC's conservative "Scarborough Country" news/talk show), but was dismissed by most people, including Kafalas.com's liberal friends, as a paranoid, jittery weenie with a touch of racism. The group of Syrians on the plane were supposedly identified as a touring band on their way to a gig in Tucson or some such place.

Well, I'm here to tell you that yesterday's arrests were a vindication of what Jacobsen was saying. Not a vindication that the episode she witnessed was, necessarily, that of a group of terrorists scoping out a plane and trying out an attack procedure -- but a vindication of the assertion that such scoping-out missions have been going on.

Jacobsen's contention was that because of tightened security on airlines, it's tougher to get weapons or explosives on-board than it used to be and that as a result, terrorist groups have gotten smarter and decided to try bringing explosives on-board in the form of components, to be assembled into deadly form on-board by a team. The Russian jet that was blown up last year, and the plot that was revealed yesterday indicate that she was correct.

It may be that the Pakistanis arrested yesterday were not all that close to a successful attempt to blow 10 planes out of the sky, or whatever it was they were supposedly trying to do. If they were still experimenting with test tubes last week, that suggests that they probably didn't have the formula down just yet (and also that they're not as smart as we're giving them credit for being). Nonetheless, there was a threat there, and our friends at Scotland Yard dealt with it. This is a good thing.

Urb's Blog

A house competing against itself?

The other day, I discovered something that any savvy college student should know by now, but which had somehow escaped my attention: You can sell college textbooks on Amazon.com, eBay, Half.com, and other places and get a lot more money than you'd get by selling them back to the college bookstore.

This is, in itself, no great revelation -- eBay is a great place to turn just about anything into cash, because it lets you reach so many buyers that you're bound to find someone who'll be interested in the item and give you decent money for it. But the one that surprised me was that Amazon does it, with their zShops area.

When you call up a listing for any book on Amazon, they give you a button that says "Sell yours here." If you do that, it gives you an easy way to set up an on-line listing for your used copy of the book.

When you sell a book this way, Amazon takes a cut of the proceeds -- but not a large one. I just listed my old cost accounting textbook for sale, at $20 (it's an obsolete edition), and if it sells, Amazon's commission is only $5.19.

You have to wonder about this business model. In Tom Friedman's excellent book, The World is Flat, he says, "I used to love Amazon.com, until I found out they were selling used copies of my books." Used bookstores, competing with retailers and publishers selling new books, is one thing... but by selling used books on its own site, Amazon is competing against itself. The price of a used accounting textbook is typically much less than that of a new book -- in some cases, not all that much less, but from Amazon's point of view, it's hugely reduced, because they're only taking a small commission. That cost accounting book I just listed sells, new, for $158.20, but you can buy a used copy (this is for a newer edition than the one I'm selling) for $39.95. So Amazon's commission on that book should be around $10, based on what they're offering me for my old book priced at $20.

I'd like to have been a fly on the wall in the executive suite when Amazon decided to implement this policy. Granted, used books are a line of business that's out there, and someone's going to be selling them no matter what you do -- but I'm sure there was some lively debate over whether Amazon should go into that business themselves. After all, how many people are going to pay $158.20 for a new book when they can get a used copy of the same book for $39.95? Perhaps the logic is that Amazon's costs are much lower when they sell used books -- they don't touch the physical book, so there's no shipping-and-handling to worry about -- but still, I'm not sure I'd want to be the executive who advocated doing it.

Urb's Blog