Any ticketing system you can dream up will be pretty inefficient due for three major reasons. First you are dealing with pretty much the prime example of an inelastic supply of goods. It's rare that bands have sufficient space in a schedule to add an extra night if a concert sells out. Conversely, you can't suddenly downgrade to a smaller venue if tickets don't sell. Hence bands tend to book smaller places that they know they can roughly fill.

Second there is the scheduling problem. Big tours are announced months in advance. You are always going to get some people who book a ticket and then genuinely can't make the show. Due to the current chain of band, venue, and ticket agent returning tickets is pretty rare.

Finally, you have the problem that fans are pretty irrational. They whine if tickets are priced high, but then pay anyway. They whine if the venue isn't packed. They whine if it's sold out and they 'have' to pay a scalper. They whine when their favourite band hits the big time and they can't see them in a small venue any more. My friends and I have done all of the above at one point or another.

However, I'm not convinced that the current system is better than some form of auctioning system. Yeah, it would have drawbacks as you've stated, but auctions have been the traditional way of selling inelastic goods just about forever. After all, it's pretty much what the scalpers do - try hanging around a venue for a few hours before a show and see how the price of selling/buying goes up and down. In fact, I'm pretty surprised that one of the larger venues/bands in the world has not tried some form of auctioning scheme yet simply to bypass the scalpers and pocket the profit themselves. It would certainly be an interesting experiment. I suspect that the only things holding them back are fan perception - I'm guessing the bands don't want to be seen to rip the fans off any more than they do already - and turf fights between the venues and ticket agents as to who would actually hold the auction. Just my two cents.

Damn, someone finally came up with a way to upstage Hunter S. Thompson, which was going to be my suggestion on how to go. I believe the quote from his wife was "Hunter always loved explosions".

Bizarrely, there is some evidence that the pirates may actually be helping the fish around Somalia. Due to the pirates, foreign trawler fleets are no longer willing to enter the fishing grounds. Hence fish stocks are beginning to replenish themselves. I originally read about this in the economist, which will be behind a paywall, this was the best article I could find with a quick google: http://www1.voanews.com/english/news/a-13-2009-01-26-voa51-68761347.html

Well, if this move by Iceland helps publicise the issue in the UK then that's no bad thing. The UK libel laws are a joke - on average the cost to fight a case from either side is about 140 times the average in Europe (Somewhere around £500,000 compared to less than £10,000). It's justice only the rich can afford.

If you happen to be British, and would like to do something about it before the US shames/forces our government to do it, you might like to visit http://www.libelreform.org/ and sign the petition there. The key findings of the report they commissioned make a great deal of sense, at least to me.

Couldn't agree more with you. I've been repeatedly told "You usually only publish positive results". If anyone is interested in an insightful discussion of many of these issues, they might like to track down a book called "Communicating Science" by Nicholas Russell. The first section gives a good critique of the history of science publishing. One of the major issues is simply the historical legacy of a lack of pages in printed journals - who wants to waste space reporting what didn't work? With the rise of the web and open-access publishing there is the slight possibility that this artificial cap on the amount of research that can be published will be finally lifted.

What about all the hot air the politicians generate? A wind turbine inside the House of Commons ought to generate a few MW...