It's been a good week here at the StarChamber Editorial Headquarters at One StarChamber Plaza. Last week brought snow and ugly reminders of a winter not yet departed; this week saw temperatures in the 80s and good cheer all around. The reading this week is a mixed set: another magazine review, some more thoughts on value, and a story about a man from Arizona having a very very bad day. Enjoy.

Magazine Alert (see Browsing) I.D. (The International Magazine of Design, $5.95) Cover story: Inside Disney with John Hockenberry. Gripping reading on the future of culture. The irony of the new millenium may well be that whereas we expected that we'd all eventually be working for Bill Gates, in fact we'll all be working for Disney. In the words of Bran Ferren, chief of Disney Imagineering R&D, "They [Microsoft] are the dial tone, we are the conversation." In other words, you might pay Uncle Bill for the privilege of thinking, but you'll take your orders from the Mouse. Also in this issue, a super-hip eatery in London modeled on a pharmacy called... "Pharmacy." Dig the walls papered entirely with foil-packaged pills. The doctor is in. Very in.

The topic last week was value, and it seems an appropriate place to revisit this week. Let's explore the topic with the assistance of a hypothetical story.

Let us suppose that Mr. A sees object X at the house of his friend Ms. B. Mr. A is enraptured with X (it has a non-zero value to him) and Ms. B doesn't really care much one way or the other, so she gives X to him. X has very little value to her, or to be more specific, X is worth less to her than the value its transferrence would add to her friendship with Mr. A. How much value does X really have?

Now suppose further that soon after the gifting of X, it is stolen (its safekeeping having been entrusted to another friend, Mr. Slacker, who left it unguarded in a public place). Mr. A, in the ensuing investigation, discovers to his surprise that X is actually worth $3000 on the open market. Furthermore, the police track down the original thief, a Mr. Thief, and find out that Mr. Thief sold X to Mr. C for $20. Soon thereafter, it was sold to a Mr. D for $50, and then finally to Mr. EFG for $100. Now what is the value of X?

No object, no person, has an intrinsic monetary value, only a monetary value assigned by the market. This monetary value can confound even the most dispassionate and persistent analysis. Markets exist so that people's disparate views of reality can reach a useful equilibrium. This is far, far from saying that objects and people do not have intrinsic value. But, alas, the intrinsic value that an object has to a specific person cannot be disputed in monetary terms, largely because it can scarcely be disputed at all. And here we leave the economists behind us squatting on their profane heaps of gold and move toward the sacred realm of the ethicist and the theologian. Theologians can do a lot to help us sleep better at night, but they have no interest in telling us how many economists can squat on the head of a pin.

Finally, let us suppose that Mr. EFG is Joe Campbell, an antiques dealer from Harrodsburg, Kentucky; that Mr. D is a dealer in stolen goods named Wendell Gray; that Mr. C is the proprietor of Rick's Variety Store in Lexington; that X is an antique toy red fire engine in fine condition; that Mr. A is a four-year-old boy named Jordan. The story, set down by our own Damiana, is a true one, and it lives on in the StarChamber archives. Give it a read --- it is both entertaining and illuminating. Mr. Thief, by the way, appeared in the foregoing hypothetical story as himself.

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