Reading The Economist
Saturday, January 19th, 2008Note: This is based on the European January 19-25 edition.
p.14 I was surprised to read:
“It [America] has much to learn from Europe. Best of all, set a carbon tax, which is less susceptible to capture by business lobbies than a cap-and-trade system.”
Perhaps I’m mistaken, but I thought The Economist preferred a cap-and-trade system. But, as they point out, the European system has been largely ineffective and is easier to game than a simple tax. Unfortunately for both them and the US, it’ll probably be a cold day in hell before an aggressive carbon tax gets real headway in Congress. Given that cap-in-trade was invented in the US, it has another thing in its favor.
p.23 I like the line, “ If Napoleon’s armies marched on their stomachs, American ones march on bandwidth.”
p.24 Wow:
“A single Global Hawk unmanned surveillance aircraft flying over Afghanistan can eat up several times more satellite bandwidth than was used for the whole of the 1991 war against Iraq.”
The whole war!
p.41 Did I miss something? Apparently Obama’s admitted to doing cocaine. Bill Clinton, W, and now Obama (and I’m sure most of his fellow Presidential candidates): everyone’s ‘experimented’. It just goes to show that my friend smoking a joint while in Amsterdam and didn’t want their photo taken because of potential problems in the future has nothing to fear.
p. 71 According to research by Steven Levitt and Sudhir Venkatesh, “Prostitutes [in Chicago] are more likely to have sex with a police officer than to be arrested by one.”
p.78 A mystery indeed:
“Who knew that … the rarely seen $2 bill still accounts for 1% of all American notes printed? (Where do they all go?)”