From the Freakonomics blog comes a business case for managed death:

Critics of the measure [a Washington state ballot issue that would allow physician-assisted suicide] point to the story of Barbara Wagner, a cancer patient in neighboring Oregon, whose insurance company denied her request for coverage of potentially life-saving drugs, and instead ( Read more... )

Yay nationalization!

Well, I hope we all enjoyed this little experiment in "free" markets, because it's over now.  Once the financial markets are nationalized, there will be no segment of the economy safe from government "rescue".  Enjoy your new status as serfs.

Epic technical fail on the UK launch of the new iPhone:

Computerworld is reporting that our friends in the UK have been frustrated by the iPhone 3G launch. It would seem that while the iPhone 3G is for sale in Apple Stores, the activation process isn't working smoothly (sound familiar?). Why is that, you ask? Because O2, that's the UK wireless ( Read more... )

• I was wrong: Americans are driving less, to the tune of 11 billion miles in March compared to last year.  And mileage dropped another 4.5 billion in April vs. a year ago.
• The current markup in gas prices includes speculation that hurricane season (which began June 1) may disrupt supplies, but it could go even higher if another Big One hits the Gulf.
• ( Read more... )

I had no idea that New Zealand had decriminalized prostitution.  And it seems to be working well so far:

The number of sex workers in New Zealand does not appear to have increased since legislation decriminalising prostitution became law, according to a new report ( Read more... )

It's no secret the Democrats (and sadly, Republicans these days) in Washington are enemies of the free market, but it's not often a sitting member of Congress so blatantly pulls a page from Hugo Chavez' play book and threatens the president of Shell Oil with nationalizing the oil industry.  But that's exactly what California Democrat Maxine Waters ( Read more... )

Tyler Cowen, currently traveling in Japan, passes on this page of unusual business card designs.  Kevin Mitnick's is pretty awesome, but some of them seem way more gimmicky than useful.

Have you seen the video of Bill O'Reilly completely losing his shit during a taping of Inside Edition (these videos are NSFW)?  It gets even better remixed.  But ( Read more... )

How to turn $100 million into scrap metal.This is a symptom of an overly litigious society, I think.  Instead of making a huge insurance claim, Mazda could possibly offset some of the loss by re-selling these cars at a steep discount but without, say, the benefit of a factory warranty.  It seems people are always looking for bargains, but the first ( Read more... )

Emerging market economy + totalitarian political regime = irony:

Police in southern China have discovered a factory manufacturing Free Tibet flags, media reports say ( Read more... )

The adventures of a company called Psystar, which is offering Mac clones computers with Mac OS X preinstalled for $399, continue to heat up the tech blogs.  Gizmodo is mostly convinced they're a scam:

Not only does the Miami Chamber of Commerce and BBB not know anything about any company named Psystar (confirmed by reader Travis through his ( Read more... )