Info on infrastructure:
Lots of people love trains (including me!), but how does high-speed rail fare under cost-benefit analysis?
Not everyone thinks the U.S. should follow the Spanish model of renewable energy investment. For instance, some Spaniards.
How does one square the oft-heard claim “Japan is years ahead in any [cell phone] innovation” [Source] with the fact that there are two iPhone models on Japan’s top-ten list?
The linked NYT article offers some hints that maybe the Japanese cell phone aren’t that many light-years ahead after all: “handsets [in Japan] often have primitive, clunky interfaces”; “most handsets have no way to easily synchronize data with PCs”; and “the emphasis on hardware makes even the newest phones [in Japan] surprisingly bulky”.
Health care Thursday:
Thoughts on health care reform.
Legalize compensation for organ donation. [More.] Basic economics tells us that price ceilings create shortages; current law sets a price ceiling of $0. The 100,000-person waiting list — and the thousands of people who die each year awaiting a transplant — are proof of what happens when the government regulates something that’s “too important to be left to the market”.
Views on Venezuela:
Car companies are slowing production, despite healthy demand. Incompetence is involved, but for once it’s not on the side of the car companies.
In related government incompetence news, Venezuela becomes a coffee importer for the first time. While the country has price controls on coffee, somehow the government blames “speculation by the private sector”.
Maps for Monday:
Understanding the DC street plan. There are more rules than I would have guessed.
This guy would be a good interviewer (if anyone would agree to be interviewed by him).
Surprisingly non-contradictory facts of the day: seat-belts reduce child mortality in airplane crashes; requiring children to wear seat-belts in planes would increase child mortality.
Tapioca milk tea drinkers beware!
Now computers are competing in Jeopardy, can Armageddon be far behind?