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September 28, 2005
A Sci-Fi Future Awaits the Court
Judge Roberts, Privacy, and the Future [via]
"Recent advances in technology have already had profound privacy implications, and there's every reason to believe that this trend will continue into the foreseeable future. Roberts is 50 years old. If confirmed, he could be chief justice for the next 30 years. That's a lot of future. Privacy questions will arise from government actions in the 'War on Terror'; they will arise from the actions of corporations and individuals. They will include questions of surveillance, profiling and search and seizure. And the decisions of the Supreme Court on these questions will have a profound effect on society."
RFID security?
RFID crackers hotwire cars, steal gas, sniff phones [via]
"This paper, "Analysis of the Texas Instruments DST RFID," is a thoroughgoing description of the vulnerabilities in commond RFID tag technology. In a series of related videos, the authors snoop on mobile phones, hotwire a car, and steal gas from a pump-payment system, all using breaks to the RFID. Amazing stuff."
The Paper River Experiment
September 22, 2005
Congress Shall Make No Law
The Economics of FEMA
High-speed photos of splashing water
Rethinking Originalism
Original intent for liberals (and for conservatives and moderates, too).
"Should constitutional interpreters embrace the document's original intent or evade it? Several leading liberal scholars are urging Americans to choose Door No. 2, because the original-intent game is doomed to reach intolerably conservative—indeed, reactionary—results. But is it? And once we reject that game, what are the proper legal rules to play by?"
Speech bubble sticker gallery
The Cynic's Conundrum
The Grim Meathook Future
The Vioxx Hex
September 18, 2005
President Clinton's worldview
Planned Parenthood, Protests, and Economics
Rove Unplugged
Someone broke the off-the-record rule [via]
"On Katrina: The only mistake we made with Katrina was not overriding the local government... On The Anti-War Movement: Cindy Sheehan is a clown. There is no real anti-war movement. No serious politician, with anything to do with anything, would show his face at an anti-war rally... On Bush's Low Poll Numbers: We have not been good at explaining the success in Iraq. Polls go up and down and don't mean anything..."
Better screw invented
September 16, 2005
Real Gold versus Real Oil
DUI Cases Thrown Out Due to Closed-Source Breathalyzer
Hundreds of cases involving breath-alcohol tests have been thrown our because the test's manufacturer will not disclose how the machines work. [via]
"...All four of Seminole County's criminal judges have been using a standard that if a DUI defendant asks for a key piece of information about how the machine works - its software source code, for instance - and the state cannot provide it, the breath test is rejected, the Orlando Sentinel reported Wednesday."
Seeking a cure for the hurricane hangover
"...A number of polls have shown Mr Bush’s level of support at the lowest of his presidency; on Thursday, the New York Times put those who think he is doing a good job at just 41%, against 53% who don’t. And the hurricane has hit him in specific ways, with the Thursday poll and others giving him lower marks than before on his traditional strong suits, such as tough leadership and ability to handle a crisis. Perhaps surprisingly, only half of those polled by the New York Times thought he had handled the hurricane badly (though nearly three-quarters of blacks do, which is unsurprising given the flood’s heavy impact on New Orleans’s blacks). The storm nonetheless seems to have pushed down Mr Bush’s ratings across the board."
September 15, 2005
Recovery through patronage and politicking
"...Call Rove runs political operations and manages coalitions through patronage. That's what he does. And that's what this is about. Everybody realizes that. Don't expect much if any discussion of this point in the major papers or on the networks. It's shameless. But that's beside the point. This is a time when the country needs an opposition party. Every Democrat should be hitting on this. Take the politics out of the reconstruction effort. He put his chief spin-doctor in charge of the biggest reconstruction and refugee crisis the country's probably ever faced. That tells you all you need to know about his values. Nothing that happened in the last couple weeks meant anything to him. And nothing has changed. Same as Iraq. Same stuff."
Helping Katrina victms in... North Dakota?
Passing notes in class
Groups challenge abstinence-only curriculum
Sex-ed organizations fighting federal funding by relying on rarely used law
"Two organizations that promote sex education are taking an unorthodox approach in their fight against federal funding of abstinence-only education programs. Relying on a little-used law that allows 'affected persons' to seek the correction of information disseminated by federal agencies, the groups said Tuesday that the abstinence education programs contain erroneous and ineffective information. They asked the Health and Human Services Department to correct it."
What happened to job growth?
The Crime: Slow Job Growth. A Suspect: Enron. [via]
"While the economy has enjoyed steady growth and low inflation since the recession ended in the fall of 2001, many companies have been reluctant to add new workers. 'Any way you slice the data, employment growth has been disappointing in this recovery,' said Lawrence F. Katz, professor of economics at Harvard. The Economic Policy Institute, a liberal research group in Washington, concludes that the lag in job growth has caused an 'employment deficit' in the United States of 3.2 million jobs. Searching for a CulpritMystified economists have pointed to various possible culprits: outsourcing, competition from China, high health care costs and lower work-force participation, to name a few. But there's one force that so far has managed to avoid blame for the sluggish pace of job growth: Enron."
Criminals Learn Forensic Science
Video clips of The Simpsons for the blind
the sight gags are still funny, but in a very different way [via]
"Last Sunday, while I put my kids to bed, Fox showed the season premiere of one of my favorite television shows, 'The Simpsons.' So I taped it. What I didn't know, since I use the VCR so infrequently, was that my children had somehow reconfigured it to tape with the audio 'blind-assist' function on. So the entire episode is narrated, in DVD commentary style, by a mellow voice which describes the action taking place on-screen."
Roberts on the Second Amendment
Gas Returns to Pre-Katrina Levels
"If you want to see prices drop more quickly, you as a consumer of Gasoline should go to the station with the cheapest gas. Doing so will impact ALL LOCAL PRICES. Why? Station owners are typically local business people (franchisees) who carefully track how much fuel they sell. Under normal circumstances, they only make a small markup on Gas -- everything else they sell typically has a higher profit margin."
Moments of Truth
What John Roberts really thinks.
"On a few rare occasions at this week's confirmation hearings, John Roberts answered a senator's real live question about a real live area of law. These glimpses hardly make up for all the demurrals. Still, they're striking on two counts. They line up Roberts with distinctly minority schools of thought, and they reveal him as a careful opportunist." (emphasis mine)
Survey Finds More Women Try Bisexuality
...according to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
"The survey, released Thursday by the CDC's National Center for Health Statistics, found that 11.5 percent of women, ages 18 to 44, said they've had at least one sexual experience with another woman in their lifetimes, compared with about 4 percent of women, ages 18 to 59, who said the same in a comparable survey a decade earlier. For women in their late teens and 20s, the percentage rose to 14 percent in the more recent survey. About 6 percent of men in their teens and 20s said they'd had at least one same-sex encounter."
September 14, 2005
U.S. won't ban media from New Orleans searches
CNN filed suit for right to cover search for bodies of Katrina victims [via] See also: images from the Katrina searches (warning: graphic) [mirror]
"Rather than fight a lawsuit by CNN, the federal government abandoned its effort Saturday to prevent the media from reporting on the recovery of the dead in New Orleans. Joint Task Force Katrina 'has no plans to bar, impede or prevent news media from their news gathering and reporting activities in connection with the deceased Hurricane Katrina victim recovery efforts,' said Col. Christian E. deGraff, representing the task force."
Chertoff delayed federal response, memo shows
The federal official with the power to mobilize a massive federal response to Hurricane Katrina was Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, not the former FEMA chief [via]
"Even before the storm struck the Gulf Coast, Chertoff could have ordered federal agencies into action without any request from state or local officials. Federal Emergency Management Agency chief Michael Brown had only limited authority to do so until about 36 hours after the storm hit, when Chertoff designated him as the "principal federal official" in charge of the storm.
As thousands of hurricane victims went without food, water and shelter in the days after Katrina's early morning Aug. 29 landfall, critics assailed Brown for being responsible for delays that might have cost hundreds of lives.
But Chertoff - not Brown - was in charge of managing the national response to a catastrophic disaster, according to the National Response Plan, the federal government's blueprint for how agencies will handle major natural disasters or terrorist incidents. An order issued by President Bush in 2003 also assigned that responsibility to the homeland security director.
But according to a memo obtained by Knight Ridder, Chertoff didn't shift that power to Brown until late afternoon or evening on Aug. 30, about 36 hours after Katrina hit Louisiana and Mississippi. That same memo suggests that Chertoff may have been confused about his lead role in disaster response and that of his department."
September 13, 2005
Incentives for Oil Exploration
Pump panic, gold glee
September 12, 2005
We had to kill our patients
"...Their families believe their confessions are an indictment of the appalling failure of American authorities to help those in desperate need after Hurricane Katrina flooded the city, claiming thousands of lives and making 500,000 homeless..."
Take That, Nino
Breyer dukes it out with Scalia over interpretive vs. originalist approach to Constitutional law.
"...Brennan and Marshall's torch-bearers today mostly sit on courts in Canada and South Africa and Israel and Europe. Those places don't have centuries-old constitutions, and as a result, judges there tend not to care about originalism. They talk and write unapologetically about dignity, equality, and the human spirit. And many of them don't think judicial restraint is a paramount virtue or worry that they're imposing their values from on high. 'A judge should also be part of his people,' Israeli Supreme Court Justice Aharon Barak said in a speech five years ago. 'I sit on a bench located in the world.'"
UHaul Pricing and Free Drinks for Women Nite
"...Network economics has some similarities to platform economics. A bar, for example, is a platform which mediates transactions (pecuniary and non-pecuniary!) between two sorts of customers, men and women. If men have a higher demand for going to a bar with many women (LA to Las Vegas) than women have of going to a bar with many men (Las Vegas to LA) then in a competitive market the bar must set a higher price for men than for women. In this context, far from being an example of monopoly power, differential pricing is a result of competition."
Katrina and ANWR
Barking about gasoline
What is it about the price of gasoline that turns seemingly normal politicians into barking economic demagogues? [via]
"When Jill puts her house on the market for $450,000 -- triple what she paid 10 years ago, but the going price in her neighborhood today -- the politicos understand that the 200 percent markup is the result of supply and demand in the real estate market. Senators don't call press conferences to denounce Jill as a profiteer. Attorneys general don't threaten to prosecute her. Governors don't compare her to looters.
But when Joe's service station ups the price of gasoline by $1 a gallon, the political world freaks out. Never mind that a Category 4 hurricane has devastated oil production throughout the Gulf Coast, depleting the nation's already strained refining capacity by 2 million barrels a day and driving up the price Joe's wholesaler is now charging him. For some reason, politicians forget everything they learned in Economics 101, and rush to savage Joe for 'gouging' his customers."
Japan’s voters back Koizumi
voters overwhelmingly endorsed the prime minister’s plan to privatise the country’s postal-savings bank, the world’s biggest financial institution. The outlook for other reforms, however, is less clear [see also]
"Everybody knows what is going to happen next. Junichiro Koizumi told the public repeatedly and emphatically that he wanted the election on Sunday September 11th to be about one issue: Japan Post. This giant receives subsidised postal-savings deposits and life-insurance premiums from tens of millions of Japanese citizens through its 24,700 branches, and thus controls a staggering ¥330 trillion ($3 trillion) in household financial assets. Mr Koizumi, the prime minister, wants to privatise it, and billed this election as a referendum on his idea. Japan’s voters have now given him overwhelming support, electing members of his two-party coalition to 327 of parliament’s 480 seats. Some time this autumn, the new parliament is expected to approve Mr Koizumi’s most cherished reform."
Freakonomics: Does the Truth Lie Within?
Katrina pain and death made journalists come alive
The Sunk-Cost Fallacy
Bush falls victim to a bad new argument for the Iraq war.
"...Psychologists, decision scientists, and economists have a name for this type of argument: the 'sunk-cost fallacy.' It has gotten the United States into trouble once before. As casualties mounted in Vietnam in the 1960s, it became more and more difficult to withdraw, because war supporters insisted that withdrawal would cheapen the lives of those who had already sacrificed. We 'owed' it to the dead and wounded to 'stay the course.' We could not let them 'die in vain.' What staying the course produced was perhaps 250,000 more dead and wounded."
September 09, 2005
Whew! Link dump complete.
I had a huge backlog of links waiting to be posted. They're all posted now; sorry for swamping you. Links will continue at a slower pace now, probably just a few per day.
Terrorists Don't Do Movie Plots
Sometimes it seems like the people in charge of homeland security spend too much time watching action movies. They defend against specific movie plots instead of against the broad threats of terrorism. [via]
"...The 9/11 terrorists used small pointy things to take over airplanes, so we ban small pointy things from airplanes. Richard Reid tried to hide a bomb in his shoes, so now we all have to take off our shoes. Recently, the Department of Homeland Security said that it might relax airplane security rules. It's not that there's a lessened risk of shoes, or that small pointy things are suddenly less dangerous. It's that those movie plots no longer capture the imagination like they did in the months after 9/11, and everyone is beginning to see how silly (or pointless) they always were.
Commuter terrorism is the new movie plot. The London bombers carried bombs into the subway, so now we search people entering the subways. They used cell phones, so we're talking about ways to shut down the cell-phone network.
It's too early to tell if hurricanes are the next movie-plot threat that captures the imagination.
The problem with movie plot security is that it only works if we guess right. If we spend billions defending our subways, and the terrorists bomb a bus, we've wasted our money. To be sure, defending the subways makes commuting safer. But focusing on subways also has the effect of shifting attacks toward less-defended targets, and the result is that we're no safer overall.
Terrorists don't care if they blow up subways, buses, stadiums, theaters, restaurants, nightclubs, schools, churches, crowded markets or busy intersections. Reasonable arguments can be made that some targets are more attractive than others: airplanes because a small bomb can result in the death of everyone aboard, monuments because of their national significance, national events because of television coverage, and transportation because most people commute daily. But the United States is a big country; we can't defend everything..." (emphasis mine)
A U.S. National Firewall
The 'broken window fallacy' fallacy
Protests over Canada sharia move
Proposals to introduce elements of Muslim law in Canada's largest province spark nationwide protests.
"Ontario is considering a report which recommends that it allow sharia religious arbitration for issues such as divorce and child custody. Opponents say the proposed arbitration process will violate women's rights. Approval would make Ontario the only Western jurisdiction to adopt a form of sharia arbitration."
Landlord Sues Restaurateurs Over Ghosts
Orlando restaurateurs refuse to move into a renovating building because they claim it is haunted.
"...The lawsuit also asks a judge to decide whether the building is haunted and, if so, whether the ghosts would interfere with the restaurant's business. Renovations have stopped on the building, and it remains empty. A company called Orlando Ghost Tours regularly led visitors through the property until it changed hands in 2001 and still begins its tours in front of the building."
It's So Fine To Be a Refiner
Who you should really hate when you fill your tank.
"Huge integrated oil companies such as ExxonMobil have refining operations. But the independent refiners like Valero and Tesoro are relatively anonymous. Since they occupy a spot in the middle of the supply chain, they don't have well-known consumer brands, and they don't make news by hitting big strikes of crude. Instead, they're involved in a tough, low-margin, and capital-intensive processing enterprise—turning crude oil into gasoline or heating oil. And it can be a difficult business. It takes a lot of money to build and operate a refinery, and communities don't exactly welcome them with open arms. According to this fact sheet from the National Petrochemicals and Refiners Association, no new refineries have been built in the United States since the 1970s."
Diversity Jurisdiction
Do we really need a woman or minority to fill O'Connor's shoes?
"...So, what we want on the court isn't exactly diversity. It's diversity reflecting those issues about which we are most anxious right now. It suggests that just because we are worried about race and gender, minority and women judges will worry, too. We don't care if the Pacific Northwest is unrepresented on the high court, but we freak out when we 'lose' a woman's seat."
New Orleans Begins Confiscating Firearms as Water Recedes
The Rude Awakening Movement
A NOLA resident has some choice words for the Vice President. [via]
"Go Fuck yourself, Mr. Cheney." says Katrina survivor in Mississippi, during (yet another) administration press conference, 11 days after the storm hit.
Koizumi, the privatization samurai
Bush declares Katrina prayer day
The people who won't evacuate
Housing the Poorest Hurricane Victims
"Fortunately, new construction is not necessary to solve the immediate problem. Enormous numbers of vacant units in the region are available for immediate occupancy by families with the ability to pay rent — and a simple expansion of HUD’s largest housing program would provide even the poorest families with the means to rent these units."
Jury indicts committee formed by DeLay
Get a move on
What do U-haul prices tell us about America? [see also]
"The idea is that large differences in prices for one-way trips from Detroit to Las Vegas compared to one-way trips the other direction reflects differential migration. The answers aren't so surprising: the flow tends to be South and West, and especially towards Las Vegas."
Comment on Opportunity Cost
Macabre Reminder: The Corpse on Union Street
"That a corpse lies on Union Street may not shock; in the wake of last week's hurricane, there are surely hundreds, probably thousands. What is remarkable is that on a downtown street in a major American city, a corpse can decompose for days, like carrion, and that is acceptable... The incomprehensible has become so routine here that it tends to lull you into acceptance. On Sunday, for example, several soldiers on Jefferson Highway had guns aimed at the heads of several prostrate men suspected of breaking into an electronics store."
The Legend of the Scopes Trial
"The anniversary of the 'Monkey Trial' provides an occasion to remember that it didn't really settle what we assume it settled. Popular memory of the trial, reinforced by the 1960 movie Inherit the Wind, made it seem that evolution was triumphant and fundamentalism vanquished, but in fact the result was much more ambiguous. Anti-Darwinism didn't die in Dayton, Tenn., in July 1925—it just retreated temporarily from the national scene, to which it has now returned."
Money Flowed to Questionable Projects
Louisiana Leads in Army Corps Spending, but Millions Had Nothing to Do With Floods [via]
"Before Hurricane Katrina breached a levee on the New Orleans Industrial Canal, the Army Corps of Engineers had already launched a $748 million construction project at that very location. But the project had nothing to do with flood control. The Corps was building a huge new lock for the canal, an effort to accommodate steadily increasing barge traffic. Except that barge traffic on the canal has been steadily decreasing."
Photoshopped fantastic theme-park rides
Fuel output drive after Katrina
Watering hole stays wet -- and open 24/7
Johnny White's regulars resist evacuation: 'Sweetheart, this is New Orleans,' says one
"There aren't any locks on Johnny White's bar in the heart of the French Quarter because in 14 years the local watering hole has never closed. Not even Hurricane Katrina could change that. "
Smart clothes pin
Japan's election
"Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party looks set to win this weekend’s election. Many of those who vote for the party will do so hoping that the prime minister, Junichiro Koizumi, uses the opportunity to purge the LDP of recalcitrants and push through long-delayed reforms"
Katrina's aftermath
A pathetic official response that has shocked the world--and will change America
"...As relief stumbles along, the political blame-game is in top gear. George Bush and the federal government have come under fierce attack. Though a CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll found that only 13% supposed the president should take most responsibility for the relief effort, or lack of it, both Republicans and Democrats were appalled at Mr Bush’s failure to grasp the scale of the catastrophe; shocked that his senior staff were absent, or on holiday, while thousands of Americans were stranded without food and water; and aghast at the bumbling response of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), which is charged with coping when disasters strike. America’s enemies, from Cuba to Iran, lined up with unconcealed smirks to offer doctors and aid."
Katrina Photos
What's My Motivation?
The Department of Homeland Security is doomed to failure without a structural overhaul.
"A crucial question to be asked in the coming slew of investigations: Did the Department of Homeland Security do such a dreadful job on Hurricane Katrina because of incompetent officials and insufficient funds—or because of the organization and incentives of the DHS itself? Is it enough to make heads roll and budgets swell—or does the whole department need a structural overhaul?"
Paper title of the month
from NBER: "The Economics of Workaholism: We Should Not Have Worked on This Paper". [via]
---- Abstract -----
A large literature examines the addictive properties of such behaviors as smoking, drinking alcohol and eating. We argue that for some people addictive behavior may apply to a much more central aspect of economic life: working. Workaholism is subject to the same concerns about the individual as other addictions, is more likely to be a problem of higher-income individuals, and can, under conditions of jointness in the workplace or the household, generate negative spillovers onto individuals around the workaholic. Using the Retirement History Survey and the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, we find evidence that is consistent with the idea that high-income, highly educated people suffer from workaholism with regard to retiring, in that they are more likely to postpone earlier plans for retirement. The evidence and theory suggest that the negative effects of workaholism can be addressed with a more progressive income tax system than would be appropriate in the absence of this behavior.
A note on Katrina links
I'm not sure who (if anyone) finds the Katrina links I've been posting to be helpful, but there has just been too much coverage and too many items for me to keep up with. I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed by the whole thing. So I'm going to post one last batch of links, and then further updates will only be sporadic, with items I find particularly notable. If you have any feedback with regards to this, please let me know.
September 07, 2005
We're focused on solving problems?
McClellan, WH reporter spar over question about FEMA boss [see also]
"From today's White House press briefing:
Q Scott [McClellan], does the President retain confidence in his FEMA Director and Secretary of Homeland Security?
MR. McCLELLAN: And again, David, see, this is where some people want to look at the blame game issue, and finger-point. We're focused on solving problems, and we're doing everything we can --
Q What about the question?"
Joe Allbaugh, Disaster Pimp
From overseas, disbelief at U.S. relief efforts
The Hell
"The details are almost indescribable"
"Note that these people were not killed by the force of a hurricane, but by the lack of response to it."
Pump It Up
Don't worry about price gouging now. Worry later.
"...The idea behind anti-gouging laws is to help people who were stuck without alternatives, through no fault of their own.
This might explain a price-gouging investigation in Louisiana, where people buying gas were running for their lives. But it has nothing to do with most of the complaints in the rest of the country. Gas prices aren't rising in Los Angeles or New York because drivers are desperate to get somewhere with potable water. They are rising because supply has become extraordinarily tight and people want to keep driving as much as they were before.
If gas prices did not rise across the country now, in fact, the short-term impact would be disastrous."
Sorting out fact from fiction on Katrina
An Imperfect Storm
How race shaped Bush's response to Katrina.
"...At the heart of the matter is the racial pattern of American constituency politics. I don't think Kanye West can support his view that George W. Bush just doesn't care about black people. But it's a demonstrable matter of fact that Bush doesn't care much about black votes. And that, in the end, may amount to the same thing."
Fox takes cue from conservative blogs
Katrina Timeline
Shoulder Surfing Keys
I don't hate Bush.
I simply wish to hold him responsible to do his job. [via]
"Doubtless certain of my readers will again leap to the tired claim that I 'hate Bush'. Sorry, but a quick read of my blog will not support that conversation-killing thesis. I don't hate Bush. I simply wish to hold him responsible to do his job. Do I deny that there is an entitlement mentality? Of course not. But it is not an expression of entitlement mentality to expect the state to ensure domestic tranquility and provide for the common defense. It is not an entitlement mentality to expect to be safe from rape in emergency facilitiies provided by the state. It's not an entitlement mentality to think you shouldn't have to watch your baby die of hydration because the Feds couldn't figure out how to airlift water to helpless thirsty people for five frickin' days and, in their world-historical and criminal incompetence, actually turned offers of water away...So long as Bush remains the King of Massive Government Spending Coupled with the Promise of 'Homeland Security', guys like Limbaugh are going to have a colossally difficult time shifting the blame for this debacle away from Bush. That's not 'Bush hatred'. That's cold logic."
Yahoo 'helped jail China writer'
Significant but not Overwhelming
"Katrina could dampen real gross domestic product (GDP) growth in the second half of the year by ½ to 1 percentage point and reduce employment through the end of this year by about 400,000. Most economic forecasters had expected 3 percent to 4 percent growth during the second half, and employment growth of 150,000 to 200,000 per month. Economic growth and employment are likely to rebound during the first half of 2006 as rebuilding accelerates."
It's Not a 'Blame Game'
"With the size and difficulty of the task of rescuing and rebuilding New Orleans and other Gulf Coast areas still unfolding, it seemed early to talk about investigating how this predicted cataclysm had been allowed to occur and why the government's response was so slow and inept. Until yesterday, that is, when President Bush blithely announced at a photo-op cabinet meeting that he, personally, was going to 'find out what went right and what went wrong.' We can't imagine a worse idea."
William Rehnquist
Will The "New Federalism" Survive the New Court?
"...Even before becoming chief justice, often in lonely dissents, it was William Rehnquist who was most personally responsible for what is now called "the New Federalism" — the revival of the ideas that judiciary should protect the role of the states within the federal system and enforce the textual limits on the powers of Congress. Establishing the New Federalism took enormous effort and leadership by Rehnquist over many years. Now that legacy is in jeopardy."
Gasoline Prices (by State)
Prices may have peaked across the U.S. after a sharp run-up in the wake of Hurricane Katrina
"...According to automobile association AAA, the average price for a gallon Tuesday was $3.04, down two cents from $3.06 on Monday. Still, in places as widespread as Flippin, Ark., and Bismarck, N.D., drivers lined up to pay close to -- and in some cases, in excess of -- $3 a gallon. Here is an updated look at prices natiowide, with local stories"
The public choice economics of crisis management
The Story of the Hurricane
After a Period of Self-Suppression, the Horrific Story Spurs the Press [via]
"...Reporters like Mr. Bury covering the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina are ripping away the kinds of journalistic niceties that have attended most of the major news events since President George W. Bush took office. The kinds of questions that came up at the dawn of the war in Iraq—is it O.K. to report from the flatbed of an Army truck and follow troops around if it means you can penetrate into the center of the conflict?—seemed perverse in the New Orleans left behind by Hurricane Katrina. Now the question was: Where are the trucks? New Orleans was getting angry. Reporters were getting angry. And that anger was part of the news."