I’m pleased to announce that my employer, the Show-Me Institute, has a new blog. If you have any Missouri ties, or just want to read the brilliant thoughts of me and my esteemed colleagues, I encourage you to check it out.
Miscellaneous 
Advances in biotechnology are moving incredibly fast these days and many scientists agree it will soon be possible for most humans to live past 100 years. What’s not being discussed yet is how society is going to manage that longevity revolution. I’m writing a book on this topic now, and here is a link to my op-ed in the LA Times today discussing the issue.
Who doesn’t want Ryanair and its cheap flights (passengers often just pay taxes and fees on sale prices) to offer the same fares domestically in the U.S.? Well, based on current law, our government doesn’t. And as I’ve said before on NPR’s Kojo Nnamdi Show, in an article for CEI’s Monthly Planet, and while moderating a panel discussion, the regulation of international air travel must change.
Unfortunately, cabotage rights that prohibit European airlines like Ryanair from operating on American domestic routes are not on the bargaining table. But a bilateral U.S. – EU “open skies” deal that was provisionally agreed to on March 2 should be approved, even if it’s only, as is said in an Economist article, “baby steps.”
The airline industry has much in common with other network industries such as railroads, electrical power, and telecommunications. The airline industry remains heavily regulated despite partial deregulation with the 1978 Airline Deregulation Act, especially with international travel.
Like all network industries, the air travel sector involves both flows and a grid. The flows are the mobile system elements: the airplanes, the trains, the power, the messages, etc. The grid is the infrastructure over which these flows move: the airports and air traffic control system, the tracks and stations, the wires and cables, the electromagnetic spectrum, and so on. Network efficiency depends critically on the close coordination of grid and flow operating and investment decisions.
Consumers would benefit if governments would get out of the way and allow the market to determine international routes, just as U.S. consumers benefited when the 1978 Act allowed the market to determine the number and frequency of domestic routes.
Unpopular on MySpace? Buy a few friends:
Enter FakeYourSpace.com, a business founded by Brant Walker, which offered users of MySpace.com and similar sites a way to enhance their page with photographs and comments from hired “friends”–mainly attractive models–for 99 cents a month each.
…
MobileAlibi.com and PopularityDialer.com offer similar services, using fake cellphone calls scheduled in advance to provide an excuse to escape a tedious situation, like a bad date, or to make the subscriber appear in demand.
(With apologies to Marginal Revolution.)
True story: The (New York-based) North County Gazette reports that the mummified body of a man was discovered in his Hampton Bays home this week. He had been dead for a year, but his television was still running and showing programming! The story notes:
When Southhampton police responded to the two story home earlier this week to answer a report about burst water pipes, they found the mummified body of 70-year-old Vincenzo Riccardi, 70, sitting in a chair in front of his television, dead for more than a year, the television still playing.
According to the Suffolk County medical examiner’s office, Riccardi appears to have died of natural causes. It was reported that his body was well-preserved, his features and hair intact due to the dry air in the house… The electricity was still on in the home although apparently the power bills had not been paid in over a year. The last he was heard from was December 2005, according to authorities.
I hate to make light of this tragic (and somewhat creepy) story, but I just have to ask: Where can I find a cable company and an electrical provider that will let me watch TV for a year without making payments?! (Or is this only some sort of special deal for the dead?)
My former Cato Institute colleague Tom Palmer has penned an important editorial in today’s Washington Post along with Raja Kamal of the University of Chicago that illustrates how very lucky we are to live in a country that respects freedom of speech and religious differences. Palmer and Kamal tell the story of Abdelkareem Nabil Soliman, a 22 year old student who is sitting in an Egyptian prison, awaiting sentencing tomorrow. “His alleged ‘crime’: expressing his opinions on a blog. His mistake: having the courage to do so under his own name,” note Palmer and Kamal. They continue:
Soliman.. was expelled from Al-Azhar University last spring for sharply criticizing the university’s rigid curriculum and faulting religious extremism on his blog. He was ordered to appear before a public prosecutor on Nov. 7 on charges of “spreading information disruptive of public order,” “incitement to hate Muslims” and “insulting the President.” Soliman was detained pending an investigation, and the detention has been renewed four times. He has not had consistent access to lawyers or to his family.
…
Soliman has criticized Egyptian authorities as failing to protect the rights of religious minorities and women. He has expressed his views about religious extremism in very strong terms. He is the first Egyptian blogger to be prosecuted for the content of his remarks. Remarkably, the legal complaint originated with the university that had expelled him; once, it was a great center of learning in the Arab world, but it has been reduced to informing on students for their dissent from orthodoxy.
…
Whether or not we agree with the opinions that Abdelkareem Nabil Soliman expressed is not the issue. What matters is a principle: People should be free to express their opinions without fear of being imprisoned or killed. Blogging should not be a crime.
Amen. Again, it’s stories like this that should remind us how good we have it here in America.
By the way, a website has been set up to petition for his freedom: www.FreeKareem.org
Tom Bell shares my concerns about Thomas the Tank Engine’s underlying premises. My earlier musings are here.
Here’s another one to add to the “personal-responsibility-is-dead” file… According to this AP report, a former IBM employee is suing the company for $5 million claiming he is an Internet addict who deserves treatment and sympathy rather than dismissal. Better yet, in the court filing, the guy claims that stress caused him to become “a sex addict, and with the development of the Internet, an Internet addict.” He is also claiming that he’s protected by the American with Disabilities Act because he says he suffers from sexual behavior disorders !!
This clown gets caught using the Net during work hours to check out porn and now he wants to blame it all on (a) the existance of the Internet and (b) the company and society for not stopping him from indulging his desires. Give me a break. Maybe alcoholics can use this theory to sue booze stores as the cause of all their problems.
Based on my prior post that analyzes Section 6 of the European Commission’s FLOSS report, we know that there is a growing and in many cases strong private and public sector demand for certain FLOSS applications. This leads the authors to the question of supply? Where are the FLOSS developers?
Based on two developer surveys (MERIT/FP5 and FLOSS-US
Stanford), the report argues that more than three fifths of the worldwide
FLOSS developer community live in the EU. One fifth live in North America and another one fifth live in other countries (p.37). The report relies on this and other data to persuade the EC to adopt an industrial open source policy.
While the authors may be overstating the point for effect
(the different data sets do not always show Europe leading and many Asian
developers are not counted), it is pretty clear that Europe is a leader in global community of FLOSS developers.
However, as I say below the fold, the authors gloss over some important developer community distinctions that may harm their later conclusions:
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