Here’s a chart from The Economist comparing per-gram cocaine prices around the world:
Click the graph to see the Economist article.
It would seem that it’s not just prescription drugs that are cheaper in Canada than in the U.S..
For an economic index that’s a little less illicit, check out the Economist’s Big Mac Index.
If you’ve got an idea for a caption for the photo below, please leave a comment!
Click the picture to see it at full size.
Photo courtesy of Miss Fipi Lele.
It may not be the Howard Beale “Mad as Hell” meltdown scene from the movie Network, but I’ll take it for now: here’s MSNBC anchor Mika Brzezinski refusing to cover the Paris Hilton non-story despite the prodding of her co-anchors and producer. Really, people, of all the things with which we should concern ourselves, that trampy monster of entitlement should be among the last of them…
I had a cynical moment where I thought that this was mere grandstanding in order to cover Paris Hilton by not covering her, but as someone who occasionally tunes in to MSNBC, I think that such subterfuge requires more brain cells than all of their producers currently have. I’m going to assume that Ms. Brzezinski’s refusal is genuine and salute her with a filet mignon on a flaming sword.
For those of you who are wondering what the hell I’m talking about with this “Howard Beale” and Network, here’s a synopsis of the movie, and here’s the scene to which I refer:
The Howard Beale meltdown scene from Network has been borrowed a number of times. The most recent homage paid to it of which I’m aware is from the opening episode of the late and largely unlamented Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip:
Studio 60 was 20% good moments, 80% Aaron Sorkin practicing self-love with a television budget and audience. Life’s too short — if I must endure some egomaniac celebrating his own genius in a showy manner, that egomaniac had better be me.
The year was 1991, and as a DJ at Crazy Go Nuts University, I was getting a lot of mileage out of this album:
Guess what: Spencer Elden, the baby on the album cover, is now 15 years old.
[via Reddit and The Striker Diary]
Here’s a graph from a blog posting by Jim “Long Emergency” Kunstler titled Peak Suburbia comparing the retail space per person in the U.S., Sweden, the U.K., France and Italy. If the data on which this graph is based is correct, Americans have 6 times more retail space than the Swedes, 8 times that of the Brits and 18 times the shopping square footage doled out to the unfortunate Italians. I suspect that here in Canada, the retail space per person is similar to the American figure.
Click to read the article that features this graph.
For those of you who do a lot of road-tripping in the U.S., here’s something that you might find interesting — a map of the U.S. Interstate highway system, simplified in a fashion similar to many subway maps:
Click the map to see it at full size.
Map courtesy of Miss Fipi Lele.
This map is a creation of Chris Yates, and you can get prints of it from the “Toys” page of his site.
Last night, as the Ginger Ninja and I emerged from baggage claim at Peason’s Terminal 1, we saw a chauffeur from a car service holding up a sign that read: Gilbert Gottfried.
“Oh, crap,” I said to Wendy, “let’s get out of here.”
I should’ve taken a picture, but I was just too tired.