Random links
- Consumer Budgeting Around the World
- I was most interested in the food portion of this - comparing the US and Canada as I knew that Canadian food costs are higher than American. It seems as though Canadians must like to eat at home - a good thing - total fraction of spending on food in Canada and the US was quite similar, just that a much larger portion of the Canadian spending seemed to be in the "food at home" category.
- Copyright stagnation
- Just look at the falloff on the number of books entering the public domain each year once copyright laws started to change around the time of Mickey Mouse's introduction (1920s). Reading further it looks like being in the public domain does a lot to keep a book accessible to later generations.
- The Song Machine: The hitmakers behind Rihanna.
- It's a bit depressing if you ask me.
- The Best Birth Control In The World Is For Men
- It seems to be in Phase III clinical trials in India now - the slightly overstated description: "no babies, no latex, no daily pill to remember, no hormones to interfere with mood or sex drive, no negative health effects whatsoever, and 100 percent effectiveness". The female birth control pill in the 1960s brought about pretty big changes; I'm curious as to what effect adding something like this to the mix might have.