Monday, Monday

+ I'm positive I'm the only person to ever enter 'tolkien' and 'liz phair' in immediate succession on iTunes.

+ These shots of the Seattle Space Needle (with Experience Music Project to the north) and the CN Tower (with the Rogers Centre/Skydome) are CRAZY! (via Google Sightseeing)

+ kottke interviews that rogue economist. Some highlights:

• Economics is a worldview more than a science or a tool.
• Police department arrests are race-linked.
• If he were ominpotent leader of America he would:

would start by increasing the IRS budget ten-fold and doing a lot more tax audits. If everyone paid their taxes, tax rates could be much lower and otherwise honest people wouldn't be tempted to cheat. For some reason, everyone hates the idea. But we can't all be cheating more than average on our taxes. I think it would be for the better. And after I got done with that, I'd legalize sports betting, and I would also do away with most of the nonsense and hassle that currently goes into airport security.

• Leavitt's also got a weblog post where he disagrees with Moneyball.

+ I don't have much to say on the current China/Japan row, but I think it's important and bears watching. I will say I can't believe Japan hasn't done more to apologize for WW2 atrocities (is it the whole 'shame culture' thing?). China, for its part, is repsonsible for the safety of Japanese expatriates.

+ My own Google Sightseeing - Charleston Harbor.

I'm specifically interested in (top center left in link above) Patriot's Point (official site), featuring the USS Yorktown, and (bottom center right in first link) Fort Sumter (official site). Christine and I visited both of these sights on our fifth anniversary.

I'm trying to send this post to Google Sightseeing, but I think his server's getting nailed and he's down for having exceeded bandwidth.