That sad sighting, continued

Remember that sighting I mentioned yesterday? The one with the DCS letter? As I went by there today it was mostly cleaned up with no sign of the porn or the DCS ephemera. But as I looked, a small plastic bottle under a hedge caught my eye. The story became both more clear and infinitely more sad as I read the label: "Evergreen Treatment Clinic. 5ml Methadone / Fruit Juice mix. One Dose."

By the way...

When did Google have its own TV news channel? Last night, while flipping through the satellite feed I found channel 366, Google Current. Where did that come from?

Holy Price Gouging, Batman!

It's gonna get bad.

[Edit] If you live in the Puget Sound region, consider using and contributing data to the Seattle Gas Prices database website.

The Market vs. Rationing.

I'm with Jane Galt on this one:

If you cap the price (as some people are making noises about), rationing will take the form of queuing: people will have to wait in long lines for gasoline. This sounds just fine to some activists and academics, apparently ones with a lot of time on their hands. The rest of us, who do not think it would be fun to live in the Soviet Union, recognize that, painful as it may be, prices are in general a better way to allocate scarce resources than lines.

But it hurts! I hear you moan. "What about my Labor Day driving?" Let me translate. What you're really saying when you say "I don't want to pay more for gas" is "I don't want to either use less gas, or use less of anything else". But as a society, we have to use less gas. You, or someone else, is going to have to consume less of the stuff, because we have less than we used to. If you don't want to be one of the people using less gas, then you have to be one of the people using less of everything else. Thus will the market pretty efficiently strip out driving by those who value it least.

But high prices don't just make people want to drive less; they make people want to supply more.

WTF?

From Jamaica: "The United States Government is not yet requesting international assistance at this time."

From a Canadain blog:

Planes are ready to load with food and medical supplies and a system called "DART" which can provide fresh water and medical supplies is standing by. Department of Homeland Security as well as other U.S. agencies were contacted by the Canadian government requesting permission to provide help. Despite this contact, Canada has not been allowed to fly supplies and personnel to the areas hit by Katrina. So, everything here is grounded. Prime Minister Paul Martin is reportedly trying to speak to President Bush tonight or tomorrow to ask him why the U.S. federal government will not allow aid from Canada into Louisiana and Mississippi. That said, the Canadian Red Cross is reportedly allowed into the area.

Canadian agencies are saying that foreign aid is probably not being permitted into Louisiana and Mississippi because of "mass confusion" at the U.S. federal level in the wake of the storm.

Quoting a blogger is always dicey. The second report gets more validity from a report today in the Canada Post that the DART team is still on the ground as of this afternoon. The Canadian Red Cross, however, has been allowed in.

Oh, and U.N. offered whatever help it might, but the U.S. politely declined "at this time."