Google ditches underwriters, makes their IPO available via auction. It's about time. The shenanigans that underwriters pull, both in terms of their margin and in terms of their allocation of initial shares to privileged clients, are long overdue for the dustbin. If we can make all IPOs public auctions, and make all secondary market transactions available to everyone in realtime, and convert all securities - especially derivatives like options over to decimal trading, we could look forward to more efficient and democratic primary and secondary markets.

Worldwide terrorist attacks down in 2003. Maybe Bush's "bring 'em on" strategy is succeeding in drawing a good fraction of the terrorist types into the Iraq killing-zone. One possible downside, though, is that concentrating them and giving them "on-the-job-training" might amount to a sort of terrorist college, sharpening the capabilities of the survivors while culling the inept. I'm not sure I want a bunch of experienced and competent terrorists running around.

On the other hand, it may be that terrorists had been used to getting away with a random bombing here and there, but have decided that their lifestyle is now more risky. And, judging from the fates of Saddam and much of Al Queda, terrorists might now be thinking their efforts really don't accomplish what they wanted. We can only hope.

USAPhotoMaps. This has got to be the coolest 282 kilobyte download I've ever seen. (When was the last time you even saw a useful, let alone extremely cool, download measured in kilobytes?)

ROTFL.

A quarter-century behind bars. All because the man wouldn't agree to being guilty of drug trafficking when he used undated prescriptions to obtain painkillers for his back. This is clearly a case of the "cure" being worse than the disease. The war on drugs is futile and far more destructive than the drugs themselves. Yeah, drug addiction can be very damaging to some people. But there are quite a few recreational users, even of strongly addictive substances such as heroin, who do not develop addiction. And there are quite a few addicts who, as long as their supply is steady, are otherwise functional in society. I think we should treat substance use as a licensable activity, like driving or hunting. This licensing should be extended to drugs that are currently legal, such as tobacco and alcohol. Potential users should demonstrate knowledge of their desired substance and of the deleterious effects it is known to have. If a user violates any of the terms of their license, it is punished in the same way as driving infractions, ultimately resulting in fines, revocation of the license and/or imprisonment, depending on the severity or frequency of the infraction.

UN officers engage each other in firefight. There's some multilateral cooperation for you. And, speaking of multilateral cooperation, the UN, the French and the Russians were all on Saddam's gravy train. Which, of course, speaks volumes about these respective countries' attitudes toward the Iraq invasion and toward their opposition of an official investigation of the corrupt Food for Oil program that the UN administered right before the war.

Spain PM orders Iraq troops home. Well, that's just swell. Actions speak louder than words, and his actions say "You want foreign troops out of Iraq? You want control over Western governments? Just kill a few hundred civilians at the right moment, and you can make the West dance to your tune". Regrettable. Not quite as sad as the basket of weasels that France embodies, but still pretty pathetic.

Mom sues Coors over son's death in accident. Let's see, the basis for damage in this suit is that Coors aired commercials that are "glorifying a culture of youth, sex and glamour while hiding the dangers of alcohol abuse and addiction". And somehow, her son, being the brainless puppet he was, translated that implicit message into a command to become incoherently drunk, drive somebody else's car without a license, and slam that car into a light pole at 90 mph. Hmmm. Yep, that's a perfect personification of the culture that Coors was trying to associate its products with, so I'm sure they're as culpable as heck in this matter. She'll make out like a bandit. And since the courts will prove that Coors was the cause of her son's death, she won't have to suffer any pangs of conscience over what she might have done differently to raise a more thoughtful and responsible son.

Emergencies. Just in case the mainstream news ever lulls you into complacency about the current state of humanity, Reuters Foundation features a page of current emergencies worldwide, most of which never rate much attention by major media.