Link Banana

Fifty things — some thoroughly reasonable, some a tad odd — that are being blamed on the high price of oil. My personal favorites:

22. Bacon and ham could get more expensive. (WSJ)
28. Demand for wine is weakening. (Portland Business Journal)
32. One Virginia library mulls bringing back the bookmobile. (Daily Times, Maryland)

(via kottke)

Jack Shafer dares thinking the unthinkable: Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal may actually be getting better.

Apparently dogs, like people, are made peaceful by oppulence:

Adaptations by individual dogs have added up to a dramatic shift in canine culture. Begging is a submissive activity, so today there are fewer all-out interpack wars, which sometimes used to last for months, according to Mr. Poyarkov. Within packs there are more stable social hierarchies that allow the whole group to prosper.

(via kottke.org, where Cliff Kuang is making me feel like a chump)

Hannah Karp takes an interesting if frivolous romp through the business practices needed for good management of a professional athlete’s entourage.

The economics vary widely. Veteran sports attorney Fallasha Erwin says he’s seen athletes give their friends lump-sum payments of as much as $100,000. But as athletes discover those types of payments can’t easily be written off their taxes, more are putting their qualified friends on professional payrolls. Salaried entourage members doing personal-assistant work typically earn $30,000 to $50,000 a year, plus a percentage of any deals they put together. Indiana Pacers forward Danny Granger, 24, has an economical one-man team — his former college roommate — who pays his own rent and will make $40,000 this year.

(via brijit)

The detail I found most interesting among Gabriel Kahn’s annoyingly indignant profile of Italy’s broken justice system was this:

The sorry state of Italy’s prison infrastructure plays a role, too. Prosecutors have charged Salvatore Ferranti for being a henchman of one of Sicily’s fiercest crime families. But last month he was released from the slammer and given house arrest. The reason: He was too fat. The prison system didn’t have beds big enough to accommodate his 462-pound frame.

(via brijit)

Jack Shafer tears into a Wall Street Journal columnist. It’s not that interesting, but I did very much enjoyed the first paragraph:

Desperate newspaper columnists can always grind out a quick piece by purchasing a large burlap bag and stuffing “The Press” and several pounds of broken glass inside it. Drag to a steep, long staircase, give it a shove, and the column almost writes itself.

Karl Rove’s Wall Street Journal editorial doesn’t exactly have novel analysis for those following the elections closely, but for anyone not doing so (99% of America) it’s a useful rundown of what’s happened.

- Technology allows a candidate to raise money quickly and inexpensively. The Internet dramatically shortens the gap between political success and raising money. Under the old regime, members of the finance committee would start calling a few days after a successful debate and FedEx’ing the checks. Mail pieces might hit 10 days later. Fundraising required events with weeks of advance notice. Today, if you do well in a debate on Tuesday night you can begin raising large sums of money Wednesday morning. Effective fundraising can be a mouse-click away.

That point was clarified this morning by Barack Obama’s announcement of having raised 32 million in January alone.