The Seattle P-I — operating one floor above Newsvine Global Headquarters — just evacuated because of an Anthrax threat. Helicopters, cops, fire, and medics are all circling the building right now. All Viners safe and accounted for.

Filed under "recursion".

NEWS & INFORMATION Newsvine.com
Today's Top Stories See what everybody is talking about right now, and add your two cents. That's the basic idea behind Newsvine.com, a Web 2.0 cocktail that mixes elements of Digg (social news), Netvibes (customization) and NowPublic (user-generated news). The most prominently placed articles are the ones voted most important by users. You can plant your own "seeds" on the vine, i.e. links to stories from elsewhere on the Web, along with your comments, to start a discussion. You can also change the page layout by adding RSS feeds and moving the boxes around. Most articles come from familiar sources (Associated Press, The New York Times, BBC) but Newsvine also invites members to write their own columns and create their own Newsvine groups to discuss areas of common interest. Recently the site added local news and weather, and a "News in Pictures" slideshow from the AP.

Good stuff here. Mika Brzezinski chooses not to read her lead story about Paris Hilton on the air in protest.

For a long time I have felt the price of gasoline in the United States was way too low. Pretty much all economists believe this. Greg Mankiw blogged back in October about the many reasons why we should raise gas taxes.

The reason we need high gas taxes is that there are all sorts of costs associated with my driving that I don't pay — someone else pays them. This is what economists call a "negative externality." Because I don't pay the full costs of my driving, I drive too much. Ideally, the government could correct this problem through a gas tax that aligns my own private incentive to drive with the social costs of driving.

Good ruling here in my opinion. Lead officer on a 100mph car chase and you should pretty much lose all rights to damages which occur to you during that chase. I can't even believe it got this far.

Interesting article about whether or not outdoor enthusiasts are financially responsible for their own rescue costs when something bad happens. I say yes... and there should be insurance for such a thing.

A suspicious package alert that shut down downtown Boston Wednesday afteroon was actually part of an elaborate marketing campaign by the Cartoon Network to spark interest in their "Aqua Teen Hunger Force" show.

CNN's Jeff Greenfield examines Judith Miller's actions more closely and finds she may actually be at fault.