Gas prices are high throughout the country, but how hard they hit individual families depends on income levels, which vary widely.

The Varying Impact of Gas Prices

A flame-throwing epidemiologist talks about sex, drugs, and the mistakes (dismal), ideologies (vicious), and hopes (realistic) of international AIDS prevention.

When people ask Elizabeth Pisani what she does for a living, she says, "sex and drugs." As an epidemiologist researching AIDS, she's been involved with international efforts to halt the disease for fourteen years. With swashbuckling wit and fierce honesty, she dishes on herself and her colleagues as they try to prod reluctant governments to fund HIV prevention for the people who need it most—drug injectors, gay men, sex workers, and johns.

Pisani chats with flamboyant Indonesian transsexuals about their boob jobs and watches Chinese streetwalkers turn away clients because their SUVs aren't nice enough. With verve and clarity, she shows the general reader how her profession really works; how easy it is to draw wrong conclusions from "objective" data; and, shockingly, how much money is spent so very badly. "Exhibit A": the 45 billion taxpayer dollars the Bush administration is committing to international AIDS programs.

The Wisdom of Whores: Bureaucrats, Brothels, and the Business of AIDS

Online gallery of modern and vintage psychiatric drug advertising.

The Nearly Genuine and Truly Marvelous Psychoneuropharmacological Mental Medicine Show

It won’t all happen immediately. But in the long run, we are all the Grateful Dead.

Bits, Bands and Books

When Nassim Nicholas Taleb said the world’s economy was heading for disaster, he was scorned. Now traders, economists, even NASA, are clamouring to hear him speak.

The prophet of boom and doom

The more painful that things become at the pump, the more our political and business leaders will finally realize that they need to take steps, and soon, to wean us from our self-defeating oil jones.

I'm not just talking about promoting conservation and offering incentives for people to buy hybrids and stuff like that. I'm talking about some radical thinking that could finally ease the epic commutes that are wasting so much time and fuel.

Work-at-home programs may be shortest route to fuel relief

George Soros is in the house (the Senate, actually). Word is he'll be talking about The Next Bubble.

The hearing will examine energy market manipulation and federal enforcement regimes. The hearing will also consider the current state of the oil and gas markets and their impact on consumers, as well as solicit testimony and discussion as to the key factors the Federal Trade Commission should incorporate into its upcoming rulemaking on its new responsibility to prevent manipulation in the wholesale oil and petroleum distillate markets.

Energy Market Manipulation and Federal Enforcement Regimes

If Google were the United States government, the data that streams onto Nicholas Fox’s laptop every day would be classified as top secret.

Mr. Fox is among a small group of Google employees who keep a watchful eye on the vital signs of one of the most successful and profitable businesses on the Internet. The number of searches and clicks, the rate at which users click on ads, the revenue this generates — everything is tracked hour by hour, compared with the data from a week earlier and charted.

“You can see very, very quickly if anything is amiss,” said Mr. Fox, director of business product management at Google.

Mr. Fox and his “ads quality” team can also quickly see whether something is working particularly well. His group’s mission, to constantly fine-tune Google’s ad delivery system, has one overriding objective: show users only the ads they are most likely to be interested in and click on.

The Human Hands Behind the Google Money Machine

It’s the rare C.E.O., of course, who’s comfortable presiding over a shrinking empire, and running a public company creates a bias toward action, if only as a way of convincing investors that you recognize your problems and are dealing with them. But history suggests that, when it comes to mergers, the best response is often to just say no. In effect, deals like the CNET acquisition are a bit like an aging outfielder taking steroids in order to stave off the boobirds. The difference is that steroids usually work.

All Together Now?

In an echo of dotcom days, DVD-by-mail leader invents a metric to appease worried shareholders. Will Microsoft save the company in the end?

Netflix Gambles on Digital Delivery