THERE IS NOW blog.hotornot.com. You can see all sorts of crummy blogs this way, but you should click on the link to give us a good rating, please.

"The music you hear in automobile commercials is better than most of the music you can hear on the radio," says an advertiser in a New York Times piece, and he's right. Volkswagen, who has probably sold me more CDs than any radio station has in the last five years (with the exception of KCRW), even has a music web site, www.radiovw.com.

HAVE THE PALESTINIANS decided to join the ring of civilized peoples? This New York Times analysis is cautiously optimistic.

FASCINATING PIECE on an economist's paper demonstrating that teams don't go for it often enough on fourth down. Turns out that the combined expectation of a touchdown (or, in the worst-case scenario, poor field position for the other team), it's economically rational to go for it on fourth-and-goal from the five, but most teams will kick the field goal as close in as the two-yard line.

It's a good example of the principal-agent problem. A football coach trying to do the best job for his team would accept the unconventional strategy, but the personal risks of losing while bucking the conventional wisdom (compared to losing while doing things by the book) outweigh the additional gains from the increased probability of winning. (via McErlain)

FOR THE FIRST TIME ever, the threat level has been raised to orange. The stock market reacted not a jot, which shows what a joke the threat-level assessment color scale is.

UPDATE: Glenn Reynolds suggests that the market may just have already anticipated an increased anniversary risk of terrorism. But that's just saying the same thing I'm saying: the threat-level assessment color scale does not convey any information. Even when the market anticipates that the Federal Reserve is going to cut rates, it reacts when the Federal Reserve actually cuts the rates. The Heimat Security has cried wolf so often that even an orange alert doesn't scare the market.

The true test of Glenn's hypothesis is whether the market soars by 400 points on Thursday if nothing happens between now and tomorrow.

FOR CHRIS KAHRL: a website of the 53rd Street Harold's Chicken Shack.

GOOD PIECE BY Bernard Lewis in today's Post on the "Why do they hate us?" question.

SPEAKING ABOUT DCJ'S tax reporting, how's about before the Democrats raise my taxes in 2003, they instead make sure that the IRS bothers to prosecute a couple of dozen buffoons who aren't paying tax and running websites bragging about their perfidy?

DAVID CAY JOHNSTON IS perhaps the best news reporter on the tax beat in America. He uncovers another tax avoidance scheme.

MODERN MEDICAL CARE IN Thailand is now available in supply that outstrips the demand, presumably because, though cheaper than comparable Western services, the cost is out of reach to many Thais. Thus: medical tourist vacations. Alas, no discussion of the public policy reasons behind the disparity in price (though there is the interesting sociological observation that many Middle Easterners have switched from American doctors to Thai doctors). I presume that medical malpractice remedies are less expensive to doctors in Thailand, which no doubt reduces the price to those who are not malpractice victims, and I have to wonder whether modern Thai hospitals have cost-shifted medical care where they provide free care for the indigent. Those subsidies raise the prices quite a bit in America: if you're able to pay, you're paying for both yourself and for the patients without insurance.

ANOTHER PERSON WHO was injured in the September 11 attacks, still in the hospital.

It occurs to me that I haven't seen any definitive stories on the bystander victims of the WTC attacks -- there were people who were hit by debris from the airplanes after they smashed through the buildings, at least a couple of deaths from people getting hit by jumpers, and a number of people outside the buildings killed by their collapse.

LOUISE KURTZ, a victim of the September 11 attack on the Pentagon who lost her fingers and her ears and has undergone 41 surgeries for her burn wounds fights to recover.

HOWARD BASHMAN has already linked to this fascinating compendium of talks from the recent Federalist Society convention, but neglected to mention that prominent blogger Professor Volokh can be found on pages 21 and 22 as an audience participant and pages 169-171 as a speaker.

I added it up and realized I've met fourteen of the speakers. That and three bucks will get me a cup of coffee at Starbuck's. I mention this for no particular reason other than that name-dropping is on my mind. A woman I dated in Los Angeles years ago (a friend of a friend of Eugene Volokh, as it turns out, but every professional in Los Angeles my age is either a friend or a friend of a friend of Eugene Volokh's) was very big on the name-dropping: which minor movie star she used to date, which network executive and which author she lost romantic battles with for the affection of other men, which medium movie star's failed sitcom she had overseen, which major movie star she inadvertently insulted to his face. It served only to demonstrate her own insecurities. I'm seeing the pattern again with someone else I recently met: she has an impressive resume and body of work on her own, but has been dropping names left and right. I'm never quite sure whether someone doing this is seeking validation or return braggadocio. ("Well, darling, my secret identity is Max Power. Jesse Jackson accidentally trampled me in New Hampshire and Alec Baldwin complimented my tie when we met outside an oxygen bar. And did I mention I had a girlfriend who dated a movie star?")

FATHER THREATENS TO sue Jehovah's Witnesses over daughter's death. They'd be protected by the First Amendment in this country, but I don't know what the law is in Canada.

AOL ANNOUNCES THAT IT will miss estimates, and it occurs to me that in the new era of "safe" accounting, the analysts' predictions haven't quite caught up, and we'll see a lot of missed estimates. The economics haven't changed, but things that used to get counted as profits don't get counted as profits any more, and analysts' expectations haven't yet adjusted to the change.

ERIC'S LINK TO THE "Comedian" trailer reminds me that there once was a day where movie trailers for comedies had nothing to do with the actual movie, but was an opportunity for an entirely different bit of comedy. The "South Park" movie did this, too. (Same announcer as for "Comedians"!) The Toys trailer was funnier than the movie, but I can't find it on the web.

THE ALBUQUERQUE TRIPLE-A baseball team, freshly moved from Calgary, will call itself the "Isotopes", after the Simpsons episode where the Springfield team almost moves to Albuquerque.