Tips from Motley Fool UK. Better still, buy a modern diesel-engined car or a hybrid.

The current hysteria about the broken metatarsal of Wayne Rooney (see helpful illustration above) reminds one that world cup hysteria in the British media is running true to form. It goes like this:

The one thing missing from the time-honoured script is likely to be English football hooligans, who were once world champions at their sport, but are now apparently eclipsed by Polish thugs. Sigh. And to think that this country once had an Empire on which the sun never set.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Most American young people can’t find Iraq on a map, even though U.S. troops have been there for more than three years, according to a new geographic literacy study released on Tuesday.

Fewer than 4 in 10 Americans aged 18-24 in a survey could place Iraq on an unlabeled map of the Middle East, a study conducted for National Geographic found. Only about one-quarter of respondents could find Iran and Israel on the same map.

Sixty-nine percent of young people picked out China on a map of Asia, but only about half could find India and Japan and only 12 percent correctly located Afghanistan.

[Link] via Truthdig.

My oblique reference to the Grateful Dead spurred a flood of erudite emails from readers questioning the accuracy of linking the band with the song I fought the law but the law won. In fact the song has a very interesting history — see the excellent Wikepedia entry about it. It’s been recorded by numerous bands, including the Clash and Green Day. But my favourite rendition is the Grateful Dead’s, because they sing it as though they had indeed fought losing battles with law enforcement agencies, possibly in relation to narcotic substances. Apple cheekily used the Green Day version in their SuperBowl ad for iTunes.

… has died, at the ripe old age of 97.

He was the person who first awakened my interest in economics. I read The Affluent Society as a teenager and drew from it the idea that economics might actually be an interesting and relevant subject. (Later acquaintanceship with professional economists cured me of that illusion.) He had a wonderful, elegant, laconic style — he wrote the way Macaulay would have written if he had been tall (JKG was 6’8″ and drew an innate sense of superiority from the fact that he always found himself looking down on people — even the President of the US whom he served as Ambassador to India.) My guess is that most professional economists loathed him. I met him once — when he was a Visiting Professor in Cambridge and a Fellow of Trinity. I never go to Ireland without thinking of his phrase “private affluence, public squalor”. Mixed obits in the NYT, the Guardian and The Times.

From an AP report carried on Truthdig…

The Palm Beach County, Florida, sheriff’s Office says Rush Limbaugh has been arrested on prescription fraud charges.

Limbaugh turned himself into authorities on a warrant issued by the state attorney’s office, said agency spokesperson Teri Barbera.

The conservative radio commentator came into the jail about 4 p.m with his attorney, Roy Black, and was released an hour later on $3,000 bail.

The warrant was for fraud to conceal information to obtain prescription. Barbera said.

Leopards don’t change their spots. Limbaugh was investigated in 2003 for a similar offence.