You read it here first

I was quite chuffed to see that I commented on the (fairly obvious) fact that the iPhone isn't really "widescreen" within minutes of seeing it while most of the pro and not so pro web gadget commentators took more than a week to figure that out.

I'm also wondering if I should sue the New York Times for plagiarism - David Leonhardt's very good article "The Cost Of War" is remarkably similar to my "The Economics of War". OK to be fair he actually did a professional job on it and well, he can actually write but I could argue that:

• He stole my title. Or his sub editor did, whatever.
• He stole my idea of demonstrating how big a number $1trillion is by showing that you could eradicate entire diseases if you used it for that (rather than fighting a war)
• OK so that's it.
  

Alright then he didn't really steal my ideas and I got the idea from Terry Jones' Grauniad article in the first place (although I did acknowledge that). In any case Leonhardt's article is excellent and it is really good to see the US MSM picking up on this theme - the criminal waste of half a trillion to a trillion dollars should be judged by the opportunity cost of that waste.