Metals are the latest trend in thievery -- not gold or silver, but copper and lead. California farmers are dealing with irrigation systems stripped of their wires; Johannesburg is facing power outages due to stolen cables; London churches are losing their roofs; and someone hacked off the arms of a statue of Pelé in Brazil. If David Copperfield could really make off with the Statue of Liberty, he could net a quarter of a million for its 62,000 pounds of copper. Apparently the construction boom in China and UAE has caused a spike in the prices of raw materials.

It made me wonder if the famous Simon-Ehrlich wager would have turned out differently with a time scale other than 1980 to 1990. An analysis from last year suggests that if the bet had extended 25 years, ending in 2005, Ehrlich would still have been out a bundle. Even a fifty-year bet starting in 1955 would have been a win for Simon.