Great Chart: State of the Economy

As Seth said "This chart kicks ass"



The greatness is that it shows not just the numbers but the typical range and historical highs and lows to provide context.

An Open Letter to the President

Mark Thoma expanded on a post, An Open Letter to the President. It's one that John Maynard Keynes wrote FDR and it's very relevant today.

Russia Moves Tactical Nukes Closer to NATO. Gulp.

Spencer Ackerman wrote the most interesting thing I've seen about the START treaty ratification process, Russia Moves Tactical Nukes Closer to NATO. Gulp.

Vitamin D

Nice infographic on Vitamin D.

Two Headlines Say It All

These were next to each other in Google News for me:



Ezra Klein has the long version, Republicans give their definition of bipartisanship.

Anderson Cooper Humiliates a Texas Birther

"Anderson Cooper goes head-to-head with Texas State Rep Leo Berman, who has expressed doubt in President Obama's birthplace." This is quite entertaining and I wish the press did more of this.

Q&A with TSA Chairman John Pistole

Wil Shipley has an amusing fake Q&A with TSA Chairman John Pistole. This "question" sums it up pretty nicely:

"Which brings me to this question: If you hired a security guard to watch your house, and 10 years later your neighbors said, ‘Hey, several times now dudes have tried to steal your shit, but we came over and stopped them each time after your security guy let them through,’ would you continue to employ him? Especially if every time you tried to enter your house, he grabbed your nuts and took naked pictures of your wife?"

The Future of Social Security in One Graph

Ezra Klein wrote The future of Social Security in one graph "This comes from the Strengthen Social Security Campaign, and it lists the impact of all of the various deficit-reduction plans on a medium-income Social Security beneficiary (click for a larger version):"

A Waste of Money and Time

Bruce Schneier participated in article debate on body scanners and wrote they'reA Waste of Money and Time "Exactly two things have made airplane travel safer since 9/11: reinforcing the cockpit door, and convincing passengers they need to fight back. Everything else has been a waste of money. Add screening of checked bags and airport workers and we’re done. Take all the rest of the money and spend it on investigation and intelligence."

Foreign Policy wrote Death by a Thousand Cuts. It begins by quoting an article from Inspire, "Two Nokia phones, $150 each, two HP printers, $300 each, plus shipping, transportation and other miscellaneous expenses add up to a total bill of $4,200. That is all what Operation Hemorrhage cost us… On the other hand this supposedly 'foiled plot', as some of our enemies would like to call [it], will without a doubt cost America and other Western countries billions of dollars in new security measures."

Bed Bug Registry

No I don't have any but you might want to know abou this, Bed Bug Registry. Then again, you might not. I found it via this article saying they've arrived in the Boston area.

The World is His ... Kickstand?

Danny MacAskill - "Way Back Home"

Cassini Finds Ethereal Atmosphere at Rhea

Cassini Finds Ethereal Atmosphere at Rhea "NASA's Cassini spacecraft has detected a very tenuous atmosphere known as an exosphere, infused with oxygen and carbon dioxide around Saturn's icy moon Rhea. This is the first time a spacecraft has directly captured molecules of an oxygen atmosphere – albeit a very thin one -- at a world other than Earth."

Thinking Like an Octopus

Thinking like an octopus "Octopuses have large nervous systems, centered around relatively large brains. But more than half of their 500 million neurons are found in the arms themselves, Godfrey-Smith said. This raises the question of whether the arms have something like minds of their own. Though the question is controversial, there is some observational evidence indicating that it could be so, he said. When an octopus is in an unfamiliar tank with food in the middle, some arms seem to crowd into the corner seeking safety while others seem to pull the animal toward the food, Godfrey-Smith explained, as if the creature is literally of two minds about the situation."

Everything You Wanted to Know about the TSA Backlash

Next Wednesday will be the biggest travel day of the year. I'm not going anywhere. It's also National Opt-Out Day in protest of the new TSA procedures. I'm not sure how many will, but if a lot do, it will only make things even slower. Anyway, here's a collection of TSA articles I've seen in the last week or so.

This year's "Don't tase me bro" will probably be "You touch my junk and I'm going to have you arrested." It came from John Tyner who refused the backscatter screening and didn't want to be groped. It become well known because he recorded the encounter and blogged it, TSA encounter at SAN.

The TSA's response from its blog, Opting-out of Advanced Imaging Technology and the Pat-down Doesn’t Fly "AIT is optional for everybody. However, if you decide to opt-out of AIT screening, you must undergo alternative screening, which will include a pat-down. As I’ve said before, there is nothing punitive about it- it just makes good security sense. Obviously a passenger can’t completely opt out of all screening if they opt out of AIT. That would not make good security sense. AIT is deployed to help us find non-metallic threats, so if you’re selected for AIT and choose to opt-out, we still need to check you for non-metallic threats. That’s why a pat-down is required. If you refuse both, you can’t fly. It is important that all screening procedures are completed.  This ensures that terrorists do not have an opportunity to probe TSA’s procedures by electing not to fly just as TSA’s screening procedures are on the verge of detecting that the passenger is a terrorist. Also, it’s important to remember that TSA screens nearly 2 million passengers daily and that very few passengers are required to receive a pat-down."

Erin claims her pat down was sexual assault and her lawyer agrees. "I stood there, an American citizen, a mom traveling with a baby with special needs formula, sexually assaulted by a government official. I began shaking and felt completely violated, abused and assaulted by the TSA agent. I shook for several hours, and woke up the next day shaking. Here is why I was sexually assaulted. She never told me the new body search policy. She never told me that she was going to touch my private parts. She never told me when or where she was going to touch me. She did not inform me that a private screening was available. She did not inform me of my rights that were a part of these new enhanced patdown procedures. "

These stories don't make the TSA look good either, Cancer surviving flight attendant forced to remove prosthetic breast during pat-down and TSA confiscates heavily-armed soldiers' nail-clippers.

One Hundred Naked Citizens: One Hundred Leaked Body Scans "At the heart of the controversy over "body scanners" is a promise: The images of our naked bodies will never be public. U.S. Marshals in a Florida Federal courthouse saved 35,000 images on their scanner. These are those images." The TSA points out, this is the US Marshal Service not the TSA.

James Fallows has written a lot about this and covers a lot of points in Airport Security Reports: 'Where Are the Airlines?'. His Dear Sen. Klobuchar: Let's Rethink the TSA is also good. He keeps trying to stop himself but he finds more good stuff like this, Pigs Fly. Also, I Agree with Charles Krauthammer.

The TSA has some Myths & Facts about Pat-downs and AITs.

Bruce Scheiner also has a collection on the TSA Backscatter X-ray Backlash

Dave Barry wrote about his blurred groin and the ACLU followed up.

You can get a luggage tag with the fourth amendment on it.

A Departing Republican Warns About Climate Change

A Departing Republican Warns About Climate Change "An outgoing Republican congressman used a House science and environment subcommittee hearing this week as an opportunity to chide his party for its growing skepticism about the threat of global warming and to warn of missed economic opportunities in clean energy development if climate change is ignored."

Sigh.

National Geographic's Photography Contest 2010

This might be my favorite Big Picture ever. National Geographic's Photography Contest 2010 "National Geographic is once again holding their annual Photo Contest, with the deadline for submissions coming up on November 30th. For the past eight weeks, they have been gathering and presenting galleries of submissions, encouraging readers to rate them as well. National Geographic was again kind enough to let me choose some of their entries from 2010 for display here on The Big Picture. Collected below are 47 images from the three categories of People, Places and Nature. Captions were written by the individual photographers. (47 photos total)"

PBS Edits Tina Fey Joke About Sarah Palin

Nice job PBS... PBS edits Tina Fey joke about Sarah Palin.

Fey was presented with the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor. Fey spoke for 12 minutes and 40 seconds of the hour and half broadcast and this, just perchance, is the 30 seconds they cut out...

While accepting the prestigious comedy award, Fey said, "And, you know, politics aside, the success of Sarah Palin and women like her is good for all women -- except, of course, those who will end up, you know, like, paying for their own rape kit 'n' stuff. But for everybody else, it's a win-win. Unless you're a gay woman who wants to marry your partner of 20 years -- whatever. But for most women, the success of conservative women is good for all of us. Unless you believe in evolution. You know what? Actually, I take it back. The whole thing's a disaster."

An Airline Terroism Scenario...

Ask the Pilot wrote in Salon:

"Here's a scenario:

Middle Eastern terrorists hijack a U.S. jetliner bound for Italy. A two-week drama ensues in which the plane's occupants are split into groups and held hostage in secret locations in Lebanon and Syria.

While this drama is unfolding, another group of terrorists detonates a bomb in the luggage hold of a 747 over the North Atlantic, killing more than 300 people.

Not long afterward, terrorists kill 19 people and wound more than a hundred others in coordinated attacks at European airport ticket counters.

A few months later, a U.S. airliner is bombed over Greece, killing four passengers.

Five months after that, another U.S. airliner is stormed by heavily armed terrorists at the airport in Karachi, Pakistan, killing at least 20 people and wounding 150 more.

Things are quiet for a while, until two years later when a 747 bound for New York is blown up over Europe killing 270 passengers and crew.

Nine months from then, a French airliner en route to Paris is bombed over Africa, killing 170 people from 17 countries.

That's a pretty macabre fantasy, no? A worst-case war-game scenario for the CIA? A script for the End Times? Except, of course, that everything above actually happened, in a four-year span between 1985 and 1989. The culprits were the al-Qaidas of their time: groups like the Abu Nidal Organization and the Arab Revolutionary Cells, and even the government of Libya."

The whole article is good but here's a main point:

"In the 1980s we did not overreact. We did not stage ill-fated invasions of distant countries. People did not cease traveling and the airline industry did not fall into chaos. We were lazy in enacting better security, perhaps, but as a country our psychological reaction, much to our credit, was calm, measured and not yet self-defeating."

Unusual Planetary Nebula

If you're curious what that is, read this: Warm dusty rings glow around a weird binary star.

The Terrorists are Winning

Security Theater: The Ripples Spread to Japan "Short version: items weighing more than 1 pound can no longer be shipped to the U.S. by any means involving flight."

Where Did Our Debt Come From?

James Fallows wrote Where Did Our Debt Come From? with this great table



"To be clear: the middle column is how much overall federal debt grew, or shrank, as a share of gross domestic product during each administration, and the right-hand chart is the average annual rate of growth or reduction during that administration."

Ezra Klein followed up

And he points out "Basically, [big] deficits happen when recessions happen." The people whining about the deficit now don't seem to admit that the reason it's so large is that the economy has shrunk so tax revenues are down. Now we could cut spending to bring it in line, but during a recession is when you want the government to spend money to help the economy get out of recession sooner. The part Republicans since Reagan have forgotten is to pay down the debt during the good times.

Debunking David Brooks

David Brooks wrote The Two Cultures which is mostly about bashing liberal economists.

"The economic approach embraced by the most prominent liberals over the past few years is mostly mechanical. The economy is treated like a big machine; the people in it like rational, utility maximizing cogs. The performance of the economic machine can be predicted with quantitative macroeconomic models."

Paul Krugman protests on several grounds in A Mechanical Manifesto.

Karl Smith comments in Brooks on Economics in part on Brook's ending: "It all makes one doubt the wizardry of the economic surgeons and appreciate the old wisdom of common sense: simple regulations, low debt, high savings, hard work, few distortions. You don’t have to be a genius to come up with an economic policy like that."

Smith makes an interesting point, "Capitalism is sometimes described as the Art of Going into Debt. Usury laws once prevented the loaning of money for interest. This implied that all investment had to be financed with high personal savings. The breakdown of these laws and, with it the taking on of enormous debts, was instrumental in the formation of our entire economic system. Similarly, no one doubts the hard work of the Amish. I think few would want their economy. Again, capital – and the ability to borrow it and trade it – not labor is the key to capitalism."

GOP Legislator Frets Over 28 Days Without Insurance

Ezra Klein writes GOP legislator frets over 28 days without insurance -- but what about 30 million he'd leave uninsured? "It's worth dwelling for a moment on the reaction of Rep. Andy Harris, an incoming legislator who staunchly opposes the new health-care law and ran promising its repeal, to news that he'd had to wait a month for his government-funded health-care benefits to kick in."

"The point [is] Harris's fear at being uninsured. But whatever else you think of the health-care law, it really does keep people from being uninsured."

17 Healthy Thanksgiving Sides

17 Healthy Thanksgiving Sides "Wow everyone at Thanksgiving dinner by bringing a healthy, flavorful side dish or dessert to share with friends or family. These nutrient-rich salads, side dishes, and desserts are twists on the rich, heavy choices traditionally offered. High-impact flavors like fresh herbs, prosciutto, ginger and seasonal fruit eliminate the need for gobs of butter, cream, and salt. With these healthy recipes you can eat well and enjoy all of the wonderful flavors of Thanksgiving."

Kent Conrad on Deficit Plans

Ezra Klein wrote Kent Conrad: 'That makes so much sense that it’s unlikely to happen' "Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) is chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, a member of the deficit commission and one of the party's leading voices on tax reform. Recently, he proposed a plan tying an extension of the Bush tax cuts to comprehensive tax reform. Earlier today, he walked me through the details of his proposal, A lightly edited transcript of our conversation follows."