When a Nobel Prize Isn’t Enough

Peter Diamond wrote in the NY Times yesterday, When a Nobel Prize Isn’t Enough .

"Last October, I won the Nobel Prize in economics for my work on unemployment and the labor market. But I am unqualified to serve on the board of the Federal Reserve — at least according to the Republican senators who have blocked my nomination. How can this be?...In April 2010, President Obama nominated me to be one of the seven governors of the Fed. He renominated me in September, and again in January, after Senate Republicans blocked a floor vote on my confirmation. When the Senate Banking Committee took up my nomination in July and again in November,  three Republican senators voted for me each time. But the third time around, the Republicans on the committee voted in lockstep against my appointment, making it extremely unlikely that the opposition to a full Senate vote can be overcome. It is time for me to withdraw, as I plan to inform the White House."

"But we should all worry about how distorted the confirmation process has become, and how little understanding of monetary policy there is among some of those responsible for its Congressional oversight. We need to preserve the independence of the Fed from efforts to politicize monetary policy and to limit the Fed’s ability to regulate financial firms."

As if I haven't been for years now, I'm really getting sick of the Republicans playing games with our economy. Eric Cantor (R-VA) apparently just realized, OK, Maybe The Debt Ceiling Deadline Is For Real.

Mars Science Laboratory: Send Your Name to Mars

Send Your Name to Mars "Last chance to Send Your Name to Mars! Closes June 13, 2011. Fill in your information below and your name will be included with others on a microchip on the Mars Science Laboratory rover heading to Mars in 2011!"

ISS and Endeavour Images From the Ground!

Thierry Legault took more astounding images of if the - International Space Station and Endeavour - STS-134 - Twilight passages and solar transits. Seriously, go there and look. These were taken from the ground!

Sarah Palin Doubles Down

"You know what, I didn't mess up about Paul Revere. Here's what Paul Revere did. He warned the Americans that the British were coming, the British were coming and they were gonna try to take our arms. So we gotta make sure that we were protecting ourselves and um um shoring up all of our ammunitions and our firearms so that they couldn't take 'em. But remember that the British had already been there, many soldiers, for seven years in that area. And part of Paul Revere's ride and it wasn't just one ride, he was a courier, he was messenger. Part of his ride was to warn the British that were already there. That, hey, you're not going to succeed. You're not going to take American arms. You are not going to beat our own well-armed persons, individual, private militia that we have. He did warn the British. And in a shout out gotcha type of question that was asked of me I answered candidly and I know my American history."

Right, a question about Paul Revere at the Old North Church is a gotcha question. Here's wikipedia on the subject.

Sarah Palin: Paul Revere Warned The British

As Ben Smith said, "Palin makes Bachmann look like Longfellow:"



"He who warned, uh, the the British that they weren't going to be taking away our arms uh by ringing those bells and um making sure as he's riding his horse through town to send those warning shots and bells that we were going to be secure and we were going to be free and we were going to be armed."

And this is apparently after she just went to his house and learned about him. It boggles my mind that anyone thinks this woman is qualified to be president.

Jobs

So the jobs report came out and again it sucks. Steve Benen updated what was known as the bikini chart...



Kevin Drum updated it to zeroed on 150,000 jobs a month which is what we need to keep up with population growth. "As you can see, the last eight months, when the economy has supposedly been starting to recover, has actually been virtually flat. Relative to population growth, we've been generating no new jobs at all."



Matthew Yglesia adds two graphs on recent public vs private sector job growth.



So in spite of the Republican calls that Obama had grown the federal government and that's somehow stealing workers from the private sector, it's just not true. In fact, "The federal government should have stepped in when the recession hit with generous bailouts to states and municipalities to help stabilize their budgets. Instead, an austerity-minded congress has been letting state governments sink. Then a new crop of budget cutting governors came to office determined to slash spending while trying to avoid responsibility for unpopular cuts. The result was to push a lot of budget pressure downward onto local government, where we’re seeing huge cutbacks even thought he population continues to grow."

What an Astronaut's Camera Sees

Spend 7 minutes and watch this, you won't be disappointed. I don't know how people in space get any work done.

FactChecking Palin and Romney

Palin Whoppers on Debt, Oil Imports. "Sarah Palin made two wildly inaccurate claims on the debt accumulated under President Obama and oil imports. She wrongly said that the debt had grown more under Obama than "all those other presidents combined." She also was way off when she claimed that the U.S. is going to spend "$8 billion a day" on oil imports this year and next year to make up for declining oil production in the Gulf of Mexico. The actual amount is less than $20 million a day."

FactChecking Romney. "We are periodically taking a look at past claims from the 2012 presidential candidates, and today it's Mitt Romney. The former Massachusetts governor is set to announce in New Hampshire that he'll seek the Republican nomination for the second time."

Supreme Court: "willful blindness" to patent infringement not OK

Ars wrote Supreme Court: "willful blindness" to patent infringement not OK.

"An eight-member majority of the high court didn't buy this argument. Justice Alito appealed to the criminal law concept of willful blindness, which holds that defendants cannot escape liability by "deliberately shielding themselves" from relevant facts. The decision built on the 2005 Grokster decision, which held the file-sharing company liable based on evidence that it had deliberately induced its users to infringe copyrights. The concept of willful blindness has not traditionally been used in civil patent cases, but this week's decision changes that."

"It's worth noting how far removed this case was from the kind of software patent dispute we've covered extensively at Ars. In a sane patent system, the kind of direct copying at issue in this case would be the normal sort of dispute, and inadvertent infringement due to independent invention would be the exception. Yet few, if any, of the software patent cases we've covered involve actual copying. Indeed, in the software industry, patent law is usually unnecessary to protect against actual copying of code, because that copying is an infringement of copyright. So patent litigation tends to involve broad patents that numerous companies infringe by accident. Tuesday's Supreme Court ruling helps to limit the damage this type of litigation can do to the software industry."

The war in Libya growing more illegal by the day

Glenn Greenwald writes The war in Libya growing more illegal by the day.

"After making clear that they intended to contrive "some plausible theory" to justify this illegal war, the White House finally settled on the claim that the war in Libya -- despite featuring substantial U.S. military action with the goal of destroying a foreign army and removing that nation's leader -- is too small and limited to be a real "war" under the Constitution and the WPR. 

Even the White House seemed to recognize the absurdity of that excuse -- the WRP explicitly applies "in any case in which United States Armed Forces are introduced (1) into hostilities" -- and the President thus subsequently requested a Resolution from Congress approving the war.  That authorization, however, never came, and now it seems that Congress is closer to doing the opposite: approving a bipartisan bill opposing the war"

The 100 Greatest Movie Threats of All Time

The 100 Greatest Movie Threats of All Time has a list of the films. Glad to see In The Loop well represented. I think Joe Pesci has the most screen time (though Clint and Samuel might too).

Tornados and Lightening Oh My

Tornados hit central Massachusetts today. While it was interesting for a bit, thankfully all I got was a big lightening storm. Still, lightening can be impressive.



Here are some photos from Springfield. At least four people were killed.

Experts see no link between Mass. tornadoes and Midwest twisters -- or global warming.

"The tornadoes that struck central Massachusetts today are an unusual phenomenon for New England -- the product of warm, humid air and winds that created the perfect conditions to generate the spinning, funnel-shaped storm. While the state doesn't have a large number of tornadoes, a National Weather Service meteorologist said there are typically one or two a year."

Personally I think they hit because Sarah Palin arrived in MA. Palin's bus nearly crosses path with tornado.

Updatefrom the Herald: "Rescue crews continued their desperate search this morning for survivors of two killer tornadoes that swept through western and central Massachusetts late yesterday, leaving at least four people dead, some 200 injured and as many as 50,000 people without power."

Shoulds Versus Coulds

I'm liking Jared Berstein's new blog. He was on Obama's economic team and gives some insights to their positions. I have to admit I'm torn on his recent post Shoulds Versus Coulds. He makes it clear it agrees with Krugman and therefore is a Keynesian. But while he appreciates liberals suggesting what we should do, he thinks it's time to suggest what we could do, that is, what would actually pass.

"Let me be clear. I totally agree that we mustn’t let “political realism” shut down our thinking on the best way out of this mess. And while that kind of writing sometimes feels academic to me, if done well (as Paul does it), it can slowly but persistently set the stage for actually doing the right thing when the political landscape shifts. Shift it will, and at that time, Paul will be among those who built the “new” paradigm from which economic policy will flow (“” around ‘new’ because most of this is known since Keynes)."

I think he's selling the effect short. It's not just "when the political landscape shifts", it's the 'should' articles that will shift it. I don't think it will shift on its own. Not with the right controlling the conversation. You know what would actually shift it? If the administration or some liberals or Keynesians in Washington, maybe a Senator with a 4+ years left, like Franken or some political appointee would actually start making the case for growing the economy with stimulus.

The Republicans are swinging for the fence asking for $4 trillion in cuts. Without any argument from the far left, the compromise will be terrible. It should be easy to make the case, the evidence is on the Democrat's side!

A year after austerity hurts the economy more, how will politicians be doing?

That being said, his follow up post mentions some Interesting “Coulds” Coming In. All are good and if they really are coulds, we should do them. We shouldn't give up on the shoulds. Unless we talk about them, they'll never happen.

Keep Your Government Out of My Food Pyramid

Kathleen Parker wrote in the Washington Post on May 20th, Health reform and obesity: Eat, drink and watch out. This is the funniest thing I've heard since keep your government hands off my Medicare.

"Fat kids (can we say that?) have always been among us, but obesity was not the plague it is today. Nor was it necessary for the federal government to instruct families about how and what to eat. We all knew the pyramid scheme of nutrition. I seem to remember it tacked to school bulletin boards, just beneath the portrait of George Washington."

Right, because the government had nothing to do with creating the food pyramid or the school you were sitting in.

"The same strategy that created pariahs out of smokers now is being aimed at people who eat unattractively. It isn’t only that you’re hurting yourself by eating too much of the wrong foods; you’re hurting the rest of us by willfully contributing to your own poor health and therefore to the cost of public health. Fat is the new nicotine."

I really can't tell if she's being sarcastic or not. She mentions Food Inc. but then says "Thus, it seems clear that the real solution to obesity isn’t more government regulation but more personal responsibility. I know, sheer genius." As if the Farm Bill and high fructose corn syrup have nothing to do with our obesity.

Parker won the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Commentary. Seriously.

These are the biggest numbers in the universe

io9 writes about These are the biggest numbers in the universe "When I say "the biggest number in the universe", what I really mean is the biggest meaningful number, the largest possible number that is in some way useful. There are lots of contenders for this title, but I'll warn you now: there is a very real risk that trying to understand all this will blow your mind. But then, with extreme math, that's half the fun."

I didn't know most of it.

Endeavour's Final Mission

Crazy amazing photos of Endeavour's Final Mission from In Focus.

Some Simple Deficit Reduction Arithmetic

Kash Mansouri in The Street Light explains Some Simple Deficit Reduction Arithmetic from Macro 101 that even I can understand.

"Suppose that the country – let’s call it Austerityland – has a GDP of $100/year, and a budget deficit of $10/yr, or 10% of GDP. And suppose that the government decides it wants to get the deficit down to 5% of GDP. How can it get there? No, the answer is not “cut spending by $5/yr”. Nor is it “raise taxes by $5/yr”. And last but not least, it is also not “enact a combination of tax increases and spending cuts that total $5/yr”. To see why, let’s do just a bit of arithmetic."

He goes on to show how cutting government spending by $5/yr results in a new deficit of $6.875, which is 7.4% of the new level of GDP and that to get to 5% deficit of GDP you need a $9/yr cut which lowers GDP by 14%!

He points to recent UK and Greek austerity measures which are failing. "When basic Macro 101 both makes good theoretical sense and also fits what we actually observe, it's really time to start looking for your handy Occam's Razor."

He followed up Comparing Two Approaches Toward Deficit Reduction by showing how growing the economy works better.

But as Krugman points out, the chicago school of economics can't even conceive of Keynesian economics. Mark Thoma points out others and talks about repeating the mistakes of 1937.

Robert Reich in The Truth About the American Economy explains that the problem. "The problem isn’t on the supply side of the ledger. Corporate profits are still healthy. Big companies continue to sit on a cash hoard. Large and middle-sized companies can easily borrow more, at low rates. The problem is on the demand side. American consumers, who constitute 70 percent of the total economy, can’t and won’t buy enough to get it moving. They justifiably worry they won’t be able to pay their bills or afford to send their children to college or to retire."

He also gives plenty of examples of things the government could do to help if not for the paralysis of Washington.

Jared Bernstein sends a Note to Congress: Stop Screwing Around and Raise the Debt Ceiling. The deficit is so high in part because the labor economy is so bad. "Falling employment rates, or rising unemployment, are associated with larger budget deficits. One begets the other as safety net programs and other measures to offset the contraction ramp up, and as tax revenues, whacked by the downturn, fall. We don’t have a tough economy because of current budget deficits. To the contrary, our economy is markedly better off because public spending temporarily expanded to partially offset the massive private sector contraction."

"So stop blaming Obama and spending and the French and socialism and Keynes and the liberal media… and stop screwing around and get your act together and do the right thing. Raise the debt limit and get back to work."

Tom Coburn Wants $4 Trillion in Cuts

The Economist's Democracy in America blog writes Deficit reduction: Tom Coburn wants $4 trillion in cuts. "These qualities are abundantly on display in this conversation with the Wall Street Journal's Gerald Seib, in which Mr Coburn insists that the United States must cut no less than $4 trillion out of its long-term budget deficit in order to retain credibility with international investors. He makes no attempt to substantiate the claim that international investors have doubts about the America's determination or ability to pay its debts. He makes no attempt to justify the claim that any such doubts are rooted in long-term projections of entitlement obligations, rather than, say, the absurd political impasse over lifting the debt ceiling itself, which he insists on prolonging unless he gets his $4 trillion in deficit cuts. He makes no attempt to justify the claim that nothing less than $4 trillion will do. He wants $4 trillion in cuts because, gosh darn it, we've gotta get serious, folks! The fixation on huge, poorly-defined, dam-busting initiatives in the service of whatever world-threatening crisis conservatives have defined as the priority of the day, without so much as an attempt at evidentiary grounding, is a sharp reminder of the kind of unmoored thinking that dominated the severely troubled administration in which Mr Coburn served on the president's advisory council on HIV/AIDS."

And that's not the worst of it.

Fukushima Risks Chernobyl 'Dead Zone' as Radiation Soars

Fukushima Risks Chernobyl 'Dead Zone' as Radiation Soars "Radioactive soil in pockets of areas near Japan's crippled nuclear plant have reached the same level as Chernobyl, where a "dead zone" remains 25 years after the reactor in the former Soviet Union exploded.

Soil samples in areas outside the 20-kilometer (12 miles) exclusion zone around the Fukushima plant measured more than 1.48 million becquerels a square meter, the standard used for evacuating residents after the Chernobyl accident, Tomio Kawata, a fellow at the Nuclear Waste Management Organization of Japan, said in a research report published May 24 and given to the government.

Radiation from the plant has spread over 600 square kilometers (230 square miles), according to the report. The extent of contamination shows the government must move fast to avoid the same future for the area around Tokyo Electric Power Co.'s Fukushima Dai-Ichi plant as Chernobyl, scientists said. Technology has improved since the 1980s, meaning soil can be decontaminated with chemicals or by planting crops to absorb radioactive materials, allowing residents to return."

Rand Paul For Jailing People Who Attend Radical Political Speeches

ThinkProgress wrote Rand Paul, Supposed Defender Of Civil Liberties, Calls For Jailing People Who Attend ‘Radical Political Speeches’. It pulls on this Rand Paul (R-KY) comment on Sean Hannity's radio show:

"PAUL: I’m not for profiling people on the color of their skin, or on their religion, but I would take into account where they’ve been traveling and perhaps, you might have to indirectly take into account whether or not they’ve been going to radical political speeches by religious leaders. It wouldn’t be that they are Islamic. But if someone is attending speeches from someone who is promoting the violent overthrow of our government, that’s really an offense that we should be going after — they should be deported or put in prison."

They only include that sentence so I imagine there's some cherry picking going on, but still, it's really missing the point of the first amendment. I agree with this comment by Paul Krugman:

"He’s not unusual. There are genuine libertarians out there. But political figures who talk a lot about liberty and freedom invariably turn out to mean the freedom to not pay taxes and discriminate based on race; freedom to hold different ideas and express them, not so much."

Dark Matters

PHD Comics has a nice 6 minute video comic explaining what we know about Dark Matter.

Dark Matters from PHD Comics on Vimeo.

World's Best Tetris Player

World's best Tetris player "It starts getting insane around the 3:00 mark and then, at 5 minutes in, all the blocks turn invisible and he keeps right on going! "



I'm pretty sure I'm not this good at anything.

3-2-6-1-5-3-4-6-8

(via grahams)

Emscripten

"Emscripten is an LLVM-to-JavaScript compiler. It takes LLVM bitcode (which can be generated from C/C++, using llvm-gcc or clang, or any other language that can be converted into LLVM) and compiles that into JavaScript, which can be run on the web (or anywhere else JavaScript can run)."

That's pretty insane.

Endeavour Docked One Last Time

NASA posted this pic of Endeavour docked at the ISS. As Bad Astronomy says, "The exposure time was long enough to show city lights streaking under the station, and I suspect tracked on the stars long enough to make them clear and obvious. I can’t identify the stars, but I think the southern dark nebula the Coal Sack can be seen on the left just above the limb of the Earth."