How Americans Spent Their Day in 2008

This is a really cool graphic showing how Americans spent their day in 2008. Be sure to check out the demographic filters.

I love this line:

Sleeping, eating, working and watching television take up about two-thirds of the average day.

Another great piece of insight is that it appears that those with 2+ children work MORE than those without any kids!

Aged News

What a great term - "aged news"! This clip from the Daily Show (after the napolean stuff) is awesome. New York Times lets them in to their offices for some hilarious commentary on the state of newspapers. The best part is when they challenge a managing editor to find one thing in there (newspaper) that happened today. Also hilarious is when the New York Times person references google as a news source (WOW).

I think the true challenge will be to preserve actual journalism through this migration in news delivery. Most online news sources are really commentary sites, rather than original journalism.

However, there was a great point referenced here -

“In the two biggest stories of our recent time—the war in Iraq and our financial meltdown—investigative journalism did not fulfill its mission,” Huffington told me in an interview for the inaugural Guardian Media Talk USA podcast. “We all have a real stake in not only preserving what investigative journalism is but in making it better.”

What a great point - current journalism, well, generally sucks. So what, exactly, is worth saving? Or, as referenced in the same article, is it time to re-think what investigative/original journalism is and should really be?

Line of the Year

"Listen, you knew what the banks were doing and yet were touting it for months and months," said Daily Show host Jon Stewart to CNBC superstar Jim Cramer in their much-discussed confrontation last week. "The entire network was, and so now to pretend that this was some sort of crazy, once-in-a-lifetime tsunami that nobody could have seen coming is disingenuous at best and criminal at worst."

Awesome. Stewart is bang-on - to simply tell the public that "ooohhh...crap! We never thought this would happen!!!" is a freaking flat out lie. Search around - there were discussions about what might happen as early as 2006. But then suddenly in september/08 US congress must pass $700B because "CRAP WE NEED IT NOW AND WE NEVER KNEW!"

Find the interview between Stewart and Cramer - the unedited one as well. I somewhat pitied Cramer in how much he was thrown under the bus...til I remembered that he personally got rich by the ultimate Pump n Dump.

Sometimes I think: No bailouts, no stimulus....let it crumble and see what happens..:)

Savings as a % of Disposable Income

The below interactive chart shows savings as a percentage of disposable income.

I won't state the obvious - but very interesting. Drag the bar along the bottom to change the timeline.



Courtesy:  Paul Kedrosky

Interesting Videos

Here are a couple of interesting videos - the first is an excerpt of Wall Street, a movie from the '80s. The blog post I found it on is a very EXCELLENT read.

The next video is a mashup of clips from a 1981 movie called Rollover. I found it on this very good blog.

Guess which country...has not faced a single bank failure?

An interesting article on how Canada actually looks quite strong right now:

Canada has been remarkably responsible over the past decade or so. It has had 12 years of budget surpluses, and can now spend money to fuel a recovery from a strong position. The government has restructured the national pension system, placing it on a firm fiscal footing, unlike our own insolvent Social Security. Its health-care system is cheaper than America's by far (accounting for 9.7 percent of GDP, versus 15.2 percent here), and yet does better on all major indexes. Life expectancy in Canada is 81 years, versus 78 in the United States; "healthy life expectancy" is 72 years, versus 69. American car companies have moved so many jobs to Canada to take advantage of lower health-care costs that since 2004, Ontario and not Michigan has been North America's largest car-producing region.

Recession or Depression?

Just read an interesting comment from Paul Kedrosky:

Depression/recession chatter. We're doing that denial thing about a depression the same way we did about about a recession. A credit collapse, trade spiral, disappeared confidence, failing banks, fast-rising unemployment, and loss of confidence worldwide: We are in a depression of some to-be-determined eventual severity. Stop talking and move on.

The Bailout Game

This is absolutely hilarious! My first time through - I kept all the money..

Check out the Bailout Game.

What Do Obama Supporters do Now?

Obama Win Causes Obsessive Supporters To Realize How Empty Their Lives Are

Grey Lines, Wasted Tax Dollars, and the Thought Police

So a Canadian out west is under investigation by the Human Rights Commission, interviewed below. I think it is a very interesting argument - and one that should always be considered (whether "Right" or "Left").

He is considered an "Activist Conservative" - wonder what he would say about the Patriot Act? His background includes using a lawyer best known for his advocacy in defence of Holocaust deniers and accused Nazi war criminals. Follow the wiki link for more strange stuff.

After reading a bit about Ezra and Syed, it looks like both are motivated for reasons other than the apparent. Ezra mentions that Syed has complaints against him - with documents to back it up.

You need to read this

This blog is absolutely amazing.

It's written by a former NBA player (American) who was signed to play in Iran. He goes through what he thought to expect, and what he actually did see. This entry in particular is thought provoking:

To be absolutely honest with you I was petrified on this flight, not because it wasn’t very smooth because it was and it wasn’t completely because I really hate flying but more so because as I boarded the plane I looked around and saw exactly what I’ve been conditioned to fear since 9/11 which is a plane full of Muslims and that seriously had me stressed, I felt like shaq shooting a playoff free throw(extremely vulnerable). There is a lot of blame to go around for my perception but I use to watch The Factor until I realized the type of narrow minded view of Muslims it was projecting so I’m passing mine to O’Reilly, thanks Bill-O!

Something to think about, I hope.

Baggy Pants - The New Crack

So it looks like Atlanta is looking to ban baggy pants. Without linking to actual stats - atlanta not known as one of the safer cities in the US. And now we know why!! Baggy Pants!

Of course, there has to be some silly quote in an article like this:

"Little children see it and want to adopt it, thinking it's the in thing," Martin said Wednesday. "I don't want young people thinking that half-dressing is the way to go. I want them to think about their future."

Soooo.....let my check my math.....carry the 7....Wearing baggy pants <> thinking about your future! Show a bit o' boxer, and you'll never get on a path to success in life!

Must be some freakonomics thing.

You'll read this. I'll read this. But nothing will change - amazing!

Here is an article talking about how HoneyBee's are disappearing - it looks like Cell phone signals may be at fault. Best summed up here:

Some scientists theorize that the radiation given off by mobile phones and other gadgets is to blame for the abrupt disappearance of those lovable honeybees who pollinate crops....The theory goes like this: radiation from mobile phones interferes with a bee's ability to navigate back to its hive, leaving their homes empty save for the queen. The U.S. West Coast is thought to have lost 60 percent of its commercial bee population, and the U.S. East Coast is thought to have lost 70 percent.

Reports are widely quoting Albert Einstein, who said that if bees were to disappear, "man would have only four years of life left."