Link Banana

It’s not that this is an exceptionally well-researched or argued essay, or one that transfers any intellectual heft by a link, it’s just that I agree with it and felt a desire to make that clear.

Aside from hiring Kal Penn, President Obama recently reached an agreement with the Russians about arm limitation. I found Slate’s explanation of the logic behind the agreed target sobering.

U.S. military planners dream up a variety of hypothetical conflicts with other nuclear powers and determine how many warheads would be required to destroy all the most important targets in each scenario.

I heartily agree with what I think Troy Patterson is trying to say, but I think he’s failed to say it. Still, on this Fourth of July, I rise to note my malaise with the idea of “going to see the fireworks.”

America’s marriage-like legal rights for gay couples are an unfortunate patchwork, but America’s legal definitions of the transgendered can feel a bit like falling down a rabbit hole:

“Taking this situation to its logical conclusion, Mrs. Littleton, while in San Antonio, Tex., is a male and has a void marriage; as she travels to Houston, Tex., and enters federal property, she is female and a widow; upon traveling to Kentucky she is female and a widow; but, upon entering Ohio, she is once again male and prohibited from marriage; entering Connecticut, she is again female and may marry; if her travel takes her north to Vermont, she is male and may marry a female; if instead she travels south to New Jersey, she may marry a male.”

(via The Awl)

Mark Dowie — in an adaptation from his recent book — examines a conflict I’d never considered: that between those trying to conserve a wilderness and those who’d historically made their home there.

Refugees from conservation have never been counted; in fact they’re not even officially recognized as refugees. But the number of people displaced from traditional homelands worldwide over the past century, in the interest of conservation, is estimated to be close to 20 million, 14 million in Africa alone. It is a sad history, and one that has forced conservationists to reevaluate the hero status of their movement’s founders, and to reconsider the idea of protecting biological diversity by removing humans from the mix.

NPR has built a fantastic set of maps about how energy is produced and distributed across the United States.

Something I learned: the Hoover Dam, which I naively assumed to be the biggest hydroelectric producer, is pretty average. The real heavyweights are in Washington.

(via BBG)

With it’s governor having mentioned secession, Nate Silver poses a more interesting scenario: what if Texas made itself into five states, as is its legal right? (A fact I hadn’t known.) I was rather surprised by the result.

I’ve never seen anything Tyler Perry’s done — I keep meaning to but not doing it — but what little I’ve seen leaves me desperately curious about what his goals are. When linking to an annoyingly superficial article I begrudgingly read — if you won’t let me see your whole article on a single page, I’ll generally not read it — MOLT said this:

“Tyler Perry is simply reflecting the thinking of a lot of uneducated, working-class African-Americans.” Anecdotally, I know that sentence to be untrue, I work with plenty of educated African-Americans who love Perry, but ever since we moved to Atlanta, the center of his “empire,” I’ve been fascinated by him. His show “House of Payne” comes on 2-3 times a day here on a local affiliate and it is amazingly bad. It is quite literally the TV equivalent of a train wreck and I can’t look away. The man is a genius. He filmed 100 episodes of the show in a year, doing almost 3 a week so that he could get into syndication faster and make the real money. The cast was showing up to the set and seeing their dialogue for the first time on the day they were filming. And believe me, you can tell. Horrible acting, dreadful writing (not, mind you, horrible actors or writers, but people being asked to do the impossible) - you would think it was farce if it didn’t take itself so seriously. The man is making money hand over fist and seems to be a gaming the system to perfection.

(Can you tell I’m trying to clean out my really old tabs?)

Today’s Big Picture series is something that’s been banned for 18 years. And while it’s certainly somber, I’m not sure I understand what all the hubbub was about.

I think there’s something to Michael Schaffer’s thesis that the burgeoning pet industry owes something to American alienation, but really it’s this statistic — whose statistical rigor I doubt — that got my attention:

A 2001 survey for the American Animal Hospital Association revealed that 83 percent of pet owners call themselves their animal’s “mommy” or “daddy.”

The most interesting part is the list of magnet and sticky states. I’m shocked to see New York at the bottom of their magnetic list. I’d expect NYC would at least make it most magnetic state in the Rust Belt, but I guess not.

(via kottke)

This chart is impeccably executed.

Jacob Gershman does some investigating into the rash of nonnatural fibers cropping up in processed American foods. As you probably suspected, their health benefits are mostly unproven:

For example, Campbell’s V8 High Fiber, which Liebman calls “high fibber,” claims on its label to offer “20 percent of the recommended daily value” of fiber per 8-ounce glass. As Liebman pointed out in a recent report, the fiber that Campbell’s is talking about is maltodextrin, which she says has not been shown to have “any impact on regularity, or any aspect of digestive health.”

Few would claim that President Obama’s recently released budget is less honest than those of his predessor. But only the ignorant would maintain it’s completely forthright. John Dickerson points out the major lies that it still tells.

“Those adjustments create much larger baseline deficit projections, making it easier to claim that the budget is an improvement over current policy,” says Susan Tanaka, a longtime budget expert working for the Peterson Foundation. As a political matter, if an administration can show that it’s making progress shrinking the deficit, it gains political capital in the fight for resources because it can claim the moral high ground for making tough decisions and being a good steward of public funds.

Apparently, economists think there are better and worse ways for us to spend our way out of the recession. Some of their most interesting suggestions:

Tyler Cowen, George Mason University: In my view, fixing the banking sector is more important than getting the stimulus right. So if you can afford to lose the money, go to a large bank (more likely to be insolvent), find their most overpriced service, and buy as much of it as you can. That way you are doing your part to recapitalize our banking system.

Ethan Harris, Barclays Capital: Get a haircut. It is a purely domestically produced service with extremely high labor content. This means no drain in spending power out of the country: it is “Buy American” without violating any trade agreements.

Robert Shiller, Yale University: I suggest using it to give an extra-generous tip to taxi drivers. They talk to lots of people, especially active business-oriented people, and they will be feeling more upbeat, sensing that some people are feeling flush, and they will communicate this feeling to numerous people, thereby helping restore confidence.

(via Ideas)

As Matt Yglesias exlpains, Pew just found that most of those things you think about the difference between Starbucks and McDonald’s customers are true:

The more money you earn, the more likely you are to want a Starbucks. The more education you have, the more likely you are to want a Starbucks. The more liberal you are, the more likely you are to want a Starbucks. The younger you are, the more likely you are to want a Starbucks. White people like Starbucks more than black people.

The one moderately surprising fact is that in aggregate Hispanics actually prefered Starbucks more than white people.

Andy Biao describes felix’s post as a “Metafilter’s history of” the central feature of the Oval Office. The description seems just about perfect.

Collected in English on one, sometimes illegible, piece of art by Emily Wick. You can also view (and order) individual states.

(via Neatorama)

UPDATE (1/17/2009): Taking a step I was too lazy or careless to, Strange Maps has listed every state motto in Latin and English, and included the story of its conception.

An interesting chart from Nate Silver. I’m impressed that the numer of people who hadn’t even held state-level office is so high (at 20%).

If there’s any logic behind the embattled Illinois govenor making a pick of US Senator, I think Edward McClellen may have captured it:

You don’t like Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s pick for the U.S. Senate? What’s the matter with you? Don’t you want to see another black guy in the World’s Most Exclusive Club?