Global Warming

Well, this is disheartening. Apparently Americans are losing interest in global warming. The issue has apparently become less important in the last two years.

Soldier Deaths in 2009

Turns out twice as many soldiers killed themselves in 2009 than were killed in Iraq.

Social Security for Dead People

And those in prison. YAY!
The Government sent $25 million in Social Security checks, 72,000 to dead people, and 17,000 to people in prison, last year. About half of it has been returned, but that's still an $11 million loss. Woohoo.

America's Healthcare Costs

America spends more of it's GDP on healthcare than any other OECD country, even ones with socialized medicine. Turns out providing healthcare to everyone is cheaper than only giving it to the rich. See if you can guess which of these tiny lines is the US.

Food For A Dollar

Jonathon Blaustein bought as much of different types of food as he could for a dollar and then took pictures of the food as part of his series, "Value of a Dollar"

Telecom Sue-Fest

All the phone companies are suing all the other phone companies. Proof:

BP Oil Spill

Good job BP. This shows where the oil is, where it's made landfall, efforts to fix the leak and more. The last update was on 8/7, but the extent of damage even then was massive.

Generic Scientific Article

This is a funny-generic-fill-in-the-blank-type article mocking news websites reporting of science. Read it.

This picture was included because it's pretty much awesome.

College Thesis on One Night Stands

This is pretty awesome. Some girl tracked and published all her sexual encounters at Duke University over a year or two. Check it out. More info here

Solar Powered Roadways

This is awesome.

Graphene

Is real cool.
Check it out

"It would take an elephant, balanced on a pencil, to break through a sheet of graphene the thickness of Saran Wrap."

xkcd Online Communities Map

This map has all kinds of awesome hidden it it.

Filibusters and Arcane Obstructions

Wow, what the fuck is wrong with our government.

"Michael Bennet, a freshman Democrat from Colorado, said, “Sit and watch us for seven days—just watch the floor. You know what you’ll see happening? Nothing."

"The goal was to finish the bill by the end of the evening, so that senators wouldn’t miss a day of their spring recess—apparently, the only thing worse than a government takeover of the health-care system."

"Merkley could remember witnessing only one moment of floor debate between a Republican and a Democrat"

“Sometimes, you’re dialling for dollars, you get the call, you’ve got to get over to vote, you’ve got fifteen minutes. You don’t have a clue what’s on the floor, your staff is whispering in your ears, you’re running onto the floor, then you check with your leader—you double check—but, just to make triple sure, there’s a little sheet of paper on the clerk’s table: The leader recommends an aye vote, or a no vote. So you’ve got all these checks just to make sure you don’t screw up, but even then you screw up sometimes. But, if you’re ever pressed, ‘Why did you vote that way?’—you just walk out thinking, Oh, my God, I hope nobody asks, because I don’t have a clue.”

"The most pervasive authority over the institution is not the Constitution or the Bible but, rather, an impenetrable sixteen-hundred-page tome, by Floyd M. Riddick, called “Senate Procedure: Precedents and Practices,” which only the late Robert Byrd, of West Virginia, was known to have read in its entirety"

"Many of the Senate’s antique rules and precedents have been warped beyond recognition by the modern pressures of partisanship. The hold, for example, was a courtesy extended to senators in the days of horse travel, when they needed time to get back to Washington and read a bill or question an appointee before casting their vote" 

"Three hundred and forty-five bills passed by the House have been prevented from even coming up for debate in the Senate."

"In the current Senate, it has become normal for a handful of senators, sometimes representing just ten or twenty per cent of the country’s population, to hold everything" 

"the Senate should not be a graveyard for good ideas"

 “The Senate wasn’t created to be efficient,” he argued. “It was created to be inefficient.”

"And so climate change joined

immigration, 

job creation,

food safety,

pilot training,

veterans’ care,

campaign finance,

transportation security,

labor law,

mine safety,

wildfire management, 

and scores of executive and judicial appointments

on the list of matters that

the world’s greatest deliberative body is

incapable of addressing." 

De-facto Segregation

Here's a map of it.
Actually 40 some maps of it.

New York

Chilean Miners

Anyway, an awesome infographic about the Chilean Miner's tragedy. What if everything you needed to live had to fit through this hole?

Stereotype Cartography

This is a guy who makes maps of stereotypes according to a country. It's some funny stuff

This map is Europe According to the USA