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You want maps? We got em.

Submitted by Roanman on Sun, 03/03/2013 - 11:50

 

We've had some complaints.

No maps or charts for far too long.

It's true, we've been remiss mostly because maps and charts involve doing work, and we haven't been all that keen on doing work lately.

So ..... ok.

We begin with some old stuff.

Here are county by county election results for the 2008 and 2012 presidential elections.

The "mandate" Democrats want everyone to believe they have is for the most part limited to urban communities which as you will see below, have been and continue to grow.

 

       

 

 

Republicans have been methodically taking control of state governments lately.

 

 

Americans continue to get fatter, but then so does everybody else who keeps tabs on such things.

 

        

 

"Subjective Well Being" seems to be fair to middling with the exception of Russia, large swaths of Africa and of course, Afghanistan, Somalia and Iraq where seemingly nobody gives a rat's patootie one way or the other.

 

 

We particularly liked the part in this piece about the prominent UK politician who argued that "It’s time we admitted that there’s more to life than money, and it’s time we focused not just on GDP, but on GWB – general well-being."  

Your habitually cynical Uncle Roany is of the opinion that there can be no finer goal for a politician than one that can't possible by measured.

The links to the map sources at Technovelgy.com have broken which was a disappointment as when we first went through them we thought the criteria to be even more obtuse than we had originally guessed it might be.  

Still, we thought it was an excercise worth attempting and we remain pretty sure that happier is better.

This next one from the CIA's World Factbook is also a bit tricky as it maps the percentage of a nation's population living below the poverty line of that nation.  It comes with the following qualifier,

"National estimates of the percentage of the population falling below the poverty line are based on surveys of sub-groups, with the results weighted by the number of people in each group. Definitions of poverty vary considerably among nations. For example, rich nations generally employ more generous standards of poverty than poor nations."

 

 

The following is The Fraser Institute's Freedom of the World 2007 map. I couldn't pull the 2012 map from the site for some reason.  It's not like much has changed except for the U.S. going backwards.  Click on the map below for the entire report for which the criteria is somewhat less obtuse than that behind the "Subjective Well Being" map above.

 

 

A very simple explanation of global economics is next.

Apologies for the fuzzy text.

 

 

 

Here's a different kind of map.

Unicef's An Urban World offers percentages of each individuals country living in town.

Click on the map for a quick and informative presentation.

 

 

Speaking of the world, it is for the most part opposed to the Obama Administration's fondness for killing people via missile attacks launched from drone aircraft.

 

  

 

Americans are slowly coming around to a similar line of thinking.

Slowly being the operative word.

 

      

 

As financial costs and freedoms lost continue to add up.

 

     

 

Government spending continues to climb regardless of Administration.

 

 

The silliness of President Obama regarding his tax and fiscal policies can be demonstrated in the following two charts.

 

 

A high percentage of Americans pay no taxes at all and over half of U.S. households are now "on the dole" for at least a part of their income.

Middle class or former middle class households have been pouring onto U.S. entitlement roles adding to deficits and crowding out the poor in a scramble for benefits.

 

     

 

 

 

When they tell you that wages are in decline, they ain't kidding.

 

 

Almost finally, the Fibonacci number or ratio sometimes known as the "Golden Ratio" is forever showing up all around you.  

Among the better examples of it appearing in nature are shells.

 

    

 

In mathematics, Fibonacci numbers, Fibonacci series or Fibonacci sequence are numbers in the following sequence.

0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89 ......

Where the first two numbers in the Fibonacci sequence are 0 and 1, and each subsequent number is the sum of the previous two.

Or by formula Xn  =  X n -1 + X n-2.  

Got that?

 It doesn't matter.  Here's what it looks like.

 

          

 

Anyway, Fbonacci showed up again just recently off the coast of New York as Hurricane Sandy.

 

     

 

And finally, speaking of blowing hard.

From Investech Research via Zero Hedge, here's a series of comments from National Association of Realtors spokesman and Chief Economist David Lereah plotted on a chart of housing prices.

Remember this chart the next time one of the talking dolls at CNN/MSNBC or anywhere else for that matter start talking about the housing recovery.

 

 

 

A tale of two cities

Submitted by Roanman on Sun, 03/03/2013 - 06:56

 

This was one of our earliest posts.

We grabbed the idea from an email that went viral back in 2008 and still comes around occasionally today.

We bring it back with the news that the city of Detroit has been taken over by the state of Michigan whose Governor Rick Snyder has appointed a financial manager under Michigan law to manage the city of Detroit's finances in an effort to avoid the alternative of banktuptcy.

 

How is this possible ??? 

August 6, 1945

    Detroit                                  Hiroshima

     

          

          

 

2009

 

       

           

          

 

 

Must be John Engler's fault !!!

 

That's an inside joke there.

You see, John Engler was a former Republican governor that Michigan Democrats used to like to blame for everything they could imagine not including "global warming/climate change" only because they had yet to imagine "global warming/climated change" while absolutely refusing to address responsibility for any problems they might have had a little something to do with creating their own selves.

Sort of like what we have going around here nowadays at the national level.

 

Electricity from body heat

Submitted by Roanman on Mon, 02/25/2013 - 09:11

 

From Geek.com.

As always, click on the the little gear above or the photo below for the entire story.

 

Fujifilm creates organic printed sheet that harvests energy from body heat

Feb. 6, 2013 (3:32 pm) By: Matthew Humphries

As The Matrix has taught us, the human body is a great source of energy as long as you can find a way to harvest it efficiently. We don’t as of yet, but research and development is ongoing in this field.

Fujifilm has used the Nanotech 2013 conference in Tokyo to demonstrate some progress with the creation of a new thermoelectric conversion material. Such a material can convert temperature differences directly into electricity, which can then be stored or used immediately to power or charge some device.

The material Fujifilm has created in collaboration with Japan’s National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) is desirable because it is both organic and has the highest thermoelectric conversion efficiency yet seen. Using a temperature difference of just one degree Celsius it can produce “several milliwatts” of electricity.

 

Sister Rosetta Tharpe

Submitted by Roanman on Sun, 02/24/2013 - 08:41

 

Ever wonder what's the big deal about Rosetta Tharpe?

Ever even heard of Rosetta Tharpe?

Don't let it get you down, few have.

Born Arkansas in 1914, Tharpe was the daughter of Katie Bell Nubin, a popular touring gospel singer of the time. Alleged to have “mastered’ the guitar by the age of six, she was certainly performing with her mother by that age, mastery or not, and continued to earn her living performing for the next 50-ish years.

She signed with Decca records in her early twenties and immediately began making hit Gospel records. She would later cross over from Billboard’s Gospel charts to the “Race” charts on several occasions, a feat that to my knowledge had never been accomplished before and rarely since.

If you like Gospel Music and the Blues, two things we clearly love around here, Sister Rosetta Tharpe is well worth looking into.

You can start here.

This performance was recorded in Manchester, England in 1964 as part of the American Folk Blues Festival recordings of the early 60s, which we keep encouraging people to go out and buy mostly because we just love it.

Just sayin'.

This is Sister Rosetta Tharpe on her 1963 Gibson SG Custom guitar, which I don't think anybody even bothered to plug in.  I can't figure out anyone else in the band ... yet.

Didn't It Rain.

 

Russian Dash-Cam Super Cut

Submitted by Roanman on Thu, 02/21/2013 - 08:01

 

We received a link to this vid from Hollow L. first I think, followed by some others, all in response to last week's meteor hit on Russia and hadn't found the opportunity to watch it.

Then we saw it this morning on Jesse's Cafe Americain.

Evidently, Jesse has some time on his hands that we don't lately.

 

 

50 Years Ago: The World in 1963

Submitted by Roanman on Wed, 02/20/2013 - 07:28

 

From The Atlantic.

A more accurate title for this wonderful photo essay might have been "The U.S. in 1963", although they do offer a nice shot of tanks rolling through the streets of Baghdad.

The more things change ......

As always, click on the photo below or the little gear up there for this outstanding photo essay.

 

50 Years Ago: The World in 1963

FEB 15, 2013

A half century ago, much of the news in the United States was dominated by the actions of civil rights activists and those who opposed them. Our role in Vietnam was steadily growing, along with the costs of that involvement. It was the year Beatlemania began, and the year President John F. Kennedy visited West Berlin and delivered his famous "Ich bin ein Berliner" speech. Push-button telephones were introduced, 1st class postage cost 5 cents, and the population of the world was 3.2 billion, less than half of what it is today. The final months of 1963 were punctuated by one of the most tragic events in American history, the assassination of President Kennedy in Dallas, Texas. Let me take you 50 years into the past now, for a look at the world as it was in 1963.

 

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