Akkam’s Razor

• Map: Show Me the TARP Money - ProPublica - Each marker represents the headquarters of a financial institution that expects or has already received money from the Treasury Department under the TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Program). The size of each marker represents the amount of bailout money given to each institution. Click on the markers to see the institution’s name and amount it’s receiving.

• THE SHALLOWEST GENERATION - The Baby Boom Generation will never be mistaken for the Greatest Generation that survived the Great Depression and defeated evil in a World War that killed 72 million people. I hate to tell you Boomers, but putting a yellow ribbon on the back of your $50,000 SUV is not sacrifice. Our claim to fame is living way beyond our means for the last three decades, to the point where we have virtually bankrupted our capitalist system. Baby Boomers have been occupying the White House for the last sixteen years. The majority of Congress is Baby Boomers. The CEOs and top executives of Wall Street firms are Baby Boomers. The media is dominated by Baby Boom executives and on-air stars. We have no one to blame but ourselves for the current predicament. Blaming Franklin Roosevelt or Lyndon Johnson for our dire situation is a cop out. Baby Boomers had the time, power, and ability to change our course. We have chosen to leave the heavy lifting to future generations in order to live the good life today.

• Obama’s Seven Lessons for Radical Innovators - Umair Haque - Barack Obama is one of the most radical management innovators in the world today. Obama's team built something truly world-changing: a new kind of political organization for the 21st century. It differs from yesterday's political organizations as much as Google and Threadless differ from yesterday's corporations: all are a tiny handful of truly new, 21st century institutions in the world today.

  Obama presidential bid succeeded, in other words, as our research at the Lab has discussed for the past several years, through the power of new DNA: new rules for new kinds of institutions.

  So let's discuss the new DNA Obama brought to the table, by outlining seven rules for tomorrow's radical innovators.

Would you believe me if I told  you that white supremacists and American Nazi’s were supporting Obama [Esquire via Political Irony]?

Rocky Suhayda, chairman of the American Nazi Party:

White people are faced with either a negro or a total nutter who happens to have a pale face. Personally I’d prefer the negro. National Socialists are not mindless haters. Here, I see a white man, who is almost dead, who declares he wants to fight endless wars around the globe to make the world safe for Judeo-capitalist exploitation, who supports the invasion of America by illegals–basically a continuation of the last eight years of Emperor Bush. Then, we have a black man, who loves his own kind, belongs to a Black-Nationalist religion, is married to a black women–when usually negroes who have ‘made it’ immediately land a white spouse as a kind of prize — that’s the kind of negro that I can respect.

• http://benfry.com/allstreets/ - This visualization by Ben Fry depicts all of the streets in the lower 48 United States: an image of 26 million individual road segments. No other features (such as outlines or geographic features) have been added to this image, however they emerge as roads avoid mountains, and sparse areas convey low population. Alaska and Hawaii were initially left out for simplicity's sake, but then Ben Fry felt guilty because of the sad emails he received. However, he made the final decision of leaving them out permanently because the two states didn't "work", since there aren't enough roads to outline their shape.

• The GOP ticket’s appalling contempt for science and learning. - By Christopher Hitchens - Slate Magazine - This is what the Republican Party has done to us this year: It has placed within reach of the Oval Office a woman who is a religious fanatic and a proud, boastful ignoramus. Those who despise science and learning are not anti-elitist. They are morally and intellectually slothful people who are secretly envious of the educated and the cultured. And those who prate of spiritual warfare and demons are not just “people of faith” but theocratic bullies. On Nov. 4, anyone who cares for the Constitution has a clear duty to repudiate this wickedness and stupidity.

• William Gibson: Undecided Voters - I look at these people and can't quite believe that they exist. Are they professional actors? I wonder. Or are they simply laymen who want a lot of attention?

  To put them in perspective, I think of being on an airplane. The flight attendant comes down the aisle with her food cart and, eventually, parks it beside my seat. "Can I interest you in the chicken?" she asks. "Or would you prefer the platter of shit with broken glass in it?"

  To be undecided in this election is to pause for a moment and then ask how the chicken is cooked.'

• I hope this is in good taste - Ta-Nehisi Coates - Likewise, I was looking at this picture of Obama's grandparents and thinking how much he looks like his grandfather. And suddenly, for whatever reason, I was struck by the fact that they had made the decision to love their daughter, no matter what, and love their grandson, no matter what. I'd bet money that they never even thought of themselves as courageous, that they didn't give much thought to the broader struggles in the the world at the time. They were just doing what right, honorable people do. But the fact is that, in the 60s, you could be disowned for falling in love with a black woman or black man. There is a reason why we have a long history of publicly biracial black people, but not so much of publicly biracial white people.