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Now, that lack of oversight looks to beget yet another. As taxgirl reports on her blog, current proposals would give Treasury Secretary Paulson a $7000 billion blank check, with no congressional or judicial oversight whatsoever. Given the actions the executive branch has taken with oversight during the course of this administration, I’m somewhat skeptical that the money will be spent wisely or effectively.

If you’re in the US I urge you to read it and act, before it’s too late. Those of you abroad, many of whose financial markets are interdependent with ours, just hope we get this right the first time.

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It’s the UK’s second bite at the apple, having been the most important financial center through much of the 1800s.

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If you see it in your town let us know!

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As two of the most common technologies for modern web developing, that’s a pretty big gap, and the advertising regulators weren’t impressed with Apple’s very literal interpretation of its own ad. The web is full of rumors as to when Flash and Java may appear, and developers Adobe and Sun claim they’re working on respective versions for the iPhone. For now, though, Apple has a bit of bad news to digest internationally.

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If you’ve flown Alitalia, let us know whether this is a good thing or not.

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So, while working on my last post, I found a cool tool I didn’t mention - it’s the National Atlas. You can click on a state and show its cities, counties, population, or even bodies of water. In fact, you can even display levels of arsenic in ground water, if you’d like, and you can mix and match any of the display items you’d like. There are also specialty maps showing additional information in a map format. Above, I’ve shown the distribution of zebra mussels in the US as of 2003, and if you’re interested you can check the progression from 1989 through the present. Amazing.

Now, it’s just for the US, but for anyone who needs a good online reference to regions or who is trying to review demographics and distances it’s an awesome tool. If, like me, you just like maps it’s just a whole lot of fun.

image public domain, nationalatlas.org

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This blog isn’t really about politics, but a recent statement about Republican Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin struck me. Apparently, she doesn’t need foreign policy experience because Alaska is so close to Russia, with variations on the theme citing from seventy to 300 miles or so. Without even addressing the validity of that logic to begin with, it got me thinking - just how far is Anchorage from Moscow, where the real seat of Russian power lies? The answer to that (and any distance questions) is here, at the Distance Calculator.

Apparently, Anchorage is about 4,350 miles from Moscow, only about four hundred miles closer than Philadelphia, where I’m writing this. I guess that means I’m almost qualified to be vice president. The Drudge report had a different take on this line of argument, but either way the distance calculator is kind of a cool tool.

image in the public domain, from nationalatlas.gov

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The results of the poll: people in Egypt, Turkey, Azerbaijan, Iran, Indonesia, the Palestinian Territories, plus the Muslim population of Nigeria in general are very favorable towards globalization and international trade, with 63% saying that globalization is good for their own country.

This may come as a surprise to some who think of Muslim countries as trying to protect themselves against “western” influences, but it makes perfectly good sense to me. Globalization in general tends to be balancing global wealth, in effect a bit like Robin Hood, taking jobs from the rich countries and giving them to the poor countries. (Ok, I admit the analogy is not great, since we all know that global wealth is still very concentrated in the hands of a few, but middle classes are growing stronger almost everywhere.) The fact that globalization brings jobs to developing countries would tend to make people in those countries see globalization favorably; anti-globalization movements, on the other hand, mostly come from developed countries who are adjusting to job losses in some industries.”It’s the economy, stupid.”

To view the complete report, visit this web page.

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