It’s time to kill the penny
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Nat Geo Photo Context 2011
Boston.com’s Big Pictures has 54 entries from National Geographic’s 2011 photo contest:
What happens when the government own a large manufacturing business…
GM, still partially owned by the federal government, has the largest inventory ever of unsold vehicles—enough for over 100 days of sales. What is any possible explanation why a private company would continue to build stock like this?
FDA’s unhealthy obsession with salt
Nevermind that the latest science is suggesting that salt isn’t a big problem. The FDA is plowing ahead anyway. Jonathan Adler reports:
Is too much salt bad for you? That used to be the conventional wisdom, but more recent scientific research has suggested the emphasis on salt is misplaced. No matter. As Walter Olson notes, the Food and Drug Administration appears to be moving ahead with plans to force gradual reductions in the salt content of processed foods. Among other things, the FDA is concerning the adoption of federal targets for gradual salt content reductions to wean consumers from their taste for salt. But reducing salt content will do more than alter food’s flavor. It can affect texture and perishability as well. Surely the FDA has better things to do than obsess over the salt content of processed foods. But if the FDA persists, I suppose it just means these (no relation) will get more use.
Random fact of the day…
A tail of two climate stories…
According to the International Energy Agency’s chief economist, global temperature will rise by 11 degrees Fahrenheit by 2010.
According a new report from climate scientists, the climate is less sensitive to carbon dioxide than the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (which the IEA relied on) previously thought. This means that temperature won’t increase as much as previously thought.
There isn’t enough Motown in the world…
I hate Nickleback, but this Motown Tribute to nickelback is quite good:
If you want to see how far America has come since the 1970s
Corporate-Government Love
One of the problems with the current state of government is the symbiosis between big government and big business. GE is a good example.
President Obama appointed GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt to head the President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness presumably because Immelt knows something about creating jobs.
GE, on the other hand relies heavily on special government favors. In 2010, GE paid no taxes on U.S. profits of $5 billion. It took GE an amazing 57,000 pages to explain their tax return.
I guess GE created a lot of jobs producing a 57,000 page tax return.
Steve Jobs and Alternative Medicine
I’ve been wondering if Steve Jobs could have live longer if not for his reliance on alternative medicine. It turns out that he regrets not have surgery sooner.
One other interesting tidbit is this line from the interview, “another aspect of Jobs’ character revealed was his disdain for conspicuous consumption.” That pretty ironic since Apple cultivates conspicuous consumption. Just look at the Apple symbol on the back of laptop screens or the iconic white headphones for iPods. Don’t get my wrong, I like Apple products (I’m writing this on my MacBook Pro and my iPhone 4 is in my pocket and I have another iPod in my bag) but they are definitely objects of conspicuous consumption.