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What Is This? The Scrambler aggregates and synthesizes the best of the web on: Politics, Markets & Economics, Sports, Tech, & Whatever Else I Feel Like Get Involved: Submit below to publish your own content. Comment + discuss like it's your job. Ask me anything. [email protected]

[street---lights]

[thescrambler-blog]

Folks, it's been an insane few weeks.

I know you've been missing The Scrambler. We've been missing it even more. 

Rest assured, plenty of content lined up. We'll be back next week. 

Spare a moment for Japan. And stay thirsty my friends.

Also, set your clock ahead on Sunday. Winter is over.

[imgfave]

[thescrambler-blog]

Bravo.

imgfave:

★ discovered on imgfave.com (social image bookmarking)

[jayparkinsonmd]

Medicine has never been better; our overall health, however, is worsening.

— David Gratzer, MD

That, my friends, is the simple truth of modern life in America. Health is less and less about what doctors can do for you, but what you can do for your health. However, The System’s responsibility is to arm you with the easily accessible and affordable tools to help you optimize your health via fresh food, safe activity, and communities that provide real relationships and strong social support from family, friends, and neighbors.

via

(via jayparkinsonmd)

#discuss

[thescrambler-blog]

Well, here's your conclusion. A bookend to Valentine's day, if you will. Get out there and make it happen.....

Ladies- Mr. Right is out there. But you'll settle for mr right now after a few drinks at the bar.

Gentlemen- In case you still didn't realize it, today was Valentine's day. Grab your butterfly nets.

[thescrambler-blog]

More good news....

Guess How Ugly the Unemployment Rate Would Be At 2000 Participation Levels

The decrease in the participation rate in the U.S. economy has left our understanding of what the real unemployment rate is a little cloudy. The latest unemployment report showed huge revisions, but little reality, as to where we really stand.  Albert Edwards of Societe Generale has put together this chart to provide a little context. It shows what the U.S. unemployment number would look life if we were at the peak participation rate of 67%, which occurred around 2000.  At that participation rate, unemployment would be about 4 percentage points higher than the current headline figure of 9%. Edwards says that 4% is the equivalent of 6.7 million more unemployed people.  So if the participation rate increased 3% (from its current 64% to 67%), unemployment would actually be 13%. That gap is partially made up of long-term, structurally unemployed construction workers left behind after the housing bust, and is a significant number.

[infoneer-pulse]

[thescrambler-blog]

infoneer-pulse:

Apple’s iPad Officially Passes the Higher Education Test

Apple’s iPad received glowing marks for its performance in college classrooms from the eagerly anticipated Reed College evaluation, according to a new report shared with Fast Company. The iPad’s smooth interface kept up with the lighting-quick pace of college lectures, helping it to overcome the very same gauntlet that killed the Kindle’s hope of education dominance a year earlier. Most importantly, the report predicts an explosion of opportunity for both Apple software developers and tablet competitors.

After extensive student interviews throughout the Fall 2010 semester, “The bottom line feeling was that the Amazon Kindle DX was not adequate for use in a higher education curricular setting,” Chief Technology Officer Martin Ringle tells Fast Company. “The bottom line for the iPad was exactly the opposite.”

» via Fast Company

[thescrambler-blog]

The 2012 White House Budget Proposal. Who Will Survive In America?

Sigh. This is truly depressing.

You can get a full look at the White House's 2012 Budget proposal here. Usually we put it on Scribd, but their site is broken. Besides, it's a 216 pager. Not exactly light reading.

In lieu of the doc, we've given you a handy data viz for the spending allocations. It's illuminating.

So what's the big deal? We reprint Jon Cohn in full.....

President Obama on Monday will release his budget request for the 2012 fiscal year. As you read commentary on it--or, if you’re as nerdy as I am, as you read the document itself--keep in mind that this is the first budget request he’ll be producing since the Republicans took over one house of Congress. It’s a huge difference and not merely in the obvious ways.

Obama’s previous budgets were the president’s way of signaling, to members of his own party, what initiatives he intended to pursue and roughly what resources he expected Congress to give him. He could expect some negotiation and pushback, from liberals on some issues and from centrists on others. But mostly he could count upon Congress, which Democrats controlled, to follow him. 

The Republican House, of course, will do no such thing. They have their own, very different priorities and their own, very different ideas about how to pay for them. Accordingly, Obama’s budget is more of an opening bid in a tough, rancorous negotiation. That means you should evaluate the document as a signal of political strategy, not simply a statement of policy priorities. And that makes it tougher to judge.

Between the administration's recent statements and a series of calculated leaks, we have a pretty good idea of what Obama is trying to do. He’s going to call for spending more money on education and other public investments, but he’ll also endorse enough cuts to keep overall non-defense discretionary spending at last year’s levels. Elementary and secondary school education, for example, should get a boost. But Pell Grants, for low-income college students, are going to take a hit, albeit a carefully crafted one.* There will be more money for building high-speed rail but less for helping low-income families pay their heating bills.

Is this a good thing? In absolute terms, clearly, the answer is no. The demand for Pell Grants is unusually high right now; among other things, cash-strapped states are raising tuitions at state schools just as cash-strapped students and families have fewer resources to pay them. Energy costs for next winter, when the cut in heating assistance would take effect, are likely to be higher than at any time since 2008. Unless the economic recovery quickens very suddenly, plenty of people will struggle to pay those heating bills. And those are just two examples of program reductions that will leave needy Americans even more needy. 

But everything is relative, and that means judging these cuts alongside both the modest increases you'll find elsewhere in this budget and the much larger increases you saw in previous ones. Robert Greenstein, director of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, will spend the next few days dissecting the Obama spending request and, as he does, he will likely find plenty not to like. But, during an interview, he also put disappointments in context:

I think [Obama's] record is very strong -- major expansions in refundable tax credits for the working poor, major expansion of student financial aid for low-income students so that more of them can go to and complete college, and of course, major health reform that will extend coverage to 32 million uninsured people. This is the most impressive record of any president since LBJ.

Obama's spending request looks even better when you consider what the Republicans would do if left to their own devices. They haven’t committed themselves to a 2012 budget just yet. But they’ve said they want a far deeper freeze than Obama’s, reducing non-defense discretionary spending to what it was in 2008. On Friday, they offered a preview of that vision when they announced their proposal for how to finance government for the remainder of the current fiscal year.

They want far more severe cuts to Pell Grants and home heating assistance, plus reductions to such essential services as food inspections and the elimination of programs like Americorps. They also want to reduce spending on the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infant, and Children. That initiative, known as WIC, provides nutritional assistance to expectant mothers and newborns. As Paul Krugman notes, that cut will hurt today and tomorrow, since kids who grow up malnourished are more likely to have problems later in life.

The most important question about Obama's budget, then, is how well it positions him and his allies in the coming debate over these sorts of priorities.  

You could make a case that, by embracing the Republican narrative on the size of government and calling for a five-year budget freeze at present levels, Obama has effectively bid too low in the negotiation over federal spending--that he's committed himself, and the country, to less government than it needs. (It's happened before!) Or you could make the case that, by making "tough" proposals to cut programs he supports, he's establishing the credibility with voters that he needs in order to marginalize the Republicans and to preserve more spending than might otherwise be possible. (It's happened before!)

I really don't know which argument is right. I'm not a political strategist and, besides, not even the political strategists can be sure about this sort of thing. But I know I'll be hoping that Obama prevails in the coming standoff with House Republicans, even though a victory would still leave the government perilously underfunded.

*The details of Obama's Pell Grant proposal are complicated and worth an item of their own, which I'll try to write shortly.

So on the one hand, Obama makes a political calculation, cuts spending on things people NEED (like higher ed grants, food inspectors, heating oil for the poor). On the other, the GOP stands for nihilism. 

Who will survive in America? Besides the rich?

#letthemeatcake #whowillsurviveinamerica

[sesamestreet]

[thescrambler-blog]

newsweek:

sesamestreet:

Everyone loves something.  What do you love?

We love that Sesame Street’s on tumblr.

[fuckyeahvolcanoes]

[thescrambler-blog]

Another week in the books. Thanks for checking out The Scrambler

This photo may may also have been taken in Cairo. Things are in play. Very exciting, interesting. We'll see what unfolds. Hope for the best, plan for the worst.

Sorry for the light posting folks. An insane RW week. We have plenty of content teed up for next week. Get excited.

Sunny but cooler in San Francisco. Sun/cloud mix in New York.

Always warm inside the bar. Today is 211 day. Act like it. That Steel Reserve isn't gonna drink itself.

STAY THIRSTY MY FRIENDS.

fuckyeahvolcanoes:

Krakatoa, Indonesia.

[thescrambler-blog]

Bill Simmons. Again.

What do these three have in common?

They've all managed to put off The Change.

I was there when it happened to Julius Erving: Nov. 9, 1984, Philly at Boston, the night his five-year rivalry with Larry Bird went up in smoke. Bird outscored Erving 42-6 in three quarters before words were exchanged and, incredibly, two of the league's biggest stars started fighting at midcourt. Imagine two kids getting their picture taken with Santa, then imagine their faces if Santa got into a brawl with the Easter Bunny. That was Bird fighting Erving. Their scuffle was so preposterous that it overshadowed the real story: Julius Erving had gone through The Change. He was great, and then he wasn't. And it happened overnight.

Sift through NBA history and you'll notice that, for modern superstars, The Change occurred somewhere between the 900th and 1,200th career game (including playoffs) for everyone except Karl Malone and John Stockton, who fended it off because of their extraordinary work ethics, their signature play (an unstoppable pick-and-roll that they could have run into their 50s), Utah's altitude (which may have given them a conditioning advantage) and the little-known fact John Stockton is actually an alien. An NBA career is really pressure over time: knees are Shawshank's prison wall, games are Andy's rock hammer, and that hammer just keeps chipping away. Eventually, your career gives out. That's the rule.

Or, that was the rule. Because Ray Allen, Paul Pierce, Steve Nash, Dirk Nowitzki and Kobe Bryant are fending off that rock hammer in ways that have to make us wonder if we're headed for a historical revamping along the lines of the steroids era blowing up baseball like an "Angry Birds" grenade. Everything we thought we knew about basketball is changing ... and for all the right reasons, too. (Well, unless you're Rashard Lewis and O.J. Mayo.) They are beneficiaries of undeniable advantages over everyone who played before them: better doctors, surgical procedures, dieting, drug testing, trainers, computers, video equipment, workout equipment, workout regiments, airplanes ... even pillows are better.

Check out the career numbers (regular season and playoffs) for Allen, Pierce, Nash, Nowitzki and Bryant for games, minutes, minutes per game and seasons played.

AGING STARS

RS Min = regular season minutes; PL Min = playoff minutes; RS MPG = regular season minutes per game; PL MPG = playoffs minutes per game

PlayerGamesPlayoffsRS MinPL MinRS MPGPL MPGSeasonsBryant106719838,8877,81136.539.414Allen106710139,5353,98737.139.515Nash105711833,0554,22831.335.815Nowitzki95610334,9804,30136.641.812Pierce92910134,4804,03237.139.912

All right, get ready for a second group of perimeter stars that also includes two other pieces of information: the season they went through The Change, as well as their drop in win shares from the previous season. (Note: I'm not a huge fan of win shares, especially because the stat doesn't show how someone like Jason Kidd or Gary Payton slipped defensively almost overnight, but it's the simplest statistical way to show a player's decline.) And keep in mind, Bird's career and Magic's career ended prematurely; Jordan missed multiple seasons because of his two retirements; and Kidd is obviously still playing (post-Change). Anyway ...

STARS OF YESTERDAY

Change = Season in which "The Change" in the player's productivity took place; WS = Decline in win shares from the previous season.

PlayerGamesPlayRS MinPL MinRS MPGPL MPGSeasonsChangeWSStockton150418247,6746,39831.835.81914-5.6Miller138914447,6195,30834.336.91816-0.8Payton133515447,4175,48235.335.61713-3.5Erving124318945,2277,35236.438.91614-2.5Kidd123112145,5104,95337.040.91714-3.4Pippen117820841,0698,10534.939.01712-1.7Drexler108614537,5375,57234.638.41513-5.2Wilkins10745638,1132,17235.538.81513-2.1Jordan107217941,0107,47438.341.81514-12.5Thomas97911135,5164,21636.338.01312-2.1Iverson9147637,4853,20541.145.11413-8.5Magic90616033,2457,53836.739.71313-11.8Bird89716434,4436,88638.442.01310-14.5

Translation: If you're a perimeter guy, no matter how talented you are, you should go downhill between Season 12 and Season 14 unless you're a freak shooter (like Miller) or an actual alien (like Stockton). So how do you explain our five aforementioned career freaks? Let's look at them again through last Wednesday's games measured by the per-36 minute averages for points/rebounds/assists, field goals/free throws/3s attempted, and percentages for field goals/free throws/3s, as well as advanced metrics for usage rate (the percentage of possessions which involve that player when he's on the floor), player efficiency and win shares per 48 minutes:

ALMOST AS GOOD AS EVER

Player/Yr/AgePtsAstRebFGAFTA3PAFG%3P%RatePERWS/48Kobe '08 (29)26.25.05.819.18.44.746%36%31.424.2.208Kobe '11 (32)27.15.25.520.78.14.446%31%34.324.7.198 Allen '08 (32)17.53.13.713.53.36.245%40%21.616.4.177Allen '11 (35)17.43.13.712.52.94.851%45%20.417.9.182 Nash '08 (34)17.811.63.712.53.04.750%47%22.021.1.181Nash '11 (37)18.912.84.012.74.12.753%42%23.224.3.195 Dirk '08 (29)23.63.58.617.17.12.948%36%28.824.6.223Dirk '11 (32)24.22.57.416.96.42.852%39%29.023.7.200 Pierce '08 (30)19.74.55.113.86.14.648%36%24.819.6.207Pierce '11 (33)19.23.55.413.55.33.751%43%23.620.9.222

I know, I know. You expected a sports column, not an AP math exam. But for each player, the differences between 2008 and 2011 are so subtle, you can barely tell the years apart. If Jennifer Aniston looks as good three years from now as she does right now, you'll know she had some work done. If Obama's hair doesn't look any grayer than it does right now, you'll know he colored it. But five elite players defying all laws of career gravity like that?

Really, it's the first wave of something Malcolm Gladwell and I tackled 13 months ago, when we wondered if Kobe's generation would accomplish things we had never seen before. I listed those modern advantages (training, dieting, etc) and mentioned that basketball players have a better chance of succeeding now. Gladwell piggybacked the point by bringing up capitalization rates (how efficiently any group makes use of its talent), deciding that "there isn't more talent than before, but there is -- for a variety of reasons -- a more efficient use of talent." Somehow we never connected the dots to Gladwell's concept of outliers: that outside factors can affect someone's success or failure more than we realize.

Nash, Pierce, Kobe, Allen and Nowitzki? NBA outliers. All of them. Their extended primes might last 15-20 percent longer than anything we've seen from a perimeter player before. A closer look.........

[infojocks-blog]

[thescrambler-blog]

A handy graphic for the Super Bowl. 

America! Excess! Freedom!

Enjoy the game.

[nprfreshair]

[thescrambler-blog]

Another week in the books. Thanks for checking out The Scrambler.

Cold in New York. Beautiful in San Francisco.

Get after it. Isn't there a big game this weekend?

Remember- You're never too cold, or too balmy to tap the rockies.

STAY THIRSTY MY FRIENDS.

nprfreshair:

Yes, that is made from crayons: Herb Williams is one of the few people in the world who have an individual account with Crayola. The company is on his speed dial. He’s on a first-name basis with many of the employees. So what merits this special treatment? Because Williams orders a lot of crayons. Boxes of them. Thousands and thousands of them. Three thousand Crayola crayons in a 50-pound case.

[thescrambler-blog]

Long-ish read, but riveting, as usual.

When Irish Eyes Are Crying

First Iceland. Then Greece. Now Ireland, which headed for bankruptcy with its own mysterious logic. In 2000, suddenly among the richest people in Europe, the Irish decided to buy their country—from one another. After which their banks and government really screwed them. So where’s the rage?

BY MICHAEL LEWIS•PHOTOGRAPH BY JONAS FREDWALL KARLSSONMARCH 2011

CRASH COURSE University College Dublin professor Morgan Kelly, in Hogans pub, in Dublin. He predicted the Irish Crash in 2006.

Are you detecting a theme over the last few years?

Here's a hint: privative the gains, socialize the losses.

#theyarewhowethoughttheywere #greatmomentsinbankinghistory

[thescrambler-blog]

Click the link above for the full article. //sigh

A recent paper by Kellog management professor Lauren Rivera “uncovers” something most of us already know: elite investment banks, consultancies and law firms are education snobs.

 From her abstract:

In the following article, I analyze how hiring agents in top-tier professional service firms use education to recruit, assess, and select new hires. I find that educational credentials were the most common criteria employers used to solicit and screen resumes. However, it was not the content of education that elite employers valued but rather its prestige. Employers privileged candidates who possessed a super-elite (e.g., top 5) university affiliation and attributed superior cognitive, cultural, and moral qualities to candidates who had been admitted to such an institution, regardless of their actual performance once there. However, attendance at a super-elite university was insufficient for success in resume screens. Importing the logic of elite university admissions, firms performed a secondary resume screen on the status and intensity of candidates’ extracurricular accomplishments and leisure pursuits. I discuss these findings in terms of the changing nature of credentialism and stratification in higher education to suggest that participation in formalized extracurricular activities has become a new credential of moral character that has monetary conversion value in labor markets.

The snobbery is very precise: you have to go to Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Stanford and, perhaps, Wharton. And the reason for this is not the belief that these schools provide the best education—in fact, many of those evaluating job candidates were critical of the education offered by these schools. Rather, it seems that the elite firms are simply using getting into Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Standford and Wharton as a proxy for intelligence.

[thescrambler-blog]

You can call the current state of affairs many things. "A broad based recovery" is not one of them. #inequality #letthemeatcake

WSJ Real Time Economics Blog:

Nearly a year and a half into the economic recovery, some 43.6 million Americans continued to rely on food stamps in November.

More than 14% of the population drew food stamps in November to purchase groceries as high unemployment and muted wage growth crimped budgets. The number of recipients was up 0.9% from October, according to the new report by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Compared to a year ago, the number of people receiving food stamps was up 14.2%.

In both Washington, D.C. and Mississippi more than a fifth of residents received food stamps — the highest recipiency rates of any state.

But demand has grown stronger in the past year in a handful of other states that recorded significant increases on a per capita basis.

In New Mexico, 19.4% of the population tapped into food stamps. That’s up 3.2 percentage points from the same month a year ago, the largest increase for any state. Idaho reported a similar jump: 14% of residents received food stamps, up 3.1 points from a year ago. Washington, D.C., Florida, Delaware and Texas all experienced similar year over year increases.

Food Stamp Use, by State

Click on the top of any column to resort the chart.

State Number of people on food stamps Nov. 2010 Percent of population on food stamps ↑Year-over-year increase in percent of population on food stamps Year-over-year rise in umber of people on food stamps District of Columbia131,61121.9%3.017,939Mississippi612,88920.7%1.543,537Tennessee1,264,40719.9%1.278,616Oregon749,49819.6%2.077,462Michigan1,920,33019.4%2.4240,584New Mexico399,45419.4%3.264,917Louisiana866,90519.1%1.464,496West Virginia345,68318.7%0.713,318Kentucky813,04118.7%1.355,390Maine241,11718.2%1.621,255Alabama863,60618.1%1.885,934South Carolina839,10918.1%1.567,569Georgia1,732,86517.9%2.3226,054Arkansas487,78616.7%1.132,393Arizona1,050,18116.4%1.063,905Oklahoma615,19116.4%1.451,831North Carolina1,531,25516.1%2.6246,098Florida2,994,41315.9%3.0563,646Missouri931,93315.6%0.954,087Texas3,925,11915.6%2.8697,058Ohio1,772,60815.4%2.0230,378Washington1,019,79115.2%1.8122,678New York2,934,49315.1%1.6311,229Rhode Island154,03114.6%2.627,161Delaware129,04914.4%2.926,179Vermont89,31614.3%1.05,974U.S.43,595,79414.1%1.85,411,796Idaho219,27114.0%3.148,309Wisconsin771,41313.6%1.9109,383Illinois1,732,16913.5%1.3162,844Indiana863,48913.3%1.382,069Pennsylvania1,673,71413.2%1.3165,619South Dakota99,82612.3%1.19,316Massachusetts799,77012.2%1.279,259Montana120,01312.1%1.413,670Nevada322,95012.0%2.568,574Iowa351,89811.6%0.824,412Alaska79,24211.2%1.410,194Hawaii153,01811.2%1.621,657Maryland643,65111.1%2.0116,540Virginia837,00510.5%1.083,970Connecticut370,66510.4%1.656,826Kansas295,78710.4%1.441,118Utah268,2169.7%1.953,455California3,521,8819.5%1.3480,231Nebraska170,7319.3%0.916,057North Dakota60,6819.0%0.42,507Minnesota473,7768.9%1.367,463Colorado435,3068.7%1.155,350New Hampshire111,5188.5%1.114,789New Jersey706,7028.0%1.5127,748Wyoming35,9246.4%0.63,592

[mocus-blog]

[thescrambler-blog]

#residentialsegregationisaliveandwell

mocus:

In a country that is only 12.1 percent African-American, 30 percent of African-Americans live in Census Block Groups that are 75 percent African-American or more.

75 percent of African-Americans in the country live in only 16 percent of the Census Block Groups in the United States.

50 percent of African-Americans live in Census Block Groups that have a combined African-American and Latino population of 66.85 percent or more (nationally, the latino population is approximately 15.8 percent, so the combined African-American and Latino population is just shy of only 28 percent).

For more informtion

[thescrambler-blog]

Interesting............

So What If You Don't Get Enough Sleep?

Actually, you'll die earlier, be fatter, and be worse at your job.

How many times have you told yourself (especially when you're up at 2 a.m. on a Sunday night): "Eh, it's just sleep." Is it just sleep, though? What happens to your health when you're not sleeping enough?

This infographic designed by FFunction for Zeo, a company that makes an electronic "sleep coach," is less of a real data visualization than a set of illustrated facts. But the facts are pretty gobsmacking. For example, we, as a nation, seem pretty tired all the time: Only 7% of people get eight hours of sleep a night. But the effects of this might be calamitous: Getting less sleep is associated with a 200% rise in cancer, a 100% rise in heart disease, and a 20% rise in the likelihood you'll be dead in 20 years. Not only will you be less healthy, you'll be fatter. People who sleep an hour more each day lose 14.3 pounds per year. (?!!). And 1 in 3 women find themselves too sleepy for sex: Scientists are inching closer to an explanation of how all this might be the case. (It really does seem that the lack of sleep itself is the problem, rather than lack of sleep being merely correlated with some other thing, such as alcohol consumption, which is causing all the problems.) Studies have shown that sleeping too little effectively puts the body on "high alert," creating increased stress hormones and chemicals associated with inflammation.

That said, what the infographic doesn't tell is that sleeping too much can be almost as a dangerous as not sleeping enough. If you sleep over nine hours a day, you're more likely to be fat, diabetic, depressed, and have heart disease. So get eight hours, but no more.