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This is cool. Click over to the NYTimes to interact and stuff.

Slate’s Interactive Job Loss map is so freaking cool and informative. It shows the job gains and losses over the last two and a half years. Notice how the Bay Area kept posting job gains until about August 2008? The losses really pile up in tech-heavy SF around November/December 2008. That about sums up my experience with incoming projects too. We were pretty busy through about August/September of 2008 and then things slowed waaay down. And, they’ve stayed slow. No wonder! Now I have the big red circle on the map to validate that I’m not alone.

Make sure to click over to Slate and interact with the map yourself!

Via

I resonated with Lance Knobel’s blog post over at Davos Newbies today, titled Silicon Valley: the glass half full.

Via Davos Newbies:

I remain a near- and medium-term pessimist about the economy, but we’ll eventually emerge from the Great Recession. When we do, the renewed support and emphasis on science and technology — on reality — offers an opportunity to return to the spirit of my youth when the best and brightest wanted to become scientists and engineers, not financiers or lawyers. The challenge of effective action on climate change certainly provides a staggering goal for the ambitious. Finally, I’m hopeful about the resources and thinking the administration is putting into rescuing our public education system.

A better education system remains the key to any optimistic view. Imagine a country where children are encouraged to exercise their imaginations and take risks. Where the goal isn’t more homework, but more signs of initiative and independent thinking. That creates a system that makes the most of America’s advantages, rather than try to create a pale imitation of Singaporean or Chinese education. There are numerous paths to national well-being and prosperity and I think we have a chance to chart one that is uniquely ours.

My friend Scott Rocket asks: “Why isn’t anyone making jokes about Obama’s big stimulus package?”

Well Scott, it looks like you just got the ball rolling. Anyone else want to chime in?

Speaking of… check out this hilarious animated GIF of David Beckham’s stimulated package:

(via Towleroad)

Robert Reich has some advice for President Obama over at Salon.com:

“We’re in a deepening recession, in case you hadn’t noticed. The biggest challenge is to ramp up aggregate demand. Yes, we have to borrow lots from the Chinese and Japanese to do this, and, yes, it’s costly in terms of additional interest payments to them. But there’s no choice. In fact, if the slump gets worse — and I have every reason to fear it will because that’s the direction we’re heading in as fast as you can imagine — we’ll probably have to have a second stimulus. And if the second isn’t enough, a third. And so on. FDR’s biggest mistake was doing too little until World War II. (No one should interpret this as a recommendation for more military spending — I’m just saying Obama will probably have to think and do much bigger than the $787 billion stimulus so far.) more…“

Both of these great finds are from my buddy Shane’s Facebook newsfeed. Thanks Shane!

You will probably need a NYT username and password to read both. Should be free to register.

No Furnaces but Heat Aplenty in ‘Passive Houses’
An awesome new type of architecture that nearly eleminates the need for heating in homes and other buildings.

Stop Being Stupid
Op-Ed by columnist Bob Herbert on the status of the US and what we should do going forward.

This was so mind-blowing, I felt the need to paste in full. Read the original with hyperlinks at DailyKos.

It’s strange to find George Bush’s heavily politicized Office of Management and Budget predicting that Democrats will retake the White House this year, but that’s the only reasonable interpretation of this OMB table (PDF) attached to the 2008 budget. Permit me to explain (h/t).

The table shows federal indebtedness since 1940 both in actual dollar amounts and as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product. Interesting in a dry and dull sort of way, especially the GDP column. The massive debt from WWII gradually was drawn down to 32.6% of GDP by the time Carter left office. However 12 years of radical Republican rule quickly doubled that figure (in dollar amounts, the federal debt tripled). Pappy Bush managed to push it up to 66.2% before he left office. Clinton then brought the debt back down to 57.4%, but Dubya turned that trend right around.

OMB projects that by the time Bush leaves office he will have driven the federal debt back up to his father’s precise level of achievement, 66.2% of GDP. Of course, by wrecking the economy Dubya may actually manage to surpass his Pappy in this one respect.

Anyway, it’s clear that OMB expects a Democrat to win the WH in 2008 because it projects that indebtedness (as a percentage of GDP) will immediately start to decline after 2009. The last Republican to manage to do that was Nixon.

Last night on MSNBC, Chris Matthews and Keith Olbermann ended their coverage of “Obama Wins” with an interesting request, of sorts. They noted how the media gets too wrapped up in covering inconsequential mini-scandals rather than digging deep into issues that matter.

Most importantly they noted the important differences between Obama and McCain on the economy. Matthews (or Russert maybe) mentioned that the differences were incredibly pronounced, and yet the media has hardly covered this at all. They opined that it’s the media’s job to bring these issues to the forefront and explore what the differences between the candidates are. Gasp! You mean, the news media should actually report on and inform the public of substantive policy issues like they did once upon a time? And not just run tabloid-like talk shows that grab your attention with a scandal for 3 minutes at a time, before slamming painful graphics and splashy content in your face? Why, what a novel idea?!

I could not agree more with Matthews and Olbermann. So imagine my surprise today when CNN Money ran a great article on the key economic differences between Obama and McCain! The coverage includes the two candidates’ positions on taxes, Social Security, health care, the mortgage crisis (and helping homeowners), energy policy, and regulating government spending. Definitely a must-read. I haven’t seen this much substance come out of CNN in a looooonnnnng time.

I was pleased to read UCLA Andersen’s assessment and prediction of the “recession.”

The U.S. economy will shrink in the second quarter, but avoid a recession this year as housing’s drag will ease in the second half, helping normal growth return next year, according to a UCLA Anderson Forecast report released on Tuesday.

“The data don’t yet add up to a recession and there is nothing here to challenge the basic story of sluggishness that we have had for two years,” the forecasting unit’s report said, adding: “Our no-recession forecast remains nervously intact.”

Even if it’s not accurate, it’s nice to read an article that’s not playing into the doom-n-gloom recession fear-mongering.