Jonathan Chait thinks she has a path to the GOP nomination. Jonathan Bernstein isn't convinced:
[T]here's no precedent under the current system for a junior Member of the House to even be a halfway viable candidate — and no precedent for someone as far off the party reservation [as Bachmann] to capture its most important prize. It isn't gonna happen.
Mark Johnson watches it head east:
Danny Quah of the London School of Economics (LSE) recently wrote a paper describing the dynamics of the global economy’s centre of gravity [WECG]. By economic centre of gravity he refers to the average location of the planet’s economic activity measured by GDP generated across nearly 700 identifiable locations on the Earth’s surface. … The graphic … shows, in 3 year intervals, the WECG 1980-2007 in black and projections for 2010 – 2049 in red.
The Bloody Mary is more than just a tasty way to get a little hair of the dog. According to the American Chemical Society, it’s also one of the most complex cocktails out there. That’s why this group of chemists decided to spend months analyzing the drink, in the process coming up with some tips for making the best Bloody Mary.
The most surprising tip? Use cheap vodka! (Read on to find out why.)
Mathematically Correct Breakfast, with a Mobius strip bagel. Plus, an unusual coconut porridge — yum!
Freddie DeBoer reflects on the loneliness and potential of the web:
Paradoxically, what I find more and more is that the Internet is a place for people to affirm and support each other. It's as if the understanding of the fundamental weakness of these electronic proxies to represent human connection causes people to push for it more and more. And this could be beautiful. But it can also be dangerous. Because of the depth of the loneliness, I blame no one for how they interact and connect with others online. I just worry.
I worry about the urge towards conformity. I worry about Twitter. I worry that all of those retweets and all of those "right on"s contribute to a kind of coarse postmodernism, where what the truth becomes what is most agreed on. I worry that dissent is confused with a lack of etiquette. And I particularly worry about the echo chamber effect, and the way that small groups of people who are just like each other can come to think of themselves as representing the opinions of everyone. On the Internet, we all make the world in our own image.
Donald Shoup wants car owners to pay for parking directly:
Minimum parking requirements have severed the link between the cost of providing a parking space and the price that drivers pay for it. Cities respond to increasing vehicle travel by increasing their parking requirements, and when citizens then object to traffic congestion, cities respond by restricting development density and requiring even more parking. The increased travel distances between sites surrounded by parking lots increase the need for cars for most trips, and the increased car ownership further inflames the opposition to charging anything for parking.
Neither planners nor politicians seem to realize, however, that the parking requirements (and the free parking they produce) accelerate sprawl. Cars have replaced people as zoning’s real concern, and free parking has become the arbiter of urban form, with serious consequences far beyond parking itself.
Jason Pack sorts them into different groups:
[T]he Islamists, like the army defectors, don't comprise the bulk of rebel fighters. The most prevalent form of unit organization is ad hoc: a few brothers or friends sharing gas money, a few rifles, a rebel flag, and a pickup truck. Occasionally, whole villages or subsections of tribes have joined the rebels as a semicoherent unit. Yet even then, village headmen or tribal sheikhs do not appear to be leading or orchestrating the fighting. In fact, military leadership at the front, inasmuch as it exists, is entirely spontaneous. In late March, for example, the top military brass in Benghazi strongly advised the fighters not to push past Ajdabiya when it was retaken due to coalition airstrikes. The fighters did not obey orders and were quickly routed by Qaddafi's counterattacks.
(Photo: Speakers standing behind a large pre-Gadhafi era Libyan flag now used by the opposition, address a rally held after Friday prayers on the corniche in Benghazi, Libya Friday, April 1, 2011. By Ben Curtis/AP)
Good morning! How’s about some hot and spicy chilaquiles to get your day started off right? A little extra dash of srircaha on that?
This recipe comes from The Sriracha Cookbook: 50 “Rooster Sauce” Recipes That Pack a Punch by Randy Clemens. Considering our long and well-documented love affair with Sriracha brand hot sauce, this cookbook hits close to our hearts and even closer to our stomachs.
Bruce Schneier takes a look at various kinds of e-book fraud:
The first is content farming, discussed in these two interesting blog posts. People are creating automatically generated content, web-collected content, or fake content, turning it into a book, and selling it on an ebook site like Amazon.com. Then they use multiple identities to give it good reviews. If it gets a bad review, the scammer just relists the same content under a new name.
A final batch of contributions:
Miami, Florida
Niger, Nigeria
New York, New York
Somewhere over, Greenland
Salt Lake City, Utah