experimentsinmotion:

Ferrofluids are liquids which becomes strongly polarized in the presence of a magnetic field.

thenationmagazine:

For a man whose presidential campaign is based almost exclusively on his economic knowledge and experience, Mitt Romney is having an awfully hard time figuring out how to make this budget of his add up. Ben Adler reports:

Publicly, Romney has proposed to make the Bush tax cuts permanent…

think-progress:

Following the lead of Kraft, Pepsi, Coca-Cola, and Intuit.

theatlantic:

Austerity Is a Disaster: The Lesson of Europe’s Record Unemployment

Euro zone unemployment just hit a 15-year high. German unemployment just hit a 15-year low. What can those of us across the Atlantic glean from this seemingly bipolar state of affairs? That austerity, every economic conservative’s favorite prescription for an ailing economy — the medicine Republicans here in the United States are pushing hard — is an utter disaster. 

A few euro zone members, including Germany and the Netherlands, are enjoying a relative jobs boom. And yet, europe’s overall unemployment rate is 10.8 percent. How is this possible? Because of  depression-level unemployment in Europe’s austerity-plagued periphery. […]

This should put to rest the notion of “expansionary austerity” — that is, that budget cuts can spur growth by giving businesses increased confidence. It has been an epic, epic failure with interest rates at zero. The more a country has cut, the more unemployment it has. Greece, Spain, Portugal and Ireland have all had markets (and Germany) force them to radically reduce deficits amidst already deep slumps. The result has been even deeper slumps. Joblessness has jumped to levels not seen in advanced countries since the 1930s.

Read more. [Image: Eurostat]

yahoopolitics:

The Supreme Court appeared sharply divided Wednesday over whether they would have to kill President Obama’s landmark health care overhaul outright if they decree that the measure requiring individuals to have insurance or pay a penalty is unconstitutional.

If the so-called individual mandate is…

vicemag:

Our Economic Recovery

If you believe what you read in the papers, we are in the midst of a genuine, bona fide economic recovery. You can tell because the bad numbers are smaller and the good numbers are bigger. The unemployment rate has stabilized at 8.3 percent, we’ve added a little over two million jobs to the national payroll over the past six months, and the stock market’s up. It’s morning in America, everyone!

Journalists started talking like this during last week’s news cycle. Every show and newspaper featured at least one story about the numbers getting better, usually capped with some economist cautioning, with a carefully vacuous caveat, that “This number is good. But there are also other numbers. In the future, there may be more numbers.” Seriousness!

Some politicians are eagerly presenting the latest figures as evidence that we’re all going to be OK. But we’re not. Even Americans with jobs are lacking basic financial security, earning wages that are actually shrinking when adjusted for inflation.

The unemployment rate is also blind to underemployment. A 20-hour-a-week gig at a Sears cash register makes you “employed,” whether you’re a high school student, a 57-year-old telephone lineman, or a law school graduate. The term is “employed,” not “gainfully employed.” You can be hustling backwards working three part-time jobs or you can be crushed under debt, you can be literally dying of a chronic illness you can’t afford to treat, but you’re still just “employed” to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The Bureau measures whether you’re in the employment pool. It doesn’t measure whether you’re drowning.

Continue

mothernaturenetwork:

Apollo 11 landing site seen in unprecedented detail
This photo reveals the steps of astronauts as well as a bit of litter they left behind.

techedblog:

Meet four teachers who are using computers, social media, webcams and other tools to help launch learning to a whole new level.

by Gerry Blackwell, with Francis Chalifour, OCT
Photography by Kevin Hewitt

If there’s one area teachers want to know about—and stay on top of—it’s…

nationalpost:

Photos: Pages from a real-life Sherlock Holmes’ diary
Between 1909 and 1912, Detective Inspector Robert Mather of the Manchester Police kept scrupulous notes on 65 characters from the city’s criminal underworld, including Samuel Searson, a.k.a. Samuel Jackson, who most recently served six months for “stealing silver shields” and three elaborately coiffed individuals labelled as “brothel thieves.” (Photos: Bonhams/Reuters/handout)

theatlantic:

The Collapse of Print Advertising in One Graph

Call it creative if you want, but this is what economic destruction looks like. Print newspaper ads have fallen by two-thirds from $60 billion in the late-1990s to $20 billion in 2011. 

You sometimes hear it said that newspapers are dead. Now, $20 billion is the kind of “dead” most people would trade their lives for. You never hear anybody say “bars and nightclubs are dead!” when in fact that industry’s current revenue amounts to an identical $20 billion.

So the reason newspapers are in trouble isn’t that they aren’t making lots of money — they still are; advertising is a huge, huge business, as any app developer will try to tell you — but that their business models and payroll depend on so much more money. The U.S. newspaper industry was built to support $50 billion to $60 billion in total advertising with the kind of staffs that a $50 billion industry can abide. The layoffs, buyouts, and bankruptcies you hear about are the result of this massive correction in the face of falling revenue. The Internet took out print’s knees in the last decade — not all print, but a lot.

Read more. [Image: Mark J. Perry]