News for March 4

Financial Crises, Visualized

What does the U.S. financial crisis look like? Some creative attempts to explain via charts, graphs, and video what the nation’s various money problems, from housing to credit to taxes to poverty, have been making the rounds on the Internet lately. Here are some of the most informative and interesting. Links include:

WallStats |  “This financial crisis is quite difficult to pin down because there are many factors involved, chain reactions, and negligence abound.  So I created this primer to help people get their heads around it.  It is a loose flow chart and fairly simple.  Each item could have been split into many sub-items but I didn’t want to lose people along the way.”

Across the Street |  “I saw enough of The Da Vinci Code to know that things are not always what they seem.  It has become clear to me that the works of the great M. C. Escher are not impossible designs;  They’re Economic Models.”

The Crisis of Credit Visualized from Jonathan Jarvis on Vimeo.

The Crisis of Credit Visualized @Vimeo |  “The goal of giving form to a complex situation like the credit crisis is to quickly supply the essence of the situation to those unfamiliar and uninitiated. This project was completed as part of my thesis work in the Media Design Program, a graduate studio at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California.”

Marginal Revolution |  “Markets in Everything, New Orleans Style … “

The End of Newspapers? Or Is There a Journalism School Model?  |  Informed Consent

I wonder if the journalism school might not be the matrix of the web-based newspaper of the future. (How to mix between public and private, and 501 c 3 and 501 c 4 type endowments I don’t pretend to know). But if it were possible, and if the school had the journalists do some teaching, so as to be able to attract tuition money, you might be able to generate proper salaries and leave enough time for newsgathering and writing. How to handle foreign correspondents isn’t clear, but a city beat wouldn’t be so hard.

• Related link: Will Your Hometown Newspaper Still Be Around in Six Months?  |  AlterNet

The Trouble With Outside Activists  |  The American Prospect

Like Juan Ponce DeLeon’s mythological fountain of youth, the Lower 9th Ward has become upper-middle-class America’s source of feel-good absolution. Do-gooders flood down to New Orleans, their bags packed full of old T-shirts and their minds packed full of altruistic dreams. They want to build houses, watch them spring up from the dirt as they do on Extreme Makeover Home Edition. Indeed, they genuinely want to help people. But the darker side of all of this well-intentioned activism is that it has created a revolving door of services and support in a parish that is in dire need of a strategic plan.

Religion and Intolerance in Contemporary American Politics  |  Miller-McCune

A reasonably well-established finding from decades of social science research is that those professing religious affiliation and beliefs tend to be more politically intolerant; that is, specifically, to be less willing to extend political rights to those whom they view as their political foes. Religion seems to be a breeding ground not for putting up with those with generally different views, but rather for encouraging condemnation of those whose political views are different. Religionists may tolerate other religionists, but the evidence from the social scientists is that religionists are loath to tolerate those who are threatening to them.

America’s Love Affair with Really Soft Toilet Paper Is Causing an Environmental Catastrophe  |  AlterNet

More than 98 percent of the toilet paper we use in the US is from virgin forests, the Guardian reports. Across the world, people are struggling to save our forests from deforestation, and instead of helping out, we’re wiping are butts with our best defense against climate change. And until the time comes when Obama gets Congress to pass a TP Act, Greenpeace has some help for consumers, with a handy guide for getting some good toilet paper that won’t harm the environment.