Earlier this year, we wrote about Kings County Beef Jerky, an artisanal jerky company in Brooklyn (of course). Sure, it's easy to mock artisanal jerky company. The jokes basically write themselves. But the company may represent the future of U.S. manufacturing. We wrote: The Kings County approach is a model for how manufacturers in many sectors can do better. Ignore low-priced commodity products. Focus instead on customizing high-quality goods for a select audience willing to pay a premium. The same idea turns out to hold true for beer. Beer production has been flat in the U.S. for decades — it's actually a tiny bit lower than it was 30 years ago (find the comprehensive data set here). And the number of big breweries has exploded. ... Continue reading →

Of each dollar the federal government spends, how much goes to defense? How much goes to Social Security? How much goes to interest on the debt? And how has this sort of thing changed over time? The graphic below answers these questions. It shows the major components of federal spending 50 years ago, 25 years ago, and last year. A few notes: Everything else is everything not listed separately on the graphic. That includes education, science, NASA, energy, natural resources, justice, and agriculture, among other things. Defense spending has shrunk significantly as a percentage of total government spending. But it remains the largest single category of federal spending. The figures in the graph include veterans' benefits as well as funding for current operations. Medicaid, Medicare ... Continue reading →

China's radical blue-sky measures during the 2008 Olympics actually improved Beijingers' cardiovascular health -- if only for a few weeks. Aly Song/Reuters In 2008, the Chinese government conducted one of the largest real-time environmental experiments ever undertaken: In order to get air quality up to par for the summer Olympics in Beijing--in of the world's most polluted metropolis--the government halved the number of cars allowed to drive the city's roads, shut down coal-burning factories in the area, and halted construction projects, among other efforts. And it worked. Air quality met the International Olympic Committee's (IOC) standards during the Olympics and subsequent Paralympic Games; both Athletes and Beijing residents could breathe a little easier - at least for a while. U.S. Olympic distance runner Amy Yoder ... Continue reading →

By The Gregory Brothers Mitt Likes Music, Including This: In this humorous musical mash-up video by the Gregory Brothers, Mitt Romney sings about the things he likes — including lakes, cars and music, but not vampires. Continue reading →

Of each dollar the federal government spends, how much goes to defense? How much goes to Social Security? How much goes to interest on the debt? And how has this sort of thing changed over time? The graphic below answers these questions. It shows the major components of federal spending 50 years ago, 25 years ago, and last year. A few notes: Defense spending has shrunk significantly as a percentage of total government spending. But it remains the largest single category of federal spending. The figures in the graph include veterans' benefits as well as funding for current operations. Medicaid, Medicare and other health services are the huge gainers here. Together, they make up a quarter of government spending. Fifty years ago Medicare and Medicaid ... Continue reading →

Japan faces 'extinction' in 1,000 years By Kyoko Hasegawa (AFP) – 9 hours ago TOKYO — Japanese researchers on Friday unveiled a population clock that showed the nation's people could theoretically become extinct in 1,000 years because of declining birth rates.Academics in the northern city of Sendai said that Japan's population of children aged up to 14, which now stands at 16.6 million, is shrinking at the rate of one every 100 seconds.Their extrapolations pointed to a Japan with no children left within a millennium."If the rate of decline continues, we will be able to celebrate the Children's Day public holiday on May 5, 3011 as there will be one child," said Hiroshi Yoshida, an economics professor at Tohoku University."But 100 seconds later there will ... Continue reading →

Marvin Orellana for The New York Times Joe Weisenthal wakes up around 4 a.m. most weekdays, afraid that in the five or six hours he has been sleeping, something happened that could move financial markets. His alarm is his cellphone, and after he silences it so that his wife can sleep, he rolls from bed and starts to type, still in his pajamas, in the darkness of his apartment at the edge of the Financial District. And the first thing he types, the first of about 150 daily messages he posts on Twitter, is almost always this: “What’d I miss?” He works for the next two hours at the table in his living-dining room, amid boxes and bikes and cleaning supplies. A chandelier hangs over ... Continue reading →

University of Chicago "I'm 101 at the moment," Ronald Coase said. I recently had a brief conversation with Ronald Coase. "I'm 101 at the moment," he told me. "I get older by the minute." Coase is a legend in economics. He won the Nobel prize. He has a theorem named after him. But China's rapid emergence as a global economic power — one of the most important developments of the past generation — took him completely by surprise. "I thought it would take 100 years, if not more," Coase said. It seemed striking that an economic legend could be so wrong about such an important subject. I asked Coase what he made of this. "I've been wrong so often I don't find it extraordinary at ... Continue reading →

The largest permanent light show in the world, performed by the towers of Central District, Hong Kong. This is how the light show looks from the other side of the harbour, on the waterfront in Kowloon. The show lasts for 15 minutes every night - this video shows just the last six minutes. Continue reading →