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Many Eyes is a bet on the power of human visual intelligence to find patterns. Our goal is to "democratize" visualization and to enable a new social kind of data analysis. The magic is when an unwieldy, unyielding data set is transformed into an image on the screen, and suddenly the user can perceive an unexpected pattern. Information visualization is a catalyst for discussion and collective insight about data. We all deal with data that we'd like to understand better. It may be as straightforward as a sales spreadsheet or fantasy football stats chart, or as vague as a cluttered email inbox. But a remarkable amount of it has social meaning beyond ourselves. When we share it and discuss it, we understand it in new ways.

Michael Moore addresses press on Barack Obama and Blue Dog Democrats' approach to health care reform at Public Citizen headquarters in Washington, D.C. on Tuesday, September 29th, 2009.

Blown Opportunity #1: Stimulus Package. Blown Opportunity #3: Auto Bailouts. Blown Opportunity #3: Bank Bailouts. No President since FDR has been handed as many opportunities to transform the U.S. into something that doesn't threaten the stability of life on this planet. He has refused to use each and every one of them. Let's look at the big three.

Big, wealthy oil companies like BP are usually expected to pay to the cleanup costs themselves. But that still leaves the cost of all the indirect damage to fisheries and wildlife habitats in the area. In that case, under current law, an offshore rig operator is liable for up to $75 million in damages. After that, the federal government picks up the tab, using an oil spill liability trust fund that's paid for by a tiny tax on oil (amounting to one-tenth of 1 percent of the price).

The U.S. disclosed for the first time on Monday the current size of its nuclear arsenal, lifting the veil on once top-secret numbers in an effort to bolster non-proliferation efforts.

"On October 4, 2010, Elena Kagan Will Ask Her First QuestiOn As A Supreme Court Justice And Justice Ginsburg will look across the bench at her new colleague and smile"

"May 9, 2010 Liberal activists intensify attacks on Kagan as court pick nears"

Sanders/Dodd Audit-The-Fed allows audit of TARP + TALF, but not FOMC, discount window operations, or agreement with foreign central banks. "Even the so called "independent" leftists, Kucinich and Sanders, have both capitulatied to the corporate, class markets and their class despotism, proving they are not real opposition leaders, but phony socialists, phony anti war activists." ~Eric Albert Schwing I read all three versions of the Sanders amendment carefully, and I believe Sanders made a good call if the decision was compromise with Dodd or have no amendment at all. The big differences with the compromise are: -Single audit covering December 1,2007 to May 2010 rather than open-ended audit until all bailout funds are recovered. -Specific parameters on the audit focusing on whether proper procedures were followed and what could be done to improve Fed governance. However it is not clear that the audit is limited to these items. -Fed website still must report lots of previously undisclosed details about the bailout measured-who got what and why. ~bmull

"A theory of change is the opposite of a theory of action - it works backwards from the goal, in concrete steps, to figure out what you can do to achieve it. To develop a theory of change, you need to start at the end and repeatedly ask yourself, "Concretely, how does one achieve that?" A decrease in the defense budget: how does one achieve that? Yes, you."

5 days later, no one knows what went wrong on May 6th.

"There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody," she declared, pointing out that the rich can only get rich thanks to the "social contract" that provides a decent, functioning society in which they can prosper.

Isn't it fiinally time to enact a "basic income guarantee"? The lack of individual and family income security in the midst of a highly-developed economy is a travesty under any circumstances. But the contradiction of "poverty in the midst of plenty" that has plagued the world since the start of the Industrial Revolution is becoming much more grave in the U.S. and abroad. The problem, of course, is one of distribution of earnings, and excess production capacity relative to available income... Winston Churchill gave eloquent testimony to this conundrum of the modern age when delivering the Romanes Lecture at Oxford University on June 19, 1930. This was a few months after the crash of the U.S. stock market marked the start of the Great Depression. Churchill said: "Who would have thought that it would be easier to produce by toil and skill all the most necessary or desirable commodities than it is to find consumers for them? Who would have thought that cheap and abundant supplies of all the basic commodities would find the science and civilization of the world unable to utilize them? Have all our triumphs of research and organization bequeathed us only a new punishment: the Curse of Plenty? Are we really to believe that no better adjustment can be made between supply and demand? Yet the fact remains that every attempt has failed. Many various attempts have been made, from the extremes of Communism in Russia to the extremes of Capitalism in the United States. They include every form of fiscal policy and currency policy. But all have failed, and we have advanced little further in this quest than in barbaric times. Surely it is this mysterious crack and fissure at the basis of all our arrangements and apparatus upon which the keenest minds throughout the world should be concentrated.

The AARP just met with the leadership of the Mayo Clinic, one of the most outstanding medical institutions in the country. They provide excellent care at a cost that is less than most other parts of the healthcare system - and with improved outcomes. We asked them about their secret to success.\n\nMayo has an electronic medical record and all their patients have their information online. The physicians are on salary, so there's no incentive to order unnecessary tests or procedures, and Mayo has an ethic of patient-centered care, with a long history of attracting the best people and rewarding them.\n\nIf Mayo can do it, why can't everyone else? The AARP believes that the potential is there for most communities to have excellent care - we must emulate the care delivery of institutions like the Mayo Clinic, and put in place payment and information systems that will coordinate care management better. It's a big job and will take some investment, but we have many opportunities to do a better job than we're doing today.

"Yeldan, Erinc On the Nature and Causes of the Collapse of the Wealth of NatiOns, 2007-2008: The End of a Façade Called GlobalizatiOn PublicatiOn Date: 3/17/2009"

The Case Against Kagan | .@MMFA unpacks today's Washington Times compilation of distortions + falsehoods used in a massive attack on Elena Kegan, Supreme Court nominee:

Fed may well have mitigated our current crisis by sowing the seeds for the next one.

Compared to Obama's charismatic presidential campaign, why is he communicating so poorly on health care reform? George Lakoff says: He's letting policy wonks sell it. And these policymakers are communicating a list, not sharing a unifying idea.

Boehner, Cantor Question White House on Proposed Health Care Summit

Volatile week on Wall Street ends with another slide: #p2 #finreg #econ http://nyti.ms/caoGkf

For generations, Egypt and virtually all other countries in the Arab world have been ruled as if that same principle applied to every aspect of society: the people are bent on chaos and only the iron hand of a police state can impose order.