The Big Picture

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• US Ends Iraq War Chapter
• What Gadgets Top Holiday Shopping Lists ?
• Current Events Summarized In Brilliant Art
• Last Minute Holiday Gift Ideas
• What Makes a Donor Donate? A New Marketplace Podcast
• 10 Thursday PM Reads
• Louis CK: I am giving away half $1M Dollars from live show
• Top 10 Countries for Solar Energy
• What Really Caused The Eurozone Crisis?
• Forbes Investment Round Table

US Ends Iraq War Chapter Posted: 23 Dec 2011 01:30 AM PST Click to enlarge slides: Ethnic Groups U.S Bases Iraqi Troops Private Contractors Civilian Deaths Troop Deaths Oil Fields Source: US Ends Iraq War Chapter Aljazeera, December 2011

What Gadgets Top Holiday Shopping Lists ? Posted: 23 Dec 2011 01:30 AM PST click for larger graphic by Column Five Media via

Current Events Summarized In Brilliant Art Posted: 22 Dec 2011 10:30 PM PST The Fed and the big banks (Background): Painting by Billy Walsh: www.HeckleSketch.com Our politicians (Background): Painting by Anthony Freda: www.AnthonyFreda.com The mainstream media (Background): Painting by Anthony Freda: www.AnthonyFreda.com Our liberty (Background): Painting by Anthony Freda: www.AnthonyFreda.com Many are still asleep … or worrying about the wrong things (Background): Painting by Anthony Freda: www.AnthonyFreda.com

Last Minute Holiday Gift Ideas Posted: 22 Dec 2011 06:30 PM PST Lots of good feedback for our first few lists (Holiday Shopping Ideas! and Holiday Gifts for Traders and More Holiday Shopping Ideas!). So with but 3 more shopping days til Xmas, lets give this one last go round. As part of our annual Shopmas tradition, I cull some of my more interesting fascinations, acquisitions, and other items I stumble each year, as well as items off of my own overstuffed wish list. Note that there are not a lot of gifts focused on women. Of you are just trying to fill that gap at this late hour, you are pretty much screwed. ~~~ • Papa Bear's Chocolate Haus: Every year, a friend in California sends us the chocolate toffee with nuts, from this Mendicino shop — and it is heavenly. This is quite simply the most delicious stuff I've ever had. Astonishingly, they don't have a webpage, but as Google reveals, they are well loved for a reason.  (707) 937-4406 ~~~ • Butt Station ($18) Tape Dispenser, Pen & Memo Holder, Paper Clip Storage. Need a last minute gift for your office cut up? Have a boss you don’t particularly care for? Look no further than the Butt Station — the perfect gift for the imperfect ass. ~~~ • Louie: Season One ($20) This is simply the funniest show on television in years. Sharply written, fearless, Louie C.K.’s has created the anti-sitcom; its what television can be when the suits don’t get involved. Dark, hilarious, absurd. Louie, the series on FX, is simply brilliant. ~~~ • Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZS10 ($235) This is the latest and greatest in the pocket sized Lumix line with the Leica lens. It features a 14.1 MP chip, 16x Wide Angle Optical Image, Stabilized Zoom, HD Video, Built-In GPS Function — and a touch screen, which accounts for much of the price differential versus the older ZS8 Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZS8 ($150) this is a solid, dependable pocket camera that takes great photos. 14.1 MP chip, 16x Wide Angle Optical Image, Stabilized Zoom, HD Video, Built-In GPS Function. It may not have a touch screen, and its HD video is saved in MPEG format, but its a helluva buy at this price.(Note you can save even more money by getting the DMC-ZS8, which seems to be the foreign version of this camera for $130) ~~~ • The Man with No Name Trilogy ($30) (A Fistful of Dollars / For a Few Dollars More / The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly) [Blu-ray] A Fistful of Dollars launched the spaghetti Western and catapulted Clint Eastwood to stardom. Based on Akira Kurosawa’s 1961 samurai picture Yojimbo. And The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly has long been one of my favorite westerns, am epic vision of greed and betrayal   (Also available in DVD format, with Hang ‘em High, for $12.50) ~~~ • The Philip K. Dick Collection ($69) An excellent introduction to the major works of PKD. I have read nearly all of these in my youth, and they were fascinating and influential — for anyone interested in the question: What is perception? And what is reality if perception is so easily skewed? For your geekiest friend: This collection includes the major works of Dick: The Man in the High Castle (1962); The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch (1965); Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968); Ubik (1969) Martian Time-Slip (1964); Dr. Bloodmoney, or How We Got Along After the Bomb (1965); Now Wait for Last Year (1966); Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said (1974); A Scanner Darkly (1977); A Maze of Death (1970); VALIS (1981); The Divine Invasion (1981); The Transmigration of Timothy Archer (1982) ~~~ • 23andMe Gift Kit ($207) One size fits all for your friends and family. Find branches of your family tree; Learn what your genes mean for your health in terms of your potentially inheritable diseases;  Includes 1-year subscription to the Personal Genome Service to get them started. ~~~ •  Octopus Salad Bowl ($144) Last time I mentioned Vagabond House, a birthday gift had not yet arrived. Well, a few days ago, these arrived, and tey are pretty outrageous. The large Salad Server has a detailed Octopus adorned the wooden bowl, which is about 16 inches across. You can also add Octopus accented salad bowls ($160 for a set of 4). The firm notes their work is of “Noble Materials, Inspired Lines, Captivating Styles.” Indeed. ~~~ • The Beatles Stereo Box Set ($225) I have been meaning to discuss this work, but I never seem to get around to it. Let me simply say that this may be the finest box set I own — or have ever seen. From the quality of the recordings, to the dept of printed material to the revelatory remastering of the original work, this is a flawless offering. ~~~ • Star Wars: The Blueprints ($450) Star Wars: The Blueprints brings together, for the first time, the original blueprints created for the filming of the Star Wars Saga. Drawn from deep within the Lucasfilm Archives, a precise, vivid, and intricate detail the very genesis of the most enduring sci fi work ever to appear onscreen. Melding science and art, these drawings giving birth to fantastic new worlds, ships, and creatures. Star Wars: The Blueprints is a limited edition. Only 5,000 hand-numbered English language copies will be available. ~~~ • Praying mantis ($2,000 – 15,000) I find the work of sculptor Nemo Gould to be both charming and compelling. He does a variety of wicked cool kinetic sculptures and various creatures. I don’t know why, but I find this Praying mantis lamp utterly beguiling. Here you will find a portfolio of images and videos of his work — but I find his Creatures especially fanciful. ~~~

What Makes a Donor Donate? A New Marketplace Podcast Posted: 22 Dec 2011 03:00 PM PST freakonomics_mppodcast112911 Source: What Makes a Donor Donate? A New Marketplace Podcast Freakonomics, November 2011 This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now

10 Thursday PM Reads Posted: 22 Dec 2011 01:30 PM PST Afternoon train reading: • Economic Growth Revised Lower for 3rd Quarter (WSJ) • How Luther went viral (Economist) • Corzine Another Victim of the Alpha-Male Curse (Bloomberg) • Cleveland Fed Two-fer: …..-Urban Growth & Decline: Role of Pop Density at the City Core (Fed Cleveland) …..-Concentrated Poverty (Fed Cleveland) • London Brokers Shrink as Debt Crisis Bites (Bloomberg) • 25-Year-Old Broker Lee Munson Is Swaggering Relic of the Boom (Observer) • Facebook reveals music, film make friendships; books, not so much (Ars Technica) • The Day I Saw Van Gogh's Genius in a New Light (Asada’s Memorandum) • The truth about Microsoft and CES ? (The Verge) see also Mystery: Who killed the Microsoft CES keynote? (Gigaom) • 106 of the most beloved Street Art Photos – Year 2011 (Street Art Utopia) What is on your tablet? >

Louis CK: I am giving away half $1M Dollars from live show Posted: 22 Dec 2011 12:15 PM PST This is pretty cool:  Louis C. K. announced he was giving away the lion’s share of the proceeds from his online only event,  Live at the Beacon Theater hi. So it’s been about 12 days since the thing started and yesterday we hit the crazy number. One million dollars. That’s a lot of money. Really too much money. I’ve never had a million dollars all of a sudden. and since we’re all sharing this experience and since it’s really your money, I wanted to let you know what I’m doing with it. People are paying attention to what’s going on with this thing. So I guess I want to set an example of what you can do if you all of a sudden have a million dollars that people just gave to you directly because you told jokes. So I’m breaking the million into four pieces. the first 250k is going to pay back what the special cost to produce and the website to build. The second 250k is going back to my staff and the people who work for me on the special and on my show. I’m giving them a big fat bonus. The third 280k is going to a few different charities. They are listed below in case you’d like to donate to them also. Some of these i learned about through friends, some were reccomended through twitter. The Fistula Foundation The Pablove Foundation charity: water Kiva Green Chimneys That leaves me with 220k for myself. Some of that will pay my rent and will care for my childen. The rest I will do terrible, horrible things with and none of that is any of your business. In any case, to me, 220k is enough out of a million. I never viewed money as being “my money” I always saw it as “The money” It’s a resource. if it pools up around me then it needs to be flushed back out into the system. The entire online venture is a disruptive upending — disintermediation — of the usual concert approach. I saw him perform at Westbury not too long ago, and my sides hurt for three days . . . >

Top 10 Countries for Solar Energy Posted: 22 Dec 2011 11:30 AM PST Well, today is December 22nd. It is, in the Northern hemisphere, the shortest day of the year. A perfect time to think about Solar energy: > Home Solar Power Discounts – One Block Off the Grid

What Really Caused The Eurozone Crisis? Posted: 22 Dec 2011 08:30 AM PST Great graphic of the EU crisis via the Beeb: > Click thru for enlarged version with full text: Source: What really caused the eurozone crisis? BBC News, December 22, 2011

Forbes Investment Round Table Posted: 22 Dec 2011 07:30 AM PST

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