Know Its Features. Know It's Real. The New $100 Bill

The Treasury has now announced the new design for the $100 bill, which was last changed in 1996. The big new feature is the blue/white motion thread running down the middle. More information at www.newmoney.gov. As cool as it looks in the video, it looks even better in person.

Don't mind the missing apostrophe in the new slogan.

Jindal Redux

I remember when Bobby Jindal was ridiculed some for complaining about spending on volcano monitoring. It is certainly time for some more.

Jarvis on the Cloud

Perhaps there is nothing like a volcanic eruption, except maybe a thunderstorm/tornado/hurricane, to remind people that the word "cloud" has another meaning, one not related at all to computers and the internet. Jeff Jarvis has some interesting reflections on his narrow escape from Europe ahead of the famous cloud, with thoughts on how the media (and governments, too) are failing to really address the event in real time.

My favorite quote.

What’s failing us, all in all, is our power structures, which aren’t built to think big and fast at the same time. ... They are treating this is a short-term, one-time event. It may well not be.

Update:
Here, by way of Matt Yglesias, is an interesting description of just why this cloud of ash causes all this trouble.

Required Reading

Roger Ebert has an excellent blog post discussing the recent controversy on Texas school books. (Strange; when I saw him on "At The Movies," I thought he was kind of a pompous ass, and now he seems to be one of the better thinkers of our time!) My favorite quote:

Does it make me a liberal if I believe Jefferson has been more central to American history than Calvin? That Lincoln was our greatest president, and Davis not our President at all? That the Theory of Evolution towers with majesty above those who, in some cases, believe the earth may be 10,000 years old, and that men walked the earth with dinosaurs? No, it doesn't make me a liberal. It makes me an educated, rational being.

His solution:

I have a simple proposal. More enlightened states should refuse to play along. Their State Boards could require generally-accepted educational standards, and vote against purchasing the corrupted Texas texts. This would have the result of limiting the influence of the Texas religious right over the rest of the country. And it would allow publishers to cling to a certain degree of self-respect.

Unfortunately, I don't think it will work out quite that way.

Psychic Beheading

Saudi Arabia is going to behead a psychic. My first reaction is that he should have seen it coming. When you think about it, though, it makes you wonder just who are the Saudis and why do we really want to deal with them when they do what they do? Warning: there is a picture at the second link.