Rocking and Rolling...

We just felt a strong earthquake – lots of sideways motion, subsonic rumbling, and of quite long duration (about 45 seconds at a guess).  The USGS initial automated report puts it at magnitude 6.9, about 20 miles south of the Mexican border.  That's roughly 60 or 70 miles from our house...

The report is preliminary and these often get revised.  USGS map at right and info below; click to enlarge...

A Movie I'd Watch...

I haven't watched a movie for months, but here's one I think I might enjoy.  When it comes out on DVD, I'm gonna get it:

A Pox on Us All...

Public sector employees, that is.  Reason has a nice piece on the problem, with video.

I was at our local post office the other day, picking up a package, and overheard a conversation between two patrons waiting in the agonizingly slow line.  The conversation started off by noting the injustice of low-skill Post Office jobs commanding top-tier salaries and benefits, paid for by taxes on private-sector workers like the two people talking.  I was cheered by this common-sense observation. 

But then the conversation veered into a direction Obama would be delighted with: the two started wondering out loud how they could go about getting one of these cushy jobs, too. 

This is the road Europe has traveled, and the results ain't pretty... 

Spike!

For the past few months, the Google unemployment index has been bouncing around the same high level.  This week it spiked upwards to set a new high (click graph to enlarge).

This index measures frequency of unemployment related Google searches, so it's an indirect measure – more a measure of interest in unemployment, rather than of unemployment itself.  But why should even that have peaked last week?

In an odd coincidence, my good friend and neighbor lost his job just over a week ago when his company filed for bankruptcy.  Maybe the spike is due to his queries?