Getting Bin Laden

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I had read this compelling piece a few weeks ago but had been procrastinating about posting a link as it sat stagnating in my Instapaper queue. If you haven't read this article yet, please do so now. Nicholas Schmidle, writing for The New Yorker:

Four months after Obama entered the White House, Leon Panetta, the director of the C.I.A., briefed the President on the agency’s latest programs and initiatives for tracking bin Laden. Obama was unimpressed. In June, 2009, he drafted a memo instructing Panetta to create a “detailed operation plan” for finding the Al Qaeda leader and to “ensure that we have expended every effort.” Most notably, the President intensified the C.I.A.’s classified drone program; there were more missile strikes inside Pakistan during Obama’s first year in office than in George W. Bush’s eight. The terrorists swiftly registered the impact: that July, CBS reported that a recent Al Qaeda communiqué had referred to “brave commanders” who had been “snatched away” and to “so many hidden homes [which] have been levelled.” The document blamed the “very grave” situation on spies who had “spread throughout the land like locusts.” Nevertheless, bin Laden’s trail remained cold.

Time Lapse From Orbit

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Here’s some more creative space photography from Ron Garan, who’s currently on board the International Space Station. Garan and several other astronauts have teamed up for the pFragile Oasis project](http://www.fragileoasis.org/), to share the perspective of Earth that they see from orbit. This time-lapse sequence is apparently a sneak peek at a longer version. The Peter Gabriel song, if you’re racking your brain, was used in the Pixar film Wall-E.

Sickening

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One Michigan woman's horrible experience about being racially profiled by some goober passenger on the plane and then having her rights violated by federal agents:

Silly me. I thought flying on 9/11 would be easy. I figured most people would choose not to fly that day so lines would be short, planes would be lightly filled and though security might be ratcheted up, we’d all feel safer knowing we had come a long way since that dreadful Tuesday morning 10 years ago. But then armed officers stormed my plane, threw me in handcuffs and locked me up.

Directly Comparing Fukushima to Chernobyl

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Nature.com has a post up on their newsblog comparing the Fukushina & Cherynobyl disasters to one another. Geiff Brumfiel writes:

The bottom line here is that Fukushima and Chernobyl are comparable, and a comparison really helps underscore the differences. Fukushima's heavy containment vessels limited the spread of some dangerous isotopes, but the coastal location makes marine contamination a much bigger issue than it ever was for Chernobyl. The latest maps suggest that there will be a permanent exclusion zone to the northwest of Fukushima, but it will likely be quite a bit smaller than the one at Chernobyl. The size comparison graphic that accompanies the article gives a nice visual perspective.

The Limping Middle Class

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Robert Reich, writing for the New York Times:

Look back over the last hundred years and you’ll see the pattern. During periods when the very rich took home a much smaller proportion of total income — as in the Great Prosperity between 1947 and 1977 — the nation as a whole grew faster and median wages surged. We created a virtuous cycle in which an ever growing middle class had the ability to consume more goods and services, which created more and better jobs, thereby stoking demand. The rising tide did in fact lift all boats. As John Gruber points out, the accompanying infographic to this article is absolutely fantastic.

Eric and Irene

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Paul Krugman, writing for the New York Times:

A few weeks ago, Mr. Cantor was the hard man in the confrontation over the debt ceiling; he was willing to endanger America’s financial credibility, putting our whole economy at risk, in order to extract budget concessions from President Obama. Now he’s doing it again, this time over disaster relief, making headlines by insisting that any federal aid to the victims of Hurricane Irene be offset by cuts in other spending. In effect, he is threatening to take Irene’s victims hostage. How is it that his supporters can continue to defend him and yet, still sleep at night?