Anybody that has tried to stitch together panoramas knows how painful it can be. So, how cool is this?

H/T to Digital Urban.

As reported in the WSJ (sorry, not all information is free) on Friday…

European Leaders Push Back on Obama’s Calls for Aid

In Berlin Thursday, with German Chancellor Angela Merkel at his side, French President Nicolas Sarkozy explicitly rejected Mr. Obama’s push for more global fiscal stimulus, declaring, “the problem is not about spending more, but putting in place a system of regulation so that the economic and financial catastrophe that the world is seeing does not reproduce itself.”

Wow. When the Europeans don’t want to spend more on government, perhaps we should take notice. BTW, good luck with preventing financial catastrophes through regulation (or any other means). Panics and manias are just part of being human.

And on the same day (also from the WSJ)…

Wen Voices Concern Over China’s U.S. Treasurys

“We have lent a huge amount of money to the U.S., so of course we are concerned about the safety of our assets. Frankly speaking, I do have some worries,” Mr. Wen said in response to a question. He did not offer specific suggestions on economic policy to the U.S. government, but called on it to “maintain its credibility, honor its commitments and guarantee the security of Chinese assets.”

Mr. Wen did indicate that China would not be rash in making changes to its $1.946 trillion stockpile of foreign reserves, much of which is in U.S. dollars. While China is naturally looking out for its own interests, it will “at the same time also take international financial stability into consideration, because the two are inter-related,” he said.

So, while we’re borrowing our way out of the financial catastrophe brought on by too much borrowing, we might just want to consider that it could be much worse. Yeah, it could be raining. But perhaps when (not if, but when) the next financial catastrophe hits, the world will just layer on a little run on the dollar. In that scenario borrowing our way out of too much borrowing won’t be nearly as easy.

music.

H/T to Marginal Revolution.

Read this Techcrunch story before you watch the video below.

I’ve been watching Mad Men lately. Everybody smokes and I’ve found out why…

Here’s another look at the politicalization of science. Warning: it’s highly esoteric.

And just as a reminder, here’s a sentence from Wikipedia on the scientific method.

Among other facets shared by the various fields of inquiry is the conviction that the process be objective to reduce a biased interpretation of the results

H/T to Watt’s Up With That for the link.