The Fireside Chat for March 19th, 2011 (VIDEO)

Even as the President maintains his focus on international crises in Japan and Libya, he discusses his trip to Latin America to open up markets for US products.

The Economist: "Shoe-Thrower" Index

Interesting. How accurate it turns out to be is another matter, it is (after all) the Economist.

SINCE our "shoe-thrower’s index" was published on February 9th, Bahrain and, most prominently, Libya, have continued to witness further unrest and demand for regime change. The index attempted to predict where trouble across the Arab world was most likely to arise by applying a subjective weighting to factors such as the length of time the leader had been in power, GDP per person and the level of democracy. We have added two further indicators that were not included in the original—the adult literacy rate and the percentage of people who are internet users—and made the whole index interactive. You can apply your own weightings to each variable to see which country may be the next to experience political upheaval. The index is presented with the weights used in the original version, but differs slightly from that version as some figures have been updated.

Rachel does a very good job of explaining the difference between Three Mile Island, Chernobyl...and what's going on now (VIDEO)

Here I am, trying to take a week off (from work), and Japan keeps pulling me in:

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