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Tuesday, December 20, 2011

50 Facts About The U.S. Economy That Will Shock You

1. A staggering 48 percent of all Americans are either considered to be “low income” or are living in poverty.

2. Approximately 57 percent of all children in the United States are living in homes that are either considered to be “low income” or impoverished.

3. If the number of Americans that “wanted jobs” was the same today as it was back in 2007, the “official” unemployment rate put out by the U.S. government would be up to 11 percent.

4. The average amount of time that a worker stays unemployed in the United States is now over 40 weeks.

5. One recent survey found that 77 percent of all U.S. small businesses do not plan to hire any more workers.

6. There are fewer payroll jobs in the United States today than there were back in 2000 even though we have added 30 million extra people to the population since then.

7. Since December 2007, median household income in the United States has declined by a total of 6.8 percent once you account for inflation.

8. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 16.6 million Americans were self-employed back in December 2006. Today, that number has shrunk to 14.5 million.

9. A Gallup poll from earlier this year found that approximately one out of every five Americans that do have a job consider themselves to be underemployed.

10. According to author Paul Osterman, about 20 percent of all U.S. adults are currently working jobs that pay poverty-level wages.

11. Back in 1980, less than 30 percent of all jobs in the United States were low income jobs. Today, more than 40 percent of all jobs in the United States are low income jobs.

12. Back in 1969, 95 percent of all men between the ages of 25 and 54 had a job. In July, only 81.2 percent of men in that age group had a job.

13. One recent survey found that one out of every three Americans would not be able to make a mortgage or rent payment next month if they suddenly lost their current job.

14. The Federal Reserve recently announced that the total net worth of U.S. households declined by 4.1 percent in the 3rd quarter of 2011 alone.

15. According to a recent study conducted by the BlackRock Investment Institute, the ratio of household debt to personal income in the United States is now 154 percent.

16. As the economy has slowed down, so has the number of marriages. According to a Pew Research Center analysis, only 51 percent of all Americans that are at least 18 years old are currently married. Back in 1960, 72 percent of all U.S. adults were married.

17. The U.S. Postal Service has lost more than 5 billion dollars over the past year.

18. In Stockton, California home prices have declined 64 percent from where they were at when the housing market peaked.

19. Nevada has had the highest foreclosure rate in the nation for 59 months in a row.

20. If you can believe it, the median price of a home in Detroit is now just $6000.

21. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 18 percent of all homes in the state of Florida are sitting vacant. That figure is 63 percent larger than it was just ten years ago.

22. New home construction in the United States is on pace to set a brand new all-time record low in 2011.

23. 19 percent of all American men between the ages of 25 and 34 are now living with their parents.

24. Electricity bills in the United States have risen faster than the overall rate of inflation for five years in a row.

25. According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, health care costs accounted for just 9.5 percent of all personal consumption back in 1980. Today they account for approximately 16.3 percent.

26. One study found that approximately 41 percent of all working age Americans either have medical bill problems or are currently paying off medical debt.

27. If you can believe it, one out of every seven Americans has at least 10 credit cards.

28. The United States spends about 4 dollars on goods and services from China for every one dollar that China spends on goods and services from the United States.

29. It is being projected that the U.S. trade deficit for 2011 will be 558.2 billion dollars.

30. The retirement crisis in the United States just continues to get worse. According to the Employee Benefit Research Institute, 46 percent of all American workers have less than $10,000 saved for retirement, and 29 percent of all American workers have less than $1,000 saved for retirement.

31. Today, one out of every six elderly Americans lives below the federal poverty line.

32. According to a study that was just released, CEO pay at America’s biggest companies rose by 36.5 percent in just one recent 12 month period.

33. Today, the “too big to fail” banks are larger than ever.  The total assets of the six largest U.S. banks increased by 39 percent between September 30, 2006 and September 30, 2011.

34. The six heirs of Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton have a net worth that is roughly equal to the bottom 30 percent of all Americans combined.

Sunday, December 18, 2011

There, I Fixed It


Ive always been a fan of the "there I fixed it blog" They have so many funny fixes that people have created some are just too crazy for me to think they are real. I love people's creativity fixing things that bother them so when i was at my friendly local La Madeleine's it made me super happy because I have my own kluge to submit now. SO without further ado here is the awesome fix I hope makes it onto the blog. I almost didnt catch it but I think it meets the requirements for getting posted


Toothpicks can fix anything... i wonder where the original plastic pin went... Do you have any cool fixes you have done? Leave a link in the comments

Saturday, December 17, 2011

Stop Houston Bandit SIgns

A long time ago when I was about 16 I was almost arrested because apparently Im a one man gang in Cypress, TX because I was spray painting over the phone numbers of signs that were around my house. Now that I have a car I stop and pick up as many of the signs as I can. I get that people are just trying to earn a living but they just look so trashy and if I dont go and pick them up on a regular basis then there are 2 then 3 and its just stupid to let them keep putting them up. I just smile to know its 2$ for every sign I pick up

 Its funny some people look like you are crazy, some honk or yell to keep up the good work but only once have I ever gotten a person yelling that I was messing up their business and that their brother was the one who puts out the signs. I tried to explain that they are trash, putting them out is illegal and that I was doing nothing wrong but they called the cops on me anyways. If you put out sign just know that any of the ones I see I tear down so just dont even bother


 Apparently the city is cracking down but I have even seen a city truck driving around picking them up. I think its good and bad, i dont like that they are using tax dollars to pick them up but I also hate them so i dont know if im for the city trucks picking them up or not. I like the community volunteers approach like they
have done here or here Ive created my own group to coordinate my own modest attack on bandit signs




Wednesday, December 14, 2011

Help Stop American Censorship

I've censored the following, in protest of a bill that gives any corporation and the US government the power to censor the internet--a bill that could pass THIS WEEK. To see the uncensored text, and to stop internet censorship, click the button below:

I ████ the ████████ to me its ████ the ████ ███████ of the old ████ ████... but ████ ██████ ████████ ████ ████████ and ██████ ████ the ████████ is ███████ its █████████, not ████ ████ but ███████████ are ██████ to ████ ███████ ████ the ████████ to ████████ it and ██████ it. The ████████ ██████ █████ be the ████ ██████████ of the ████████ ████ ████ and █████ ████. ████ or █████ you ███████████ and ████ ████ to cut it the ████ out or we ████ █████ ████ the ████████ in the ████ way

Monday, November 28, 2011

Hex words and their colors

So awhile ago I was thnkign to myself, self if hex numbers are letters and numbers then there has to be some words that are real hex numbers that can represent colors. So there are some words that are made from the letters of the hex numbers. Apparently I wasnt unique in this question so I stood on the shoulders of other bloggers and took the word list from this post he used numbers and leet type speak but i wanted only true words so I culled out his list a little and here are

The seven hex words colors

#accede

Verb:
  1. Assent or agree to a demand, request, or treaty.
  2. Assume an office or position.

#beaded

  1. Decorate or cover with beads
    • - a beaded evening bag

  2. String (beads) together

    • Cover (a surface) with drops of moisture
      • - his face was beaded with perspiration

    #bedded

    Adjective:
    (of rock) Deposited in layers or strata, esp. in a way specified.

    #decade

    1. A period of ten years
      • - he taught at the university for nearly a decade

    2. A period of ten years beginning with a year ending in 0
      • - the fourth decade of the nineteenth century

    3. A set, series, or group of ten, in particular

      • Each of the five divisions of each chapter of the rosary

        #deface

        1. Spoil the surface or appearance of (something), e.g., by drawing or writing on it
          • - he defaced library books

        2. Mar; disfigure
          • - the canyon's spectacular limestone walls have been defaced by the reservoir

        #efface

        Verb:
        1. Erase (a mark) from a surface: "words effaced by frost and rain"; "his anger was effaced when he stepped into the open air".
        2. Make oneself appear insignificant or inconspicuous.

        #facade

        1. The face of a building, esp. the principal front that looks onto a street or open space

          • An outward appearance that is maintained to conceal a less pleasant or creditable reality
            • - her flawless public facade masked private despair

          Do you think the colors remnd you of the words? I think it would br really cool if somebody did a layout with these words... hidden messages in CSS colors would also be something cool you could do. Ive thought about hiding ascii art in the source code before so iono. I also put the definitions of the words so you can have more context when your trying to decide if the colors match their definitions

          Wednesday, March 16, 2011

          Katamari Everywhere Chrome Extension - Roll up the web

          My boss tipped me off to some sweet code over at kathack.com and like i usually do with these cool little bookmarkletts ive weaponized it into a Google Chrome Extension

          So I hope you go

          Get the Katamari Everywhere game


          heres a quick demo video i threw up on youtubez


          hope you like it and it wastes tons of time :) leave me comments in the comments...

          Thursday, January 13, 2011

          Carter Cole : ordained minister

          I'm an ordained minister! woohoo


          It was totally easy to become registered but each church seems to charge from 8$ to a few hundred. They require you to get credentials to give to the clerks office and have each states information and instructibles on how to preform a marriage


          This post was fat fingered through my iPad :)