And you are here why?

Ta-Nehisi Coates Authority ... is a matter of relationships, allegiances, and association and is "based ultimately upon the consent of those under it." Power, on the other hand, is "external" and "based upon force." Power exists where allegiances have decayed or never existed at all. "Power arises ... only when authority breaks down." [F]or most Americans, the police ... are figures of authority. The badge does not merely represent rule via lethal force, but rule through consent and legitimacy rooted in nobility. This is why whenever a liberal politician offers even the mildest criticism of the police, they must add that "the majority of officers are good, noble people." [T]he line is not meant to defend police officers, but to communicate the message that the speaker is not questioning police authority, which is to say the authority of our justice system, which is to say—in a democracy—the authority of the people themselves. ...

  /via DorkTower

The answer - via FreshyMap  (and no, the answer is not just "Chicago!") Oh its a winter-wonderland indeed...

Most (all?) discussions about inequality in the USA end up getting side-tracked and/or derailed for one simple reason - most people are unaware of where they actually are on the scale.  Or, to put it differently Surveys reveal that the majority of people (no matter whether they are poor or rich) believe that their position is in the middle of the distribution of wealth and income. It seems likely that part of the reason for this is that we primarily know people in a similar economic situation as ourselves, and that we have a hard time imagining that others are significantly richer or poorer than ourselves.  To put it in chart form And now, to really hammer this home, Maximilian Kasy of Harvard's Econ Dept has put together the Wealthometer .  Plug in a few quick numbers, and see exactly how misinformed you  are!

via C hristopher Ingraham , we have this interactive visualization of Ideology (and party unity) in the House from 1857 to 2011 . It was created by  Christopher Ingraham . Data from  Voteview.com . Inspired by work by  Brian Resnick, Brian McGill and Ella Krivitchenko of the National Journal . All together now -- this plot combines data from the  party unity graph  and the  graph of dw-nominate scores . The bottom line - its pretty much always sucked, it just sucks a lot harder nowadays...

Amptoons puts Alyssa Rosenberg's count of the race and sex of characters on prime-time TV up against the same for the USA as a whole.  The conclusions? Asian & Latinos get short shrift  Law Enforcement is all over the place Check it out...

via Nathan Yau , a map showing the nearest Pizza place within a 10 mile radius in the USA . The summary? As you might expect, Pizza Hut (red) dominates from a national perspective. Domino's (blue) also has a strong showing nationally, but with a better showing in the east. Regionally, Papa John's, which started in Kentucky, is strong in the east central area; Godfather's, with headquarters in Nebraska, is popular in the midwest; Little Caesars shows strong in California and Michigan (its first location in Garden City, Michigan); and Papa Murphy's is strong in the northwest, which makes sense because it started in Washington. The sad thing, of course, is that none  of this is actually any good :-(

Nelson Minar - at somebits - has put together a remarkably comprehensive set of vector tile maps of all the American Rivers.  Its based on the NHDPlus dataset , and a tutorial for putting it together and/or using it is available on Github here . The finished product is remarkably cool - check out one of the images below (click to embiggen. A lot )

The Atlantic has a great piece on obesity in America from 1985 through 2010 (FWIW, "obese" basically tends to translate to "BMI > 30". Whats particularly bad though is that there are no states w/ obesity rates below 15% . Ouch.

Well heres a change.  From FT Alphaville, according ConocoPhillips CEO Ryan Lance “In 1990, North American reserves and production were falling but thanks to unconventionals, proved reserves have risen 68 percent since then,” Lance told an audience of OPEC ministers on Wednesday. “North America could become self sufficient in oil as well (as gas) by 2025,” he said at a conference before OPEC’s policy-setting meeting in Vienna” Seriously? Well, it turns out that he is pretty serious, as are a whole bunch-a other people.  Its due to a confluence of factors - unconventional sources (shale gas), increasing exports in the US, Candian tar-sands, etc. etc.  The bottom line is that the U.S. might, actually, be getting closer to energy self-sufficiency, something that I find unexpected and shocking (in a good way!) Mind you, this is causing ripple effects all over the place, the main one being that Saudi Arabia seems to be (slowly) becoming a lone-wolf in OPEC.  FT ...

We have it , and they don't.  From The Star The Supreme Court of Canada struck down Friday (4/13/2012) warrantless wiretap powers that police have in cases of emergency. The   high court   has given  Parliament a year to re-write the law. Ruling in a 2006 British Columbia kidnapping case, the country’s top court said a 1993 provision of the Criminal Code is unconstitutional because there is no accountability or oversight for the warrantless searches, either to the person wiretapped or in reports to Parliament. The unanimous ruling was written by rookie judges Michael Moldaver and Andromache Karakatsanis.  Sucks to be you Canada - we've got wiretaps when we want, where we want, without warrants and are thus clearly superior to you!