Title: Government shutdown
1Government shutdown
2For weeks, the House and the Senate argued, each
claiming they were standing up for what the
public wants and doing very little to compromise.
As a result, we have a shutdown that began at
1201 a.m. ET Tuesday and will stop 800,000
Americans from getting paid and could cost the
economy about 1 billion a week. That however is
just the tip of the iceberg. The total economic
impact is likely to be much greater than the
simple calculation of lost wages of federal
workers. Some estimates show that a three- to
four-week shutdown would cost the economy about
55 billion. This is the first time the
government has shut down in nearly 18 years. The
Republican-controlled House and the
Democrat-controlled Senate, will try to see if
they can reconcile their two versions of the
spending plan at the heart of the issue. So far,
each has refused to budge. For more than a week
the process has been that the House sends a
version of the bill with provisions the Senate
finds objectionable the Senate kicks it back.
The House sends it again the Senate kicks it
back again.
3In Other News
- Research recently published suggests that the
dust from the Martian's surface contains about 2
water by weight. This is one of several insights
emerging from data that the Mars rover Curiosity
has been collecting. Five studies in the journal
Science were published last week based on data
from the rover's first 100 days on the Red
Planet. - A new project, "The Faces of Facebook," collects
more than 1.27 billion Facebook profile photos on
one site, arranged in chronological order
according to when the person joined the social
network. Users can sign in via Facebook to
pinpoint their photo on the page and see where
they show up in relation to their friends. At
first glance, the site looks like colorful,
pixelated white noise. But users can zoom in to
see individual photos and then scroll around or
click on a photo to visit that person's Facebook
page. (Be warned, however the page is
experiencing heavy traffic and can be slow). The
site launched last week.