CNBC Sucks at Geography

I caught CNBC's special The New Age of Wal-Mart on Saturday. I think I hate Wal-Mart, but I don't see why a town should resist getting one if it used to have an Ames or a K-Mart.

What most annoyed me is that CNBC's graphics department doesn't know shit about geography. During the show, CNBC showed the following map of Japan when it talked about Wal-Mart's global presence. Maybe it's esoteric, but does anyone else notice something wrong with this map?


The northern most island that's colored yellow isn't Japan. That's Russia.

CNBC: let's clean it up. I'm available as a consultant.

Taxes

I'm trying to figure out my effective tax rate and I'm stuck. On my pay stubs, I can see deductions for Social Security, Federal Taxes, State Taxes, and Medicare. I've been adding all of those together to figure out how much I'm paying to the government, but I shouldn't really include Social Security, right? I mean, if I'm going to eventually get that money back, then it's not a tax exactly, right? Is my actual tax rate Federal Income + State Income + Medicare?

Disqus Addition

The comments on this blog are now powered by Disqus. I discovered this tool about 10 minutes ago on my friend Kevin's site. In addition to letting you post comments, it's an aggregator. If you create a profile on Disqus, you can keep track of all posts you've left on various websites. You can see when people respond to things you've posted and track what your friends have been saying all over the web.

I think it's an improvement. It's also very easy to use. Post a comment and let me know what you think.