- April 12, 2011 • 6:00 am PDT
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The fight for America's financial future has reached a fever pitch, with Republicans squaring off against Obama, and everyone squaring off against a looming deficit. Here are eight slides to help you better understand Washington's current dogfight.

1
A Pickup Truck Grows an Educational Mini-Farm
2
Could Charging People for Uneaten Food in Restaurants Help Us Stop Wasting It?
3
What Drivers Really Think About Bikers: The History and Psychology of Sharing the Road
4
Should Teachers View Their Students as Customers?
5
New Research Says Parenting Makes You Happy—If You're a Dad
today's top stories from our friends at pitchfork

Those social programs we can't afford? They could be complete paid for if we just got rid of tax breaks for the wealthy.
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The writer and environmentalist Stiv Wilson is on a mission to better understand how plastic ends up in the ocean, and what he—and the rest of...
Celebrate Tax Day with these clever "receipts" that show you where your tax money goes, or how much beer you could have bought instead.

Teachers hate when students doodle in their notebooks, but if they're drawing about what they're learning, it could help them absorb the information.
Yachting, brow lifts, and nights at the opera: We are the 99%.

Lifehacker has created a handy chart detailing when you should buy various things. Generally, the time to buy something is when sales of that...
President Obama took the advice of Bret and Jemaine from Flight of the Conchords and asked Peter Orszag, Director of the Office of Management and...
Much like reducing life to venn diagrams, this man has reduced his life to pie charts.Via Boing Boing.

Creating politically charged street art just got a bit easier with this new adjustable pie-chart stencil.
Right now, the United States' federal debt is about 66 percent of GDP. It's projected to grow to 100 percent by 2022, and keep growing...
In theory the Senate passes legislation with a simple majority: 51 votes. But if a senator threatens to filibuster a bill by talking about it...

California Governor Jerry Brown announces what is expected to be a bloody budget Monday at 11:00 a.m. PST. You can watch it live.

Stephanie Fox and io9 create a visual depiction of how the world changed from 2000 to 2010.

How can a city like Los Angeles make its streets and transit more comfortable for women—and for everyone?

World food prices appear to be surging and that could be playing a role in North Africa's ongoing turmoil.
After quite a long while of hearing about and even owning a copy of Bill McDonough's and Michael Braungart's Cradle to Cradle, I finally got...

All those "wasteful" energy programs currently threatened by the House GOP are but a tiny thread compared to military and health spending.

With Netflix streaming on the rise, pricey movie theaters are less and less attractive. Let's lower film budgets and thus ticket prices.
Think you have the answers? Go ahead and try to balance the budget with this game, we dare you.