I like watching every year this to try to imagine what it was like 50 years ago, and it's practically impossible.

"When it goes from zero to even a very small charge, it can feel very bad," said Dan Ariely, an economics professor at Duke University. "It creates a very small financial burden but a very big emotional reaction."

That quote from an interesting article in The New Republic that talks about the success of the Washington, DC plastic bag tax. On 1/1, stores began charging shoppers a tax of a nickle per plastic bag and bag use has gone down 50%. The article then makes the connection to a carbon tax and how even a tiny fee is better than no fee because of reason Ariely states above.

The article also mentions a failed $0.20 bag tax in Seattle that potentially reached too high. Nickle bag tax for everyone!

Two links from two weeks ago that you may or may not have seen, but I had saved to share and not gotten around to it yet.

The Yes Men sent out a hoax press release from the US Chamber of Commerce saying they had changed their position on climate change. Obviously the media was interested in this so the Yes Men rented a room at the DC Press Club and gave a fake press conference. Then it gets really awesome when a representative of the Chamber shows up and shuts down the presser. And now, they're getting sued for it



Via TPM.

If you saw the profits made by the big banks last quarter and wondered how they were doing it, Philip Greenspun has an answer:

Because of the Collapse of 2008 financial reforms, the big investment banks are able to borrow money from the U.S. government at 0 percent interest. Then they can turn around and buy short-term bonds that pay 2 or 3 percent annual interest. Now they’re making 2 percent on whatever they borrowed. They can use leverage to increase this number, by pledging some of the bonds that they’ve already bought as collateral on additional bonds.

It's all so awesome, isn't it?

Lots of people don't like this movie, but it's Coen Brothers, and I can't help feeling that it was at least average. I think the people who don't like it have forgotten what a Coen Brothers movie is. For every No Country, Raising Arizona, Big Lebowski, there's a Lady Killers.

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Alright folks, this one's for all the marbles. What better way for us to celebrate than for me to be absent for the final Live Blog of the season. I'm on an island off the coast of Puerto Rico, and if you're reading this, I wasn't able to find a TV playing the last 2 episodes. Comments are open and I hope you think of this as YOUR live blog. I'll put up a show review with my thoughts on the 24 finale when I get a chance to see the episodes.

I'll need you guys to keep count of the JBKCs (or Jack Bauer Knockdowns) and the number of times someone says "damnit". I'd ask you to count the stupid things that happen, but no one can count that high. In any case, have fun.

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I have a theory that about half of the things we saw last week in the "Scenes from next week" montage are not going to happen this week. We'll see.

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I don't know if tonight is going to be different. I sure hope so. Nothing has really happened that isn't super ridiculous so there's no point in going over it again.

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Basically, last week didn't do anything to make me feel better about what's going on. Jack Bauer is almost totally out of the picture, though I'm sure he'll make a miraculous recovery by the end of the episode. Blah blah blah. I'll try to keep this fun for everyone, but it's really a struggle.

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If you remember from last week, I freaked out a little bit about Tony Almeda's (seeming) move to the dark side after killing Larry Moss dead. While that was one of the more surprising moments in television history, it was surprising because '24' had spent the better half of a season setting Tony up as a good guy (after setting him up as a bad guy). If they can do whatever they want, why should we even bother watching it, let alone writing about it?

Imagine if you went into work tomorrow and told your boss, "I just signed a $12 million client!" Everyone would probably be excited and surprised. And then a couple days later when you said, "Just kidding, I didn't really sign anyone," everyone would be SHOCKED, they'd never see it coming. And then you'd get fired. That's what watching '24' is like, you don't care about the plot twists because they're based on lies. In any case, we'll be back here live at 9 EST.

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This is from last week, or the week before, but James Wolcott's not-too-long take down of the DC hive-mindset is great, each delicious sentence dripping with scorn.