Government Executive - Authors - Serena Dai

An Animated Map of Frantic Campaign Traveling

Serena Dai, The Wire — Fri, 02 Nov 2012 13:50:00 -0400

Romney and Obama have really hopped, skipped, and turned all across the country to campaign, as you can see in this fun animated map video of their campaign travels by statistician Jerzy Wieczorek. Using data from a Washington Post interactive on campaign stops from May 29 to October 25, Wieczorek plotted travel between different campaign events for Romney and Obama. The blue line represents Obama, and the red line represents Romney, with exact locations popping up below and above the map. Note: The video does not include trips home to D.C. or Boston. With those, the frantic hopping required to the campaign for president would be even more hectic.

Video by CivilStat h/t RevolutionAnalytics

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Video: The Daily Show goes on a mission to help vets get jobs

Serena Dai, The Atlantic — Thu, 25 Oct 2012 10:36:56 -0400

People in America agree on two things, Jon Stewart said last night on The Daily Show : popcorn is corn and counts as a vegetable and we should help veterans.Well, at least 85 percent of Americans think veterans' benefits are big deal. Another 14 percent would rather reduce the deficit.

Who are in that 14 percent? Congressional Republicans. Stewart explains: "Forty Republican senators thought it would be wrong to spend a billion dollars on a bill to help reintegrate veterans to the domestic workforce partly because of the amount of money we had already gladly spent on wars that made them veterans in the first place."

Part of the problem is that the certificates veterans earn overseas do not easily translate to domestic certifications. Luckily, one bill does have bipartisan support to address this. Er, sort of. The HIRE at HOME Act asks the State to take into consideration any training veterans receive overseas. You know, just consider it. And the bill, which tries to translate the complex war certifications to civilian certifications, is only two pages, "substantially shorter than the iTunes contract you have to sign to download a season of Band of Brothers ."

The Daily Show
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Hillary Clinton is tired of the 'having it all' debate

Serena Dai, The Wire — Thu, 18 Oct 2012 16:22:30 -0400

In a profile by Ayelet Waldman in Marie Claire, Hillary Clinton responded to a question about Anne-Marie Slaughter, who wrote The Atlantic's cover story on why women still can't have it all and once worked for Clinton at the State Department, with some direct words: "Some women are not comfortable working at the pace and intensity you have to work at in these jobs."

Slaughter was the director of policy planning at the State Department and wrote about quitting the position in part to spend more time with her two teenage sons. In the piece, Slaughter praised her former boss: "Watching Hillary Clinton in action makes me incredibly proud—of her intelligence, expertise, professionalism, charisma, and command of any audience." And noted of her time at State, "I had it better than many of my peers in D.C.; Secretary Clinton deliberately came in around 8 a.m. and left around 7 p.m., to allow her close staff to have morning and evening time with their families (although of course she worked earlier and later, from home)." But Waldman writes that Clinton's "disapproval was palpable" when she brought up the story. Clinton touted her own commitment to "enabling women to continue to do high-stress jobs while caring for not only children, but [also] aging parents."

How much it costs to throw an Olympics vs. go to Mars

Serena Dai, The Wire — Thu, 09 Aug 2012 09:47:00 -0400

The $2.5 billion that it cost to launch Curiosity Rover may sound like a lot, but as the Facebook group "I f**king love science" noted, that's pocket change compared to the cost of the London Olympics. "I've seen quite a few comments complaining about the cost of the Curiosity mission, saying that the money could have been better spent combating poverty etc.," the group runner wrote. "I've got nothing against the Olympics, I'm just trying to put things into perspective."

The group compared Curiosity's $2.5 billion number from The New York Times and the Olympic's $15 billion estimate from Forbes in a pie chart, which has also been floating around Tumblr. We liked the way they thought but decided to put the numbers in a bar graph instead. (A pie chart suggests Curiosity and the Olympics were dipping from the same pool of money.)

Click here to view The Atlantic Wire's graph.

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