links for 2010-12-30
Abandoned Uranium Mines: An 'Overwhelming Problem' in the … Folks in Chatham should read this Scientific American article about the problem of abandoned uranium mines. When some of their mines ceased to be profitable 20 years ago, Tronox (née Kerr-McGee) just up and left, abandoning their mines. Folks living in the area are terribly sick, [...]
2009 McDonnell vs. 2010 McDonnell.
Candidate Bob McDonnell, September 2009, on Governor Tim Kaine’s suggestion that state employees should contribute to their own retirement accounts: These are tough economic times. I understand the governor has been forced to make difficult decisions to balance the budget. As Attorney General, I made tough choices as well, cutting the office’s budget by 14% [...]
links for 2010-12-22
New York Times: A Scientist, His Work and a Climate Reckoning I really enjoyed Justin Gillis’ piece about Charles David Keeling in today's Times. It's about the guy who figured out how to measure carbon dioxide levels, and did so at Mauna Loa Observatory for decades, until his death. Gillis does a fine job of [...]
I want to capture this moment.
Keep this in mind next time somebody says that President Obama and Congress aren’t accomplishing anything. This is a good day.
Photography is not a crime.
Near the top of my wish this for next month’s General Assembly session is a law explicitly authorizing citizens to videotape, photograph, and record audio of police officers in the line of duty. In the current issue of Reason, Radley Balko makes a powerful case for why this is important. In theory, this is the [...]
links for 2010-12-21
Vietnam's Mammoth Cavern – Photo Gallery – National … These photos of Vietnam's Hang Son Doong cavern are just amazing. This is how I picture many of the scenes in "Journey to the Center of the Earth." (tags: vietnam caving) Legal Low Power FM | MetaFilter Congress has relaxed regulations on community low power FM [...]
links for 2010-12-20
Washington Post: Marshall seeks to ban gays from Virginia National Guard What a buffoon. (tags: gay military politics) Washington Post: Senate panel ban seen as double standard The Senate Arms Services Committee sensibly prohibits its staff from own stock in any company with a Defense Department contract. After all, that would be a huge conflict [...]
AMBER Alert API?
Why is there no API for Virginia’s AMBER Alert system? I should be able to have all of my websites query their system every hour and, when an alert is found, display the content of the alert on every page on every site. Heck, I’d write a WordPress plugin so that anybody could easily deploy [...]
Richmond Sunlight’s JSON API.
I’ve just released v1.0 of the Richmond Sunlight API. It’s JSON-based, simple, and straightforward. This turns Richmond Sunlight into a web-based service that allows any application or website to get data about the General Assembly automatically and basically seamlessly. The most exciting bit, I think, is the Photosynthesis API. Now any individual or organization can [...]
links for 2010-12-17
PhD Challenge The winner of first annual PhD Challenge has been announced. The challenge was to have published a peer-reviewed, academic paper that employs, somewhere within it, the phrase "I smoke crack rocks." Three people managed the feat, and the winner was a CMU student who managed to weave the phrase in pretty seamlessly. (tags: [...]
McDonnell is attacking public broadcasting (again).
Gov. McDonnell is again proposing cutting all funding for public broadcasting, though this time he wants to eliminate all funding—$2M/year—that the state spends on this public/private partnership. State funding provides about 15% of the budget for most public broadcasters, with that state contribution serving as the kernel from which the stations raise money. Clearly this [...]
links for 2010-12-15
Blair House – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Blair House, the president's guest house, turns out to be enormous. Based on pictures of it, I thought it was a sort of a townhouse cottage—maybe 1,500 square feet. Wrong. It's larger than the White House. It has 119 rooms. (tags: president washington)
links for 2010-12-13
Wikipedia: Peacekeeper Rail Garrison Car During the Reagan administration, Rockwell developed a prototype railroad car for storing, transporting, and launching an ICBM. Upon an elevation in the threat level, the president would be able to order all twenty-five such trains to start circulating on the nation's rail network, making it very difficult for the USSR [...]
links for 2010-12-10
New York Times: Cash Is King for More Consumers This Holiday Season In the 27-year-history in which such things have been tracked, more people are paying cash for purchases than ever before. Which is to say that people are living within their means, something rarely done in modern American history. Although in the short term [...]
links for 2010-12-09
Virginia Places: Second-Worst Decision of the State of Virginia? In the 1830s, Virginia's public works department decided that railroads were a fad—the future would be in canals. (Folks in the western half of the state were inclined to disagree.) This was, in retrospect, a bad idea. It cost a lot of money, and Virginia didn't [...]
links for 2010-12-08
Napolitano vs. Assange If you see something, say something! "OK, there’s still three whistles left out there. Who's got the whistles?" (tags: humor wikileaks) Very Small Array: United States of America Map A map of the United States, with every state renamed to its first Google autocomplete candidate. I live in Virginia Tech. I recently [...]
links for 2010-12-07
The Atlantic: Lies, Damned Lies, and Medical Science A lot of the accepted facts of medical science were long ago disproven. Mammograms aren't especially useful. Most antidepressants are no better than a placebo. Vitamins do nothing to prevent cancer. In fact, 41% of the most important research findings in the past thirteen years have been [...]
links for 2010-12-03
Governor of Virginia: Flag Status at a Glance Next time you're wondering why the flag is flying at half-staff, pull up this page and find out. If either the U.S. or Virginia flags are at half-staff, you'll get the explanation for it. (tags: flag virginia) Excitement Over Receiving Socks on Christmas Graphed over time. (tags: [...]
links for 2010-12-02
Bruce Schneier: Close the Washington Monument Make the Washington Monument a monument to fear, the fear that politicians all want us to live in under the rubric of "terrorism." Remember when Janet Napolitano said "the system worked" when passengers subdued the underpants bomber? She was absolutely right. Because we are all part of the system of [...]
links for 2010-12-01
The Phrase Finder: Minced oath A minced oath is a euphemism that's employed to avoid swearing. The etymology of some is obvious ("by gosh" meaning "by God"), but others turn out to be more interesting: "zounds," "for the love of Mike," "suffering succotash," and "what in Sam Hill," among others. (tags: language english)
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Waldo Jaquith (JAKE-with) is an open government technologist who lives near Charlottesville, VA, USA. more »
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