Links for November 30th
Christian Science Monitor: Way cleared for horse slaughter to resume in US after 5-year banCongress has passed a bill, and the president has signed it into law, that re-legalizes the slaughter of horses for human consumption. Banning that practice was a huge mistake, for reasons that were obvious at the time, but it took a [...]
Links for November 25th
BBC News: CO2 climate sensitivity ‘overestimated’Of all that is very clearly known about global climate change, the one connection that is not well understood is the quantity of climate forcing that results from each unit of CO2. That is, exactly how much additional heat can the atmosphere store for each each ton of CO2 that [...]
Links for November 23rd
New York Times: Who’s on the Line? Increasingly, Caller ID Is DupedTelemarketers are faking Caller ID information with apparent impunity, so that people believe that the IRS or the FBI is calling. (Just like spam!) The FTC has just filed their first complaint against a company for doing that. The FCC wouldn't comment as to [...]
Links for November 15th
FDIC Bank ClosingsI was curious where banks closed by the FDIC tend to be located, so I put together this visualization. (You have to click on Visualize -> Map.) Turns out they're mostly in Florida and Georgia which are—surely not coincidentally—hot spots for home foreclosures. Almost all of these closings were after mid-2008. Pew Charitable [...]
My new job and its effect on my blogging.
I started a job with the White House about two and a half weeks ago. (For you federal government geeks, it’s via an assignment from the GSA, which in turn is via an IPA from UVA.) The plan is to take the train up to D.C. once a week, and work in Charlottesville for the [...]
Links for November 13th
Harvard Business Review: Put Your Best People On Your Most Boring ChallengesI agree completely with this suggestion that the exciting work shouldn't be saved for enthusiastic, capable employees. The most interesting, important, effective work that I've done professionally was working on tasks or projects that were considered boring. This summer the FDA asked me to [...]
Links for November 11th
Double-Tongued Dictionary: hoghouse"Connotating legislation that has been stripped of its original provisions and amended to accomplish a different purpose." This is a useful word. Office of Government Ethics: Executive Agency Ethics Pledge WaiversThese are the presidential appointees who were given waivers to exempt them from one or more ethics regulations, along with copies of the [...]
Links for November 10th
Nieman Reports: A Local Newspaper Endures a Stormy BacklashThis is the story of how the tiny Idaho Falls Post Register bravely uncovered a series of cases of pedophiles acting as leaders in area Boy Scout troops, as told by the managing editor of the paper. In the face of an angry public very much in [...]
The booming small wind industry.
Today’s depressing statistic is brought to you by the New York Times: [T]here is a booming business in small wind, meaning machines that generate a few kilowatts – enough, say, to run a house or several houses. The American Wind Energy Association said that sales of such small machines jumped 53 percent in 2010, with [...]
Let’s run party leaders in unopposed races.
Looking over races in central Virginia, I sure see a lot of incumbents going unchallenged. If they were hit by a bus in the weeks or months before election day, the opposing party would have no chance of getting their own guy elected, because they decided to sit it out. My own representatives in the [...]
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Waldo Jaquith (JAKE-with) is an open government technologist who lives near Charlottesville, VA, USA. more »
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