Governmnet Visibility?

What to see where your tax dollars are going? Heres a list of a few sites that provide visibility into where and what your tax dollars are doing.

• usaspending.gov : displays data pertaining to obligations (amounts awarded for federally sponsored projects during a given budget period)
• itdashboard.gov : information on the effectiveness of government IT programs and to support decisions regarding the investment and management of resources
• citizen.apps.gov : See how Federal Agencies are using our free tools
• data.gov : [To] increase public access to high value, machine readable datasets generated by the Executive Branch of the Federal Government.
• paymentaccuracy.gov : Current and historical rates and amounts of improper payments, why improper payments occur, [and] what agencies are doing to reduce and recover improper payments.
• uspto.gov :Dashboard seeing the status of the patent office
• fcc.gov : Spectrum maps, broadband maps, etc.
  

Bad news is this openness makes it harder to swindle money from the taxpayers. Good news is John Boehner’s 112th Congress is going to cut funding to these sites forcing many of them to shut down. (Thank god the American dream is still strong!)

No Secrets

On the Media, a radio show produced by WNYC, had a good piece on privacy titled "Your Tweets May Be Betraying You". They pointed out the governments overzealous warrantless wiretapping and how this has affected the Telco’s, how corporations are tracking us so heavily so as to make the government appear disinterested in us, and most interestingly, how we now are volunteering so much information that it makes this entire topic mute.

As an example of how much information is publicly available, they pointed out the script Creepy, which “allows you to gather geolocation related information about users from social networking platforms and image hosting services.”

Where's a DC?

Datacenter Map is a site that lists the physical locations of "all" the DC's and their stats. Does a fairly good job.

Cool Playhouses

Every year, there is a competition at the Stanford Mall showing off some cool playhouses. SFGate has a couple of picts of them. Also on that note, here's some other insane playhouses:

• Barbara Butler: Great hand made kids houses
• Lilliput Play Homes: Very high quality prefab, large playhouses
• Web Urbanist: List of 10 Amazing Tree Houses: Plans, Pictures, Designs & Building Ideas
• Posh Tots: Nice over priced playhouse
• Treehouse Company: English company that makes great kids houses.
• Wood Manor: Nice wood kids houses
• Daniels Woodland: Theme company that makes cool tree houses on the side.
• Treehouse Design & Construction: A Northern California Tree House Makes Memories
• Treehouse Workshop: For kids and adults

Another good game

Yea! More cool "brain races" this time to the moon!
Here's a history of some of the coolest:

• DoT supported SunRayce (build a solar powered car and race it across the US) and World Solar Challenge, (do the same but race it across the Australian continent).
  
• Then there was the DARPA Grand Challenge: to build a car to race on its own
  
• The Ansari X Prize: Launch a reusable manned spacecraft
• And now the X Prize Foundation is starting the $30 million Google Lunar X Prize.

Got Phat Pipe?

PC Mag's Chloe Albanesius, has a writeup about the new US Gov Broadband Map being posted online.

Also today, the agency released stats from an Internet Usage Survey of 54,000 households, which found that 68 percent of households in the U.S. have broadband access, up from 63.5 percent last year.

The National Broadband Map will go live later today at www.broadbandmap.gov. It's a searchable database with more than 25 million records that show where broadband Internet service is available, the technology used to provide the service, the maximum advertised speeds of the service, and the names of the service providers.

Sterling Engine

I have a very cool toy Sterling Engine that I got from ThinkGeek. Fun to play with, but here’s an interesting write-up in Technology Review (via MIT) about:

A startup company [that] has developed a new type of engine that could generate electricity with the efficiency of a fuel cell, but which costs only about as much as an internal combustion engine. - [Friday, February 4, 2011 By Tyler Hamilton]

lock picking

Lock picking is cool, but a brute force safe cracking robot that can crack a “manipulation proof” lock in a few hours, is way cooler!

Ben Goldacre on the Placebo Effect

Dr. Ben Goldacre, who does the column Bad Science in the UK paper The Guardian, has a stand-up about "science and it will be funny"

Fake Steve Jobs to Religious Right

I’m too dumb not to post this. Hate-spewing “Christians” need to listen up

"It’s bad enough that you’re hateful bigots. But to dress up your hate and bigotry as an expression of Christianity? That, my friends, is pure evil. If you want to go around hating people, fine. Go for it. It’s stupid, and pointless, but whatever. Go hate people. Just don’t go around saying Jesus told you to do it."