“The Congressional Pig Book is CAGW’s annual compilation of the pork-barrel projects in the federal budget. A “pork” project is a line-item in an appropriations bill that designates tax dollars for a specific purpose in circumvention of established budgetary procedures. To qualify as pork, a project must meet one of seven criteria that were developed… Continue Reading
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Monthly Archives: July 2018
Is the Library Card Dying?
The Atlantic – Sara Polsky: “..Serious library-card collectors approach the pursuit more systematically than I do. A high-school freshman in California, for example, maintains a collection of more than 3,000 cards. A librarian in Nebraska scans valid library cards from all over the world and posts the images online. The retired librarian Larry Nix maintains… Continue Reading
Coastlines around world boast hints of ancient humans who gathered traveled along edges of world where land meets sea
Hakai Magazine – Where Our Human Ancestors Made an Impression: “Human tracks encode a startling amount of information, enough for scientists to create a brief, but illuminating, biography of a person or group of people. The average person takes an estimated 224,000,000 steps over the course of a lifetime. When preserved, footprints are a library… Continue Reading
This Twitterbot keeps you up-to-date on fires burning near you
FastCompany: “As fire seasons in the U.S. gets hotter and drier, a new Twitterbot will show you if a wildfire is burning near your house, where the fire is headed, and if a plume of smoke is traveling in your direction by posting an updated time-lapse video and infrared images every six hours. The tool,… Continue Reading
New tool helps you find 48,000+ open Amazon S3 buckets
The Daily Swig: “Hundreds of thousands of potentially sensitive files are publically available through open Amazon buckets, a new online tool can reveal. The free tool, created by software engineer GrayhatWarfare, is a searchable database where a current list of 48,623 open S3 buckets can be found. Amazon’s S3 cloud storage, or Simple Storage Service,… Continue Reading
Court Vacates Injunction Against Publishing the Law
EFF – Win for Public Right to Know: Court Vacates Injunction Against Publishing the Law – Industry Groups Want to Control Access to Legal Rules and Regulation: “San Francisco – A federal appeals court today ruled that industry groups cannot control publication of binding laws and standards. This decision protects the work of Public.Resource.org (PRO),… Continue Reading
MOU on information-sharing relationship between LC and Peace Palace Library in The Hague
“July 19, 2018 – Two of the world’s most comprehensive international law libraries, the Law Library of Congress and the Peace Palace Library based in The Hague, Netherlands, have agreed to form an information-sharing relationship to exchange information and better serve library users. A memorandum of understanding (MOU) was signed today in a ceremony at… Continue Reading
House Cmte panel approves bill to expedite fed firings
FCW.com: “The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee advanced a bill that would make it easier to fire federal employees. The Modern Employment Reform, Improvement and Transformation Act, introduced by Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-Ga.), would allow the head of an agency to remove a federal employee “if the head determines the performance or misconduct of… Continue Reading
CRS – Private Activity Bonds: An Introduction
EveryCRSReport.com – Private Activity Bonds: An Introduction June 9, 2006 – July 13, 2018 “The federal tax code classifies state and local bonds as either governmental bonds or private activity bonds. Governmental bonds are intended for governmental projects, and private activity bonds are for projects that primarily benefit private entities. Typically, the interest earned by… Continue Reading
American Democracy in Crisis: The Challenges of Voter Knowledge, Participation, and Polarization
American Democracy in Crisis: The Challenges of Voter Knowledge, Participation, and Polarization – PPRI – Alex Vandermaas-Peeler, Daniel Cox, PhD, Molly Fisch-Friedman, Rob Griffin, PhD, Robert P. Jones, PhD, 07.17.2018 State of the Country – The Direction of the Country – “Despite a strong economy, Americans remain relatively pessimistic in their outlook on the direction… Continue Reading
IMF – The Global Expansion: Still Strong but Less Even, More Fragile, Under Threat
IMF: “Amid rising tensions over international trade, the broad global expansion that began roughly two years ago has plateaued and become less balanced. In our latest World Economic Outlook Update, we continue to project global growth rates of just about 3.9 percent for both this year and next, but judge that the risk of worse… Continue Reading
Gov Doc Blog provides background and historical context to Russian interference in 2016 US election
Via GOVDOC-L: “On Friday, the Department of Justice announced indictments against 12 officers of the Glavnoye Razvedyvatel’noye Upravlenie (GRU), the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Russian Armed Forces General Staff. While unfamiliar to most Americans, the GRU has a long history of operating within and against the United States, dating back to the 1920s. In… Continue Reading
