Via TOPIC: “The story of the plastic bag—the kind that is so ubiquitous in grocery stores, in gutters, in the branches of trees—is a story of persuasion, one that began with a battle between paper and plastic in the hearts of the American people. “People are fond of the old paper bag,” Peter Bunten explained… Continue Reading
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Monthly Archives: August 2018
Google Search latest target in Trump’s “strategic” push to discredit the news
Quartz: “The White House is “taking a look” into regulating Google, Donald Trump’s top economic advisor said Tuesday morning, after the US president tweeted in the early morning hours that googling “Trump news” turned up too many negative results. Google search results has it “RIGGED, for me & others, so that almost all stories &… Continue Reading
Government Agency Digital Products Case Study Report Now Available
Federal Depository Library Program (FDPL) – “In the fall of 2016, the Government Publishing Office (GPO) and the Superintendent of Documents entered into an interagency agreement with the Federal Research Division (FRD) of the Library of Congress to develop and test a methodology for identifying agency digital publishing, dissemination, and preservation policies and practices. The… Continue Reading
Harvard Law School Library receives donation of material from American lawyer and radio personality
Et Seq. The Blog of the Harvard Law School Library: “The Harvard Law School Library is excited to announce that it recently received a unique collection of material from the family of Harvard Law School (HLS) alumnus, jurist, and popular radio personality Neil Chayet (HLS ’63). Comprised of more than 10,000 individual transcripts and several… Continue Reading
Free application lets users shrink JPG images with no loss in quality
Via the Shrink Me FAQ: “Why should I compress images? Image compression is ideal if you want to make your site / app load faster or to save some storage. Do compressed images suffer from quality loss? No, your images should look identical to the human eye. You almost won’t see any differences, just give… Continue Reading
NOAA – Heat-seeking citizen scientists zero-in on D.C., Baltimore for mapping mission
NOAA: “A corps of volunteers are setting out this week with an important task in front of them: Collect real-time data about the hottest places in Baltimore and Washington, D.C. It’s part of a NOAA-funded project to map places where people are most at risk during extreme heat waves. Using specially designed thermal sensors mounted on… Continue Reading
Federal judge blocks publication of 3-D printed gun blueprints
Washington Post: “A federal judge ruled in favor of more than a dozen attorneys general on Monday to block the release of blueprints for 3-D printed firearms online. The Seattle court order effectively criminalized publication of the gun design files, banning Texas-based company Defense Distributed from posting them on the Internet. The decision presents a new hurdle in the company’s fight to make… Continue Reading
Tech Industry Pursues a Federal Privacy Law, on Its Own Terms
The New York Times: “In recent months, apparently, Facebook, Google, IBM, Microsoft and others have aggressively lobbied officials in the Trump administration and elsewhere to start outlining a federal privacy law. The law would have a dual purpose, they said: It would overrule the California law and instead put into place a kinder set of… Continue Reading
Does Google Actually Make Us Dumber? That Study – And Many Others – Were Just Called Into Question.
BuzzFeedNews: “Another spate of high-profile and provocative psychology studies have failed to replicate, dealing blows to the theories that fiction makes readers empathetic, for example, or that the internet makes us dumber. At a time when psychology researchers are increasingly concerned about the rigor of their field, five laboratories set out to repeat 21 influential… Continue Reading
White Collar Prosecutions Fall to Lowest in 20 Years
White Collar Prosecutions Fall to Lowest in 20 Years – “The latest available data from the Justice Department show that during April 2018 the government reported 494 new white collar crime prosecutions. According to the case-by-case information analyzed by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University, this number is down 14.4 percent over… Continue Reading
GPO – A Tribute to Senator John McCain
Govinfo: “After being held as a POW for 5 ½ years in North Vietnam, Lieut. Commander McCain was released on May 14, 1973. Nine years later in 1982 he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from Arizona. In 1986 he was elected to the United States Senate. Throughout his tenure in Congress, he… Continue Reading
John McCain’s Final Letter to America
The Atlantic – John McCain’s Final Letter to America – this missive addresses our country, and our people, collectively and individually – who we are, what and whom we have lost, sacrificed, and are in danger of destroying, as well as the roots of compassion, grace, strength, courage, hope and commitment we are all called… Continue Reading
