Guesses At Nothing

Ernie, the newest member of our family.

With all the good signs about a new transparent, ethical administration under Obama, his nomination of William Lynn for deputy defense secretary makes me cringe.  Obama has provided a waiver from the ethics guidelines that he created so that a former lobbyist who worked for Raytheon can get a job in the defense department. Raytheon is huge cog in the industrial-war-machine and if the nomination goes through, would put Lynn in a position that clearly has conflict-of-interest implications written all over it. It reeks of political happy-glad-handling (whatever the hell that means; it just sounds right).  I hope that with all the fervor surrounding Obama (my own fervor not withstanding) that he doesn't get a free pass on hypocrisies as great as this one.  If anything, hopefully the transparent ideals he espouses will prevent him from making many moves like this one.  Though so far that is to be determined.

As part of Google's never ending quest to find everything there is to find anywhere and make it publicly available, the company has tracked down one of the original solar panels that Carter installed in the White House (the ones that Reagan later removed). 

So what ever happened to the panels? It turns out that during President Reagan's administration the solar hot water panels were removed from the White House in 1986 and placed in storage. In 1992, Unity College located the panels and transferred them from a General Services Administration warehouse to their campus in Maine. After restoration,16 panels provided their cafeteria with hot water for the next 12 years. In cooperation with Unity College, Google was able to bring one of these panels down to our Washington DC office for display throughout the next year.

[via Official Google Blog]

From MoJo, more evidence about Obama living up to his transparency promises:

On his first day in office, President Obama put former president Bush on notice. His administration just released an executive order that will make it difficult for Bush to shield his White House records--and those of former Vice President Dick Cheney--from public scrutiny by invoking the doctrine of executive privilege. Shortly after taking office, Bush handed down his own executive order, amending the Presidential Records Act to give current and past presidents, along with their heirs, veto power over the release of presidential records, which are considered the property of the American people.

Also from the article:

[Obama]'s basically saying if there's a dispute, and a former president thinks something should be covered by executive privilege and Obama doesn't agree, then Obama would direct the Archivist to release it [despite the former president's claim of privilege]. The only option a former President would have at that point would be to go to court and sue.

I am sure some will say this is an attack on Bush, but the door swings both ways and Obama is removing the same privilege from himself.  The best part -- if Bush doesn't like it... sue.  One day in and I already feel like I just took a long refreshing shower. 

Certain chapters of Saul Williams The Dead Emcee Scrolls set to music by Thomas Kessler (performed by The Arditti String Quartet are available from his site as a free download, or the whole shebang is only six bucks. Not bad, considering the book itself is nearly double that on Amazon. (36 new from 4.98, but still.)

robots.txt is a text file that sits in the root directory of a website that dictates what pages and directories are not allowed to be indexed by search engines. Under president Bush, the list was nearly 2,400 lines.  Here is a sample:

1. User-agent:     *
2. Disallow:       /cgi-bin
3. Disallow:       /search
4. Disallow:       /query.html
5. Disallow:       /omb/search
6. Disallow:       /omb/query.html
7. Disallow:       /expectmore/search
8. Disallow:       /expectmore/query.html
9. Disallow:       /results/search
10. Disallow:       /results/query.html
11. Disallow:       /earmarks/search
12. Disallow:       /earmarks/query.html
13. Disallow:       /help
14. Disallow:       /360pics/text
15. Disallow:       /911/911day/text
16. Disallow:       /911/heroes/text
17. Disallow:       /911/messages/text
18. Disallow:       /911/patriotism/text
19. Disallow:       /911/patriotism2/text
20. Disallow:       /911/progress/text
21. Disallow:       /911/remembrance/text
22. Disallow:       /911/response/text
23. Disallow:       /911/sept112002/text
24. Disallow:       /911/text
25. Disallow:       /ConferenceAmericas/text
26. Disallow:       /GOVERNMENT/text
27. Disallow:       /QA-test/text
28. Disallow:       /aci/text
29. Disallow:       /afac/text
30. Disallow:       /africanamerican/text

As soon as Obama became president, it changed to this:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /includes/

The first sign that Obama truly believes in the idea of a transparent government that helped get him elected?
[via kottke.org]

Neglection, a word I just made up, is the noun form of the verb neglect, when the noun neglect just won't do.  Neglection is the state of  this blog.  Right now, I am awaiting the bidecadal (another word I just made up, meaning: twice a decade) snow storm here in NC.  It has been a (adjective omitted) new year.  It is just too early to tell.  I am, in any event, glad that this is most likely the last year I will refer to the year as "two-thousand and (blank)" as two-thousand and ten rolls off the tongue much better as "twenty-ten".  At least, as the time passes before twenty-eleven (for sure, no one will say two-thousand and eleven), I hope to write here more. Time will tell.

UPDATE: Turns out neglection is a real word. Though (simulacrum be damned) just because something is a copy, it doesn't mean it isn't original. Bidecadal is also a word among the scientific-type (scientiospecial?) though Princeton doesn't know about it yet.