Links for January 21st through January 26th

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Sometime between January 21st and January 26th, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

  • Improved Del.Icio.Us Posting Bookmarklet (With Gruber’s Title Case Goodness): "For a while, I used the del.icio.us Complete Firefox extension, but it's one of those few abandonware extensions that didn't make the trip to Firefox 3. So I switched back to my bookmarklet, as it can do everything the extension does and more — and with keyconfig and a handy reference, it can be triggered by a keystroke just as the extension was, so I'm all good."
  • Time Machine backups on network shares in Leopard: A guide to setting up Time Machine backups over a network without springing for Apple's Time Capsule device.
  • Obama signs order to close Guantanamo in a year: President Barack Obama began overhauling U.S. treatment of terror suspects Thursday, signing orders to close the Guantanamo Bay detention center, shut down secret overseas CIA prisons, review military war crimes trials and ban the harshest interrogation methods.
  • The Obameter: Tracking Barack Obama’s Campaign Promises: PolitiFact has compiled about 500 promises that Barack Obama made during the campaign and is tracking their progress on our Obameter. We rate their status as No Action, In the Works or Stalled. Once we find action is completed, we rate them Promise Kept, Compromise or Promise Broken. (So far: 6 kept, 1 stalled, 14 in progress)
  • US Democracy Server: Patch Day: * Leadership: Will now scale properly to national crises. Intelligence was not being properly applied. * A bug has been fixed that allowed the President to ignore the effects of debuffs applied by the Legislative classes. * Drain Treasury: There appears to be a bug that allowed loot to be transferred from the treasury to anyone on the President’s friends list, or in the President’s party. We are investigating. * Messages to and from the President will now be correctly saved to the chat log. * Messages originating from the President were being misclassified as originating from The American People. * A rendering error that frequently caused the President to appear wrapped in the American Flag texture has been addressed.

Pacific Science Center’s Lucy Exhibit Stumbling

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In some ways one of the most famous women ever to walk the Earth, Lucy died around 3.2 million years ago. Her partial skeleton, discovered in 1974, has become one of the most significant anthropological finds ever. Starting in 2007, Lucy went on what was planned to be a six-year, 10-city United States tour — her first time outside of Ethiopia — and began with an engagement in Houston so successful that her stay was extended for an extra five months.

Her second stop on the tour is at Seattle’s Pacific Science Center, where her exhibit is running from October through March 8th. Unfortunately, this could very well be her last stop before heading home to Ethiopia. Apparently, not enough people are bothering to see the exhibit.

Facing up to a half-million-dollar loss on the exhibit, the center laid off 8 percent of its staff and froze wages, President and CEO Bryce Seidl said Friday. Workers are taking unpaid days off, and the nonprofit organization suspended matching funds for individual retirement accounts.

It’s a disappointing outcome for an exhibit that was intended to be a blockbuster for the Seattle museum and a public-relations coup for Lucy’s homeland of Ethiopia, Seidl said.

[…]

The exhibit cost about $2.25 million to mount, Seidl estimated. That includes a $500,000 fee to the government of Ethiopia, which plans to use the money raised during Lucy’s U.S. tour for cultural and scientific programs.

The science center had hoped 250,000 people would visit during the exhibit’s five-month run, which ends March 8. But attendance, so far, is only 60,000.

[…]

Other museums around the U.S. have been tracking Lucy’s poor showing in Seattle, and none has yet agreed to be the next stop on what was meant to be a six-year, 10-city tour. Chicago’s Field Museum backed out of plans to host the exhibit because of the cost. Controversy over whether the irreplaceable fossil should be transported around the globe led the Denver Museum of Nature & Science not to follow through on early discussions.

“Lucy may not be anywhere other than Ethiopia after Seattle,” Seidl said.

Just sad. Prairie and I had already been discussing going, and this cements our plans. We’re thinking that we’ll probably be heading down on Valentine’s Day weekend and spend a day seeing the Lucy exhibit and wandering around the PacSci.

You should head down and give Lucy a visit as well (on your own schedule, of course, but don’t wait too long, she’s only here until early March). It’s an incredibly important bit of history and science, and it’s sad to hear that so few people are showing up.

Happy 25th Birthday Macintosh!

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Twenty-five years ago today, Steve Jobs introduced the original Macintosh: “The computer for the rest of us.”

It’s funny to see just how much hasn’t changed in the past 25 years — especially Jobs’ consummate showmanship and flair — and how much has. That little machine that started it all is certainly a far cry from what’s being offered today, but it’s very easy to see how much today’s Mac still owes to the original, in everything from the interface to the advertising (I was really amused at how similar the two ads at the very end of the above clip are to many of today’s ads from Apple).

So happy birthday, Macintosh! And here’s to another 25 years to come!

The New Me

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Last week sometime, I was brainstorming with ways to personalize the design of my site a bit while still working within my limited artistic and design sensibilities. On a whim, I emailed Shari, a comic artist whose blog I’ve been reading and whose artwork I enjoy, to see if she might be willing to sketch a version of me that I’d be able to work into the design somehow.

Shari was kind enough to agree, and since I didn’t have a particular image or pose in mind beyond knowing that I wanted to be wearing a Utilikilt, I directed her to my Narcissism set on Flickr and let her go to town.

A day or so later, Shari sent me a first set of preliminary sketches. There were a number of versions of ‘me’ that looked very promising, but down in the middle of the page was a funny little very anime-style version that she’d dubbed the ‘Valiant Camera Warrior’ which I got a big kick out of. When I wrote back to confirm that I liked the direction she was heading with the sketches, I also mentioned how much I enjoyed the Valiant Camera Warrior.

A couple days later she sent me the final artwork…and I was floored! Not only has Shari come up with an incredible comic version of ‘me,’ but she went ahead and inked the Valiant Camera Warrior as a bonus! I’ve worked the artwork into a few different places into the site design now, but under the cut are larger versions of her work.

Read more

Obama and Open Government

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It’s reports like this one from the EFF that go a long way towards boosting my confidence in the next four (eight!) years.

It’s only his first day in office, but President Obama has already signaled a serious commitment to transparency and accountability in government. The President ordered federal agencies in a memorandum released today to approach the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) “with a clear presumption: in the face of doubt, openness prevails.”

This message is in line with advice EFF and other nonprofits gave the Obama Transition Team on transparency issues shortly after the election.

According to Obama’s memo:

All agencies should adopt a presumption in favor of disclosure, in order to renew their commitment to the principles embodied in FOIA, and to usher in a new era of open Government. The presumption of disclosure should be applied to all decisions involving FOIA.

This statement is almost certainly meant to address a controversial memo issued by John Ashcroft in the wake of 9/11, which ordered agencies to disclose information only after considering all possible reasons to withhold it, and assured them that government lawyers would defend their decisions in court unless they had no “sound legal basis.” Many open government advocates believe Ashcroft’s policy effectively gutted the FOIA over the past several years. Today’s memo doesn’t explicitly reverse that policy, but directs the incoming attorney general to issue new FOIA guidelines to agencies “reaffirming the commitment to accountability and transparency.” This is a big step in the right direction.

This, of course, was just one of many items on the agenda for Obama’s first day in office. The New York Times has a good summary:

President Obama moved swiftly on Wednesday to impose new rules on government transparency and ethics, using his first full day in office to freeze the salaries of his senior aides, mandate new limits on lobbyists and demand that the government disclose more information.

Mr. Obama called the moves, which overturned two policies of his predecessor, “a clean break from business as usual.” Coupled with Tuesday’s Inaugural Address, which repudiated the Bush administration’s decisions on everything from science policy to fighting terrorism, the actions were another sign of the new president’s effort to emphasize an across-the-board shift in priorities, values and tone.

[…]

“Starting today,” Mr. Obama said, “every agency and department should know that this administration stands on the side not of those who seek to withhold information, but those who seek to make it known.”

Advocates for openness in government, who had been pressing for the moves, said they were pleased. They said the new president had traded a presumption of secrecy for a presumption of disclosure.

“You couldn’t ask for anything better,” said Melanie Sloan, the executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, an advocacy group that tangled frequently with the Bush administration over records. “For the president to say this on Day 1 says: ‘We mean it. Turn your records over.’ ”

I think I’m going to like this guy.

(via Boing Boing)

Links for January 21st from 08:43 to 17:23

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Sometime between 08:43 and 17:23, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

  • US Democracy Server: Patch Day: * Leadership: Will now scale properly to national crises. Intelligence was not being properly applied. * A bug has been fixed that allowed the President to ignore the effects of debuffs applied by the Legislative classes. * Drain Treasury: There appears to be a bug that allowed loot to be transferred from the treasury to anyone on the President’s friends list, or in the President’s party. We are investigating. * Messages to and from the President will now be correctly saved to the chat log. * Messages originating from the President were being misclassified as originating from The American People. * A rendering error that frequently caused the President to appear wrapped in the American Flag texture has been addressed.
  • Gregg Nations’s Job – Keeping ‘Lost’ on Track: ith 34 episodes to go in its two final seasons, the stories of nearly 100 characters to wrap up, several Dharma stations to keep track of and a whole lot of time traveling going on, the writers of “Lost” are doing anything but winding down. Yet their task — untangling the seemingly impenetrable mass of plotlines that have become addictive to some viewers of the show and alienating to others — is relatively simple compared with that of Gregg Nations.
  • The Inauguration of President Barack Obama – The Big Picture: Yesterday was a historic day. On January 20th, 2009, Barack H. Obama was sworn in as the 44th President of the United States of America – the first African-American ever to hold the office of U.S. Commander-in-Chief. The event was witnessed by well over one million attendees in chilly Washington D.C., and by many millions more through coverage on television and the Internet. Collected here are photographs of the event, the participants, and some of the witnesses around the world.
  • 88 Lines about 44 Presidents: Washington was quite reluctant / Didn't want to rule the land, / Adams, more enthusiastic, / Claimed Sedition Acts were grand, / Jefferson bought half the nation, / Headlined the two dollar bill, / Madison's Federalist Papers / Seemed to give him quite a thrill.
  • Obama inauguration stops traffic – web traffic, that is: Shh! Hear that? It's the sound of people not searching and not doing things on the web while Barack Obama is giving his inauguration speech. This is a man who can stop traffic of all sorts – including web traffic.

Links for January 19th through January 20th

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Sometime between January 19th and January 20th, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

  • ‘Battlestar Galactica’s’ Ron Moore addresses the shocking developments of ‘Sometimes a Great Notion’: This post contains extensive interviews and information about “Sometimes a Great Notion,” the Jan. 16 episode of Sci Fi's "Battlestar Galactica." Below, “Battlestar Galactica” executive producer Ronald D. Moore talks in detail about several big developments in the episode. I'd recommend watching the episode before reading the full text of the post.
  • The country’s new robots.txt file: Here's a small and nerdy measure of the huge change in the executive branch of the US government today.
  • Gothic Charm School: Snarklings, why do so many people (including ones who should know better) think that Goth has some sort of religious affiliation? Is it because so many Goths like wearing large, ornate cross pendants or intricately-beaded rosaries? Wait no; that, while possibly a small part of it, can’t be the main impetus for so many people assuming that Goth comes with a particular religious requirement. Because if that was the case, the accessorizing with crosses and rosaries would cause people to assume that all Goths are particularly flamboyant Catholics or Christians….
  • One man’s take on the new whitehouse.gov on TwitPic: Humor for the HTML geeks out there. :)
  • The top 25 Bushisms of all time.: I find the Bush who flails with words, unlike the Bush who flails with policy, to be an endearing character. Instead of a villain, he makes himself into an irresistible buffoon, like Mrs. Malaprop, Archie Bunker, or Homer Simpson. Bush treats words the way he treated recalcitrant European leaders: When they won't do what he wants them to, he tries to bully them into submission.
  • Worst Commercial Placement Ever: This is violent and contains a fairly major spoiler from the most recent episode of Battlestar Galactica. The inverse serendipity of the commercial is priceless, hilarious, and very, very wrong. (via wcitymike and MeFi)