Pius XII Memorial Library Government Information

Fancy times are coming at the opening of the George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum scheduled for May 1. The NARA site for 43 includes a Barney webcam, a link to the history of the White House Easter Egg Roll, and for presidential scholars approximately 80 terabytes of electronic records.

Caveat: Presidential records created in electronic format are subject to the Presidential Records Act. Beginning on January 20, 2014, electronic Presidential records that have not been processed can be requested under the Freedom of Information Act.

Mission accomplished.

Color the documents community as frustrated. As reported by the Federation of American Scientists the NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS) is no longer accessible.  A trip to the WayBack Machine will provide some information (as will print and microfiche collections — such as SLUs) but ease of searching and dissemination is gone for now.

The Second Amendment has been a debate topic of late and it is a good Constitutional exercise to see what information there is on the number of folks in your county that have the sanction to carry concealed firearms. Interestingly, the Missouri Department of Revenue has a simple web-based interface to provide that information — it is just a download away.

Who owns the upcoming sequester? The GOP has it down to the President at www.gpo.gov.  But the Constitution puts it on Congress in Article I, Section 7, “All Bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives…”  and Article I, Section 8,  “The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States…”

Facebook, mySpace, Twitter, Instagram, etc.  the whole panoply of social media outlets — who can keep up?  Looks like law enforcement agencies have the rationale to be vigilant online – or they should be if FBI advice holds any weight.  Under the title Social Media: Establishing Criteria for Law Enforcement Use, the need to be social is pretty clear — they are watching you, you should watch them.

Derived post — where is the R&D money going.  Nice set of graphs from MIT.

Friday beat down.  Turn up the volume and prepare to blast off. NASA is all about Gangnam Style.

The common good rules, or is that rules for the common good.  Either way, new safe-guards have been introduced by the FDA to protect food consumers (guess that covers everyone).

NOAA isn’t saying it, but the statistics are there, dust bowl conditions are rife in the Midwest. Scientific American is looking at the problem do make some potential predictions.

Just when you thought the NASA spinoffs were just for tech-know-geeks –  there comes a paean from a Black-Eyed Pea.