Pricing Elmo and golf clubs on government time

A story by The St. Petersburg Times shows that during official meetings there, county commissioners were using their government-issued laptops to "pass time on e-Bay, travel sites, and personal email."

Ted Schrader tracks stocks on tbo.com. Fellow Pasco County Commissioner Steve Simon favors eBay and golf-related sites like hirekogolf.com. Commissioner Pat Mulieri fiddles with her AOL email account.

The three commissioners regularly visited those Web sites and many others the past three years, which is totally unremarkable except for one fact: they did so during meetings of the Pasco County Commission while ostensibly focused on public business.

Personal use of county computers, meanwhile, has gotten rank and file county employees fired.

One commissioner admitted checking the prices of Elmo and golf clubs. Matthew Waite, one of the two reporters, explains how they did it on his personal blog, in a post called "Watchdog journalism doesn't have to be hard."

It's pathetic I actually took some satisfaction in passing this

Can you pass 8th grade math?

An academic journal on plagiarism

Who knew plagiarism was an academic discipline? Not I. Plagiary is a journal dedicated to the subject, but let's just hope no one steals this drivel:

Devoted specifically to the scholarly, cross-disciplinary study of plagiary and related behaviors across the disciplines, articles in Plagiary address the issue of fraudulent contributions to disciplinary discourse communities and the potential (and actual) corruption of the professional literature and other genres of discourse as a result of such derivative and/or fraudulent "contributions" to discoursal interchange.

Disciplinary discourse communities? Discoursal interchange? If that's the best they can do, maybe they should steal a few paragraphs from someone else.

Finding academic, scholarly, scientific and technical articles online

Mary Ellen Bates writes for SearchEngineWatch about finding academic, scholarly, scientific and technical articles online. She gives a brief overview Google Scholar, Scirus, PubMed, CiteSeer, SMEALsearch and OAIster.

Guide to Port Databases Online

beSpacific, channeling information compiled by Nathan Estey and posted on FOI-L by Michael Ravnitzky, has put online A Guide to Port Databases.

World Public Opinion

World Public Opinion offers "in-depth information and analysis on public opinion from around the world on international issues." The site is the creation of the Program on International Policy Attitudes.

Anonymous source burned by metadata

If you take digital pictures you may know that the photographs can have information embedded in them, including the time, place and the camera's settings when the picture was taken. eWeek writes about how such "metadata" left in a Washington Post photograph published online "exposed the whereabouts of a 21-year-old hacker who confessed to controlling thousands of compromised PCs for malicious use." "The hacker agreed be interviewed by Washington Post reporter Brian Krebs on the condition that he not be identified by name or home town, but when the article was posted on the newspaper's Web site, an accompanying photograph included metadata that pinpointed the location to Roland, Okla., a small town with a population of 2,842," eWeek says. The article says Slashdot contributors made the discovery, with one Slashdotter wondering "how many other news stories might have very much unintended data leaks through metadata tags in images. Possibly quite a hell of a lot."

FamilyDoctor.org

FamilyDoctor.org, by the American Academy of Family Physicians, offers information about common medical problems. This includes tips for choosing a family physician, advice on preventing medical errors, and evaluating medical information found on the Web.

Greenhouse gas database

The World Resources Institute offers the Climate Analysis Indicators Tool, or CAIT, "a comprehensive and comparable database of greenhouse gases and other climate-relevant indicators." It offers lots of data for comparing emissions by regions and countries. It also offers downloadable demographic data on each country's health, education, economic size, energy use and governance.

Directory Assistance Plus

Directory Assistance Plus is an online phone directory. Lots of obnoxious ads trying to sell you searches for pay, though.

Sources of economic data

Earlier this month there was a discussion on the computer-assisted reporting discussion listserv NICAR-L about sources of economic data "beyond Census data and Claritas." Here's a summary of the suggestions from the list:

• National Bureau of Economic Research

• Bureau of Labor Statistics

• IRS

• Bureau of Labor Statistics Current Population Survey

• Federal Reserve Bank

• Local county/city planners and economic development agencies

• Information on electricity use from local utilities

• McGraw Hill Construction, for residential and commercial construction contracts by MSA

• Real estate foreclosures, usually from local courts

• Bureau of Economic Analysis

• American Community Survey

Nugget of the day: Federal government media contracts

Contracts from 2003 fiscal year to March 31, 2005:

Advertising agencies: $1.4 billion
Public relations firms: $197 million
Media organizations: $15 million
Individual members of the media: $90,000

(For seven agencies: Commerce, Defense, Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, Interior, Treasury and Veterans Affairs)

Source: U.S. Government Accountability Office, Activities and Financial Obligations for Seven Federal Departments

ScienceBlogs

ScienceBlogs calls itself "a global, digital science salon." "ScienceBlogs is the web's largest conversation about science," the site says. "It features blogs from a wide array of scientific disciplines, with new voices coming on board regularly."

Mathematician says data sweeps will be ineffective

John Allen Paulos, the author of A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper and other books, uses a little math to argue that massive government data mining sweeps will be an ineffective way to bag terrorists:

Even if an accurate profile of potential terrorists is drawn, the fact that such a vanishingly small percentage of us are terrorists means that the vast majority of the people investigated will be innocent.

Even if the probability that the purported terrorist profile is accurate were an astonishing 99 percent (if someone has terrorist ties, the profile will pick him or her out 99 percent of the time, and, for ease of computation, if someone does not have such ties, the profile will pick him or her out only 1 percent of the time), most of the hits would be false positives.

For illustration, let's further assume that one out of a million American residents has terrorist ties -- that's approximately 300 people -- and the profile will pick out 99 percent, or 297 of them. Great. But what of the approximately 300 million innocent Americans? The profile will also pick out 1 percent of them, "only" 3 million false positives, innocent people who will be caught up in a Kafkaesque dragnet.

A place to show what you make

Instructables calls itself "a venue for showing what you make and how others can make it":

Making things is part of being human. Whether you make bikes, kites, food, clothing, protocols for biology research, or hack consumer electronics, good instructions are critical.

Instructables is a step-by-step collaboration system that helps you record and share your projects with a mixture of images, text, ingredient lists, CAD files, and more. We hope to make documentation simple and fast. Show your colleagues how to operate a machine, show your friends how to build a kayak, show the world how to make cool stuff.

Free registration required.

Zillow update: Jefferson County, Ky., not included

In a previous post I wrote that Zillow's "coverage of Louisville is sparse compared to other cities" and in this morning's paper I wrote that there was "almost no data" for Jefferson County. I wrote this because when I looked at Zillow I did find a few Jefferson County properties that had prices attached and couldn't find a list of counties covered. Keith Stone, however, points out there is such a list, and Jefferson County isn't included. I looked again at the properties I had found in Jefferson County and some, at least, appear to be the result of mistakes, such as a property with an address of "Louisville, IL" that nevertheless appears on the Louisville, Ky, map. Zillow, meanwhile, does say it expects to add data on more homes in the coming months, and since they have an empty Jefferson County page, maybe its time will come.

Fraud Update

Fraud Update, from the Center for the Study of Economic Crimes, tracks "government actions against fraud & other practices victimizing consumers, businesses & government."

Editing the email you receive

With everybody using their email as a de facto database, it's helpful to know that with Outlook you can edit the subject line of any email you receive. "Why would you want to edit the subject?," Outlook Daily Tips asks. "To add keywords so you can find it easier or to make it more informative, so you don't need to open the message to see what it's about."

A coroner's blog

Everyone, and I mean everyone, is blogging: "Live from the Coroner's Office" is a blog by the Lake County, Ill., coroner. Friday's post begins, "One of the things that can make the Coroner’s 'business' tough are the odors we encounter ... "

A cautionary email tale

Following up on yesterday's post on email tone, here's a cautionary email tale passed along by Peter Smith. The Boston Globe article by Sacha Pfeiffer begins, "Once again, a friendly reminder: The next time you're tempted to send a nasty, exasperated, or snippy e-mail, pause, take a deep breath, and think again. ... "

Picking Olympic figure skating winners by chance

Just yesterday I told my wife I don't like Olympic events where winners are picked by judges because it introduces too much subjectivity. Then I read this blog post about a Yale statistician who studied figure skating's new scoring system (introduced after the scoring scandal at the last Winter Olympics) and found that chance plays a large role in who wins. The statistician, John Emerson, writes:

"Does the new scoring system increase fairness? On some level it does, but the system has introduced the unsettling possibility of dumb luck influencing the medal standings. In a close competition with skaters separated by only a few points, the outcome will likely be determined by the random choices of panels of nine judges."

Predicting company performance by data mining the Web

Reuters reports that a New York company, Majestic Research, is gathering freely available information on the Internet to predict the sales and financial performance of companies. " ... several dozen math Ph.D.s, statisticians and other quantitative analysts evaluate data spewed from computers using 'Web crawling' programs track sales and other information from tens of millions of Web pages or other on-line resources," says the article by Dane Hamilton. " ... The firm's methods differ from traditional Wall Street research, where analysts make forecasts based on conversations with company executives, advertisers, suppliers and mall visits to forecast company results and make recommendations."

Misinterpreting email tone

Wikinews reports on a study that shows people falsely believe they can interpret the tone of emails. A Wired story calls this "The Secret Cause of the Flame Wars." The study itself, published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, is behind a subscriber-only wall. Remember this the next time you email me, you jerk.

Nugget of the Day: Media company operating margins v. ExxonMobil

Company and operating margin:

Gannett: 32%
Washington Post: 23%
Knight Ridder: 20%
New York Times: 18%
ExxonMobil: 16 %

Source: Forbes.com using data from Reuters Fundamentals, Thomson Financial/FactSet Research Systems. (Free registration required to access Forbes.com)

Occupational Outlook Handbook

The 2006-07 edition of the Occupational Outlook Handbook offers detailed information about hundreds of jobs, including the training and education needed, earnings, expected job prospects, what workers do on the job and working conditions. It also offers tips on looking for jobs and information about each state's job market.

Fathers.com

Fathers.com, from the National Center for Fathering, offers resources for "Helping you Become a Better Dad," including hundreds of tips "for nearly every fathering situation."

Governing.com

Governing.com, the companion to Governing magazine, writes about state and local government. Articles on the front page today include "Development without tears" and "The coming competition for potholes."

Zillow property search

Everywhere I look I'm seeing references to Zillow, which promises "free, unbiased valuations on more than 40 million homes across the United States." It displays the information on a satellite map, so you can easily check each house in a neighborhood, including such information as square footage, number of bedrooms and bathrooms and so on. Unfortunately, coverage of Louisville is sparse compared to other cities.

Project on Government Oversight

Project on Government Oversight "is an independent investigative non-profit whose mission is to expose corruption in order to achieve a more accountable federal government."

Good looking people don't commit crimes

This paper claims that good looking people are less likely to commit crimes. I don't know why, but its premise makes me homicidal...

Nugget of the day: Texas hunting incidents

For the year 2004 (latest available online):

Total incidents: 33
Fatal incidents: 4
Average age of shooter: 39
Most frequent weapon involved: Shotgun, 19 incidents
Number in which victim moved into line of fire: 1

Source: International Hunter Education Association, Hunter Incident Reports

Skipease skip tracing blog

Skipease is a blog devoted to finding people, searching the Web and public record news.

Mapping men's room diaper changing tables

Man, I could have really used something like this a few years ago if there had been one for Louisville. This site uses Google Maps to show all the men's rooms in Manhattan with diaper changing tables.

Top Ten Sources

Every day TopTenSources promises to choose a "Top 10" list of the best newsfeeds on a particular topic, then make those feeds available on its site so you don't have to gather each one yourself.

Science exploits Enron email

Wired writes about how scientists are making use of Enron emails, which became public after its collapse. "Academic researchers quickly realized the e-mails were a unique and open data trove that could be exploited by researchers interested in social networks and information analysis and retrieval," the article says.

Data mining using Google

A blogger explains how to do data mining with Google.

Bad spin on Deadspin

Deadspin is a sports blog with attitude that's been getting a lot of hype recently, including a writeup in The New York Times (NYT subscriber only access, I'm afraid) that asserted the blog is "rapidly becoming a major player on the national sports scene" and is "occasionally a vital source for sports journalists." But the reliability of those claims is in doubt since the NYT writer, Vincent M. Mallozzi, said the Deadspin founder, Will Leitch, once covered the St. Louis Cardinals for the Post-Dispatch, when in fact he had been a campus sports correspondent at the University of Illinois. Whatever. I still like this now dubious Leitch quote: "I learned that there is no place in the world less joyful than a press box." Unless maybe it's the corrections page.

Where to apply for a passport

The U.S. State Department has a search page where you can find the nearest place to apply for a passport. It has a gloriously inelegant name: the "Passport Acceptance Facility Search Page." Search by ZIP code, state or city.

List to discuss Geographic Information System mapping

Maps-l is an email list for discussing Geographic Information System mapping.

Search for ham radio operators by ZIP code

This site allows you to search for ham radio operators by ZIP code. It shows their location on a Google map, including their callsign, name, class, status, latitude and longitude and address. Its popup windows don't display properly in Firefox, however, only in Internet Explorer.

Volkswagen-driving, hard-cider-drinking, Wired-reading, cartoon-watching iTunes users

The Center for Media Research reports on the statistical profile of iTunes users:

Their favorite car make is Volkswagen, which they are 2.2 times more likely to own than the average Internet user. In terms of beverages, their alcohol of choice is hard cider, followed by imported and domestic beer.

Among magazines, iTunes users are 3.3 times more likely than average to read Wired, 2.6 times more likely to read Rolling Stone and 2.5 times more likely to read FHM.

When watching television, they flock to the Cartoon Network at 1.4 times the average rate, and to HBO and BBC America at 1.3 and 1.2 times the average rate, respectively.

How to read a research paper

The British Medical Journal offers a free series of articles by Trisha Greenhalgh, a medical school lecturer, on how to read medical research papers. These include how to read papers that report drug trials, statistics for the non-statistician, assessing the methodological quality of papers, how to decide what the paper is all about, and using the Medline database. These same articles are published as a book.

Rating the effectiveness of federal programs

The U.S. Office of Management and Budget unveiled a new Website, ExpectMore.gov, this week that purports to rate federal government programs on how well they're performing. There are five ratings: "effective," "moderately effective," "adequate," "ineffective" and "results not demonstrated."

This is how the OMB says it arrives at those:

We use a standard questionnaire called the Program Assessment Rating Tool, or PART, for short. The PART asks approximately 25 important, yet common sense, questions about a program's performance and management. For each question, there is a short answer and a detailed explanation with supporting evidence. The answers determine a program's overall rating. Once each assessment is completed, we develop a program improvement plan so we can follow up and improve the program's performance.

I'm sure (wink, wink) that political considerations never play a role in this. The site, by the way, says that 72 percent of the programs rated are performing at least adequately.

National TV news search

SearchEngineWatch reports That TVEyes now offers a free service that lets you search for words spoken during national news broadcasts. This is only the portions of news broadcasts made available on the Web, and only from some national broadcasters, not all. SearchEngineWatch says available now or coming soon are searches of FoxNews, CNN, MSNBC, CBS News, Reuters and the BBC.

New public records blog

The Public Records Blog offers information on how to conduct your own investigation, finding pubic public records and legislative news about public records.

Update 2/7/06: Wow, a whole day and no one pointed out my rather embarrassing reference to "pubic records." Undoubtedly, though, there'd be more interest in a blog on that subject.

Converting weights and measures

Convert Plus! offers a complete set of online tools for converting weights and measures. It offers not only the standard ounces to pounds and cups to gallons, but also more esoteric conversions to measurement systems such as those used by Imperial China and ancient Greece and Rome.

Color scheme chooser

ColorBlender is a tool that helps you pick a harmonious Web color scheme. You can save your schemes and return to them later.

"Information brokers -- unethical but useful"

A private eye defends his access to data brokers. Some refreshing honesty this: "I have used data brokers with fantastic results. I don't know how my middlemen got the information and I don't want to know."

Introduction to competitive intelligence

Freepint explains competitive intelligence, "a systematic and ethical programme for gathering, analysing, and managing information about your business environment that can affect your company's plans, decisions, and operations."

The most useful tool for conducting research, for assisting with analysis, and for guidance in disseminating useful information within an organisation is a knowledge map. ... it can range from a very simple, orderly arrangement of business cards to a very sophisticated and comprehensive expertise database.

Economic search engine

ESE ("ease") is a search engine that indexes "300,000 pages on 10,000 economics web sites from around the world." It is sponsored by the American Economic Association.

Nugget of the day: 100 largest military contractors

Largest Kentucky-based military contractor: Humana Inc., $2.26 billion in awards, ranked 13th

Source:

• U.S. Department of Defense, 100 Companies Receiving The Largest Dollar Volume Of Prime Contract Awards - Fiscal Year 2005

Education World®

Education World, "the Educator's Best Friend," offers an education-only search engine, original articles on education topics, reviews of other education sites, education chats, teacher and principal profiles, education job listings and more.

InformationWeek: Five Ways To Keep Your Google Searches Private

Paranoid Googlers will want to read InformationWeek's article on "Five Ways to Keep Your Google Searches Private."

The PR List

PubSub's PR List is a list of blogs about public relations and communication.

Academics share their reading

CiteULike "is a free service to help academics to share, store, and organise the academic papers they are reading." Apparently you don't have to be an academic to use it, because it let me register, though truth be told, I don't have much to add to the likes of "Radioimmunoassay of apolipoprotein B with use of monoclonal antibodies."