Metro apologizes for power and communications failure
Washington Metro (DC) apologized to customers after its power system failed Thursday night, leaving riders with no service and no information. Original post
Miscellaneous
Gamification can change behaviour. I have proof.
This post has been on my mind for a while now, and a recent article on the topic from Policy Horizons Canada finally brought this to the top of my “blog topics” list (which seems to have a leaking hole in it these days…sorry about that). As always, I like to start with a definition:Read… Read more »
TSP Talk – We hate to see January go
Despite the S&P 500 being down 3 of the 5 days last week, the major indices all managed to close in positive territory for the week, with a strong showing from the small cap and international funds. The market was bolstered by the Fed’s reassurance of low interest rates through at least 2014, and leftRead… Read more »
Sunlight Foundation's Political Party Time: SOPA Fundraisers
Motion Picture Association of America Chairman Chris Dodd set off a firestorm of criticism last week when he suggested that Hollywood would withhold campaign money from President Obama and lawmakers who don’t toe the Hollywood line on online piracy. Losing support of the entertainment industry would not be insignificant for the president: In 2011, DreamWorksRead… Read more »
Contract Duplication Challenges Continue
Contract Duplication remains a challenge for government and industry and is an issue that the Coalition will continue to highlight in the interest of improving the efficiency and effectiveness of the procurement system. Duplicative contracts for the same or similar commercial products and services increase government and contractor administrative, bid and proposal and other overheadRead… Read more »
Hadoop Quickstart: Use Whirr to automate standup of your distributed cluster on Rackspace
We have previously provided a Quickstart guide to standing up Rackspace cloud servers (and have one for Amazon servers as well). These are very low cost ways of building reliable, production ready capabilities for enterprise use (commercial and government). And Bryan Halfpap has provided a Quickstart guide which shows you how to build a HadoopRead… Read more »
Call for Papers on “Reducing Urban Poverty”
From the University Partnerships Clearinghouse: “To encourage a new generation of urban policymakers and to promote early career research, USAID’s Urban Programs Team, International Housing Coalition (IHC), World Bank, Woodrow Wilson Center’s Comparative Urban Studies Project (CUSP), and Cities Alliance are co-sponsoring a third annual paper competition. The competition seeks paper submissions for an upcomingRead… Read more »
Call for Papers on “Reducing Urban Poverty”
From the University Partnerships Clearinghouse: “To encourage a new generation of urban policymakers and to promote early career research, USAID’s Urban Programs Team, International Housing Coalition (IHC), World Bank, Woodrow Wilson Center’s Comparative Urban Studies Project (CUSP), and Cities Alliance are co-sponsoring a third annual paper competition. The competition seeks paper submissions for an upcomingRead… Read more »
You Probably Suck at Breathing
Those Montel Williams commercials for Money Mutual really annoy me. It has nothing to do with predatory lending or anything like that, though it certainly is a field worthy of disdain. It has to do with Montel’s shoulders. His shoulders. I looked for the commercial on YouTube but I can’t find it. If you reallyRead… Read more »
NREL RE Atlas Shows Intersection of Resources
(Clockwise, from top left: concentrated solar in red and wind; concentrated solar, wind and biomass in green; hydro in purple and geothermal; PVs and wave energy.) It’s easy to spend a lot of time adding and removing layers from NREL’s RE Atlas tool. It’s easy to use, and provides a wealth of information. Recently, whileRead… Read more »