Lincoln Museum stays in Indiana

Indiana retains Lincoln Museum collection

The collection will be split between the Allen County Public Library and the State Museum, with the library in general receiving the collection's books, documents and manuscripts. The state museum will get the three-dimensional artifacts.

The Indiana consortium stressed a need for increased access to the collection. The library's goal is to digitize the document collection and make it available for research.

I'm a bit surprised about all this, since they had to cobble together a consortium on short notice and compete with the Smithsonian and the Lincoln Library at Springfield, IL. I wonder what this all looked like behind the scenes?

The persistance of culture

A reader at Strange Maps comments on this map:

“I looked at this map and thought, hmmm…where have I seen this divide before? Looks very familiar. This isn’t just some urban/rural, professional/worker, white-wine-and-brie/beer-and-sausages thing!”

Mr Hecht did some overlay work, and came up with this remarkable fit: “The divide between the (more free-market) PO and the (more populist) PiS almost exactly follows the old border between Imperial Germany and Imperial Russia, as it ran through Poland! How about that for a long-lasting cultural heritage?!?”

I expect those more familiar with Polish history would not find this surprising, in the same way that I don't find this map surprising at all:



I believe it was William Faulkner who said, "The past is not dead. In fact, it's not even past."

You got served ... on Facebook

Australia OKs Facebook for serving lien notice

A court in Australia has approved the use of Facebook, a popular social networking Web site, to notify a couple that they lost their home after defaulting on a loan.

* snip *

The documents were sent last Friday after weeks of failed attempts to contact borrowers Gordon Poyser and Carmel Corbo at their Canberra home and by e-mail.

Interestingly, Facebook is highly pleased with the turn of events:

In a statement, Facebook praised the ruling. "We're pleased to see the Australian court validate Facebook as a reliable, secure and private medium for communication. The ruling is also an interesting indication of the increasing role that Facebook is playing in people's lives," it said.

I might have thought they'd be concerned that they could lose customers who would now have reason to be even more concerned about their ability to remain private. Guess that doesn't apply to Facebook people. The company seems ecstatic at how mainstream they're becoming.

Self-censorship after criticism

While doing some research into open access journals, I found this one at Public Library of Science:

The Chilling Effect: How Do Researchers React to Controversy?

The authors conducted interviews and surveys with researchers whose work had been exposed to controversy, mainly by accusations of wasted money. The findings:

The NIH defended each grant and no funding was rescinded. Nevertheless, this study finds that many of the scientists whose grants were criticized now engage in self-censorship. About half of the sample said that they now remove potentially controversial words from their grant and a quarter reported eliminating entire topics from their research agendas. Four researchers reportedly chose to move into more secure positions entirely, either outside academia or in jobs that guaranteed salaries. About 10% of the group reported that this controversy strengthened their commitment to complete their research and disseminate it widely.

As some others* have noted, all of the examples of "wasteful earmarks" that John McCain and Sarah Palin trotted out during the election campaign were appropriations for basic science or science education. It's bad enough that this encourages voters and lawmakers to think of these fields as wasteful; add to that the possibility that the researchers themselves will begin to shy away from their work and you get a double hit on science.



* At Dispatches from the Culture Wars, Panda's Thumb, or Pharyngula, can't really recall where just now. Doesn't matter - you should be reading them all, anyway.

Sharkey leaves the Shire, still not done

The Bush Administration's Parting Shot for Yellowstone

A last-minute regulation published today by the Bush Administration opens Yellowstone National Park, the country's most famous sanctuary for wildlife and natural quiet, to significantly more harm from snowmobiles than a federal court rejected in September as unlawful. The regulation authorizes double the level of snowmobile use recommended just last month by scientists and park managers in the National Park Service.