Declassifying ancient history

Here's a bizarre story.  The National Security Agency just declassified a text on cryptology.  All well and good, and glad to see government information becoming more free, etc. 

Only this text is 200 years old has been in the public domain (and available) for a long time. Actually what was declassified (and there is argument over whether it was ever actually classified) is a 40 page abstract that was captured in Germany.  The full 500-page text has been on the web for years. Upward and onward with freedom of information.

Tip of the tail to Secrecy News.

National Jukebox

My friend and colleague Peter pointed out the coolest government website I have seen in some time: the National Jukebox from the Library of Congress.   It plays a selection of historical recordings: ragtime, choirs, gospel, etc.  Very neat.

Spa: The Canadian Experience

Spa

Well, this is MY favorite government publication of the week.

Enemy Combatants: Black Soldiers in Confederate Prisons

The latest issue of Army History magazine (D 114.20:78) has a wonderful article by Thomas J. Ward, Jr.

When African-American Union soldiers were captured in the south the Confederacy had no idea what to do with them. The one thing they were clear on was that they couldn't treat them as Prisoners of War.

Some were summarily executed. Some were judged to be slaves and returned to their masters. Some were made to work for the Confederate army at the front lines (until Union General Benjamin Butler put white Confederate prisoners in the same position.)

Some free blacks were turned over to civilian courts to be tried but this proved an embaressment when the court ruled that it had no jurisdiction over crimes committed by men acting as soldiers.

Later in the war some of them were treated as POWs but the Confederacy refused to swap them for southern prisoners - which would imply that white and black were equal.

Fascinating story...

The Feather Trade

I just discovered the Encyclopedia Smithsonian, a website that brings together articles on many subjects from the Smithsonian Institution. One that caught my eye was The Feather Trade, about a 19th century conservation movement. Feathered hats were so popular they were endangering some species of birds. Very cool stuff.

Heroes of the plantation

Here is a fascinating government document (not a contradiction in terms) that you can read for free on the web. The Invisible Cryptologists is the story of an all-African American unit of the U.S. Signals Intelligence Service (SIS) that served from World War II to the mid-fifties. These men and women, all college graduates, worked at mostly boring low-paying jobs with little hope of promotion, but they categorized and translated thousands upon thousands of enemy messages. Their unit was variously called "the snake pit," "the plantation," and "the black hole of Calcutta." Not a lot of respect there.

Here is one worker explaining how he moved from the boring task of typing punch cards to a more challenging job: "I knew that somewhere people were selecting messages, and I began to wonder how did they pick some messages and throw some away. So as a result, I enrolled in a Russian course at the Department of Agriculture. Soon, I was off the machines and pulling tapes, based on keywords. Once we pulled the tapes, we bundled them in categories and put numbers on them that designated subject areas. But it was a little more complicated than that. Many times the print on the tape was not clear, so we had to read the punched holes. I think what we did was was critical because we threw away what we thought wasn’t any good. If there was anything good in there, it was lost – it went in the burn bag."

Tip of the iguana tail to Government Book Talk.

Happy birthday, GPO!

This month the Government Printing Office is celebrating its 150th anniversary. This is the institution that sends depository libraries like mine thousands of publications each year so that the public - not just our students - can be informed.

They have a lovely video which I can't embed but you can see here. Can you imagine an era when a government agency provided an in-house bowling alley for its blue collar workers?

How a Bill becomes Law

A very old topic for illustrations, but a REALLY nice illustration, with tons of information. Thanks to Free Government Information for pointing it out.

30,000 guilt free miles

When I started working at the university I bought a parking pass. This was a hunting license allowing me to look for a space in a gravel lot that was a twelve minute walk from my office.

A year later, when it came time to renew the permit, I said the heck with that, and bought a bike. It turns out that for what it would cost to park a car I can buy a nice bike every few years and throw in the university-subsidized bus pass for those days when the weather or my health make a bike look two wheels too few.

Recently I calculated that I have commuted to work a whopping 30,000 miles since I switched to the bike. According to the EPA’s Household Emission Calculator that's about 408,420 pounds of CO2 I didn't produce.

Besides being good for the planet my bike commute is great for my health and easy on the wallet - it has extended the life of my car by, most likely, two years.

This is worth celebrating, and it happens that Friday, May 21, is Bike To Work And School Day. Oddly enough I will not bike to work that day. Instead I will help to staff one of the many Celebration Stations around town. If you bike or bus or walk to your job that day, drop by one of the stations for all kinds of treats - coffee, fruit, donuts, candy, and chances for prizes.

Don't worry about the calories. You can pedal them off.

photo by negscratch

In Praise of Gobbledygook

I have been enjoying the Government Printing Office's new blog, Government Book Talk, which I wrote about here. The latest entry concerns the new edition of the GPO Style Manual.

That reminded me of my favorite federal book about language, Gobbledygook Has Gotta Go. It was written by John O'Hayre and published by the Bureau of Land Management in 1966.

It is thoroughly outdated, of course. It assumes all women are secretaries, and I don't mean Secretaries of State. But as a guide to clear language and an antidote to gov-speak, it is hard to beat. Here is one of my favorite passages.

"Here's a pompous memo that rankled F.D.R. so much that he rewrote it and shot it back to the man who pomped it up in the first place. The memo dealt with what Federal workers were to do in case of an air raid:

Such preparations will be made as will completely obscure all Federal buildings and non-Federal buildings occupied by the Federal Government during an air raid for any period of time from visibility by reasons of internal or external illumination. Such obscuration may be obtained either by black=out construction or by termination of illumination.

Here's how F.D.R. dignified the memo by giving it simplicity:

Tell them that in buildings where they have to keep the work going to put something over the windows; and, in buildings where they can let the work stop for a while, turn out the lights."

I'll bet the memo writer hated to lose obscuration. It seemed to be his motto.

Homeland Security Digital Library

My university library is a federal depository, which means that the government sends us publications in various forms for us to make available to the public. But it means more than that.
For example, we have access, ONLY because we are a depository, to the Homeland Security Digital Library, which has more than 70,000 government publications on a much wider variety of topics than the name might suggest.

For example, a class is working on response to the earthquake in Haiti. I went to HSDL and searched for Haiti earthquake, limiting to publications where those words appeared in the title or summary. Here are some of the 49 responses, all full-text. Many of them have been updated numerous times.

Haiti Earthquake: Crisis and Response
2010 Haiti Earthquake and Caribbean Earthquake Risk
Guidance for Relief Workers and Others Traveling to Haiti for Earthquake Response
'Build Back Better' in Haiti: Lessons from the Indonesian Tsunami
Council Conclusions on the Earthquake in Haiti: Extraordinary Foreign Affairs Council Meeting
2010 Haiti Earthquake Pre-decision Brief: Leptospirosis

Talkin' Gov Docs

The Government Printing Office wants to tell you about interesting government publications (not an oxymoron). They have started a blog called Government Book Talk with a monthly listing for some publication of interest. This month in honor of March Madness they are having a "National Park Playoff." Vote for your favorite park poster or handbook.

The site still has some teething pains (when I first pulled it up it wouldn't work on Internet Explorer, on Firefox some of the boxes were blank, and they are still working on getting an RSS feed.) But it is a step in the right direction.

Sha na na na... Get a Job

I often make fun of illustrations in government publications, but this may be the best I have ever seen. If you can't get a good look, blow it up.

The Department of Labor publishes the Occupational Outlook Quarterly to help people decide what job might be right for them. In today's economy a lot of people are trying to think outside the box, and OOQ might give them some helpful ideas.

My favorite section is "You're a what?" which features such occupations as acupunturist, cobbler, and research chef.

The Gonzalez Contata

This may be the most unusual music video I have ever put on this blog. Composer Melissa Dunphy has written an opera based on the Alberto Gonzales 2007 Senate Judiciary Committee hearing transcript. The opera is entitled: "The Gonzales Cantata."

Asir Weirdness

I've been working in this library for more than 20 years and there is no government publication here I haven't handled at least once. And yet there are still surprises. Take the attached brochure for Asir National Park, dated 1986.

If you have been to any of our wonderful national parks you probably recognize the format of this brochure (the original is in color, by the way). The National Park Service has been using the same format for their publications for a long, long time. I remember reading an article in a design magazine praising their grid format for its flexibility, clarity, and consistency.

So, hooray, a government program that works. A little unusual, perhaps, but why would I say it's a surprise?

Weirdness Number 1. Asir National Park isn't in the United States. It's in Saudi Arabia. Notice the photo of the Red Sea.

Okay, that's a little more unusual. But not a great shock. Another government liked the style and copied it. U.S. federal documents aren't copyrighted, so no harm done. Flattery is the sincerest, etc. What's the big deal?

Weirdness Number 2. This brochure is in the federal documents collection as an official U.S. National Park Service publication. Sudoc number: I 29.6: As4.

Fair enough. Our National Park Service helping out a sibling agency. All in the best interest and tradition, etc. So?

Weirdness Number 3. Nowhere on the publication does it mention the U.S. National Park Service. It says the publisher is the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia Ministry of Agriculture and Water.

So it is a federal document that dares not speak its name. The only similar examples I can think of are the street atlases of places like Beijing and Moscow that were put out by the Central Intelligence Agency. Apparently no one wanted to stroll through those cities with a book with CIA stamped on the cover. Go figure.

Guide to NonGovernmental Organizations

Service members conduct joint logistic operations in Port-au-Prince.
Originally uploaded by Official U.S. Navy Gallery

The Defense Department just put out a nice book, intended for the military but of use to anyone interested in NGOs (NonGovernmental Organizations). Here is the official title:

Guide to Nongovernmental Organizations for the Military: A primer for the military about private, voluntary, and nongovernmental organizations operating in humanitarian emergencies globally.

If you think about it, the military runs into NGOs every time they are sent to earthquake zones, or similar disaster sites, so it makes sense to make sure the officers know how they work.

The best part is a 100-plus page directory of NGOs, giving phone numbers, budgets, e-mail, etc.
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Government: The Snapshot

Nothing to say here, except that this photograph with caption reminds me of the Census Bureau's jokey ads about taking a snapshot of America. The illustration comes courtesy of the City of Witchita, Kansas.

Periods of War

Occasionally we get questions about the dates the U.S. was officially at war with some other country. Here is a nice, authoritative source. The Congressional Research Service has published a list of official periods starting with the Indian Wars (January 1, 1817, through December 31, 1898) and continuing up to the wars that haven’t ended.

The main purpose is to help determine whether someone is eligible for veteran’s benefits, but students have asked for these dates as well.

North American Environmental Atlas

This is incredibly cool. The Council for Environmental Cooperation
(i.e. the governments of U.S., Canada, and Mexico) have created a free, online atlas of the environment. You can add and subtract layers, remove political boundaries, etc. The pretty banners you see on this page are actually the lines of marine vessel emissions, which is to say pollution from ships.

Relax your mind with a government source

I know, when you are looking for a stress-buster, government information is not the first thing that comes to mind. But try this website. Unfortunately it only works during daylight hours on the East Coast.