Thu 12 February 2009
Last time I posted on this blog, Hillary and Obama were still battling it out for the Democratic nomination. Now Barack Obama is our president with an uphill battle to save the economy. So yeah, it's been a while. I haven't been doing too much innovative Geo-related stuff lately, hence the lack of blog posts. I'll try to pick up the pace a bit, even if I have to resort to fluff pieces like this one...
Well, it looks like the economic stimulus bill is going to pass. The bill doesn’t actually specify the projects that will be funded; the money will be allocated to cities and some federal grant agencies. The mayors have already proposed thousands of “shovel-ready” projects that might get a green light depending on how much funding the city gets.
There’s a great site, stimuluswatch.org, that allows the public to review these proposals. Good to know where our tax dollars are headed!
There are several GIS proposals ranging from projects with specific, well-defined (and measurable) objectives to the nebulous "Give us $500,000 to upgrade our cities' GIS program". It will be interesting to see which ones pan out, which ones produce results and which ones are just a pure waste of taxpayer dollars.
P.S. If you'd like to see where most of my time and energy is going these days, it's training for the US National Cup mountain bike race series. My cycling exploits are available for all who are inclined to read them.