From Matthew Yglesias:

Fittingly enough, it seems that there was no genuine guest scheduled to stay in Blair House. Rather, the Bush administration asked former Australian Prime Minister John Howard to stay at the place in order to give them a pretext to turn the Obamas down. Fittingly, from everything I’ve heard about Howard he and Bush are really two peas in a pod in terms of terrible policymaking.

My assessments of Bush just keep getting driven lower and lower. I think that Yglesias says it best when he opens this post by describing Bush as petty, stupid, and immoral. I would have thought that by this point the administration would be desiring to avoid PR gaffs and to present as good of a face for Bush as it can so that he can at least ride off into clear skies and not a storm of frustration.

Link via Matthew Yglesias » The Howard Gambit .

Read this today on Boing Boing. Pretty fitting since I’m currently reading Bjorn Lomborg’s controversial book, “Cool It”.

Earlier this year, predictions were rife that the North Pole could melt entirely in 2008. Instead, the Arctic ice saw a substantial recovery. Bill Chapman, a researcher with the UIUC’s Arctic Center, tells DailyTech this was due in part to colder temperatures in the region. Chapman says wind patterns have also been weaker this year. Strong winds can slow ice formation as well as forcing ice into warmer waters where it will melt.

Link via Sea ice area returns to 1979 level – Boing Boing .

Update: As with everything concerned with global warming there is far from a consensus on this issue. To see a different side of the story that interprets graphs (not sure from what source though) as showing a rise in December, but an ultimately downward trend click here.

Update #2: In order to clarify this post for those out there that have already mischaracterized it. By no means am I claiming here that the trend is downward. I think it’s fairly clear to see that using the particular data for this instance the ultimate trend is down. However, this is not what me, nor Boing Boing was claiming. Simply read the headline, it claims that sea ice levels returned to the 1979 levels. This does not mean that the average is what it was in 1979 nor that levels are now higher nor that the trend is upward: it simply says its returned. For a further discussion of why I disagree with those aforementioned links see my most recent post.

USA Today has posted a story detailing how the government recently approved a further payment of $15 billion from the $700 billion stimulus plan. In that article it provides some figures for how much money has gone to various banks over the past few months. It writes of how the:

Treasury also said it had provided an additional $20 billion to Citigroup Inc. on Dec. 31 under a program it has dubbed its “targeted investment program” to provide support for the banking giant. It already had provided Citigroup an initial $25 billion.

Not only was $45 billion giving to Citigroup, but much has gone to non-banking institutions too. Describing the automakers bailout the article describes how:

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said last month when the Bush administration announced it would provide emergency loans to GM and Chrysler LLC that it had committed the first half of the $700 billion rescue program and Congress would need to authorize use of the final $350 billion.

Frankly, it’s a little scary to me that we don’t even blink at numbers this large anymore. We think of $15 billion as a small amount of money, which is just horrendous. Furthermore, it is deeply troubling that none of these banks will provide concrete details as to where they spent this money.

Link via Gov’t supplies another $15B to banks – USATODAY.com.

Since today was the Macworld Expo Cultured Code has released the 1.0 version of its task management program Things. If you’ve been looking for a task management application for Mac OS X then Things is definitely worth checking out. I’ve been using the beta for months now and believe that it is the most intuitive and “Mac-like” app out there. Also, a huge plus is that it is significantly cheaper than competing programs like Midnight Inbox and OmniFocus: a license for Things is $49.

Check it out here.

Concerning the question of whether Panetta is experienced enough to be a competent CIA director a Georgetown professor writes that:

I think he’ll do fine. … The director is not a line officer; he’s not running cases and doing detailed analyses. He has to rely on many people in organization at various levels below him who are doing that- he has to exert leadership, he’s not supposed to micromanage. Even someone coming up through the ranks is not going to be in a position to directly apply [his experience]; if it’s experience from years ago, it might even be out of date.

To me this makes sense. The idea that he would bring in outsiders and people who are not typical politicians was one of Obama’s larger campaign points during the primaries. This simply seems to fit with his pledge to assemble a cabinet of something more than yes men and women.

Link via Is Panetta Experienced Enough? – The Plank .