Chattanooga blocked roads

I tried to start this yesterday but had no power etc. After discussing with some people this morning, it still seems valuable to have a map of blocked or obstructed roads. Please contribute by emailing locations to chattadata - at - gmail.com or @chattadata for Twitter. These are being geocoded, so be as specific as possible. If you can get coordinates using Google Earth, do so. Otherwise, addresses at the blockage will work. For intersection blocks, specify which road is actually blocked. Include a notes if you like. Map will display blocked roads as red, obstructed(passable with caution) as yellow, and cleared blockages as green. Map link will be distributed once it starts getting populated.
Be Safe.

American Avant Garde Slept Here

I like houses, especially historic houses. Usually when I visit an historic site, it is intentional. How appropriate that I met this house by Chance.

Almost a year ago I was riding with some friends from upstate New York down to the city. One of the riders lived north of the city and we detoured through Harriman state park to take her home. We pulled into the driveway and to her house, which is part of Stony Point cooperative community. This white house is in her front yard. We got out and she pointed to the house and told us how John Cage, David Tudor and others had lived there in the 50's. Cage later built another cottage further up the hill. I was absolutely fascinated.

Spending cuts to turn lights off?

I don't get it.

After watching this video during Sunshine week, the value of E-Gov spending should be obvious. Yet, HR1 cuts funding to these projects to the point where the IT Dashboard, Data.gov, paymentaccuracy.gov, USAspending.gov, and Apps.gov all face shutdown in the next few months. If you haven't ever looked at or used any of these sites, or didn't know they existed, take a few minutes and check them out. Do they seem to be valuable tools for informing citizens of government activity and spending?

So what do we do? Some folks, including Tim Berners-Lee, have encouraged people to sign petitions like this one from Sunlight Foundation. Others remind us that the dotcom bust gave way to Web 2.0, so maybe this would give rise to something better on the post Gov 2.0 side of things. However, I think the biggest casualty of this is, and will be, the lack of our elected officials placing value on open government. Having buy in for transparency and open gov from government workers and officials is key to the success of opening data at any level of government. If the benefits of doing this are not valued by those we elect and employ, then we should not expect much transparency. If these federal government sites fall, then we no longer have them to reference, not just for the value they provide, but as an example of open government in action.

So when I read statements from our congressional reps about reducing spending, cutting government waste, and keeping government on the straight and narrow, I don't think that discarding tools that allow us to monitor (some of) their efforts is a good idea.