Shovelwatch

Shovelwatch: Tracking the stimulus from bills to building

ShovelWatch is a joint project of the non-profit investigative outfit ProPublica, the morning news program The Takeaway and WNYC, New York’s flagship public radio station.

With investigative reporting, interactive features, and (not least) help from you, we’ll be tracking the stimulus bill dollars as they travel from Congress to your neighborhood. With your help, we’ll make sure that one of the biggest, fastest appropriations ever has a big, fast army to track whether it is well spent.

If you're interested, not only can you see what the bill contains, but also look at a state by state breakdown, analysis of the bill, what the bill leaves out, projections for when things will start, important projects not getting money, etc.

Now if only they could start a site to monitor all those effective tax cuts. Krugmansheadexplodingwatch or something.

Some rightly concerned scientists

So two screenwriters, a physicist, a marine biologist, a philosopher and a science journalist walk into a bar...

There's a joke in there somewhere but it's not coming to me right now. It probably involves Gorilla Jousting. Anyway, in a rare earnest moment, I wanted to pass along the solid work done by Science Debate 2008. Drawing from a pool of over 38,000 scientists who submitted over 3,400 science-related questions, the six aforementioned protagonists whittled the list down to 14 questions designed to bring science back to the forefront of the presidential debate.

Barack Obama's answers can be found here. John McCain has yet to respond, citing the more pressing issue of his campaign's darkly comedic self destruction.