“The Fed­eral Gov­ern­ment pro­duces an immea­sur­able amount of data each day. Data­Masher helps cit­i­zens have a lit­tle fun with those data by cre­at­ing mashups to visu­al­ize them in dif­fer­ent ways and see how states com­pare on impor­tant issues. Users can com­bine dif­fer­ent data sets in inter­est­ing ways and cre­ate their own cus­tom rank­ings of the states. Want to learn more? Watch this brief screen­cast.” — via David Rothman

“When things dont add up, they are prone to express their opin­ions on the mat­ter, and the level of response will be pro­por­tional to the absur­dity of the event. The more things that occur that make no sense, the more cyn­i­cal IT pros will become.IT pros com­plain pri­mar­ily about logic, and pri­mar­ily to peo­ple they respect. If you are dis­mis­sive of com­plaints, fail to rec­og­nize an illog­i­cal event or behave in decep­tive ways, IT pros will likely stop com­plain­ing to you. You might mis­take this as a behav­ioral improve­ment, when its actu­ally a show of dis­re­spect. It means you are no longer worth talk­ing to, which leads to insub­or­di­na­tion. Good IT pros are not anti-bureaucracy, as many observers think. They are anti-stupidity. They may work on big projects or steer the group entirely from the shad­ows while divert­ing the atten­tion of super­vi­sors to lesser top­ics. They believe they are pro­tect­ing the orga­ni­za­tion, as well as their own cred­i­bil­ity — and they are often cor­rect.” — via Jenica