Notes During Snow and Rain

* NIH is slated to receive $7 billion over the $70.5 billion dollar budget, including $6 billion for the National Cancer Institute.

* NSF: The budget asks for a 8.5% increase to $7.045 billion dollars.

* DOE: The projection for 2009 is $33.9 billion, in addition to $39 billion for energy programs under the stimulus package, and $1.6 billion for the Office of Science.

* NASA: $18.7 billion has been requested, which is a $700 million increase over this year's figure. The stimulus package included $1 billion.

Public Health, Thai Style: Thailand's Anti-Smoking campaign run by the Thailand Health Promotion Institute demands that all cigarette boxes be printed with one of several disconcerting graphics, to dissuade smokers from smoking. So smokers will be able to blow artful cigarette rings while regarding a box adorned with rotting teeth, a body tethered from emphysema to hospital ventilators, lung cancer, or skeletons. The country intends to run similar warnings to dissuade alcohol drinking.

Branding Triplets: Peter Orszag started an Office of Management and Budget (OMB) blog last week. The first title announced a new slogan: "Discipline, Efficiency, Prosperity". Perhaps the OMB is signaling that branding strategists have swept through to overhaul the agency's image, and that the marketing team incredibly found a few unspoken for adjectives still available after the run of the late 90's. Or perhaps enough companies have gone out of business now that some adjectives are newly available for government agencies to use.

The OMB promises a turnaround from the apparent Bush era slogan: Dissemble, Procrastinate and Ruin -- and offers the new blog to open up channels of communication.

Our only experience with Cabinet blogs was reading Mike Leavitt's blog, a communique that wasn't usually a font of transparency. For instance, Leavitt traveled to Africa several times to support PEPFAR and the Bush public health agenda. During Leavitt's 2007 visit, African president Thabo Mbeki was be writing about Leavitt's endorsement of the African National Congress's (ANC) nutrition and HIV/AIDS policies (in Mbeki's usual misleading manner). However, Leavitt's blog of his trip would read like a vaguely concerned tourists introduction to the country. 'All these orphans -- that's going to be a problem....' No mention of HIV/AIDS policies. Dissembling.

I guess there's only so much transparency allowed on a government blog.

Paper Cuts: This map shows the distribution of 15,590+ jobs lost from newspapers since 2007. Unlike many online denizens, I actually still subscribe and enjoy paper media. Oh well.

Poland Spring and Nestle Deterred?: The town of Shapleigh, Maine voted against Nestle in the company's bid to test the spring water in their town for possible bottling. The townspeople reject the idea of Nestle extracting water from their springs. Their vote may or may not accomplish their objective, pending likely legal challenges and the fact that the townspeople don't have say over state owned or private drilling sites in the town. The movie, "Flow" documented the extraction of water in Michigan.

Rahm Emmanuel Runs the Republican Party: Sunday, Rahm Emmanuel told Bob Schieffer that Rush Limbaugh was "voice and the intellectual force and energy behind the Republican Party." Emmanuel explained that when Republicans "attack" Limbaugh they have to then "turn around and come back and basically said that he's apologizing and was wrong." Sure enough, a couple of days ago, RNC chairman Michael Steele told CNN's D.L. Hughly that he, Steele, not Limbaugh, was the "de facto leader" of the party, and Limbaugh merely had a show that was "incendiary" and "ugly". Today Steele apologized to Limbaugh.

Measles -- Science In Action: Last week a man returned from Europe with measles symptoms, caught from a friend. Once home, he came into contact with 73 people, which the San Francisco Communicable Disease & Prevention (CDCP) center contacted after activating an Infectious Disease Emergency Response. The man claimed to have been vaccinated twice against measles but couldn't document this. Instead he asserted that his disease symptoms proved that vaccinations don't work. Two of the man's children were also unvaccinated.

The aptly named Andrew Resignato, the director of the San Francisco Immunization Coalition, noted that since the average person doesn't understand vaccines or disease or science, these perennial outbreaks among the unvaccinated are to be expected. Last year a measles outbreak infected 12 people in San Diego. Earlier this year, a different man returning from India set off another Emergency Response in San Francisco.

Octopus Are Our Friends: Nothing like an octopus that inadvertently manipulates the water flow in its pool to plunge reporters into anthropomorphic sentiment. The Los Angeles Times reported that a female octopus at the Santa Monica Aquarium "disassembled the recycling systems valve, flooding the place with 200 gallons of seawater". This octopedal dexterity motivated quite a few comparisons to humans.

The two-spotted octopus, which if spread out, according to LA Times reporter Bob Pool, would be "the size of a human forearm", "floated lazily in the water that remained in its tank", then "watched intently through glass walls and portholes as workers struggled to dry the place out in time for the day's first busload of schoolchildren to arrive on a 9:30 a.m. field trip." (Emphasis mine) Octopus fans immediately started writing in to suggest that the aquarium should name the unnamed octopus, from "it" or "she", to "Flo". Sure, why don't we just invite "Flo" to tea and sandwiches while we're at it?