Can I just say that, after 8 years of our highest leaders denying that they have to tell anyone what they are doing, answer to anyone, or release any of their documents, I am adoring this shift to transparency in government.

The new Congressional Oversight Panel for Economic Stabilization now has a website (cop.senate.gov) and is issuing (or at least planning to issue) reports every 30 days. Here is the intro video from panel chair Elizabeth Warren, who is actually pleasant to listen to:*

If you were willing to dig around on Thomas.gov and various agency websites, trawling through legalese and govermentese, you could usually find most documents. But this move toward making it easy for the everyday American (or at least those with, uh, Internet access…) to keep up with what leaders are doing, and explaining what is going on (in lay but not dumbed-down terms)… This is refreshing. This is smart. This is good.

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* In fact, listening to her gives me teaching withdrawal symptoms. That’s ok. I’ll be back in front of a classroom soon enough. Teaching a very different class, about which I am getting excited.

My friends Maria and Paul left me a little Yule tree this morning.

I was very very very happy. I decorated it this evening with a cup of tea, The Pogues If I Should Fall From Grace with God (because it has the best Christmas song ever), and cats scattered around the room watching.

A lesser long nosed bat eating from a hummingbird feeder.

Look at his belly! And his feet all up in the air! Cute!

(via)

That is a JUMPING SPIDER. Disguised as an ant! Nefarious, evil creatures.

via UglyOverload, which gives me a heart attack every other day.

Now, will someone who is not arachnaphobic look at that site and follow some links and tell me where these live so I NEVER go there? I just don’t have it in me tonight to see pictures of jumping spiders that don’t look like ants.

For the love of all that’s holy… gah.

I have worked diligently on writing, looking up page numbers in articles, and verifying citations for just over 36 hours since Friday morning. A tad over 12 hours a day. And here I was excoriating myself for not getting started earlier in the day(s).

This is ridiculous.

Every 5-10 minutes I am stopping myself from writing a paragraph that isn’t necessary, so imagine how bad it could be.