Budget of the United States Government - FY11: Contains the budget message of the President, information about the President's budget proposals for a given fiscal year, and other budgetary publications. "See the White House FY 2011 Budget website for details about different departments, terminations and reductions, or to learn how the budget will affect your state.
New York Times: Huge Deficits May Alter U.S. Politics and Global Power - "By President Obama’s own optimistic projections, American deficits will not return to what are widely considered sustainable levels over the next 10 years."
WSJ: White House Unveils $3.8 Trillion Budget - includes charts - "Budget Crunching: A look at how the Obama administration is counting on bringing in revenue and spending it in fiscal 2010."

Two congressional members from Missouri said on February 2 that they plan to file legislation blocking the Environmental Protection Agency from developing its own greenhouse gas rules. U.S. Reps. Ike Skelton, a Democrat, and Jo Ann Emerson, a Republican, sharply criticized federal environmental regulators and warned that because EPA officials are not elected, the agency is not accountable to the farmers, business owners and other Missouri residents who could be hurt. The EPA had concluded in December that that emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases represent a danger to public health, which allows it to consider rules limiting them. That decision stems from a 2007 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that found greenhouse gases are air pollutants under federal clean-air laws. But the two Missouri lawmakers say Congress did not intend to give the EPA the authority to regulate greenhouse gases through the Clean Air Act. ''The EPA is controlled by bureaucrats who are not elected and are responsible only to the head of the EPA who is from New Jersey,'' said Skelton, who represents central and western Missouri. '' And I doubt that they understand mid-America, the Midwest, agriculture and what our farmers need to continue to do a good job for our country.'' http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/02/02/us/AP-MO-Energy-Missouri.html

USGS Releases New One-Stop Source for Scientific Information about U.S. Oceans and Waters News release: "A one-stop source for biogeographic information collected from U.S. waters and oceanic regions is now available from the National Biological Information Infrastructure (NBII) Program. The OBIS-USA website offers a unique combination of tools, resources, and biodiversity information to aide scientists, resource managers and decision makers in the research and analyses critical to sustaining the nation’s valued marine ecosystems. OBIS-USA is a one-stop source for biogeographic data collected from U.S. waters and oceanic regions--the Arctic, the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, the Caribbean Sea, the Gulf of Mexico, and the Great Lakes. It provides access to highly distributed data sets from a multitude of partners documenting where and when species were observed or collected. The site allows one to examine each data set to assess its applicability for a variety of uses. Current functionality allows the user to view the data and FGDC compliant metadata as well as to view geographic, temporal or spatial extent; the taxonomic depth and richness.

February 2010 Petroleum Marketing Monthly With Data for November 2009— Feb 1, 2010:" "Monthly price and volume statistics on crude oil and petroleum products at a national, regional and state level.
Natural Gas Monthly — Jan 29, 2010: "Monthly natural and supplemental gas production, supply, consumption, disposition, storage, imports, exports, and prices in the United States.
Monthly Energy Review — Jan 29, 2010: "EIA's primary report of recent energy statistics: total energy production, consumption, and trade; energy prices; overviews of petroleum, natural gas, coal, electricity, nuclear energy, renewable energy, and international petroleum; carbon dioxide emissions; and data unit conversions. MER data show that in the first 10 months of 2009, total energy consumed by the industrial sector fell to 23 quadrillion Btu, down 11% from the first 10 months of 2008. See What's New in the Monthly Energy Review for a record of changes."

Back-formation is the process of forming a new word (a neologism) by extracting actual or supposed affixes from another word; shortened words created from longer words. Verb: back-form (itself a back-formation). "Stripping the in- from inchoate is known as back-formation, the same process that has given us words like peeve (from peevish), surveil (from surveillance) and enthuse (from enthusiasm). There’s a long linguistic tradition of removing parts of words that look like prefixes and suffixes to come up with “roots” that weren’t there to begin with." (Ben Zimmer, "Choate." The New York Times, Jan. 3, 2010) http://grammar.about.com/od/ab/g/backformterm.htm

Quote
In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual. -Galileo Galilei, physicist and astronomer (1564-1642)

Tips from Cook's Illustrated, March & April 2010
• Poke holes in meat to allow marinades or seasonings to penetrate more deeply.
• Sprinkle sugar on fish fillet for faster browning before fish dries out.
• Soak dried beans overnight in brine of two teaspoons salt per quart of water.
• Make light brown sugar by adding 1 tbsp. molasses to 1 c. granulated sugar.
• Make dark brown sugar by adding 2 tbsp. molasses to 1 c. granulated sugar.
• Substitute half the amount called for fresh herbs if using dried herbs.
• Make 1 c. cake flour using 2 tbsp. cornstarch and 7/8 c. all-purpose flour.

On February 1, I followed a reader's link to www.groundhog.org that led me to a groundhog cookie recipe. On February 2, I put the link to the recipe in the muse, and a reader said her family had made them for years and brought some to lunch. Thanks, Peter. Thanks, Julie

If you missed out on the chance to bid on Alberto Giacometti's bronze sculpture, "Walking Man I," which sold for a world record $104 million in London on February 3, there's good news: The sculptor made another one just like it, and it's in Chicago. "Walking Man II" isn't for sale, but you can see it at the Art Institute of Chicago. The life-size sculpture -- which looks a bit like spaghetti slathered in mud -- is one of seven sculptures made by Giacometti, a Swiss surrealist who died in 1966.
http://www.suntimes.com/news/metro/2029391,CST-NWS-manwalk04.article
See images at: http://images.google.com/images?gbv=2&hl=en&sa=1&q=%22walking+man+II%22&aq=f&oq=&aqi=&start=0