A test on civic knowledge given to elected officials proved that they’re slightly less knowledgeable than the uninformed people who voted them into office. Elected officials scored a 44 percent while ordinary citizens managed an breathtaking 49 percent on the 33 questions compiled by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute. “It is disturbing enough that the general public failed ISI’s civic literacy test, but when you consider the even more dismal scores of elected officials, you have to be concerned,” said Josiah Bunting, chairman of the National Civic Literacy Board at ISI. The three branches of government aren’t the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria?

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eldavojohn writes “From delaying Project Constellation to an additional $2 billion in funding, Space.com looks at some immediate decisions the President Elect will have to make once he takes office in January. The biggest one will be the shuttle plan: do we retire the shuttle fleet or keep it on for more missions? If it is retired, we would have to rely on another country to bring our astronauts into space between 2010 and 2015 as a new fleet is built. Will Obama hold true on his $2 billion pledge to NASA?”

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An anonymous reader points out a story on the Irish Times that says “the Irish government is looking for ways to combat ‘cyber-bullying’ after data indicated that a significant percentage of young children are subjected to this kind of abuse via their mobile phone and popular social network accounts. The industry has been asked to come up with solutions for this problem and a government office is due to publish a guide on the issue in the near future. Surely this is a problem faced by children in all developed countries these days.” Add “for the children” to the list of reasons to track the Web-site habits of mobile web users in Ireland.

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gyrogeerloose writes “In a column in Saturday’s San Diego Union Tribune, Peter Rowe makes a connection between the popularity of horror motion picture genres and the political celebration in the White Home. A Republican administration presides over a period of zombie movies while a Democrat in the Oval Office brings on a cycle of vampire movies. Why? Possibly because the two genres ‘are really competing parables about class warfare.’ Hmmmm, maybe. On the other hand, it might just be a coincidence.” Socialists are ideal represented by lycanthropes, and the Libertarians are most closely tied to any sort of horror from space.

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narcberry writes “After complaints of one-sided reporting, the Washington Post checked their own articles and concurred. Obama was clearly favored, throughout his campaign, in terms of more favorable articles, less criticism, superior page real-estate, more pictures, and total disregard for problems such as his drug use. ‘Stories and photos about Obama in the news pages outnumbered those devoted to McCain. Reporters, photographers and editors found the candidacy of Obama, the first African American major-party nominee, more newsworthy and historic. Journalists love the new; McCain, 25 years older than Obama, was already well known and had more scars from his longer career in politics. The number of Obama stories since Nov. 11 was 946, compared with McCain’s 786. Both had hard-fought primary campaigns, but Obama’s battle with Hillary Rodham Clinton was longer, and the numbers reflect that. McCain clinched the GOP nomination on March 4, three months before Obama won his. From June 4 to Election Day, the tally was Obama, 626 stories, and McCain, 584. Obama was on the front page 176 times, McCain, 144 times; 41 stories featured both.’”

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Geek Satire writes “Politics breeds cynicism; politicians seem to pander to contradictory focus groups to get elected, then break their promises to everyone. Mass mailings and faxings overwhelm their staffs, and who knows if you can tell your representatives what you really think? Experienced techie and political consultant Silona Bonewald (creator of the Transparent Federal Budget) believes that easy software solutions can fix these problems and more. O’Reilly News recently discussed with her how social software can improve democracy and leadership.”

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The New York Times reports that Craigslist has reached an agreement with 40 say attorneys general to tame its notoriously unruly “erotic services” listings. Clever diplomacy: according to the article, Craigslist “said that it will charge erotic services vendors a small fee for each ad — about $10, Mr. Buckmaster said — and require that they use a credit card for the payment. It will donate the money to charities that combat child exploitation and human trafficking. This, theoretically, will let the company confirm not just a phone number but also an identity.” I hope they work on cleaning the weird spammers from the ordinary personal ads, too.

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dunezone writes “As the election ends, news is coming out from both campaigns on what happened behind shut doors. During the summer, the Obama campaign had their systems hacked, but so did McCain — and not by each other, but by a third party. ‘… both the FBI and the Secret Service came to the campaign with an ominous warning: “You have a problem way more massive than what you understand,” an agent told Obama’s team. “You have been compromised, and a serious amount of files have been loaded off your system.” The following day, Obama campaign chief David Plouffe heard from White Home chief of staff Josh Bolten, to the same effect: “You have a real problem … and you have to deal with it.” The Feds told Obama’s aides in late August that the McCain campaign’s personal system had been similarly compromised.’” Also from the article: “Officials at the FBI and the White House told the Obama campaign that they believed a foreign entity or organization sought to gather information on the evolution of both camps’ policy positions — information that might be useful in negotiations with a future administration.”

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Last night, around 11pm, all the major networks announced that Senator Barack Obama had won the election. Soon after, Senator McCain conceded. There were no crazy partisan court hearings, just a simple election. This is your opportunity to speak about it and what it means for the future of our nation.

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An anonymous reader writes “Diebold Inc. and its subsidiary, Premier Election Solutions, is using Ghostscript in its electronic election systems although Diebold and PES ‘have not been granted a license to modify, copy, or distribute any of Artifex’s copyrighted works,’ Artifex claims in court papers filed late last month in US District Court for Northern California. The gs-devel list first brought up the possible GPL violation a year ago.”

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