The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is on my mind. I’ll get to why in a moment. Right now I have a project for it to take on: Public Infrastructure.

Here’s why: Right now public discussions of political issues such as taxation are frequent, top-of-mind, polarized, and controversial. They are also entirely divorced from the largely apolitical issue of maintaining the public infrastructure – a subject which is, in the minds of most Americans, foggy.

Professor Irwin Corey would understand …

The “World’s Foremost Authority” once explained, “Today we’re going to talk about the universe. Why? Because there isn’t anything else!”

I’d hoped that when I deconstructed Nicholas Carr’s paean to Cloud computing — officially titled The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, from Edison to Google but more properly titled The Joys of Griddish — it would put an end to the nonsense (see “Carr-ied away,KJR, 2/4/2008).