YOUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK

by Rob Lopresti

Okay, this week’s rambling has nothing to do with mysteries. However, we have had fun with discussions of interesting titles before (see here and here and here), and I realized I was sitting on a gold mine of them. So it is time to share.

As I have mentioned, in my day job I am a government information librarian. So what follows are actual titles of U.S. federal publications. Many of them come from the website Free Government Information, where people in my trade gather to swap war stories.

But this column was inspired by a Congressional publication I recently discovered in the stacks. Here is the genuine title:

Combatting Terrorism of the United States Senate Committee on Indian Affairs

Perhaps you are surprised that a Senate committee was engaging in terrorism. I suspect some Native Americans were only surprised that someone was combating the committee’s evil deeds. But let’s move on to a few more classics of my field.

Some of these titles no doubt made sense when they were published. Some make sense now if you look them from the right point of view. Some – like the terrorism one above – are just a garbled mess. And some are artifacts of one of the most tragic impulses that can occur to a government author – the desire to be clever or “hip.” Dullness is your friend, Mr. Bureaucrat. Embrace it. If you are putting an exclamation point in a government title, you are on the wrong track.

(At the other extreme you have the Government Accountability Office, formerly the General Accounting Office, which is famous for producing publications with riveting, edge-of-the-seat titles like this one:

Oversight of food safety activities: federal agencies should pursue opportunities to reduce overlap and better leverage resources

Not amusing, I admit, but it suggests you can also err on the un-hip side.)

Okay, here we go. As promised, all of these are true, with links to prove it.

AARUGHA!

Cooking up solutions: cleaning up with lasagna

Do you know oatmeal?

Draft Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement for the Mars Exploration Program.

Easing the Thumbprints of Society

Everything you always wanted to know about shipping high-level nuclear wastes

Exploring the U.S. Role in Consolidating Peace and Democracy in the Great Lakes Region

Fertilizers in a national emergency

Getting a job on the moon

The golden age of bathing

How large is China’s economy? Does it matter?

Index of Blank Forms

Let’s Use TV!

Manual for Medical Examination of Aliens

Plane Clothes: Lack of Anonymity at the Federal Air Marshal Service Compromises Aviation and National Security.

Public Dance Halls: Their Regulation and Place in the Recreation of Adolescents

Request for Assistance in.. Preventing the Injury of Workers by Robots

State-of-the-art dummy selection

Step into action! A guidebook for the above-knee amputee.

Wake Up America! A National Sleep Alert.

What color is your green card?

Whether the attempted implementation of the Reid-Kennedy Immigration Bill will result in an administrative and national security nightmare

A winning combination: wild horses and prison inmates

And you thought my job was dull. Come to think of it maybe you still do.