Since Friday’s post was so popular, let’s go back to hear more from Scranton City Council gadfly Ray Lyman, who reminds us that the “Cons-itution” overrides the “Scrantin City Consil.”

The city that gave us Steamtown, Dunder-Mifflin Paper, and me is updating it’s online presence. Scranton, Pa. has appropriated $15,000 to give RediscoverScranton.com a facelift in an attempt to lure young professionals to the area.

The effort will include a drive to connect Scranton natives via online social networks like Facebook. It’s a savvy move, and $15,000 is not really that much to pay for a web site as involved as the one Scranton is talking about. Plus, my favorite part of the story, though, is that unlike most municipal sites, the new Rediscover Scranton will not include needless pictures of local politicians. This is a good idea – since the site is aimed at people outside the Electric City, there’s no reason for such gratuitous vote-grabs.

Rediscover Scranton may need a spokesperson, though. Luckily, there’s a champion of the people and a native son of Northeastern Pennsylvania who would be perfect:

From the “A recession for some is an opportunity for others” file… Time reports on products which have done the best since the going got tough. Predictably, the products reflect a new national priority on conserving resources and spending smart. For instance, people are buying elements of food to prepare their own meals and snacks rather than prepackaged food, like baking mixes rather than delicious, delicious Tastykakes. It’s nice to see, in Time’s article, that people are establishing good habits out of necessity – plus it’s encouraging that some folks are doing well.

And the headline (“What Sells in a Recession: Canned Goods and Condoms”) reflects that no matter how the economy is doing, sex sells.

Capitol Hill is rejecting the BlackBerry Storm. The Storm is the touch-screen incarnation of the portable email device which has become the bane of existence for the significant others of those who use them, the BlackBerry.

Apparently, when BlackBerry released this little technological marvel, many Members of Congress and their staff suddenly needed a touch-screen interface to answer their email. But now, since the touch screen doesn’t work exactly like they’d hoped, they are trading their Storms in for older models.

These folks get their equipment from the Chief Administrative Office (CAO). In other words, like almost everyone else carrying these things around Washington (myself included), the denizens of Capitol Hill have their work pay for it. But because these are elected officials and their staff, the Storm surge on Capitol Hill was – you guessed it – your tax dollars at work. So were the tutorial classes the CAO set up on how to use the Storm.

TechRepublican’s Chad Miles blames the difficulty on a disconnect with technology among many on the Hill who may be of a more advanced age. That’s probably a big part of it. But some of it is the lack of risk – BlackBerries are consequence-free. (I’ve known people who have lost their BlackBerries in airports or after a night on the town, and their companies have sent brand new ones.)

If you or me were to buy a mobile device, and then decide a few months later we didn’t like it, we might be stuck with it, depending on our service plan. We might try a little harder to make it work. In fact, we might not even buy it in the first place – we’d have to think long and hard about spending our own money first. Members of Congress and their staff have no such trepidation when spending your money.

Mashable is just one of the tech/social media blogs that has fallen in love with Twitter. And Twitter goes provide an interesting case study in social media – orginially launched as a way for people to send and receive updates via text message – kind of a Facebook status beamed right to your phone – it has since become a way to broadcast thoughts, blog posts, and any other random string of thoughts that come out in 140-character chunks.

And I’m a user. You can follow my Twitter feed here (or in the widget on the right).

But, as with many internet startups over the past decade, Twitter has yet to turn a profit. There’s plenty of money being thrown around – both Google and Facebook have kicked the tires on a possible purchase – because of the site’s rapid growth and popularity.

There’s a good lesson if you’re building an online political application. As the Mashable post mentions, it’s obvious why Twitter is growing so fast – it does something very simple, but has an open platform for addition. It is built to be popular and viral first, rather than creating a means to an end.

There’s a way to advertise on Twitter – considering that people are constantly indicating their preferences based on who they follow or what they tweet about, it’s ripe for some kind of advertising monetization. But if Twitter had been built as an advertising platform, people would have turned away. Similarly, a website that only talks about what a voter can do for a politician for something – votes, donations, etc. – won’t be nearly as effective as one that advertises what a politician can do for a voter.

Come to think of it, more politicians should think like that anyway.

A research firm released an “innovation heat map” last week – using a variety of factors to identify where new and exciting advances were taking place across several industries. Not surprisingly, Silicon Valley was the most innovative area of the United States. But somewhat troubling is they way innovation is tanking in some of our major cities: Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Chicago, and other industrial cities are simply not keeping up with the times.

Washington, D.C., with its culture of federal government and bureaucracy, isn’t even on the radar for this – which is no surprise, and which is probably a big reason why the tech team that funtioned so freely and successfully on the Obama campaign is meeting so many challenges during the Obama Presidency.

Washington’s premium on the status quo and aversion to innovation will taint any aid failing industrial cities receive – and worse, will prolong those cities’ economic woes.

Since it’s March, imagine a young basketball player with bad shooting habits. The only way that player will get better is if he changes his or her shooting motion to adapt to the game. The federal government solution might be to replace basketball rims with hula hoops or lower backboards, but none of these will actually make the shooter better – and eventually, he or she will get to a level where the rules can’t be changed.

(By the way, this is not some sort of clever metaphor for why the Washington Wizards and Georgetown Hoyas suck this year.)

More on the possible digital transition of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer – check out this 1981 San Francisco local news story about the possibility of getting your morning newspaper online:

I stumbled on the clip reading Patrick Hynes’s theory that mobile phones may make some web sites irrelevant.

President Obama authorized funding for federal stem cell research today – a move which his supporters are hailing as a victory for science over the vagaries of political ideology.

But is it?

Embryonic stem cell research involves fertilizing a human embryo for the express purpose of harvesting stem cells. Opponents of embryonic stem cell research would point to the moment that a human egg is fertilized by a human sperm as the moment life begins. The natural progression of an embryo, without any outside addition, is a fully grown person. That’s a medical and scientific fact.

Is the embryo life? Well, that’s less clear. Like the origin of the universe or the cause of the dinosaurs’ extinction, it’s a matter of scientific debate. As anyone who appreciates science can tell you, the answers to many questions tend to change from generation to generation. But if you do the research and you accept fertilization as the creation of life, then it’s a logical conclusion that the living entity has a set of rights. You might say it’s a truth we hold to be self-evident.

What is becoming more clear is that there are a growing number of alternatives to embryonic stem cell research – so the discussion over whether or not the research sacrifices human life is one we don’t have to worry about anymore. Or we wouldn’t, if the Obama administration hadn’t stepped in.

So if embryonic stem cell research isn’t necessary, and only raises difficult ethical questions that can be avoided with equally useful alternatives, why open the can of worms? The answer lies in the memo which accompanies the executive edict. Outside of announcing another Detroit-esque plan to fund something which is outdated and controversial, Obama takes several thinly-veiled shots at his Republican predecessor.

In other words, it’s more about politics than science.

Nothing happens by accident in politics. The latest case in point is the flap over Rush Limbaugh.

It started with a seemingly offhand comment by President Obama, chiding Republicans for following the marching orders of the guy who, let’s be honest, has gotten a ton of us interested in Republican politics. In the weeks following, the White House has taken repeated jabs at Limbaugh – to Limbaugh’s delight. In a story published last week that I just stumbled across, Politico reveals that this has been a strategy months in the making. After finding high negative ratings for Rush Limbaugh in October polls, Democrats have been waiting for the right flap to arise and give them a chance to hang Limbaugh around the Republican Party’s neck.

The behind-the-curtain strategy of what seem to be spontaneous events, like this Limbaugh controversy, demonstrates a key value of Washington – that governing is campaigning by other means.

Will it keep working? The Republicans won’t get any overt help from Limbaugh, and why should they? As he has always said, his success “is not determined by who wins elections.” Without a single Republican in Congress, Limbaugh could count on a reliable daily audience – and the longer a controversy like this goes on, the more he can add to that audience. The tete-a-tete with the President also gives Limbaugh figurative weight, as if he really is a key thinker for conservative/Republican circles.

Truth be told, it’s more likely to be the other way around: Limbaugh is more likely to parrot GOP talking points than to devise his own platform for America. It’s not a matter of laziness, but of reality: he’s putting together a radio show, not a political movement.

Which raises an interesting point – as critical issues come before the federal government, why is the White House talking about a radio show blowhard? Aren’t there real issues they should be working on?

The folks at Right.org are giving away stimulus/bailout checks! And they’re also giving out stimulus/bailout invoices…

Incidentally, if you think you can make a better video panning the stimulus, you should enter Right.org’s contest to do just that. Grand prize is $27,599 – your share of the stimulus.