Sometimes we end up living in a little universe. It isn't surprising. In reality, there is no size the universe has to be ... so we set our own arbitrary boundaries. This from that; these from those; stuff from here most certainly goes in there. Sometimes in the course of compressing and compacting the big is reduced to amazingly small.

So it is with our American Government; often narrowly defined by the sorry crop of insecurity driven and egoists - this spawn of the monied and elite - that the current system belches forth to stand as modern servants of the American public trust. And if the sum-total of the political class were really the whole of it we would be a sorry people indeed.

But the political class is not the American government. They aren't even the tip of the iceberg. If anything they simply serve to distract, lead us to despise the things that make us great. The government is us. It's that guy from church who works out at Goddard with no kids of his own - who shows someone else's how the *real* gurus debug software with an oscilloscope. And then lets them play space-defender on the TRS-80. It's the friend's mom who lets you sneak crazy spiral-art math onto the plotter in some office at Foggy Bottom - or over at Walter Reed. All the while, they are doing just awesomely cool things on behalf of America. Sometimes for security or health, sometimes just because Americans like to spend a bit of our national treasure doing awesomely cool stuff. Who knows if they voted Republican last time or Democrat. And who cares?

Often overlooked; the awesome part of our government is coming into the digital age. There are many surprising and impressive resources that pop up when one starts to explore, lots of them worthy of highlight. But as for this post ... all of this is by way of an insanely overdone introduction to your National Jukebox. Yep. Scratchy old records.

The Library of Congress presents the National Jukebox, which makes historical sound recordings available to the public free of charge. The Jukebox includes recordings from the extraordinary collections of the Library of Congress Packard Campus for Audio Visual Conservation and other contributing libraries and archives. Recordings in the Jukebox were issued on record labels now owned by Sony Music Entertainment, which has granted the Library of Congress a gratis license to stream acoustical recordings.

At launch, the Jukebox includes more than 10,000 recordings made by the Victor Talking Machine Company between 1901 and 1925. Jukebox content will be increased regularly, with additional Victor recordings and acoustically recorded titles made by other Sony-owned U.S. labels, including Columbia, OKeh, and others.

The whole thing is really well done from a technical standpoint. It supports playlists and has several different ways of browsing the catalog (Including a pretty cool "day-by-day" mode). It appears to be a really great platform to build on. I got lost in the ragtime stuff myself, and there is a pretty diverse cross-section of period recordings in many genres. Incluuuuding a whole yodling section ;-).

Also interesting was the collection of political speeches. With features from everyone's favorite punchline-about-whom-they-really-know-little, William Jennings Bryan. There are also recordings of Taft, Roosevelt, Wilson and others addressing problems that we face even (or again) today and issues largely forgotten. It is striking how very much right back where we started the current dynamic is. While not definitive on how we should proceed by any means, listening back in time was more instructive than I would have expected.

So when down and out on Washington. Maybe thinking that anti-American rumpweasel who wants to drown our government might be on to something after all (I can see drowning that Conrad guy ... and Lieberman too - on principle it's never too late). Just remember. Those guys aren't really our government; they're the ones screwing it up. These guys; they are our government. And they rock.