Made out of people

Like you're doing the time warp

O'Reilly's Radar points to the side-by-side Microsoft Earth and Google Maps comparator.

There's been some weird press about MS's map not having Apple HQ, but it's interesting that in other places, Microsoft's map seems to be newer.

Check out UC Irvine which has been under a fair bit of construction. Zoom in four times, and don't pan. Check out the new computer science building in MSN, and the construction patch on Google. Follow East Peltason eastward to Palo Verde road, and check out the field that had become a construction site through most of 2004, and is now a housing complex. Not yet pictured.

There's a lot of other constuction, too.

Heck, just compare Irvine wintertime (green) to Irvine summertime (brown)...

Local Theater, Great and Not-So

It may be clear that I really like various local theater. Which is why you get a two-part review, in which Seattle (and, soon, New York) triumphantly bests San Francisco, below the fold.

First, Circus Contraption. I saw part of their show at the Moisture Festival back on the first of April, a wonderful evening of tomfoolery, amusement, and complete idiocity mixed with various brilliant (and, to be sure, not-so-brilliant) acts. There was good rope work and contortionism and music and I figured these were good people.

A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of seeing them again at their big show, the Grand Travelling American Dime Museum (not to be confused with Baltimore's Dime Museum, also worth checking out.). It was a tough show. They were plagued by a power outage that kind of killed the evening's energy for the first hour or two: timing was off, cues were missed, jokes fell flat, and their brilliant band just didn't quite get it.

And then, after intermission, the air was clear and we enjoyed an hour and a half of the best stagecraft I've seen in a few years. (I might give a slight nod to the Bindlestiff circus but it's close.) The jokes were brilliant. The band was in full tune with its Seattle Klezmer - meets - big band sound; the musical saw was an accompaniment to a sexy aerial feat. It worked.

I don't know what changed. A motivational speech? More confidence in the spotlights? But all I can say is that Circus Contraption is worth looking out for: their remaining show or two in Seattle, or their upcoming New York trip.

I was ready for great entertainment, then, when I went to see Killing My Lobster in WORLD OF SCIENCE . I like science as much as the next guy, and I liked the way I found out about it more: over breakfast at Savor a girl at the next table was talking about her date last night. "He brought me to that show. It was really funny," she said, and I believed her.

And so I brought my trusty geologist along (she's got a master's degree ... in science).

Killing My Lobster is a bay-area sketch comedy group. They have a lively enthusiastic cast, and seem to run a bunch of cool stuff over the year: a film festival, a monthly benefit cabaret, and periodic shows.

But, well, in this show, they weren't funny. The Physics Chanteuse aims for good science, but I was happy to hear bad science. Or good science parody. There were moments: the opening slide presentation, for example, hit the notes of the planetarium show perfectly. And one sketch, replacing everything with chemical names, had spot-on writing.

Yet the audience spent the night looking ... puzzled. Was that a punchline? Was that meant to be timed a little better? Clever setup -- but where was that sketch going? The evening had a not-quite-finished feel, like someone needed to sit down and give it a good shakedown. Figure out just what is funny about the frog singles lilly pad, or just how to set up the joke about Steven Jay Gould. (Much less the New York Times Science page.)

I'm afraid that I just can't claim it's worth an evening in San Francisco, or the $17 entry fee.

Starting to talk about SNARF

That project I mentioned before? We've now got an external web page up, so the world can wait in anticipation for us to be ready to release SNARF to the outside world.

Etched in Stone

My friend Cheshire got his first fifteen minutes of fame with the blockbuster movie Cooper Black: Behind the Typeface.

Now he's got a mystery noir. Etched in Stone

Check it out.

(Yes, he's a typeface geek. Apparently, they have conventions. That's why the credits rolls the typefaces and their designers. Kind of like Pixar movies roll every person who touched the Renderman code base.)

... "A Beautiful Mime." "The Perfect Swarm." heh, heh.

Thinking about anonymity

Anonymity is a favorite issue, of couse, among sociologists and observers of online technology. Which is why I have been watching the discussion around the Plame case with a sort of horrified fascination.

If I understand correctly:
* A source asked for anonymity, and provided information relating current events to secret information to several major newspaper reporters. (By doing so, the source may have committed a crime)
* The article was refused by most of the reporters. All of the reporters accepted the anonymity request; all but one rejected the article.
* The article was, on its face, an attempt to discredit a critic of the administration by suggesting it came from a favoritist source.

As far as I know, none of these are controversial points.

It's now becoming clear that the source may have been an administrative higher-up. That is, a representative from the top levels of the administration--which has a powerful mouthpiece in tools like the daily press conference--decided that the best way to communicate was through an anonymous leak.

(This is not the only occasion upon which this has happened, of course).

Now, the leak could be the choice for several reasons. Perhaps there was some chance the statement was wrong, and the official didn't want to be held accountable for it. Perhaps the official didn't want to be quoted on a nakedly defamatory statement. Perhaps it was meant to be "background"--not for quoting, but instead for "context."

This article suggests that journalists need to more carefully consider who they owe anonymity to.

So now I bring in the social analyst hat. Anonymity is a trade. If a statement was really, truly anonymous, then it would be read as the ravings of a madman. "A person who refused to be identified in any form whatsoever said that ...." So clearly, there is credibility being exchanged and used as currency. In some critical sense, the journalist is linking their credibility to their sources'.

But then the system breaks down, sometimes. "I was just reporting what the source said," says the journalist, and "it wasn't me!" say a dozen plausible candidates, and the poor little false leask, the irritating dirt, the damaging fact floats around, abandoned.

Facts should be tied by a string of crediblity to the speaker.

I would go one or two steps further then the article above, premised on the idea that anonymous tipsters are meant to be trying to share information that they couldn't otherwise get to the people who need to know it.

1. Anonymity requires accountability. Anonymous information should be truthful, should be something that couldn't be said openly, and should benefit the public. If these conditions aren't held, the source should be exposed. That's right: if a source abuses their anonymity, they should face the consequences of their abuse. Thus, for example, if an administration official anonymously claims that the US is not considering a course of action, and the next day we do that course of action, then the official should be identified.

2. Extraordinary anonymity requires extraordinary accountability. A guy in the labor department who points out that the books don't add up is fundamentally different than a person at a higher level who has usual press access. The whistle-blower needs support. The higher-up requires suspicion.

Now, I think this is a pretty juicy piece of meat. I'm offering reporters a fair deal by which they get to report "XYZ lied!" occasionally. The downside, I guess, is that their lying sources might decide not to cal lthem. (Presumably, honest and upright sources wouldn't be concerend.)

What am I missing?

Noted in passing

Just a quick pointer to the Public Radio Exchange, which carries lots of cool documentaries, snippets, and interesting things. They wrap up some of their stuff in a podcast, which is nice.

And so I hapened to run into Terminally Blonde featuring ....

Well, actually. Don't click there. Instead, download the whole MP3 from the podcast and listen to that. So that it'll be a surprise. (The third bit in the podcast, about malls in small town America, is also fun.)

Overspecialization

Maybe it’s just that as a new northwesterner, I’m used to stores that sell lots of stuff. Costco is from the Seattle area. In contrast, New York has little corner shops that do nothing but eyebrow plucking. Or sell kitchen sinks.

And so it was weird to pass by some shops on the train:
* Mr. Bar Stool
* Gray Iron Castings.

Gray Iron Castings? Do they turn you away if you want black or silver iron castings?

Wow.

There Goes the Neighborhood.

(This is a meditation on gentrification, locked deep in the review of a play that you probably won't see. But you really should, if you can. It's smart, it's funny.)

Last night, I was in the Lower East Side, seeing “There Goes the Neighborhood” at PS 122. (Full disclaimer: while PS 122 stages great stuff, I don’t usually fly in from Seattle for it. But when a childhood friend writes the play, I do.) I was still adjusting to New York: I’d gotten off my plane, zipped about by train, and was just about in place. I’d almost gotten used to streets flowing with taxis and busses, subways running everywhere, and cafes, restaurants, and kitchen-supply stores on each corner.

But I hadn’t heard a Brooklyn-Italian accent for a while, so when Deanna Pacelli stepped on stage as Vinnie, a tough salami-slicer, it took me a few words before I was quite adapted. When I caught up with him, Vinnie was talking about his shop (which sells the best mozzarella in Brooklyn, and possibly the world) which he’d inherited from his father. Which he had inherited, in turn, from his father.

Vinne isn't as happy with the way his street is today.

Deanna's accent quickly changed: a glass of wine, and she was a bar owner who had moved in from Long Island. A flick of her hair, a shawl in her lap, and a she was a Puerto Rican immigrant. A broke worker who had moved in looking for cheaper housing. An Italian grandmother, a gay town improvement activist. A retired librarian.

Each of them had a piece of a story to tell about Smith Street, a recently-gentrified neighborhood in Brooklyn. Mari Brown, the forementioned childhood friend, had settled on Smith Street in 2000, and had taken a job as a waitress. She started getting to know the regulars at the local bar, and—not long after starting—began to collect their stories.

Everyone had something to say about how the street became the way it was: the changes that had happened since it was a bustling Italian neighborhood in the 50s and 60s, and how it had been named as “trendiest restaurant row” in the 21st century. Some were proud. Some were upset. Some were worried, or nostalgic.

There are a lot of sides to gentrification, and the idea of a neighborhood. Everyone has their own favorite moment, something that makes the neighborhood work. Is it decades of tradition, as Vinnie suggests? Or is it being a good gathering place? (If so, do you gather on the stoop, in a bar, in a coffeehouse, or in a cocktail lounge with hot breakbeats?) Is it important to know your neighbors? Do you want to be protected by your tough cousins, or by the faceless police?

None of these have easy answers. They all get brought out during debates about how neighborhoods should be shaped, or reshaped.

Mari collected these stories, and wove them together into a play. Her roommate, Deanna Pacelli, is an actress, and was a fellow waitress; she brought the characters back to life on stage. The different perspectives are all raised, held up to the light, considered. None are ignored or laughed-off; even though the play is a comedy (and it is a particularly funny one, largely just because people are funny), it’s a sensitive one.

While the one-actor-plays-a-small-army has definitely Been Done, and so often tastes more than a little stale, this particular take is impressively constructed and feels fresh. Rather than a series of standalone monologues, this play gives shorter bits to the characters and ties them more closely together. The actress smoothly slides between the characters; she brings them back to chat, to argue with each other, to change their minds. Different moments in history get examined from three or four different perspectives. And a story is gradually constructed.

Upon writing this, and only now, I realize that Mari tells it like a documentary. This isn’t a bad way to construct a story: we meet a growing series of opinionated experts who each have something important to say. The storytelling forms a coherent unit, and we get a history and a direction in one.

They showed it in Brooklyn (and brought the subjects to watch) last year to general acclaim, including a New York Times review. Now they’ve moved up to Off-Off-Broadway in a limited run
that closes on May 29 (sorry about the short notice), with another Times review a few days ago.

Upcoming travel

I'll be passing through NYC briefly this Friday night to see There Goes the Neighborhood, which was written by a friend... I'll be in DC on Saturday afternoon through Wednesday afternoon.

(Wednesday through Saturday I'm at the emailviz workshop and the HCIL open house )

Just to let you know.

You Can't Go Home Again

... they say, although they also say that home is where they have to take you in when you go there.

This weekend, I was startled to (once again) rediscover both how connected and how weirdly spread out my social networks are. It happened in a combined birthday / graduation party (congratulations, Dr. Nikita,, 14th Wearer of the Robes!) late at night in Berkeley while I was down here for the online deliberation conference.

I found out that a mailing list that I'm a member of--one that gets a number of my mass emails--has something more like a hundred members than the much more comfortable 30 or so that I'd thought. It's very strange going to a party where more people recognize me than vice versa.

Anyway, it was great to see them all, and to have a little bit to catch up. And to remember that the Bay Area isn't my home, but is definitely some sort of place that I belong.

DIAC conference

I'm at the Online Deliberation conference at Stanford (hi Ping!), where I just presented a fun, illustrated overview of my work. Hm. I need to find a way to post some of those slides sometime, with some explanation... hopefully, I'll have a paper draft that will clarify that shortly.

Until then, I also co-wrote a paper with John Kelly, from Columbia. We kind of swapped analysis and discussion back and forth; I'm actually quite pleased with how it turned out. I had never met John before we got this paper together; I'm looking forward to continuing collaboration afterward.

Opinion Diversity in Online Political Discussion Networks

Theater Review: Impact Briefs

I'm in the Bay Area for the Online Deliberation conference, and while I've got all sorts of important things I should be doing, I'd rather talk about a play.

See, I did a really bad job of planning this trip, but I decided to take an extra night and hit the Impact Briefs show. Impact Theater plays in the basement of LaVals, in Berkeley, which means that it's theater you can drink beer and eat pizza to. This is a very good thing for any sort of theater, but espcially theirs.

This episode is the "how to" show, and--as promised--provides a great deal of useful how-to information. How To Avoid Drowning in Two Inches of Water. How To Be Popular. How to Order a Fun Dinner in a Fun Restaurant

Thursdays through Saturdays, through May 28.

(More, below the line...)

The show rotates between three media: a funny, short plays, less than ten minutes; hilarious, narrated slide shows; and clippings from the Prelinger Archive. The plays are largely good; two of them, I think, both by Wayne Rawley, are brilliant. (Yes, Wayne just left Seattle for the Bay Area.)

"How to ask a scary question" addresses a real issue in everyone's life: he and she are sitting on a couch. He builds his strength, looks nervous--and wants to ask the question that's clearly been on his mind. What the question is, and how she answers, and what happens after that is, of course, what makes the play. And even if you haven't asked that question, you've been right there.

"How to Gain Controlling Interest" addresses the real questions in a boardroom, complete with suits and ties.

The various edits from the Prelinger Archive are marvelous, but that's mostly because I just can't get enough of 1950s social hygeine films. As a proto-sociologist, I watch them with a certain fascination: they are an intentional, explicit attempt to construct social mores. Which I think I'll have to blog about some other time soon.

Check it out.

Dictatorial Blog

So a few people have tried to respond to my last post, and have found that they ... can't.

That's because, I just realized, I got completely overwhelmed with blogspam, and until I have a chance to upgrade to MT 3.0, or install a few functions that will take care of this for me, I'm just blocking everything.

So that means that an entry that includes anything matching the regex ".*" gets blasted.

Sorry, no comments today.

I don't get the stock market

I still don’t get the stock market. (This post inspired by starting to read the rather well-written Wall Street [thanks, CT and needing to test an assumption or two.)

Note: The following will prove that I'm not an economist.

(Oh, and sorry about the lack of posting).

I think I’m a pretty smart guy. I can understand futures and options (and, indeed, futures on options). I know what a derivative is, even if I don’t want to buy any, and can kind of grok some of the more interesting financial tools out there. At least, I can understand them as long as I stick to a single underlying axiom: a company’s stock price has something to do with the way the company is doing.

Now, this isn’t a terribly unusual belief: I hear it repeated on the radio a lot (“after the news that the CEO of company XYZ had a bad headache, stock prices fell”). But I just don’t get it.

The problem is, you see, there’s a certain degree of accountability disconnect. Let’s look at this:

A company sells stock, I have been assured, in order to dilute ownership in exchange for money. (Presumably, if they had more capital around, they’d sell bonds instead: those, after all, they are likely to get back in a predictable way.) When I buy a stock, I am getting a little bit of ownership in exchange for money.

Why might I buy a stock?
• I expect someone else may buy it from me for more money
• I wish to own part of that company in order to exert decision-making force
• I expect dividends to come out of the stock
• I expect the company to be sold to someone else (or liquidated) for cash and assets; I want to get at that cash

I would claim that we can eliminate the first of those as the ‘greater fools’ theory. Since we’re trying to figure out what the market is about, the first of those really shouldn’t affect anything. After all, if we believe rational economics, that greater fool knows something. Or thinks he does. And that something had better be one of the latter points, or the whole house of cards is going to collapse. (If the stock market really runs in large part on psychology, as this article seems to suggest, then the idea of counting on it as a long term investment vehicle for anything: social security, my future, whatever, seems incredibly … well, stupid.)

As for the decision-making: well, Google just IPO’d with such incredibly dilute common stock that investors will never have a meaningful vote. Heck, it was announced as such in the prospectus. The owners are holding onto more than 50%. This means their vote doesn't count. Yet they bought the stuff. Indeed, most people who buy are getting virtually no decision-making power for their purchase.

Dividends? Microsoft is now releasing dividends quarterly, around $0.08 per share. If you figure this will keep up forever, that’s a 1.62% continuous interest rate. I’m not impressed with this as a return on anything, especially in a market that likes to see 5% -- or 10%, or 30% -- gains.

Sold? The only way any company gets sold or liquidated is if it fortunes plunge. And, well, the value goes down when fortunes plunge. Anyway, common stockholders often see very little after the meat of the corpse is taken apart. Certainly, the chances that anything is going to happen to Google that would put $193 into each shareholder's hand is pretty unlikely.

So what’s left? What is it that changes in the world when a piece of news (“Executive XXX announces tweak to product line ZZZ!”). The market is overjoyed: clearly, something wonderful will happen! What is it? Will they start issuing dividends? Will the company be worth more if it’s ever taken apart? Is this a probabilistic statement that the company is less likely to fall apart, or a value statement of what it’s worth today? What about bad news? Ford sells Firestone tires, which are found to be defective. Ford’s stock price slips a little. Why? Sure, Ford will have to shell out some money to replace the tires, but we’re not expecting them to go down, are we? Rational Actor theory would suggest they go down by exactly the value of those tires they have to replace, plus the goodwill they lost. Of course, if I expect them to bounce back, I should just wait: sure, their present cash reserves are down a touch, but the company is still there. Unless I think this changes my expectations of its long-run value, I should hang in there.

And yet the market reacts excitedly, prices flipping up and down like there’s no tomorrow.

What am I missing? What’s the mechanism for the connection between the events that occur in a company’s life, and the shareholders’ willingness to buy or sell those stocks?

What I'm asking, at heart, is what keeps the whole "wisdom of markets" things going?

Data Synchronization in Practice (See also: Raindrop)

I just got a slice of the Microsoft Research blog Raindrop. I'll be posting there periodically: for the next little while, I'll post placeholders here pointing to there, but I'll sooner or later be posting all work-related material there.

The Danyel-only view of Raindrop lives here

And my own post came up just now, entitled Synchronization in Practice

Travel Plans

For those who wait, with bated breath, to know where I am and where I'm going, here's some future highlights.

· This weekend, January 15-16: the Triumphant Berkeley Return Trip. I have much of Saturday to wander about on my own; then I head off to Chesh & Sarah's for a gathering. Sunday morning is vegetarian buddhist thai brunch! Contact me for more information as danyelf -at - acm.org

· Sometime early-mid February: University of Maryland.

· February 16-20, plus a few additional days on one side or the other: Redondo Beach, CA for the SUNBELT conference, with planned side-trips to Irvine, San Diego, and LA

Calling them on "Excellent" Customer Service

I'm sure that you've also had lots of people on the phone announce that they wish to provide you with "excellent" customer service. Before telling you that their computer is dead, they can't call you back, and they refuse to fix your problem.

I've decided to take the word "excellent" as a promise.

Here's the transcript...

TITLE: Calling them on "excellent" customer service.

So I'm ordering the various stuff for my new place. Land line. DSL over land line. ISP for DSL over land line. And so on. Qwest helpfully offers me a one-stop shopping -- as I work my way through my menus, I order two of them. (The third, the ISP, is easy to call.)

Then I get an email the next day. It starts off by telling me that their computer glitched, and missed my order for DSL. Could I please let them know whetehr I want it, and what ISP I will use? ("We are committed to excellent customer service.")

- Sure. I give them the information.

- Ok. You will need to wait until your line is installed to order DSL. ("We are committed to excellent customer service.")

- Huh? But I already did order DSL! And you asked me to confirm it!

- Well, we're afraid--the next email says--we can't process that request, and we'll need you to cancel your current order, then call this number and restart. ("We are committed to excellent customer service.")

- Ok. In my world, I reply tartly, "excellent" customer service involves processing a customer's actual request, as opposed to asking them to cancel their order in order to restart their order. It's just one of those things.

Interestingly, I did get a response. And they decided to move forward, and were able to add DSL to my previous order.

I Own a Place!

Yesterday, at 2 pm, I closed on a condo. I am now a proud homeower; my salary for the next few years will all go to a bank. I am locked into the cycle of debt and houses and saving for my unborn (indeed, unconcieved and unplannned) future childrens' college education.

But you can start sending mail to a more convenient mail address.

Like 1017 Minor Ave. #303, Seattle, WA. 98104

(Does writing a paper mail address on a blog open one to mail spam?)

Oh, and you have no idea how amused I am that there are a lot of hits for "homeower" at Google. There are Homeowers' Associations, Homeowers' Insurance, and all sorts of marvelous services to those of us who have signed paperwork transferring a home from someone elses' bank to our own bank.

Comment Spam Wins

I'm having to trim 50-60 comment spam entries, including a recent deluge of personal names that seemed to link to sites that were strings of random alphabetic characters that never recurred.

I have no idea what that was meant to accomplish.

I haven't found an easy script for turning off comments without deleting the ones I have today. But I do know that running MT 2.6 is like running an unpatched Windows NT 3.1 server in the real world: the attackers win.

Pretty soon, I'll be self-hosting from home, and I'll set up a blog. I'm not sure I'm ready to retire MOOP right now, but I'm actively thinking about it.

Blog spam of the day

Ok, I really need to learn how to turn off comments on old entries -- blog maintenance is taking too much time.

But, oh, the joy! I just got comment spam from someone claiming to be Blog Ethics writing:

Help stop evil word of mouth marketers like BzzAgent.com by supporting the Blog Publishers Association founded by legendary blogger Jason Calacanis.

Read their warning/disclaimer at this site

How weird.

Mortgages and Politics

I mentioned that I'm thinking about mortgages. Fortunately, they are a lot less eye-bleedy now that I've started reading up.

(Side note: I reached mutual agreement on a place on Saturday. If there are really, really good reasons why I shouldn't live on First Hill, near the Swedish Hospital² off Madison, now is the time to tell me.)

One of the things I've realized, though, is that one's mortgage profile really reflects one's political outlook, especially in toda'ys low-interest-rate climate. Pretty much everyone agrees that interest rates will never be much lower than they are today: they will rise. Whether they rise fast or slow, sooner or later, they will wander upwards¹. Combine this low price with the recent election, and we have a great testbed for linking politics to economics that the Crooked Timber crowd might be into.

(More below the fold...)

Today, a mortgage agent explained it to me this way: 90% of homeowners refinance or sell within 5 years. And interest rates have stayed below 7.9% for 180 of the last 200 years. And houses appreciate 5% per year. So it really doesn't matter if I sign up for a 5 year ARM or a fixed-rate mortgage: it really doesn't matter. After all, in five years, my mortgage will be a thing of the past, an artifact of my changed work and social life, a memory of my old single life or of my time living in Washington or of my time in a condo.

The last time that mortgage rates were high was the dot-com boom. Before that was the cold war, and the junk-bond crash of the mid-90s. None of those apply today. Not only that, but we have redefined "full employement" from 5% to 4%, and the job market is taking on more jobs. The Fed has done an excellent job of keeping interest rates low, and Europeans and Asians continue to be hungry to buy up American debt. I'll have no trouble selling at a profit in five years, or rates will be low enough to refinance handily.

A cynic might note that all twenty of the years with high interest rates have been in the last 40. That the US trade deficit is at astounding levels, and that today's news has the president proposing another few billion of debt. That the dollar is being propped up by Asian investors, who may stop paying for it. That serious inflation may be in our short-term future and we may not dig ourselves out of it for a decade or more -- after all, this just happened in Japan. In five years, rates may be impossible and everyone will be hunkered down or paying discount prices for expensive houses. And I'll be stuck with a floating mortgage at 10%.

Now, I suppose if one follows the Way of the Elephant, one is likely to believe the first scenario, which lines up well with their party line; if one follows the Path of the Donkey, one is more likely to believe the second. If one believes the first, one is likely to buy an adjustable, short-term mortgage.

So, what does the red/blue financial map look like? Are houses in red Orange County going with ARMs, while condos in blue San Francisco attached to 30 year fixed rate?

Do any sociologists around here have a copy of local economic news, and a decent voting map? There's a confounding variable or two in here ("people who are buying houses", for example), but the raw data should be interesting. I know there have been studies looking at things like "optimism," or "consumer confidence", but I'd like to see how these fairly simple parameters line up against each other.

---

¹ Papers that model Adjustable Rate Mortgages (ARMs) as less risky are kind of startling to me. An ARM is never going down, after all. It might come back to the same rate, but not much better than that.

² Hey, if we can have a Jewish Hospital in St. Louis, there can be a Swedish Hospital in Seattle, ok?

Mortgages make my eyes bleed

I'm working on trying to buy a condo somewhere out here in the Seattle area. Turns out the really interesting bit is financing it.

(Read below. This is mostly trying to straighten out my own thoughts).

Unless I show up with 20% of the house value in hand, I need to somehow get a mortgage for more than 80% of the cost. The old way of handling this was to get a large mortage for, say, 95%. But that triggered something called "Mortgage Insurance" -- essentially, buying a policy against my own default

For reasons that are somewhat mysterious to me, mortgage insurance seems to be gone. You now handle this with a second mortgage at substantially higher rates. This mortgage can be a line of credit, or home equity loan, or a conventional mortgage. (For the second, it appears to be centered around an odd legal fiction: you take out a loan against the down payment on the house... but you then spend that money on a down payment for the house.) Either way, somehow this dodges, for those with adequate credit, the nastiness of mortgage insurance.

So then: Do I want my main mortgage to be fixed, or adjustable, or balloon? Adjustable immediately (which is cheaper) or later (which locks in good rates for five or ten years, but then can jump a huge distance)? Am I risk-loving enough to balloon in ten years (meaning I have to pay off the whole balance then), or should I wait for fifteen?

Am I going to live here for more than two or three years?

Do I want to make a dent against principle (which hardly happens in the first few years anyway), or am I ok with an interest-only mortgage (which means that I make no progress against principle at all?) for a few hundred dollars less a month?

The set of combinations is mind-boggling. And that's before I whip out the spreadsheets: "I need to contribute at least 5% of my own. And I need to have two months' payments set aside in my bank account. And I need to have closing costs. But the seller will pay some of them."

And that's where my head begins to hurt.

Bilth Gater

It was 1997, and I was an intern at Microsoft. (I've written some about this experience before.) One metaphor that came to mind during our discussions was that of joining the Empire. Led, of course, by the Dark Lord, Bilth Gater.

I've been sitting with these comics on my hard drive since 1997. Now that I really have joined Microsoft, I thought it would be fun to share them. Click through to my SMUGMUG site to check them out.

Incidently, I don't remember Samedh's last name, or how to contact him. These images are, however, all copyright by Samedh, 1997.

No more home page...

Irvine is slowly shutting my accounts down (although my existence on this machine may last a little longer), and so I'm migrating outward. I just noticed today that my Irvine-based home page is down...

Was Darwin Wrong?

Appreciating National Geographic (courtesy Auros )

Was Darwin Wrong?

Interestingly, the National Geographic teaser page is not as unambiguous. They want you to have a copy on your desk for someone to flip through.

Email black hole

Somehow, all email that went through UCI in the last few days got eaten by a grue. Or protected and locked away. I'm still trying to figure out what.

But if you sent any mail to my UCI or my ACM acccount on Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday, you may want to resend it -- and this time to ACM but not UCI.

Double translation

from Joshua's Blog

This text apparently appeared in Josh's spam the other day:

This lozenge is a modern grease-binding accessory which removes grease from a board you consume! Explicated with the mighty fat-sticking fiber, the alloy of biological constituents...

This tablets is a modern fat-sticking addendum which removes fat from a nourishment you wolf! Forged with the mighty fat-sticking fibre, the alloy of biological compounds...

As Joshua points out, these are probably the same text, translated twice. What are they translated from? Where did they come from? What do we know about the language, given that it translates (for example) one word as either "lozenge" or "tablet", and another as either "forged" or "explicated."

My own guess, judging from the text, is that it's just one text, possibly translated into two languages, and then back.

So let's imagine, for example, an (imaginary) primary text:

This tablet is a modern grease-binding additive which removes fat from the food you eat! Based on a powerful fat-attracting fiber, this combination of biological compounds...

and then send it to, say, French and German, and then back. Not that I have time for this...

CSCW Return

Back at work, and on a fat internet connection and a working computer.

Some quick notes:

• On Nov 2, I got spam with the title: "Are you desperate from your country? Come live in the USA!"
• Lots to think about with backchannels (still!) and inattention
• If the subject of the discussion inside an online space is mostly that space, is that ok, or does it point to a lack of vitality? If so, does this point to my own lack of vitality, as a person who largely studies online spaces?
• I listened to "deep house" music that was actually acid jazz remixes, but never made it to a bar a hundred miles out of chicago, with half a tank of gas, that played both kinds of music.
• The US is a stunningly beauitful country: whatever your politics, it's wonderful to watch little towns built into the bends of rivers and the tops of mountains and badlands and patchwork farms and low clouds rolling across the Rockies. The flight down into Seattle -- Mt. St. Helens, Mt. Adams, and Mt. Ranier towering over smaller snowcapped Cascades -- is humbling.
• The Seattle airport's new expansion has a great combination of cool art, and a historic plane: a replica of Dick Rutan's Voyager. (If the name "Rutan" rings a bell, this is the brother of Burt Rutan, of SpaceShipOne / X-Prize fame.) The displays of rocks and water are surprisingly relaxing for a baggage-claim area. (Really.)
• When I walked into the Sea/Tac baggage area, a military unit had just landed. The guys stood around, carrying green bags and wearing casual fatigues, while the Sergeant shouted their names as their footlockers rolled off the lines. "Sir, here sir!" "Good. Take your bag." "Sir yes sir!"

Blogging CSCW

I'm not, actually, although I may try to point out some favorite moments. But if you're out there, still wondering what I do with my time, check out

Jack Vinson who is both blogging the conference, and keeping track of the bloggers who are out here in Chicago.

Husky or Maltese Whatever

Three articles you should read, in sequence, about one of the great mysteries of modern life (right up there with STOP CASTING POROSITY)

http://sublethal.net/archives/2004/07/10.000748.html

http://www.portlandtribune.com/archview.cgi?id=25379

http://www.portlandtribune.com/archview.cgi?id=25499

Update: ... third link fixed.

Blog Spam

Just to warn you .. after the next day or so, I expect to be largely offline for about 3 weeks, until (about) Nov 1st.

Since I still haven´t figured out how to turn off comments globally on this thing, and my last attempt wiped all the comments and I haven´t been able to fix it yet, expect lots of offers for poker and vidocaine, and virtually no posts from me.

That includes web design improvements, although I promise to play with the templates when I return.

Who is JE Fatouch?

This is silly, so it´s all in the extended entry.

A few days ago, I got an email from no one I knew asking for an Orkut invitation. I decided against it, because, well, I don´t do that sort of thing.

Today, I got another email from the same guy:

Hello, this is an global message:
1) To: my new friends:
Thank you for invite me to your friend's list at http://orkut.com. I'll be your friend forever. A star shine already illuminates you.
Sorry, I'm unable to reply your messages at this time. Reason: I have 5,560 emails in my GMAIL inbox.The same as my Orkut account .
I will contact you personally as soon as possible.

2) To: people that has asked me if i know you:
Not, i`m just a human looking for friends. Are you human? Why are you so prevented? Please add me to yours friends list.

Best ,
J.E Fatuch
"It's love, not life, the opposite of dead'

What´s his goal? Did anyone else get this?

Economics of Religion

I suppose this isn't really what I'm meant to be thinking about during Yom Kippur, the Jewish Days of Repentance. And yet standing in the back row of a synagogue, listening to a rabbi talk in Danish¹

That said, I actually did get a lot out of the service. Simply being in a synagogue, hearing the words I grew up with, brings me to a very thoughtful headspace

So we're long past the days when churches could simply demand an off-the-top tax from the king, or could send out its troops² to raise a little money³. With the exceptions of plans like land investment (as practiced by the Catholic church) and spin-off copy companies, most religious groups are stuck with donations.

I know most about Chrisitanity and Judaism--I'd love to hear notes on how other groups manage this.

(... more ... )

While Christians can afford to pass a plate around, Jews--rather inconveniently--set up prohibitions on carrying or using money on the days when donations are most likely to be of help--the well-attended Saturday Sabbath services and the extremely-well-attended High Holiday (that is, Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur) services.

Now, the shocking moment of truth is that most places of worship are built to be filled once or twice a year. Christians mostly don't show up except on Christmas and Easter; most Jews show up only on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. So you need to optimize your donation system for those days.

There are two dominant models for this, as far as I understand. Both of them are trying to build a system that is progressive (that is, gets the largest donations from those who can spare the most), that gains financial stability for the holiday, and finds some way to handle people who are transient in one way or another.

The American model, which I grew up with, is to sell memberships. Membership in the synagogue entitles you to the warm fuzzy feeling of being a member plus--crucially--entree to the High Holiday service. No membership? No entree. Membership is usually priced as a proportion of income, or is graded to income. For travellers and visitors, tickets can be arranged on the fly, a day or two early, usually accompanied by a small donation. Once you have the ticket, you can enter and wander about within the synagogue, picking the seats of your preference⁴.

In contrast, the European model sells seats. Anyone can get in, but the seats are numbered and claimed in advance. Nominally, of course, the seats are reserved for the year, and so come (in at least some synagogues) with storage areas. The Copenhagen synagogue actually had locking (!) drawers in front of each seat, so that members could leave their various prayer garments conveniently close⁵. If you don't have a seat, you can try to claim a seat--but someone else might show up. Which leaves you (or me, in this case) in the Standing Room Only section in back.

How does it stay progressive? Assign a level of prestige to the seats. (Remember that lyric
in Fiddler on the Roof about Tevye, as a rich man, getting a "seat on the Eastern wall"? Eastern seats are closer to Jerusalem, closer to the center of the action, and thus more prestigious. Arguably holier. Definitely more expensive. The good seats would be some combination of auctioned and inherited, ensuring that the well-heeled get their chance to both be generous and let their generosity be publically known.

Under the American model, incidently, it becomes important for the synagogue to own a number of copies of the prayer books: you don't expect people to carry them in, and you can't find a safe place to store them, which means that even occasional visitors can have a copy of the prayer service.

Under the European model, you remind people to buy a book and lock it at their seat.

Which is why I spent the service standing up, without a book. And why those times when I sat down, I would find myself politely invited to find a different seat. As a local, I can imagine the positive side of the European model: you sit with your friends, you have your paraphenalia in place. As a visitor, though, it rather hurt.

Incidently, I assume--but don't know--that women's seats are allocated the same way as men's seats. In this synagogue, incidently, the women's section was far above the men's: they sat in side-balconies 30 feet up. Nominally, this is to keep the genders from getting distracted by each other. In practice, couples worked out finger-signs for basic important sentences like "let's go chat with the Rabinowitz's in 5 minutes in the courtyard," and leaned down over the boundary to chat.

---

¹ I understood nothing of the Rabbi's speech except the words "Napster," "download", and "computer." Apparently, it had something to do with asking people to bravely step outside of normalcy, to do the socially unpopular--that is, for kids to not steal music. Apparently, it instead started lots of irrelevant side conversations about the morality of music sharing, the RIAA, America's role in enforcing copyright regimes, Denmark's aquiescence to American copyright rules, and the small Danish hometown of Lars Ulrich.

² I certainly miss the Vatican Army. Don't you?

³ Or, failing that, a little hell. Western medieval militaries weren't known for their great discipline.

⁴ Roughly. There's always someone whose seat you shouldn't take. Just like high school. Except there's no fear that The Teacher will forget your name.

⁵ Then it had little hooks next to the locks to leave the keys, because many people refuse to carry keys with them on the holidays.

I wonder what triggered this:

From UCI's Chancellor

This fall, I want to call special attention to electronic mail. Our
principles guide our interactions and they apply to all forms of
communication, including electronic mail. Email allows us to
communicate with each other almost instantaneously, across campus or
across the globe. Stripped of vocal inflections and visual cues,
however, email communication can be misinterpreted. Also, without
face-to-face contact, we sometimes type things that we might not
verbalize. The challenge for each of us is to continue to communicate
in a thoughtful manner. A rule of thumb: consider whether you are
comfortable printing out your email and posting it on your door for
all to read.

I wonder what flamewar just happened that triggered this message? I am curious how this fits in with Dourish's observations on undergraduate perceptions of email and formality...

(For the curious, the canonical reference on online behavior and flamewars is the book "Connections" by Kiesler and Sproull and the (many) things that refer to it.)

Familiar names from the past

During my travels, I'm trying to read up a little on history and politics: if I'm going to be obsessed with the subject, the least I can do is be well-informed. And maybe getting frustrated with history will be more fun than being frustrated with events where I don't know how they'll turn out.

(more below)
(Update: the book is 1988, which makes this a little more significant: the Cold War is rolling toward its end, but is by no means over; the threat is still Soviet.)

Anyway, the book of the moment is a book from 1988. Entitled Thinking in Time: The Uses of History for Decision Makers, it attempts to trace through momentous decisions (Bay of Pigs, Cuban Missile Crisis, parts of the Vietnam and Korean wars, and others) and looks at what people could have done. Their "mini-method" is, essentially, to look at where people and events come from--who do they work with? what events shaped them?--and try to break out the "knowns" from the "unknowns", the "assumptions" from the "desired results". The authors call it "placement", the need to "place" arguments in the views of those who will hear them.

Anyway.

On page 201, we're learning about the SALT treaty, and Jimmy Carter's 1977 attempt to get the Soviets to agree to cutbacks in the number of nuclear missles held by both sides. We learn that even if he had somehow succeeded with the Soviets--and that was dubious--he still needed to get the US Senate on his side. The critical person at the time was Senator "Scoop" Jackson.

And so there I am reading along, and a familiar name pops up.

Richard Perle, Jackson's principal staff aide for such issues, had given deep cuts qualified support, probably on the well-grounded assumption that the Russains would never accept them. Had that assumption proved wrong, Perle would probably have found some previously unnoticed reason why deep cuts were not acceptable either. It was Perle's consistent view that anything the Russians liked had to be against US interests.

Plus ça change...

[Update: It's not "plus la change."]

L'Shana Tova

Just wanted to wish you all a happy, joyful, and significant New Year. In Jewish tradition, the New Year's holiday is a time of change, when a person has a unique possibility, and obligation, to correct old mistakes and to find new paths.

(More, below)

In high school & undergrad, this seemed self-evident: a new year of classes was starting, too. (Usually, it meant that I missed two classes in the first or second week of school, and that was a change, but not necessarily for the better.)

In grad school, the new year would be overwhelmed with CHI deadlines, finishing up whatever work I'd done over the summer before I dived into my next round of projects, and wasn't all that much of a change.

This year--

This year, it's a change. The holiday is being followed by a month and a half of travel, followed by a new job, a new home, a new location, a new title.

Sometimes, I guess, it all comes out at once.

Again, then, may you enjoy and thrive in the New Year, and may we all see (somehow) a turn toward a more peaceful world. Hey, a guy can hope.

Campaign Finance Law (is confusing)

I just got a call from [a political committee] asking for a donation, and proudly announcing that they would be working directly with [the presidential campaign] to coordinate Get-Out-The-Vote efforts. I was confused: I had thought that the committees were obligated to pretend that they didn't work with the campaign after the primary date...

The other day, I also saw a sign saying " [Members of Political Party] Register Here!" over a booth saying " [Political Party] Registration". Again, I had thought it was illegal to be party-specific at a registration booth... but I don't know the details.

Do any of my loyal readers?

Things that Don't Exist

Things that don't exist: a Sonata in Sock Puppets.

• Quicktime .mov
• Lyrics
• Bit Torrent

via Alex Halavais

MT Blacklist failing?

I seem to be getting an awful lot of Casino spam to this blog. I've now added the word "casino" to my mt-blacklist, and it's still getting through. Any advice?

*Update: The magic word is "casino," which seems to have some nasty control characters in the name...: 'casin&#111' *

World Travellin'

Blogging will be even lighter than usual for the next little while--I'm off to a few weeks' travel before I start work in November.

Update: Added eastern seaboard details.

• FOOCamp (Sebastopol, CA): Sept 10-12
• Family visit (Eastern seabaord): Sept 13-Sept 19
  • Washington DC area, Sept 13 - 19
  • New York City: Family & friends part in Brighton Beach, Sept 20. (_Email me for details_)
• Tourism: Copenhagen & surrounds: Sept 20 - Sept 27
• Tourism: Madrid, Seville & surrounds: Sept 27 - Oct 7
• Tourism: Nairobi, Tanzania, and Zanzibar: Oct 8 - Oct 29
• "Planes, Trains, and Automobiles" Travel Combo: Oct 29. Northern Zanzibar to Zanzibar Town (car, 1 hour), Zanzibar Town to Dar Es Salaam (boat, 2-3 hours), Dar Es Salaam to Nairobi (plane, 1 hour), Nairobi to London (plane, 8 hours), London to Chicago (plane, 7 hours), Chicago to Seattle (plane, 3 hours). Plus layovers.
• Seattle: Arrive Oct 30. Start work Nov 1.
• CSCW (Chicago): Nov 6 - Nov 10

If I'll overlap with you anywhere, I'd love to touch base...

Digital Cameras and Safaris

Just thinking out loud about future travel...

so i've been thinking about cameras, and looking at my trip itinerary.

1) I will be camping and staying in "local" (read: primitive) housing for three weeks straight in Tanzania. I don't expect to run into camera recharge stations very often.

2) My camera runs something like 100 shots ( = 1 days' shooting ) on a battery, and something like 250 shots on a memory card, give or take.

3) Few digital cameras run on AA batteries, which means that if the batteries run out, I'm just plain SOL.

But going to a 35 point'n'click means losing a lot of the stuff tha I've grown to like: (some) exposure control and focus control. Going to any 35 mm means that I lose that little preview window.

So I'm contemplating the merits of ...

A) Buying a pile of batteries as long as my arm, and keeping track of which are and aren't charged. (I'll probably do something like that anyway; I just found a bunch for $10 each).

or

B) Buying a 35 mm SLR & a decent zoom lense, and then going completely nuts in the next week (huntington gardens, anyone?) with print photography practice to see if I can get enough skills going to feel fairly confident.

(The same goes for film: do I buy a bunch more CF cards, or a digital
wallet?)

Your thoughts?

(It should be noted that higher-end cameras often take AA batteries as an in-a-pinch substitute, and that this tool actually solar-charges batteries!)

Becoming One with the Borg

I've now signed the forms, and so I can say that I've been hired by Microsoft Research in the Community Technologies Group by Marc Smith and will be starting in November as a researcher...

Just to let you know.

Update: the CTG page has disappeared. Which means that Marc's page has a dead link on it. I'll assume it's an internal error

Dissertation chairs

So my dissertation defense will be attended by my dissertation chair, my department chair, and a third unchaired professor. In order that the third not feel left out, I tried to figure out what honorary chair ought to be granted.

Which led to this obscure reference from a conversation yesterday:

"Prof. Smith will be joining us today to speak on the topic of 'Religion and the State: the Inquisition in 15th Century Spain.' She holds the Comfie Chair in Spanish History. Her unexpected research approach centers on two techniques: historical studies, diary research, and network -- Her research approach centers on three techniques: historical studies, diary research, network analysis, and archaeological-- Wait!"

How to commercialize a product

A few weeks ago, I got a copy of an an article from the New York Times ("For Liars and Loafers, Cellphones Offer an Alibi" [reprint here ]).

It talked about "alibi clubs", where members agree to give each other emergency-out calls covering for each other. "Oops, there's my phone! Gotta run!"

Cingular has apparently gone one step further, and is offering it as a paid service.

"Escape-A-Date" is the perfect service to use when you are afraid that your blind date may not be just right for you. This new service allows you to schedule a "rescue" phone call at a pre-set time. That way, you'll be called at the time you specify. The service tells you exactly what to say to set the tone for a speedy escape. There are eight randomly generated humorous scripts. (Yahoo)

Wow.

The Social Computing Research Lab List

Even though many of the great old research firms may not be what they once were (PARC has lost its Xerox moniker; AT&T has lost much of its old social computing staff), industry-aligned and sponsored social computer research is far from dead.

This has come up in the context of my job search I'm leaning toward industry, largely because the sort of things that I do seem to connect very well to current industrial interests in a number of different ways. Industry seems to be the place today where research can have short- or medium-term effects on product. (Of course, there's still a difficult balance of how to get those products into the real world, a venture with mixed results)

I've run into quite a few places that are doing interesting things. Here's a brief overview of labs you might want to know about: places whose publications are worth monitoring.

1. Microsoft maintains a community technologies group, a social computing group, and an adaptive systems group.
2. IBM has labs in Cambridge working on collaboration, Almaden working on user experience, and New York
3. Intel's "lablets" have a People and Practices group, as well as teams interested in social computing at both Seattle and Berkeley
4. FXPAL is an American presence of Fuji-Xerox that does research in Palo Alto
5. Hewlett-Packard's information dynamics lab has interesting work on social networks and social structure
6. PARC has projects in Sensemaking and Community
7. MERL is an American presence for Mitsubishi in Cambridge
8. MITRE is a government-oriented research organization with interests in collaboration and information solutions