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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)...

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Continued reading Local Theater, Great and Not-So...

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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.

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SNARF is still an internal tool: it won't see the light of out-of-Microsoft-day for a few months, yet. None the less, a release to a possible customer base of, oh, 78000 people can make one a little jittery. Doubly so, because each person's run is sending us back usage data. Are we collecting the right data? Will it be analyzable the way we think? Will we come up with sufficiently-interesting analyses?

Because if this works, it's going to be GREAT. Great for the users, whose email experience should be vastly improved. And great for researchers, who will get truly interesting information about how much email flow happens, how quickly, and when.

(An overview of SNARF will be presented at the upcoming CEAS conference.)

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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?

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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.)

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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.

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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.

Continued reading There Goes the Neighborhood....

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

Just to let you know.

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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.

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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

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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...)

Continued reading Theater Review: Impact Briefs...

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