Eszter

One of the many perks of being at the Berkman Center this year has been to learn about all sorts of interesting and important legal matters that otherwise would either not make it on my radar or would be hard for me to appreciate/understand without background and context. The New York Times now reports on an issue that Berkman fellow Steve Schultze first introduced me to last Fall: the complexity involved in accessing unclassified government documents online that are theoretically free to the public, but in reality can be quite hard to access. The article identifies some major problems with PACER (the government-run Public Access to Court Electronic Records system) and also discusses some important efforts to make the material more accessible to the public. Included is work by (and an interesting photo of:) CT commenter – but more importantly friend of CT;) – Aaron Swartz.

Steve’s blog points us to Show Us the Data whose purpose is to “identify the 10 Most Wanted Government Documents”, that is, “unclassified documents or data that .. exist–on paper or in government computers and databases–that would be of value to the public if posted and regularly updated on an agency’s Web site.” Check out Steve’s blog and that voting site for more on truly freeing up free government documents.

Following up on my post from a couple of weeks ago about the book cover contest, I thought I’d post a link to the resulting 24 submissions (by now listed in order ranked by people voting on the Worth1000 site). I’m happy with the outcome, there are some really great ideas in there. (The final cover will say “Edited by” since it’s an edited volume.) Fonts, colors, various details can be changed so the idea is not necessarily to look for the perfect design. I like a friend’s reaction to all this: “I’d say my median favorite one is better than 99% of book covers I see in the bookstores.”

I invite you to put on your creative thinking caps and participate in the book cover contest now running over at Worth1000 for my methods edited volume called Research Confidential. The winner receives $150 and the chance to have the design show up as the book cover.

You may recall the thread here a while back regarding the book’s title. I received many great suggestions. In the end, an idea I got from Jonathan Zittrain won out. That said, the subtitle “Solutions to Problems Most Social Scientists Pretend They Never Have” came from a suggestion on that CT thread submitted by reader Vivian.* Many thanks to both! (In fact, many thanks to all who participated in that helpful thread and convinced me to abandon my original idea.)

The title is not the only idea for which I owe JZ thanks. I’m following in his footsteps by running a contest for the cover design. His book on The Future of the Internet – And How To Stop It ended up with its cool cover this way.

The contest page gives a brief summary of the book and some ideas I have for a cover design although I’m very eager to see all sorts of other suggestions. The site also lists technical specifications for submissions. The contest runs for a week. If you can think of friends who are good at this sort of thing, please pass the word along. And thanks to my publisher, The University of Michigan Press, for supporting this idea.

[*] A note to reader Vivian: I’ve tried to figure out who you are so I could contact you and see how you felt about having your full name included in the book’s Acknowledgments. Please let me know your thoughts on this.

It’s unusually cold in some parts of Europe and temperatures are expected to be especially harsh this coming weekend. This makes the following even more unfortunate than it would be otherwise: due to conflicts with Ukraine, Russia has cut off gas supplies to several countries some of which rely on Russia for the majority of their needs and have enough supplies for no more than a few days. There isn’t a ton of good coverage* about this out there (yet?), you can read up on some of it here and here (although some information in English already seems outdated when I compare it to reports in Hungarian papers, which presumably have more accurate updates for at least Hungary). Hungary has already shut down numerous industrial plants and has taken other measures to lower usage.

Let’s say you are a country and calculate that you have enough supplies for about three weeks. Your neighbor only has enough for two days and asks for your help. What do you do? (Judging from some of the reports, this isn’t necessarily a hypothetical.)

[*] Feel free to post links to additional coverage that you find helpful. New stories came up as I was writing this post, I suspect/hope that more will be available. (Don’t assume I didn’t search in the right places, there was very little on this when I first started looking for it earlier today. The only reason I even knew to look was a mention by my cousin in an email and a phone conversation later with my Mom. They are both in Budapest so they are following the details and seem to have more to go on.)

I don’t like seeing you’re when your should be used and vice versa, but the following took it all to a whole new level: in a recent email I received, instead of your, the person wrote u’re. Yikes.

I never make New Year’s resolutions. If I want to do something then I’ll just start doing it. (This explains why I started recording my steps with a pedometer on April 4, 2007 and why I started photo Project 365 on October 24, 2006.) If I’m not really committed to doing something then it certainly won’t make a difference to start it on January 1.

But yesterday, I got some resolutions handed to me nonetheless. I was at a New Year’s Eve party and everyone was asked to write down their resolutions and put them in a hat. Then we went around and drew resolutions.

Here is what I got:

Eat More Green things (and by green, I don’t mean moldy)
Make more stuff

I get the first one and I’m happy to give it a go. I’ve already had some edamame today to comply.

But what does the second one mean? Does writing a book count as making stuff? Or should I be setting up shop at Etsy?

I’m curious, those of you who make New Year’s resolutions, what’s the longest you’ve managed to stay on track? Anyone go a whole year? Any unusual attempts this time around?

Last year, when I was putting together my tenure file, I kept thinking that a section was missing. Where was I going to thank all the people who had helped me over the years? Of course, it makes all the sense in the world that a tenure file does not have an acknowledgements section. After all, talk about a situation where one would feel obligated to include everyone, rendering the exercise completely pointless. Nonetheless, while academic work is often characterized as a lonely enterprise, feedback from others – whether on research, teaching or professionalization – is an essential part of the process. Thus it seemed wrong to put forward one’s materials without acknowledging all the assistance and support offered by colleagues and friends near and far.

When I heard that I got tenure, I said thanks to people as I let them know about it. But it didn’t quite seem enough. While there is room in articles to acknowledge others’ contributions, they tend to be focused on the specific actions related to that particular piece. Book acknowledgements can be a bit more inclusive, but even there, it is not clear how wide a net one would cast.

When talking to one of my colleagues about this, he suggested that the appropriate thanks is to pay it forward by mentoring future generations. That is a nice and generous idea and I’m happy to do it. Nonetheless, I still wish there was a way for the many people to get credit. This is part of all that invisible work in academia (and probably many other professions) that never shows up on CVs. Thanks to those who engage in it, it means a lot!

[UPDATE: An email from Director of Strategic Communication at Amazon, Craig Berman states the following (quoted with permission), which I thought was important to note here: “Amazon is a marketplace of many sellers, and while sellers are free to set their own prices for items they list, every customer pays the same for every individual offer.” I’m happy to hear that there is no price discrimination per se. Prime Shipping is a shady product though and I don’t recommend enrolling in it.]

Amazon is quoting me a higher price than it’s quoting my friend, on the same product. I knew this was theoretically possible, of course, but I didn’t realize online stores engaged in these practices much these days. After all, is it really worth annoying customers when they find out? After a bit of experimentation, it seems to me that what’s going on here is that those with a Prime membership are being quoted a higher price. Ouch. So the thanks I get for paying for the Prime membership and shopping at Amazon a lot is higher prices. No thank you. [click to continue…]

On Tuesday, I had the opportunity to go to DC and meet with some people on the Presidential Transition Team. I got to talk about my research on Internet uses and skills with people who seemed genuinely interested in what we know about this topic and how it might apply to future initiatives. It was an exciting experience.

It is great to see an administration again that cares about information technologies (see related comments in Obama’s weekly address from two weeks ago). However, it’s important to realize that achieving a knowledgeable Internet citizenry is not simply a technological problem and thus cannot be resolved by a solely technical solution. There is plenty of research now that shows how mere access to the Internet does not level the playing field when it comes to achieving universal Internet literacy. Rather, coupling technical access with education about uses is an important part of the puzzle. Of course, even if one accepts all this, solutions are far from obvious. I got lots of really good questions from the people in the room and was thrilled by the conversation.

Afterward, walking down the hall, I saw on the doors the names of lots of people who have been in the news recently. It’s wonderful and encouraging to see the number of smart and knowledgeable people on this team.

I’m embarrassed to note that seemingly we’ve never written about Global Voices on CT before. It’s a global citizens’ media project that focuses on areas of the world often ignored by mainstream media in the US and Europe. Just recently, I was talking to its co-founder Ethan Zuckerman about how at times of sudden events in otherwise less covered areas, interest in the site peaks. This may be one of those times. They are posting and linking to information about the events in Mumbai that may be of interest to those looking for additional resources.

Almost a week after the elections, I continue to be obsessed with related news reading up on people involved with the campaign and the transition team as well as the myriad of interesting opinion pieces. I’ve also found some interesting visuals. Here are links to a few in case you haven’t seen them yet:

• Election night for Obama and family through the lens of the Obama for America campaign photographer, David Katz. [thanks]
• A collection of newspaper front pages from November 5, 2008. [thanks]
• The Chicago Tribune’s collection of images from election night at Grant Park.

Are there any readers of Crooked Timber in either Budapest or Zürich who would be interested in meeting up in person? I’m on the road and it’s one of the rare occasions when I’m not simply in-and-out of a town. Budapest options are this weekend or Monday. Zürich options concern next week. Drop me a note if you’re interested and we can figure out specifics. (Email info on my Web site or send a note to my last name @gmail.com.) For those interested in Budapest, you can see some of my photos of the castle district here.

Unfortunately, I’ll be out of the country on Halloween this year, but seeing this house and yard over the weekend in the northern suburbs of Chicago sort of made up for it. (Click for links to the individual photos.)

I’m on my way to UC Irvine to participate with some very cool folks in a meeting called Public Spheres, Blogospheres hosted by UCI’s HumaniTech. I’m on a panel about Blogging and the Academy.

I suspect the question of whether or how junior faculty should blog will come up. While it’s a topic we’ve gone over numerous times around here and it may make some people yawn at this point, I believe it’s still worthy of discussion with some points that haven’t been considered sufficiently yet. More on that when I get around to organizing my thoughts about it (this conference would be a good opportunity for that, hah). Academics from different fields will be represented at this meeting, which may lead to different takes on the topic. I look forward to the conversations.

UPDATE (11/6/08): Podcasts of the sessions have now been posted, they are available here.