There’s an excellent story on the front page of the Boston Globe today, by Carolyn Johnson, about scientists who just go ahead and blab about their data before the village elders have given them permission.

Yay.

The article says:

Scientists who plunge into openness also risk giving a competing lab a leg up.

“Maybe somebody has discovered some interesting gene and doesn’t want to blab to the whole world about why it’s interesting,” said Michael Laub, an assistant professor of biology at MIT. He says his lab is not overly secretive, but does not post “all the gory details of what someone is working on, because I don’t want my grad students necessarily to be scooped by someone else.”

Laub is just saying what everyone knows.¹ But the fact that everyone knows it and we’re ok with it is a sign of the problem with the system: The system we want maximizes knowledge and innovation, but the system we have swerves in order to preserve credit for individuals. From the discovery of the shape of DNA to AIDS research, we’ve seen some of the problems with the competitive model of science. But we also routinely see the benefits, as scientists work overtime in order to get credit for a discovery.

And yet, the mix seems wrong. The competitive model made more sense when it was more difficult to share data anyway. The collaborative model is proving itself in unexpected places. It’s clear that a mixed model works — some competitive, some collaborative — but it’s not clear how far we can push the slider toward the collaborative side. My hunch, and my hope, is that it’s way further than we would have thought, especially since experience shows that the satisfaction of being recognized as a continuously generous member of a network can at least equal that of authors of intermittent, officially-sanctioned publications.

[Tags: science open_science collaboration ]

¹I’m totally guessing about his, but I suspect that Laub actually talked with Johnson, the reporter, mainly about the virtues of open science, but noted that his group doesn’t give away absolutely all of its data…and it was only the last part of the sentence that made it in. As I say, I’m totally making this up, but the quotation had that sort of ring to it.

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#8567 If iTunes — one of the least intuitive user interfaces around — isn’t transferring podcasts onto your iPod (which, except for the wheel, is a UI so badly designed that your first instincts are almost wrong):

1. Click on your iPod in the “Devices” section of iTunes

2. Click on the “Podcasts” tab in the window on the right. (See here for instructions and a screenshot.)

3. Click on “Sync”

4. Click on “Apply” in the bottom right.

5. Smite your forehead and say “D’oh!”

(I’m not proud of this. It just never occurred to me that syncing podcasts would be off by default. And I had always clicked through the very top level of the device, not recognizing it as a preference pane. Hence the self-inflicted D’oh!.)

#8568 If you are using Firefox and want to quickly scroll among the many, many, many tabs you’ve accumulated, install the add-on All In One Gestures and set the mouse wheel preference so that you can then:

1. Position your mouse cursor over any tab.

2. Spin the wheel away from you.

3. Watch the tabs fly by.

4. Spin the wheel towards you.

5. Watch the history of your tabs pass before your eyes.

4. Smite your forehead and say “D’oh!” [Tags: tips itunes firefox ]

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Here’s an animated explanation of how humans spread across the planet. (Thanks for the link, Greg!)

[Tags: science anthropology genetics ]

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Gene Koo and Eric Gordon are giving a Tuesday lunch talk on “Hub2: Creating Deliberative Publics through Virtual Worlds.” [I'm taking quick notes and will undoubtedly get some stuff wrong.]

Hub2 is a partnership with Boston (Harvard is sponsoring the project) to enhance the community participation process. It’d be good to have a platform for deliberative process. But land use discussions typically ahve their own technical jargon. And it can be hard to imagine what a place will be like when all you have is a 2D map. It’d be better to be working in 3D space, so you can see what t’d be like to move these trees over there, or widen the path, etc. Instead of having the community react — yes or no — to a design, why not have the community participate in the design?

Hub2 aims are providing a design process that is experiential, embodied, constructive. Hub2 heads towards “augmented deliberation”: Imagine, design, engage, activate (= IDEA). They’re using SecondLife for this. They hope citizens will use it as a design tool and come up with an affirmative vision of what they want. And because you can walk through the virtual space, you develop an informed opinion. Gene and Eric ask people to try out the space in various roles, e.g., a 33 yr old who walks her dog twice a day or as someone in a wheelchair.

The project has set up Boston Island in SecondLife and have the last name “bostonian.” They are using it for augmented deliberation about Harvard’s Honan Library Park development in north Allston, MA. Local residents get together, try out layouts, leave comments (in visual flags). Residents can access the site either at home or using the public access systems in the library; the libraries have Hub2 staff people there to help people with the system. (They have thought about the fact that they’re putting public records into a proprietary data format, but SL is the best choice.)

Over 60 teenagers have spent time on the system, along with about 30 other residents. That’s more than have participated in the traditional process.

Q: I’m glad you’re dealing with the digital divide issues. But this is a 1.2 acre park out of 350 that Harvard owns in Allston…
A: There will be more open spaces.

Q: Should we open this process up to the world?
A: It’s a local issue
A: Keeping it local builds consensus
A: Maybe. You’d want to make clear who is local and who isn’t. It might even help to defuse the situation in which the locals want a design that is impractical or reflects the needs of those who happened to have engaged in the process.

Q: Maybe you should be talking with SL about how to make the archives more open.
A: Yes. But our main goal is to improve the design process. [Someone on the irc chat points to a BBC piece on archiving virtual worlds.] [Tags: berkman secondlife boston harvard allston community_design ]

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Google is taking to the public in its lobbying of the FCC to make the “white space” available for wireless broadband. This is the space between designated channels. Right now, we use it as sort of bowling alley gutter bumpers between assigned frequencies, but given modern technology, we can make better use of it, if only we’re allowed to.

Google has a form for sending a message to the FCC, as well as some useful explanatory materials…

[Tags: fcc google spectrum white_space ]

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The Sunlight Foundation’s new site, Political Party Time, tracks the hundreds of parties being thrown at the two political conventions by fun-loving groups who are merely interested in celebrating democracy, folks such as the RIAA, AT&T, USTelecom, and Bank of America. [Tags: democracy sunlight lobbying conventions ]

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This could well be it. Of course, it may be fabricated, in which case, it’d be much less awfully funny, and funnily awful.

[Tags: humor media ]

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From Fred Stutzman comes Freedom. Here’s how he describes it:

Freedom is an application that disables wireless and ethernet networking on an Apple computer for up to three hours at a time. Freedom will free you from the distractions of the internet, allowing you time to code, write, or create. At the end of your selected offline period, Freedom re-enables your network, restoring everything as normal.

Freedom enforces freedom; a reboot is the only circumvention of the Freedom time limit you specify. The hassle of rebooting means you’re less likely to cheat, and you’ll be more productive. Not rebooting is why we bought Apple computers in the first place. When first getting used to Freedom, I suggest using the software for short periods of time.

Freedom is free, although Fred wouldn’t object if you chipped in $10.

And lest you think that Fred is a curmudgeon railing against the Net, check out his current post about his new course: Technologies of Friendship.

[Tags: ]

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I know that I’m right-left dyslexic, although “dyslexic” can’t be the right (left?) word, can it? But I recently realized I’m also up-down dyslexic: if you tell me to climb the hill, I won’t roll down it, but if you give me a trapezoidal plug and a trapezoidal socket — like the small end of a USB plug, or a VGA plug — I will try to insert it the wrong way up 50% of the time.

I assume this is tied into my extraordinarily low scores on tests for spatial ability. You know the test where they show you a cube unfolded into six squares, some with various shapes drawn on them, and then you’re supposed to figure out which squares are adjacent? Not only can’t I do that, I have trouble imagining them folded into a square. To me, they might be instructions for making an origami heron or the shadow cast by a fourth dimensional cube onto a two dimensional surface. Or Space Dominoes. I just can’t tell.

This, by the way, make me the world’s most annoying chess player. Obviously, I can’t picture the board ten moves ahead. But I also can’t picture the board one move ahead. So, I have to actually move my piece to see what it would look like, and, if you’ll let me, to judge your possible responses, I’ll move your pieces too.

My nightmare: I’m piloting a spaceship over the surface of the Empire’s Death Cube, which is folding randomly because of a warp in space-time, and my only hope is to fly to the left and insert the trapezoidal nose of my ship into the trapezoidal hole of the Death Cube’s energy portal. And then I look out my window and see that the Cube is made out of seafood.

Oh, did I mention that I’m afraid of seafood?

[Tags: dyslexia chess death_cube ]

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I just uploaded some photos of Lake Buel reflecting the sky, a theme I seem to like. (I’ve had vivid, overpowering dreams about sky and earth mirroring each other. I can’t convey the numinous feeling of them.) Anyway, here are a couple, and there are more at Flickr.

[Tags: photos lake lake_buel mirror sun ]

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Jay Rosen calls the special This American Life episode on the mortgage/credit crisis “probably the best work of explanatory journalism I have ever heard.” After listening to the podcast yesterday, I’ve got to agree. Not only do I now understand what happened, I think I’m actually going to remember the explanation.

Furthermore, the show focuses on the question that really bothers most of us: What the hell were we thinking? Didn’t we know that offering huge loans to anyone who walked in was unlikely to end well? The show interviews people at different levels in the process, and asks them exactly that.

It is a great piece of journalism. And be sure to read Jay’s piece about it, which is both insightful and wise.

[Tags: journalism media mortgage jay_rosen ]

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One of the mailing lists I’m on, filled with pro-Obama folks, is exercised because the Borders book chain is prominently featuring Corsi’s hatchet job. Someone on the list is now suggesting that we each call Borders and tell them they’ve lost a customer.

Not me.

Corsi’s book is at the front of the store because it’s a best seller. It’s possibly a best seller because of large buys by politically motivated groups, as opposed to being a grass roots best seller, but, a best seller is a best seller. Also, publishers pay book stores to place their books at the front. So, there’s no reason to think Borders is engaged in an anti-Obama conspiracy. It’s just business, as venal and corrupt as usual.

So, why not fight back via the marketplace by organizing a boycott of Borders, or less, drastically, simply letting Borders know that we may be skipping the next couple of visits?

Go ahead. I wouldn’t picket you if you did. But, personally, I’m reluctant to use economic threats to affect political debate. I didn’t like it when radio stations refused to play even non-political Dixie Chicks songs, I wouldn’t stay out of a 7/11 that put a McCain sign up in its window, and I’d be angry at Borders if the right wing had gotten the store to move “The Audacity of Hope” off the front shelves because “it’s blatant political pandering.”

We’re better off without these threats to the pocketbook.

(Except sometimes.) [Tags: ]

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The new edition of the Philosophical Lexicon is out. Compiled by Daniel Dennett and Asbjørn Steglich-Petersen, the PL compiles witty definitions of philosophers’ names. It focuses on recent philosophers, and it’s full of in jokes, almost all of which I don’t get.

Here are some samples:

rand, n. An angry tirade occasioned by mistaking philosophical disagreement for a personal attack and/or evidence of unspeakable moral corruption. “When I questioned his second premise, he flew into a rand.” Also, to attack or stigmatise through a rand. “When I defended socialised medicine, I was randed as a communist.”

turing, v. To travel from one point to another in simple, discrete steps, without actually knowing where one is going, or why. Hence, turing machine, n. A form of transportation that became popular with adventurous but aimless souls without motorcycles in the 1960s. Also tur, n. Such a travel; used especially metaphorically, “Searle’s lecture comprised a grand tur of every inconceivable position in the literature, and ironically “The latest book on connectionism is a real tur de feys”.

Isn’t this the sort of thing we’d do as a wiki these days? (BTW, I am listed as one of the many contributors, but it had to be 25 years ago and I don’t remember which is mine. Buber, maybe?)

[Tags: humor philosophy ]

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Craig Newmark weighs in on McCain’s scary Net agenda. (Craig says something very nice about me, but I’m linking to him anyway.) Craig’s written about this before. For example: Why a president needs to know tech.

And the cuticle on Harold Feld’s pinky knows more about the Net than all of McCain’s personal IM list does (because McCain doesn’t have one). Harold is, um, not impressed with McCain’s policy statement. To put it mildly. [Later: Part 2 of Harold's post is more substantive but not as funny.]

And that ol’ AT&T veteran and certified visionary — he was right and AT&T was wrong — David Isenberg is equally aghast.

Matt Stoller runs just the subheads of McCain’s policy statement. Hilarious. As Matt says, “Seriously, this is approaching Chuck Norris-level aggrandizement.”

[Later] Susan Crawford, professor of law and ICANN rep, and one of the most clear-headed policy people arounds thinks McCain’s policy is “wistful.”

It’s not just that McCain’s policy is ludicrously wrong about the source and nature of the Internet’s value. It’s that McCain might win, in which case, the Internet is going to get a whole lot worse for us in the US … and, given that high on McCain’s agenda is exporting US copyright totalitarianism, it’s bad news for the rest of the world, too.

(My take, along with some more links, is here It’s also up at HuffingtonPost.) [Tags: ]

More links at Sascha Meinroth’s place, including his own analysis.

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McCain has delivered his tech policy. And it’s clear: This election will determine whether America willfully becomes a third-world participant in the online economy and culture.

Much of the McCain policy is the expected stuff about public-private partnerships, educating the workforce, and providing incentives to reach under-served populations, etc. But he shows his hand on three issues:

1. He’s flat against Net neutrality.

2. He wants to see copyright extended and enforced more vigorously.

3. He thinks the current infrastructure only needs a couple of tweaks.

In sum, our Internet policy should be the same as our energy policy: Hand a key resource off to big corporations whose interests are fundamentally out of alignment with ours as citizens.

Let’s assume that this is not because McCain is a tool. Let’s assume he has the best intentions and that his policy accurately reflects how he thinks about the Internet.

To McCain, the Internet is all about business. It’s about people working and buying stuff. There is nothing — nothing — in his policy statement that acknowledges that maybe the Net is also a new way we citizens are connecting with one another. The phrase “free speech” does not show up in it. The term “democracy” does not show up in it. What’s the opposite of visionary?

Further, the Internet to McCain is a set of tubes for delivering content to an awaiting public. Jeez, does he not have anyone on staff under the age of 25 who could have clued him in on what the Net is about?

It gets worse. Even if we ignore the cultural, social, and democratic aspects of the Net, even if we consider the Net to be nothing but a way to move content to “consumers” (his word), McCain still gets it wrong. There’s nothing in his policy about encouraging the free flow of ideas. Instead, when McCain thinks about ideas, he thinks about how to increase the walls around them by cracking down on “pirates” and ensuring ” fair rewards to intellectual property” (which, technically speaking, I think isn’t even English). Ideas and culture are, to John McCain, business commodities. He totally misses the dramatic and startling success of the Web in generating new value via open access to ideas and cultural products.

The two candidates’ visions of the Internet could not be clearer. We can have a national LAN designed first and foremost to benefit business, and delivered to passive consumers for whom the Net is a type of cable TV. Or, we can have an Internet that is of the people, by the people, for the people.

Is it going to be our Internet or theirs?

Go Obama! [Tags: politics mccain technology_policy net_neutrality obama ]

Obama’s campaign’s response:

“Senator McCain’s technology plan doesn’t put Americans first—it is a rehash of tax breaks and giveaways to the big corporations and their lobbyists who advise the McCain campaign. This plan won’t do enough for hardworking Americans who are still waiting for competitive and affordable broadband service at their homes and businesses. It won’t do enough to ensure a free and open Internet that guarantees freedom of speech. It won’t do anything to ensure that we use technology to bring transparency to government and free Washington from the grip of lobbyists and special interests. Senator McCain’s plan would continue George Bush’s neglect of this critical sector and relegate America’s communications infrastructure to second-class status. That’s not acceptable,” said William Kennard, Former Chairman, Federal Communications Commission.

Someone just pointed me to the back and forth between Kevin Werbach and Michael Powell. Powell (former FCC head) drafted McCain’s tech policy, and Kevin (former FCC person) is an Obama supporter: 1 2

Harry Lewis at BlownToBits points to some of the flat-out contradictions in the McCain policy statement.

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Check out NaturalMotion’s show reel for Endorphin, software that models the human body without using motion capture devices. Given sufficiently fast processors and ample memory, it was just a matter of time before algorithms started out-doing putting tracing paper over matter.

[Tags: animation games ]

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The Guardian turns 9 photos of Bush at the Olympics into LOLcats. Funny!

[Tags: guardian lolcats bush ]

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Here’s a description of a panel, from an email from Alex Leavitt:

I, along with Tim Hwang (Harvard ‘08), Christina Xu (Harvard ‘09), and Diana Kimball (Harvard ‘09), have been formulating and developing plans throughout the summer for blogging groups, ROFLCon events, Free Culture activities, and SXSW panels.

The panel is titled “Blackboards or Backchannels: The Techno-Induced Classroom of Tomorrow” and its public description from the SXSW website follows:

The traditional classroom: obsolete? Teachers brandish chalk and Powerpoints at students who prefer debating on IRC rather than IRL. How do kids want technology integrated into the curriculum? The students speak out: to debate the potential for Wikis, backchannels, and social tech; interrogate some teachers; and argue for a r/evolution in teaching and learning.

Want to vote this panel onto the South by Southwest agenda? Go here…

(Alex archived the very interesting IRC backchannel chat during a Digital Natives discussion at Berkman@10.)

[Tags: education sxsw berkman alex_leavitt ]

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Stuart Shepard of Focus on the Family says he was aiming at being “mildly humorous” in his video asking “lots of people” to pray for “torrential” rain two minutes before Obama gives his outdoor acceptance speech, an aim I think Shepard achieved:

Apparently, this video has gotten some people bent out of shape, but I think we ought to take Shepard up on it. He says that even though some other people will be praying that the weather be clear and mild, “it’s not a contest.” Well, why not? Let’s have a good old-fashioned Ba’al smackdown. Let’s all put on our prayer caps*, and if there isn’t a torrential rain exactly two minutes before Obama speaks, we’ll know which side G-d is on. Then, both sides can stop campaigning as the voters dutifully ratify G-d’s will.

So, no torrential rain two minutes before Obama speaks means the Republicans have to acknowledge that the Creator prefers the Democrat. I’m ready to take that bet!

*Attire may vary by religion. Consult your local priest, rabbi, imam, or Tom Cruise for details. Children of G-d are ineligible to enter. In case of dispute, whether the rain was “torrential” will be decided by an interfaith panel of meteorologists. “Two minutes before” will be interpreted as meaning two minutes before Obama is standing on his network-assigned mark. Given G-d’s well-known punctuality, but factoring in the time it takes for rain to descend, there will be a 3 second grace period given, so to speak. In case of tie, the winner will be decided by seeing whether the Republican convention is hit with a plague of lobbyists.

[Tags: politics obama prayer humor ]

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Today’s English lesson: Are the people in this video geeks, nerds, or dorks?

Answer: They are geeks who are not ashamed of appearing dorky, if it will further their nerdy loves.

(Asbestos: I love this video. I think it ought to be shown right next to the Sesame Street song about how a bill becomes law.) [Tags: geeks nerds physics cern ]

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Terrific site that collects found photos (via Boingboing)

[Tags: photos found_photos ]

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I haven’t seen any of the Olympics because, well, I guess I don’t care enough. But I was taken by the version of this photo that ran in the Boston Globe today:

Do we really look this blood thirsty, or was this just some good-natured exuberance? Is it typical of American victory yells? Is it typical of other countries? Is it as scary as it looks?

[Tags: olympics phelps sportsmanship victory spahtaaaaaah ]

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On Thursday, we saw Shakespeare & Company’s Othello, in Lenox, Ma. We go frequently to see that company’s productions, but this one was special. In fact, I didn’t want it to have an intermission. The play is too relentless. You know where it’s going (especially if, ahem, you re-read it the day before) and you just want it to get there, to be over, to let you go. It is a play with no distractions and no subplots. (This production wisely dropped the Clown who has a couple of scenes of witty-but-now-incomprehensible Elizabethan badinage.) The plot ticks, but its engine is Othello’s prodigious will. As soon as Iago suggests that Othello shouldn’t suspect Desdemona without proof, you know that “proof” will be forthcoming, and Othello will be unstoppable. Only an intermission stands in his way.

The first half of the play is Iago’s. Iago knows everyone better than they know themselves. Including the audience. Iago is the one who addresses us directly. We may not be on his side, but we are in his world. The second half is Othello’s. But at the end, the play belongs to the women. Desdemona sees clearly. And her maiden (Iago’s wife), Emilia, is a fierce teller of truths and the bravest person on the stage. For all the talk of heroism and military feats, the only truly heroic act Shakespeare shows us is Emilia’s.

I thought the acting surpassed Shakespeare & Co.’s usual high standard. Michael Hammond was a believable Iago. He took Iago’s hatred as a given. Hammond instead convinced us that his power was based on his ability to see into those he used. John Douglas Thompson’s Othello I found harder to appreciate because of the extremes to which his character is pushed: He’s a hard-won general and a charming teller of tales who rapidly is reduced to writhing on the floor. But the depth of his feeling for the woman he kills was apparent. Merritt Janson was a perfect Desdemona. Kristin Wold was a fearsome, riveting Emilia. LeRoy McClain added immeasurably to the play by giving us a sympathetic, rounded Cassio. This was a hell of a production.

And, boy, could that Shakespeare guy write!

Michael Hammond blogs about Iago, painting him as the consummate actor. He adds:

I am also inclined to suspect that by presenting a character so ingenious in his ability to inspire and manipulate others, Shakespeare was offering those who mistrusted or even hated the theatre their worst nightmare.

Given Iago’s understanding of how the world looks to each character, perhaps he’s also the consummate playwright.

Here’s the NY Times’ review. He liked JThompson’s performance a bit more than I did — although he makes a good case and is probably right — and he failed to glow enough over Hammond’s Iago. And here’s the WSJ’s review. [Tags: shakespeare othello ]

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Especially given how much I love Elizabeth Edwards, I was very unhappy to hear that John Edwards is an adulterer. And that perforce makes him a liar, a vow-breaker, and, well, the rest depends on details and psychologies I don’t even want to know about. So, when he and Elizabeth decided to continue the campaign despite the resurgence of her illness, I simply don’t know if they were reconciled and mutually aware, or whether he was cynically and quite horribly using her.

I had been hoping that Edwards would still be able to serve his cause and country. If this were a “simple” adultery, then I’d say it shouldn’t keep us from benefiting from his potential public service, and I’d say the same if it were either Bush, either Clinton or the one and only George Washington. But, there’s the potential that this was a far more treacherous betrayal. (Disclosure: I was a volunteer adviser to the Edwards campaign on Net policy.) [Tags: politics john_edwards ]

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NBC tried to keep us Americans from seeing the Olympics in real time. So, how’s that working out for NBC? From the NYT:

NBC, which owns the exclusive rights to broadcast the Olympics in the United States, spent most of Friday trying to keep it that way.

NBC’s decision to delay broadcasting the opening ceremonies by 12 hours sent people across the country to their computers to poke holes in NBC’s technological wall — by finding newsfeeds on foreign broadcasters’ Web sites and by watching clips of the ceremonies on YouTube and other sites.

In response, NBC sent frantic requests to Web sites, asking them to take down the illicit clips and restrict authorized video to host countries. As the four-hour ceremony progressed, a game of digital whack-a-mole took place. Network executives tried to regulate leaks on the Web and shut down unauthorized video, while viewers deftly traded new links on blogs and on the Twitter site, redirecting one another to coverage from, say, Germany, or a site with a grainy Spanish-language video stream.

Temporal slapstick. It brings me odd joy. (Thanks to Jonathan Distler for the link.)

[Tags: olympics fort_business cluetrain ]

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Slow motion lightning

This explanation comes from Lenski the comments section of the Huffington Post where I found the video:

The search for a path proceeds through the treelike process that shows early in the video, finding the thin trails that are of somewhat lower resistance than clear air. Basically, a slightly higher density dust particles or raindrops allows enough current to flow to keep looking for more path. These tendrils of ionization last a little while, long enough to present a temptingly lower resistance for the main strike. It’s a race to see which one completes the circuit first.

Once a path between the sky and ground has been found, that’s when the action really kicks in: A surge of current flows through the slightly lower resistance pathway, blasting the outer electrons from the atoms of atmosphere in its path forming a plasma arc. The dramatically lower resistance causes it to continue passing the surge current. The electrons stripped from the atoms of the atmosphere are “free electrons” that carry the current until the lightning strike dissipates the electrical charge that started the whole process in the first place.

Here’s something that was only discovered recently: Lightning strikes are such high energy events that they produce x-rays! (It makes sense, once we think about it… The process of stripping electrons away from the atoms of the atmosphere and subsequent recovery of the electron shells as the event ends would produce electromagnetic radiation, at energy levels all the way into x-rays.)

[Tags: lightning ]

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The Media Research Hub has announced the availability of small-ish grants for advocacy groups working on media reform:

Small grants of up to $7,500 are available for research that supports public-interest efforts to change the media / telecommunications infrastructure, practices, policies or content. The grants are intended for short-term, advocacy-centered research, completable and usable by advocacy partners within the next 4-12 months. Recent small grants recipients were announced November 16, 2007. To be considered for the next round of small grants, please submit your proposal online by September 8, 2008.

Applicant Criteria

Proposals must be:

* Submitted by a US-based nonprofit advocacy, organizing or community group working on media and/or telecommunications issues. Groups with nonprofit fiscal sponsorship are also eligible. (A limited number of international non-profit organizations will be solicited by invitation only.)

* Structured as a partnership with an academic researcher based at a university, college or other research institution. This can include advanced graduate students.

There are no citizenship requirements for participants in these projects.

If you win, don’t forget my finder’s fee! :)

[Tags: grants media ]

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I got this from FlyClear.com, a quick-pass, iris-scan lane system at some airports. I don’t recall ever applying for membership. For one thing, there’s no FlyClear lane at my local airport. So, this big hunka hunka of steamin’ disclosure is disquieting:

Dear David Weinberger,

We take the protection of your privacy extremely seriously at Clear. That’s why we announced on Tuesday that a laptop from our office at the San Francisco Airport containing a small part of some applicants’ pre-enrollment information (but not Social Security numbers or credit card information) recently went missing. None of your information was in any way implicated. However, we were prepared to send those applicants and members who were affected the appropriate notice on Tuesday detailing that situation.

Before we could send out that notice, the laptop was recovered. And, we have determined from a preliminary investigation that no one logged into the computer from the time it went missing in the office until the time it was found. Therefore, no unauthorized person has obtained any personal information.

Again, none of y