Your cyber-IMproPRieties have hISTories

At this late date, someone seems to be talking sense about the IMproPRieTies of the history of property - and about the ancient history of "cyberspace" -- Ben Peters, TOWARD AN ANALOGY IN CYBER HISTORY: JUDEO-CHRISTIAN TRADITIONS OF TRANSGRESSION IN MATERIAL PROPERTY. Link.

the secret of social media marketing

secret #32590

March 29, 2009

I masturbated in the church bathroom this morning.

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"an entirely new frontier for television"

Through the wall of light, the fifth wall, the fake light, TwitLight breaks

Oh the humanities

Technology and changing habits have called into question the nature of the traditional humanities journal — a printed assembly of peer-reviewed articles, reviews, and notes and queries offered by subscription. "What we shared until recently was a sense that the academic journal appeared between covers as a deliberately constructed series of articles, sometimes on a common theme," Ms. Wheeler observed.

A journal started today, however, is likely to be online-only and open access [hanh?]. And more and more readers now discover bits and pieces of any journal's content — an article here, a book review there — through electronic databases and aggregators like

JStor, Project Muse, and Ebsco.

Editors of well-established humanities journals have mixed feelings about the changes.

More readers, more dollars: That makes editors happy. But they worry about how to carry the idea of a journal as an organized whole over into the digital world. "The journal itself becomes invisible to the end-user," Ms. Wheeler told her audience. Even as access to its content increases, "the identity of the journal is often lost."

"It's hard for me to imagine The Journal of American History becoming entirely digital anytime in the near future." — Edward T. Linenthal, editor

Times' mirror

I can't recall seeing a newspaper do what I'm about to describe, but why not?

Here's a Times story from Oct. 23, 1999:

A NEW FINANCIAL ERA: THE OVERVIEW; ACCORD REACHED ON LIFTING OF DEPRESSION-ERA BARRIERS AMONG FINANCIAL INDUSTRIES

The Clinton Administration and top Republican lawmakers reached an agreement early today to overhaul the financial system, repealing Depression-era laws that have restricted the banking, securities and insurance industries from expanding into one another's businesses.

The Times should run that story again. Verbatim, page 1. Make itself, its own understanding of that event, the news. Publish the analyses offered by people with a decade's hindsight. And keep this up until someone sorts out what exactly happened - not just the event, but the Times's coverage of it, and the understanding of that coverage then, and now.

Clarification

The tinygram problem and silly window syndrome are sometimes confused. The tinygram problem occurs when the window is almost empty. Silly window syndrome occurs when the window is almost full. #

The Friendly Islands

merci a La Vache Qui Lit pour TJ

Enquirarium at 153

The overdetermined relevance of Edward Liddy

Spitzer on AIG


Mr. Liddy, I failed to note, was a director at Goldman:

The Fed stepped in after JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Goldman Sachs Group Inc., which were brought in to help assess AIG, failed to come up with a solution, according to a person familiar with the talks. Liddy is currently on the board of Goldman, the company Henry Paulson ran as CEO before becoming the U.S. Treasury secretary in 2006.

Your phallocratic remains will be pickled, then lost

For centuries in China, the only men from outside the imperial family who were allowed into the Forbidden City's private quarters were castrated ones. They effectively swapped their reproductive organs for a hope of exclusive access to the emperor that made some into rich and influential politicians. link

Lessig clarifies his concerns

This is no time to play nice.

The rules of Capitalism were broken before they were made

"If our government were playing by the rules--which require shutting down banks with inadequate capital--many, if not most, banks would go out of business." Stiglitz

Outta everything

In keeping with the falling value of newspapers nationwide, McClatchy's estimated value of its share of The [Seattle] Times has been eroding steadily. McClatchy acquired the Times share when it bought Knight Ridder in June 2006. In 2006, McClatchy valued its Times investment at $102.2 million. At the end of 2007, the value had fallen to $19.3 million.



The McClatchy Co., which owns 49.5 percent of The Times, has again cut the value of its share of the Seattle newspaper company -- this time to nothing. link

Press, release

Open Access Week declared for 2009
Popular global event extended over one week, October 19 – 23

Washington, DC – March 5, 2009 – To accommodate widespread global interest in the movement toward Open Access to scholarly research results, October 19 – 23, 2009 will mark the first international Open Access Week. The now-annual event, expanded from one day to a full week, presents an opportunity to broaden awareness and understanding of Open Access to research, including access policies from all types of research funders, within the international higher education community and the general public.

Open Access Week builds on the momentum generated by the 120 campuses in 27 countries that celebrated Open Access Day in 2008. Event organizers SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing & Academic Resources Coalition), the Public Library of Science (PLoS), and Students for FreeCulture welcome key new contributors, who will help to enhance and expand the global reach of this popular event in 2009: eIFL.net (Electronic Information for Libraries), OASIS (the Open Access Scholarly Information Sourcebook); and the Open Access Directory (OAD).

“I’m participating in Open Access Week again this year because I want to shed light on the tremendous potential of Open Access,” said Allyson Mower, Scholarly Communications & Copyright Librarian for the University of Utah’s Marriott Library. “People searching for information usually consume whatever is readily available. Open Access ensures that quality information is at people’s fingertips.”

“eIFL.net works to make intellectual outputs of developing and transitional countries more visible and more easily accessible,” added Rima Kupryte, Director of eIFL.net. “We believe that Open Access contributes to improved education, teaching, and research, and accelerates innovations and economical developments in these countries. Open Access Week is a great opportunity to promote Open Access globally.”

This year’s program will highlight educational resources on Open Access that local hosts can use to customize their own programs to suit local audiences and time zones. OASIS will serve as the centerpiece of the 2009 program, delivering resources for every constituency and every awareness level. The Open Access Directory will again provide an index of participants on five continents, as well as their growing clearinghouse for all OA resources. Through the collaborative functionality of the two initiatives, OA videos, briefing papers, podcasts, slideshows, posters and other informative tools will be drawn from all over the Web to be highlighted during Open Access Week.

The organizers will also work with registrants to develop a variety of sample program tracks, such as “Administrators’ introduction to campus open-access policies and funds,” “OA 101,” and “Complying with the NIH public access policy” that take full advantage of available tools. Participants are invited to adapt these resources for local use, and to mark Open Access Week by hosting an event, distributing literature, blogging -- or even just wearing an Open Access t-shirt.

“After the success of last year’s Open Access Day, we’re delighted to be co-organizing the first ever Open Access Week with our fellow collaborators, again in conjunction with the anniversary of one of our flagship journals,” said Peter Jerram, CEO for the Public Library of Science. “We ask our supporters to celebrate the fifth anniversary of PLoS Medicine by spreading the word about Open Access and getting involved in the week.”

“There’s no more certain sign of the momentum behind Open Access to research than an annual, global celebration of this scale,” added Heather Joseph, Executive Director of SPARC. “Occasions like this are the best possible way to attract attention from busy faculty members and administrators, and to demonstrate the widespread appeal of Open Access. It’s SPARC’s pleasure to be working with our partners to realize the event once again this year.”

For more information about Open Access Week and to register, visit http://www.openaccessweek.org.

Mill for your thoughts

The above, via Winer, no less, seems somehow in keeping with this notice, or at least with the locus of the Tutor where I found it.

One has to admire the simplicity: 1 idea, 2 pages, $1 million.

Dick and Dave and Dan and Herb minus Dave (and Dick)

David Moffett, featured in these motley pages some time ago, has deleted himself from Fred: WSJ

Freddie Mac CEO Will Resign

Freddie Mac's chief executive officer, David Moffett, announced his resignation from the U.S. government-backed mortgage company just six months after being installed in that post by the company's regulator as part of a rescue operation.

The McLean, Va., company offered no immediate explanation for the resignation, effective March 13, but said that Mr. Moffett "indicated that he wants to return to a role in the financial services sector." A spokeswoman for Freddie said that the decision was Mr. Moffett's and that his resignation wasn't sought by the company's regulator, the Federal Housing Finance Agency.

Though Mr. Moffett's title is CEO, his job in many ways is more akin to that of a chief operating officer because the FHFA is running Freddie under a legal procedure known as conservatorship. As the conservator, the regulator assumes all the powers of the board and shareholders and seeks to restore the company to financial health.

A person close to Mr. Moffett said his decision partly reflected "frustration" with a job offering little freedom of maneuver. "He's a private sector guy," this person said.

Mr. Moffett is not anomalous:

In January alone, three of Fannie's most experienced investment managers -- Ramon de Castro, Paul Norris and Mike Lebowitz -- defected to other companies. Freddie recently lost Gary Kain, who was the head of its investments and capital markets operations before joining a private equity firm. Freddie has had only an acting chief financial officer since September.

Mr. Lockhart, the regulator, has argued that government ownership has gone well and that mortgage-market conditions would be much worse if it hadn't happened. Without government backing, he says, Fannie and Freddie "would have had to pull back dramatically from the market, which would have accelerated the downward spiral." When he was asked about the prospect that the federal government soon will be calling the shots at many more major financial institutions, though, Mr. Lockhart said in a recent interview: "I sure hope not."