Yes, Joe's got 24-hour emergency service in the Amarillo area!

Even online, there are many meta-journalist columns that attempt to offer added analysis and investigative reporting. One of the issues online is, of course, finding these sources, which are often more hidden than The Economist (a London magazine founded in 1843). Columbia Journalism Review (http://www.cjr.org/) is a rare institutional effort to do this.

While in-depth (or at least, accurate) analysis should be key to ALL journalism, many newspapers have strayed from, well, their local roots. Offering detailed analysis of local events (aka serving a niche market), as opposed to competing with major online blogs or The Economist, may breathe life into the printing press not to mention the newspaper website.

I entered my PhD in 2003 (remember, it was after a kinda big crash). I beat out 160 candidates to get one of seven slots. Since then, like many junior scholars, I've been watching faculty retirement stats for new jobs. Now, I'm finishing my dissertation, and here we are. I hope to either help create a cool start-up or pray for a faculty position in 2010.

Oddly, PhDComics is one thing that's kept us going.

Wow, it's like they've skipped Open Courseware all together-- way to kick some MIT ass. Sadly, don't think this is going to match YouTube edutainment favorite: Drunk History (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6V_DsL1x1uY)

Anthropologist Timothy Ingold said once that humans have an amazing ability to write themselves out of their own history. This post kinda shows that.

We should see some new commercials soon:

"I'm the Emperor...And I'm Darth Vader"

We're both evil, but one of us is ugly, while the other is shiny and black (for a premium!)

What a load of crap. How much did pets.com have in their war chest back in the day? How far did that get them?

Massive "startups" vs the small agile ones are like the dinosaurs vs the rodents. Who survived and thrived after the meteor hit?

Wow! comparing Palin to Chester Allen Arthur, BURN!

While I don't know how Obama would come out ("qualified" or "unqualified") in a Lessig-style analysis (which is, more or less, just a rhetorical style), this talk shows some pitfalls of one-to-one comparison. One pitfall being that Lessig's Power Point format (something he's carried over from his Free Culture lectures) glosses over what one DID as Senator, Mayor, Secretary of War, etc. These are titles (just like Major, Congressperson, VP) but the eras and jobs have changed.

Also, in saying that Palin is "qualified" or "unqualified," Lessig (slyly, but brilliantly) does what he seems to rail against: classifying a political figure into a pass/no-pass binary through a series of soundbites.

This post shows how someone can use profiles to filter and experiment in Google Analytics, which is super cool. I love Analytics (sexy maps, pretty graphs, easy to access) but it's still important to know how to interpret and discuss the data beyond the Analytics page. I'm enamored with my Dashboard, but most non-techies (aka potential investors) don't care how many filters I have. Learning what you need from Analytics and how to explain that data to a broad audience is key. Metrics rock, but they need a context beyond the dashboard.

Success also can be measured in ways other than downloads. I don't think Google is trying to "corner the browser market" by getting everyone to switch to Chrome. Rather, this could be another Google attempt to manipulate the course of future web development. The fact that there's now an omnibar for Firefox (http://scalarmotion.wordpress.com/2008/09/17/omnibar-for-fir...) indicates Chrome's influential success.