
Archive for January, 2009

Book cover contest (including $$ prize)

Friday, January 30th, 2009

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 and over at Crooked Timber 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. The subtitle “Solutions to Problems Most Social Scientists Pretend They Never Have” came from a suggestion on the CT thread submitted by reader Vivian. Many thanks to both! (In fact, many thanks to all who participated in those helpful threads 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.

links for 2009-01-30

Friday, January 30th, 2009

links for 2009-01-28

Wednesday, January 28th, 2009

links for 2009-01-26

Monday, January 26th, 2009

links for 2009-01-25

Sunday, January 25th, 2009
  • (NYTimes) "Mr. Obama said he was always happy to take calls for his chief of staff — a reference to an incident a few weeks ago when Mr. Hoyer called Mr. Emanuel, who was in the back of a car and claimed he was too busy to talk, so he handed the phone to Mr. Obama.

    In meetings, it is not uncommon for Mr. Obama and Mr. Emanuel to engage in teasing banter. One White House official recalls an exchange last week in which Mr. Obama said something to the effect of, “Well, I was going to do that, but I didn’t want Rahm to mope for a half-hour.”

links for 2009-01-22

Thursday, January 22nd, 2009

links for 2009-01-21

Wednesday, January 21st, 2009

links for 2009-01-20

Tuesday, January 20th, 2009

links for 2009-01-19

Monday, January 19th, 2009

links for 2009-01-16

Friday, January 16th, 2009

links for 2009-01-15

Thursday, January 15th, 2009

Turtle

Sunday, January 11th, 2009

As some of you know, I’m a huge turtle fan. I just came across this video that should explain why one might become a turtle fan. Although the ones I had when I was little weren’t of this variety, they were this size. Too cute for words.



links for 2009-01-11

Sunday, January 11th, 2009

links for 2009-01-10

Saturday, January 10th, 2009

links for 2009-01-09

Friday, January 9th, 2009

links for 2009-01-08

Thursday, January 8th, 2009

Gas shortage in Europe

Wednesday, January 7th, 2009

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.)

links for 2009-01-07

Wednesday, January 7th, 2009

This is a first

Tuesday, January 6th, 2009

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.

links for 2009-01-05

Monday, January 5th, 2009
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