[This on CT. Worth checking out for comments.]

Some physicists have come out with a paper on the Eurovision song contest. Of course, we at CT like to be ahead of the curve and thanks to Kieran’s ingenuity reported similar findings over a year ago. So much for this being “new research”.

There has been much excitement about and focus on social networks in the past few years ranging from social networking sites to several high-profile books on the topic.

Interestingly, much of the buzz about recent work covers research by physicists. It’s curious how physicists have expanded their research agenda to cover social phenomena. I thought their realm was the physical world. Of course, since social phenomena are extremely complex to study, as a social scientist, I certainly welcome the extra efforts put into this field of inquiry.

What is less welcomed is watching people reinvent the wheel. Sure, partly it’s an ego thing. But more importantly, it’s unfortunate if the overall goal is scientific progress. Much of the recent work in this area by physicists has completely ignored decades worth of work by social scientists. If we really do live in such a networked world where information is so easy to access, how have these researchers managed to miss all the existing relevant scholarship? Recently Kieran pointed me to an informative graph published by Lin Freeman in his recent book on The Development of Social Network Analysis:

People whose overall work focuses on social networks are represented by white dots, physicists by black ones, others by grey circles. (Click for a larger version of the image.) As is clear on the image, the worlds exist in isolation from each other. It would be interesting to see year-of-publication attached to the nodes to see the progression of work.

I have been meaning to write about all of this for a while, but John Scott from the Univ. Essex addressed these issues quite well in some notes he sent to INSNA‘s SOCNET mailing list a few months ago so I will just reproduce those here. (I do so with permission.)

Read the rest of this entry »

I spent last weekend at Dartmouth participating and giving a talk at the Cyber-Disciplinary Conference hosted by the Center for the Humanities. Panelists explored topics on how digital technologies are influencing the political process, concerns about privacy and surveillance and how the humanities can contribute to the study of culture in a digital age.

Kudos to Mark Williams for organizing and hosting a great meeting! In addition to bringing together a diverse group of interesting people, Mark also did an exceptional job with the various logistics of the conference. The panels were well spaced out and there was always plenty of time for discussion. We also had several occasions to socialize and continue conversations in more informal settings.

You can see a list of participants here. I have also posted some photos.

I have started a new blog.. haha, because I don’t have enough online endeavors already.:-) It is for my research group. In addition to covering research updates, we will also post general IT-related news items. That’s the plan for now. It’s called the Web Use Project Blog. We cover more than “Web use” in a strict sense, but that name still works for much of my work and for lack of a better name I will continue to use it for now.

From the APSA:

“The American Political Science Association, through action by its Council and its Committee on Professional Ethics, Rights, and Freedoms, supports the views expressed in the May 3, 2005 statement by the AAUP against academic boycotts. We join in condemning the resolutions of the AUT that damage academic freedom and we call for their repeal.”

I am waiting for the American Sociological Association to follow with a similar statement. According to Jeff Weintraub, the ASA Council has taken the matter under consideration, but no outcome so far.

Northwestern will be hosting Princeton for the NCAA Women’s Lacrosse quarterfinals this weekend. The game will be played right outside my office this Sunday at 1pm. The only glitch for me is that I’m at Dartmouth this weekend so I’ll miss it. Maybe it’s just as well, I probably wouldn’t know whom to cheer on (both teams?!). And I’m not sorry I’m at Dartmouth, I’m participating in a interesting conference.

UPDATE: NU beats Princeton 8-6 and proceeds to the semifinals.

For some neat images, check out the Art of Science online exhibition hosted at Princeton. [thanks]

Jeff Weintraub has posted a petition calling on all academic and scholarly associations to join the AAUP in condemning the boycott of Israeli universities and academics. The American Sociological Association and the American Political Science Association are singled out as associations that should endorse the AAUP’s statement. You can add your signature to the petition here.

Yom Hashoah – Holocaust Remembrance Day – was just a few days ago. I thought I would post a note about one of the most difficult films I have ever seen: Spielberg’s “The Last Days”. It documents the final stages of the war when it was clear that Hitler was going to lose yet the Nazis did all that they could to continue to kill as many Jews as possible managing to annihilate over 400,000 Hungarian Jews in just two months. The movie looks at the lives of five Hungarian Jews who escaped to the U.S. and revisits the locations of their past with them. One of the people featured is California Congressman Tom Lantos. The movie is very effective. Although it is impossible to understand fully what these people experienced, this film brings you very close to the events. I did have one problem with it though. It completely ignores the plight of the thousands who returned after the war and had to start their lives over in the country that had taken everything away from them. I am surprised that the movie is rated PG13. Some of the images are among the most disturbing ones I have ever seen, certainly not for the faint of heart.

For some more personal thoughts on Yom Hashoah, check out this post over at Is That Legal?. (Be forewarned: difficult images.)

Jeff Weintraub (via Normblog) writes a post I have been meaning to write forever. It relates to why I don’t donate [1] to the Red Cross: the International Federation’s refusal to grant the Israeli branch – Magen David Adom – full membership. The post is motivated by this editorial in The New York Times. The author of the editorial explains:

The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies includes Red Cross organizations from North Korea, Iran and Cuba, but not from Israel. The reason it gives is that the corresponding Israeli society, Magen David Adom, uses the Jewish star as its emblem and will not adopt the red cross or red crescent, emblems that are recognized by the Geneva Conventions and the international Red Cross movement. Understandably, the Israelis do not want to adopt either of these emblems because they are heavy with religious meaning.

It seems like the issue is all about symbols. But as Jeff Weintraub notes, the opposition to admit the Israeli branch comes from particular countries and reflects more politics than a conflict over images.

Opposition by Red Crescent branches from Islamic countries, including but not restricted to the Arab world, has always been the decisive factor preventing the inclusion of Israel. It is now more than a half-century since the creation of Israel, and it is time for these countries to come to terms with Israel’s existence – not to endorse Israel’s policies, or even necessarily to make peace with Israel (if that seems too radical), but just to accept its existence. If they can’t bring themselves to do this, then at least the international Red Cross/Red Crescent organization should do so.

The NYTimes editorial ends by explaining why it is ironic and troubling for the actions of an organization such as the ICRC to be so politically motivated:

Despite all the talk of emblems, it is politics that have impeded Israel’s entry. That situation puts the Red Cross movement in an unfortunate position. The International Committee of the Red Cross, the arm of the movement that works in conflict zones and visits prisoners, often finds itself urging nations to put politics aside and do the right thing, such as in its current work on behalf of the detainees at the American prison in Guantánamo Bay. It will be in a better position to make these moral appeals when it can show that it is part of a movement that does what is right, rather than what is politically expedient, when it comes to running its own shop.

1. Of course, my actions may well be unfair to the American Red Cross given that it has tried to pressure the International Red Cross to ending its boycott of the Israeli organization. Nonetheless, there are enough other organizations in need of donations that I will continue to channel my support away from ones with strong ties to such overt anti-Israel stances.

This just came through on Drago Radev’s IList:

I was visiting a government office recently and I noticed the following sign at the entrance:

I don’t drink coffee so a store like Starbucks has much less appeal to me than to many others. I am also not fooled by most of their pastries. They tend to look good, but usually do not measure up in taste. (I have fallen for the looks enough times now to know better.)

There is one exception, however: the Starbucks Espresso Brownie Bar. Unfortunately, in the past few months I have noticed that they have added fudge on top. It is a really bad innovation (if you can even call it that). They have pretty much ruined an extremely good pastry. Yes, I can get dramatic when it comes to chocolate. I don’t like people messing with a good chocolate product.

It turns out that you can still get the fudgeless type in other markets. During my recent travels I have noticed them at various airports. But the store on my block only has the fudge type.

Maybe introducing the new version in some markets is their way of experimenting to see if the change holds up. If you’d like to join me in saving a perfectly good pastry then please send the company a note by filling out this form on their Web site.

I was reading this article in Wired when I came upon the claim that “Google: Accounts for almost four out of five internet searches (which includes sites that license Google’s search technology), and 75 percent of all referrals to websites.” No references are offered for these figures. The rest of the piece is filled with other supposed facts without one link to or mention of a source.

Having followed the search engine market for a while the numbers in the quote above sound suspicious to me. I have never seen figures suggesting that Google (with or without affiliates) accounts for 80 percent of all searches. I contacted the author for his sources. To his credit, he got back to me very promptly. However, he did not point me to a source that can verify the information. (I do not quote from personal communication in public unless I indicated to the author that I would – which I did not – so I will not give you his exact words, but there is no source with the above figure that I can pass on to you or a collection of sources whose aggregated information leads to the above number.)

Newspaper and magazine articles do not require citations so unless the source is mentioned in the text as part of the article (e.g. “a study by the Pew Internet and American Life Project found…”) then the reader has no way of verifying the information (unless the reader decides to contact the author and the author responds). In academic writing, it is well understood that you have to cite your sources whether you are referencing ideas or specific facts. I realize that this may be tedious to do on the limited pages of newspapers and magazines. However, it seems that in online publications there should be less of a constraint to cite sources. If the reporter did his or her job and looked up relevant references for an article then why not link to them? Sure, if these are proprietary sources then that may be difficult. But I am sure that is not always the case. Yet we rarely see references to original sources in traditional newspaper and magazine pieces.

Now that the above article has appeared in Wired with the mentioned numbers stated as supposed fact, future writers (of blogs, newspaper articles, academic papers or what have you) can simply cite the Wired piece as the source of these figures and be done with it. And then we will have an unverified (and highly unlikely) figure taking on a life of its own.

PS. It is a whole other issue to figure out what it really means that a search engine accounts for x% of all searches. That may still just mean y% of all users (where y is a much smaller number than x). You can read more about this here. It would take a whole other post to get into why this may also be relevant here. I’ll leave that for another time.

I am happy to report that the Lansing, Michigan airport has free wireless.

I just finished a visit at the Quello Center at Michigan State. It was a great visit, the Center seems to be thriving. Also of note is that its Director Steven Wildman and Executive Director Johannes Bauer have assumed the editorship of the Journal of Media Economics with Stephen Lacy also of Michigan State.

It’s that time of year again when the Passover page on my Web site starts attracting lots of visitors. A few years ago I compiled a feminist humanist modern version Haggadah for Passover as the traditional ones I could find did not meet my needs. I would have preferred to just grab one from a Web site, but none provided the type I was seeking. Once compiled, I figured others may find it helpful as well so I decided to post it. Feel free to grab a copy if it is of interest. It contains no references to a higher power, it includes an orange on the Seder plate, it is inclusive in language to both Jews and non-Jews and it refers to contemporary plagues such as hunger, war and racism. It is certainly not meant to offend. It is meant to offer people an alternative that better aligns with their beliefs and concerns about the world. (The Web page does not contain a Creative Commons license because I myself grabbed most of the material from elsewhere so it’s not really up to me to make a decision on that. I credit the sources on the document and include links to their Web sites. )

A fellow user of the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) has created a wonderful hack for Google Maps using Greasemonkey. By installing the script in Firefox, it is now possible to get addresses to overlay on the CTA system map. This was a feature seriously lacking on the Transit Authority’s own site and has caused many frustrations for me in the past. This is an awesome feature. [thanks]

Here are some step-by-step instructions on how to get this to work.

Using the Firefox browser go to http://greasemonkey.mozdev.org/.

There’s a link called “Click Here to Install Greasemonkey” – click on that. Be sure you’re letting Firefox accept downloads. (If you are not then a warning message will come up right below the location bar of the browser letting you know and instructing you to click on a button to allow downloads from that site.)

Next, go to http://www.holovaty.com/code/firefox/greasemonkey/cta_google_maps.user.js
Once you’re on that page (it’ll just be script) then under the Tools menu of Firefox choose Install User Script.

That’s it. Next time when you go to http://maps.google.com/maps you’ll see a new link on the page: CTA map. You can click on it whenever you want to view your address on the CTA map.

I exchanged a few emails with Geeta Dayal a couple of weeks ago about academic blogging. She now has a piece out on the subject in the Village Voice. There is an additional document with some links to an assortment of academic blogs. U. of C. blogger Sean Carroll is quoted in the article right before my comments. We report on similar experiences regarding how we approach our blogging. We both mention how we take considerably more care in what we make public on our blogs compared to what we may mention to someone in passing. This may seem obvious, but reading some blogs I sometimes wonder how much thought goes into some people’s writing. (Then again, you may still be wondering about that even on this blog.) U. of C. blogger Dan Drezner not only gets a listing on The Guide to Blogodemia page, but also this nice comment: “Politics blogosphere-wise, he’s one of the heaviest hitters.” Right on.

The article was helpful in reminding me about the number of science bloggers out there. Although their numbers may be smaller than those among social scientists and legal scholars, they definitely make their mark on the blogosphere as well.

Before I link to yet another advertisement for your amusement, I thought it was worth noting the interesting twist in some of us actually seeking out and making conscious decisions to view ads. Aren’t consumers supposed to hate advertisements? Isn’t the great fear about TiVo and similar devices that audiences skip over all the ads? That may be the case if the commercials are horrible, which many of them are. But the fact that people voluntarily visit sites that feature ads suggests that there is room for advertisements in our world. They just need to be good enough to capture our attention. Remember the Honda commercial called Cog? Talk about creative. I personally liked the Get Perpendicular Hitachi flash movie to which I posted a link yesterday (although that may be a bit too geeky for some). The Ad Forum hosts thousands of ads from across the world (although only a small fraction seem to be freely accessible). Again, some of them are creative enough that people will voluntarily go to the site to check them out. Here are some recent popular ones: Frogger and The Banana. So dear advertisers, instead of getting upset about new technologies how about getting creative?

UPDATE: I had also meant to post a link to the video depicting the shot made by Tiger Woods the other day. If you haven’t seen it yet, you’ll understand the connection to this post once you view it.

The Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) is facing some major budget crises and has been contemplating various ways to deal with it. This week, the CTA decided to propose a plan that would cut dozens of bus routes AND the Evanston Purple Line express that runs during rush hours on weekdays. This would be extremely unfortunate for those of us in Evanston who use the Purple express.. and pretty much anyone between us and our destinations. I suspect those of us who have the alternative of getting into our cars will opt to do so. This will cause increases in traffic.. obviously not just in Evanston but to and from our destinations as well. It will be especially unfortunate for parking at Northwestern, which is already in a bad state. I foresee more and more people deciding to drive to work instead of taking the El. Overall, the environment won’t thank us for these changes either.

One of the most shocking parts of all this is that the one area in which the CTA decided to recommend no changes is charges to tourists! That is one of the most likely populations to go along with whatever changes are implemented so why leave them out of the plans?

By this time in the week most people are ready for a break (that’s probably why you’re checking out blogs in the first place, right?:). Here is an amusing link (in that geeky sort of way at least:).

• Get Perpendicular! (you’ll want to check this out when you can have the sound turned on)

Now that Meetup has decided to start charging for its services, I wonder if Upcoming.org is going to take off. It seems like a promising service and many new features are being added these days. It’s not clear why it’s been so slow to spread. It seems it’s still lacking the necessary critical mass. It’ll be interesting to see how the recent additions of features to it and the changes at Meetup may influence its future.