Tree of Knowledge

This research position would be very interesting:
Research Assistant positions with The Cooperation Research Group: Case Studies in Commons-Based Peer Production

Project Description:

What makes Wikipedia or digg succeed?  What makes other collaborative efforts fail?  Peer production—large scale cooperation among human participants—has become an increasingly important mechanism for the creation of information, knowledge, and culture.  Civil society organizations […]

At risk of going all Obama, all the time at this blog, this piece at Technology Review on Austan Goolsbee, Obama’s chief economic advisor was an interesting read:
(Goolsbee) is part of a generation of economists who have focused on the Internet, network effects, behavioral economics, and neuroeconomics. Whether Obama wins or loses, this is the […]

Another excellent article on Obama’s Online Outreach group to make you drool, this time from WaPo.
Highlights:
A year and a half ago, Rospars led a group of 11. It’s easily double that now, with staffers taping signs on the back of their furniture that read, “This is not an extra chair! This chair belongs to . […]

Doorstops with Peter Costello are becoming more and more like conversations with the Cheshire Cat:

Cheshire Cat: If I were looking for a white rabbit, I’d ask the Mad Hatter. Alice: The Mad Hatter? Oh, no no no… Cheshire Cat: Or, you could ask the March Hare, in that direction. Alice: Oh, thank you. I think […]

Gary Langer, (US) ABC News polling guru has interesting things to say about Presidential Nomination Convention polling bounces:

Convention bounces became apparent in 1968 (election polling was too infrequent for reliable conclusions before then), but the focus owes much to Bill Clinton and the Mother of All Bounces: He soared from a dead heat against incumbent […]

Making the greatest foreign policy mistake in the last thirty years would have this effect I guess:

THE Coalition lost its traditional position as the party of choice on defence and security last year, helping Labor win the election, a new study reveals.

..

Report author Ian McAllister said the coalition held a decisive lead over Labor on […]

Those looking for a more considered political response to the Russo-Georgian conflict than John McCain’s bellicose rhetoric need look no further than UK Foreign Minister, David Miliband’s Op-Ed in The Times. Here’s a taste:

At the emergency Nato foreign ministers meeting today I will argue for political and practical support for Georgia. Politically we need to […]

A Tip/Wag for the BBC’s new linking policy.

A tip of the hat for the fact that the BBC will be introducing a form of in text linking and will be providing readers with links to background material from around the web including user generated content sites like Youtube, Flickr and Wikipedia.

However, a wag of the […]

(Some) media executives have realised that online streaming of sports events doesn’t cannibalise broadcast audiences because 99% of people prefer to watch sports on the big screen:

“We’ve learned that wherever you are, you watch on the biggest screen you can,” Mr. Bowman said.

To be sure, CBS came to this conclusion slowly. In past years, the […]

If there’s one thing we’ve learnt from the past 8 years, it’s that dumb candidates make bad Presidents. Which means people should be worried about this (via Scatterplot):

That John McCain graduated 894 out of 899 students from the Naval Academy. That’s in the bottom 0.6%. Which is shocking to me. Especially since class rank takes […]