Next Wednesday, craigslist founder Craig Newmark will be visiting Georgetown University. Given that my thesis examines craigslist extensively (with a particular focus on Missed Connections, of course), I have been given an incredible opportunity to interview Mr. Newmark. I am currently compiling a list of questions, but I wanted to let you do the same:

What would you ask the founder of craigslist?

Leave it in the comments, or twitter me. If the question is good, I am happy to get you an answer.

Update: For more information on the lecture, check out the event on Facebook. It is open to everyone, so if you are local, free up your calendar and come!

“Kittens, inspired by Kittens!” == instant Internet classic.

Sure this came out last fall, but I am obsessed. I can’t stop watching it. Perhaps this is what happens when we let children go wild on I Can Haz Cheeseburger. Let’s just hope I don’t go write a journal article about it.

Last night I got an acceptance letter to Michigan State University. <Little happy dance.> I know it is still early in the admissions process, but it is nice to have a firm yes from one of my top school choices.

With the prospect of moving quickly approaching, I have found myself imagining what life might be like at any of the seven schools to which I applied. Honestly, I have to admit that East Lansing (where MSU is located — about 1.5 hours west of Detroit) has been the greatest mystery. So for the last 24 hours or so, I have found myself browsing housing ads on craigslist (it is psychotically cheap).

However, as a gay man, there is an entire other set of social variables that I am trying figure out. (more…)

The photos, tweets, and video are pouring onto the web. You can literally refresh Flickr and see pages and pages of new photos. Parties, bars, and lots and lots of crowds on the mall.

There is very little I can say that hasn’t already been said more eloquently. My friend Sarah shared her experience freezing for joy on the mall (link here, if you are her friend on Facebook), Katie IMed me this morning to talk about seeing the parade and Katie Couric, and I had to debate whether my Anderson Cooper moment Sunday during the concert at the Lincoln Memorial was better or not.

I suppose the thing I would emphasize is the number of people. Walking along the mall… scratch that… baby stepping along the mall I was reminded of an interview on Marketplace during which an economist was talking about how our brains can’t handle large numbers: “We are really bad at understanding the difference between a billion and a trillion dollars.” Regardless how many people showed up to the mall yesterday, I felt very much like a dollar bill, smashed into a wallet that was trying to hold a billion dollars.

The National Mall is huge. The fact that people had a hard time getting on the mall boggles my mind. When I was training for the Marine Corps Marathon, I used to run laps around the National Mall late at night. A full lap going around the Lincoln Memorial, but not the Capitol Building (I didn’t care for the hill) is 4.5 miles. Anyone looking at pictures of the crowd should appreciate that pictures can never reflect the immensity of the crowd. (No peripheral view.)

As the gobs of photos Steve took will attest (here), getting off the mall was even harder. But once the crowds broke just enough that you could maintain a slow walk, we found ourselves talking to people on the street, sharing stories, and a kind of cold-numbed enthusiasm that, as one lady put it, would really be “helped by a drink.” (So we talked about wine bars in DC for the next 30 minutes as we walked a half-block.)

So we have a new president. I am not quite sure that I can claim that it has sunk in. Perhaps I need an episode of John Stewart first.

As young as I can remember, at the end of each year my father would talk about the “top ten”. Always a man for striving and measuring, my Dad would turn to the local newspaper and share what the Deseret News considered the most notable stories of the year. At some point my father started asking us to create our own top ten lists. This has since become a tradition in my family, but one that I have never shared here.

Between school and work, and all the extra commitments I masochistically piled on, this year I have had precious few moments to stop and catch my breath. When my sister demanded that I stop “for just thirty minutes!” and reflect, I was surprised at the list. So without any more explanation, my “Top Ten for 2008”:

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Okay, I’ll admit it. I’m a freak about typography. I love well used type. Okay, I’ll admit it. I am also a transportation freak. I love a beautifully designed transit system. While I’m confessing, I’ll admit it: I almost changed my undergraduate major to graphic design and urban planning. Maybe if they had had a joint program…

Well, today I got the closest thing: Paul Shaw’s AIGA article on the history of typography and the NYC subway system. Entitled The (Mostly) True Story of Helvetica and the New York City Subway, Shaw blends a beautiful history of fonts, signs, and the complicated birth of the modern NYC subway system.

There is a commonly held belief that Helvetica is the signage typeface of the New York City subway system, a belief reinforced by Helvetica, Gary Hustwit’s popular 2007 documentary about the typeface. But it is not true—or rather, it is only somewhat true. Helvetica is the official typeface of the MTA today, but it was not the typeface specified by Unimark International when it created a new signage system at the end of the 1960s. Why was Helvetica not chosen originally? What was chosen in its place? Why is Helvetica used now, and when did the changeover occur? To answer those questions this essay explores several important histories: of the New York City subway system, transportation signage in the 1960s, Unimark International and, of course, Helvetica.

It’s been a long day – you enjoy a treat. Read it here.

As frequent readers know, the New Media team at gnovis kicked off the academic year with a four part series on why we blog. The perspectives were each interesting and provocative, and certainly worth revisiting.

These types of belly-gazing blog posts are common around the web. However, following a link from Steve today, I was surprised to see this conversation in in the Atlantic as well.

Andrew Sullivan (of the Atlantic and on his blog The Daily Dish) has written a compelling piece that situates the act of writing a blog post next to more formal writing. I have been a fan of Andrew Sullivan’s writing since I first read Love Undetectable in high school, and was delighted to see that same prose here. Starting with antiquity and moving forward to Montaigne, he attempts to represent the very ethos of blogging:

To blog is therefore to let go of your writing in a way, to hold it at arm’s length, open it to scrutiny, allow it to float in the ether for a while, and to let others, as Montaigne did, pivot you toward relative truth. A blogger will notice this almost immediately upon starting. Some e-mailers, unsurprisingly, know more about a subject than the blogger does. They will send links, stories, and facts, challenging the blogger’s view of the world, sometimes outright refuting it, but more frequently adding context and nuance and complexity to an idea. The role of a blogger is not to defend against this but to embrace it. He is similar in this way to the host of a dinner party. He can provoke discussion or take a position, even passionately, but he also must create an atmosphere in which others want to participate.

While in the gnovis peice I argued that a personal obligation to participate in a community was my reason for blogging, I have to admit that it is a dynamic community that may constantly be reshaped by the items to which I can only hope I add “nuance and complexity”.

This is just rediculous. I was watching Colbert last night when Steven talked about a cat in Japan that had been appointed station manager. What next? Tourists, of course.

According to this post at Japan Probe:

Little Tama has proven to be incredibly popular, drawing tourists to Wakayama and generating healthy revenue for the Wakayama Electric Railway

Apparently Tama has made so much money that they even gave him an office. You’ve got to check this out:

Is there a dark side of email? I couple weeks ago I posted the following on Twitter:

Apparently the answer is yes.

Is there a solution? Brett sent me an email a couple days back. All it contained was a link to one of Google’s new projects: “Mail Goggles”

According to Gmail’s blog,

When you enable Mail Goggles, it will check that you’re really sure you want to send that late night Friday email. And what better way to check than by making you solve a few simple math problems after you click send to verify you’re in the right state of mind?

But as TechCrunch points out, it is far from fool-proof:

There are two problems with the product. First, I hate math. Second, if I want to send a drunken email, and all that’s standing between me and success are a few math problems, I’m gonna go find that calculator.

And of course what about Twitter, IM, or the infamous drunk Facebook wall posting? In the meantime Brett, I resent the insinuation that I am bad at math.

Also known as things I am a bit embarrassed to admit I haven’t gotten around to yet.

Back in 2005, when I first started coming to D.C. for business, I was a power-tourist. Each day I would finish with my work obligations around 3:30 and then book-it over to the Mall to get in a museum. This of course didn’t always work.

Funny story: One afternoon after having spent most of the previous night preparing for that day at work, my touristy dedication had me at the Hirshorn viewing art. Intrigued by the video exhibit downstairs, I walked in, sat down, and was happy to be off my feet. Next thing I knew a security guard was roughly poking me.

“Museum’s closed,” he said. Through the mix of exhaustion and confusion, I suddenly realized that this poking, so anachronistic in the moment, could only mean that I had fallen asleep. Asleep, in a suit, sitting on a bench in the dark. Lovely. Rushing past the guard, I quickly excused myself, still trying to reorient myself to the circumstances.

When I moved to D.C. I fully intended to spend every weekend at the Smithsonians. “One a week,” I told myself. I am sure many people have this ambition, and like many of the same, I am sure we never quite make it. Well, with the prospect of moving on for that Ph.D. I decided that to start this academic year I should make a list of all those things I have been meaning to do, but haven’t quite gotten around to. So without further ado, in no particular order, my top ten: (more…)