So the thesis is done, and life can return to normal, whatever that is. There is one piece of major news that has been noticeably absent from my blog over the last 20+ days: A Ph.D. decision.

I am going to UC Irvine!

Those following my twitter feed already have heard the news, as well as peers at CCT and the AAMC, and everyone else who has suffered through my never-ending love affair with anteaters (kind of one of those jokes that has taken on a life of its own). However, I realized I need to throw something up here once professors at various universities (you know who you are) started writing me curious about where I had decided to go.

This was one of the hardest decisions I have ever made, but not for any of the trite reasons. After visiting programs I found myself wishing I could mash them up into one delicious mega-Starburst. I was also really upset at the prospect of not working with so many exciting classmates. “These are your colleagues!” my advisor, David Ribes, kindly told me during that fateful decision week.

So why Irvine? Surprisingly, not the weather. I am going to go work in medicine. Medicine? Yeah, that was my initial response as well.

UC Irvine’s Medical Center is in the process of overhauling all of their technology, including their electronic medical health records system (EMR). Yunan Chen and Gillian Hayes are doing a number of studies during this transition, and they kindly invited me to join them to pursue my interests in digital identity in a more institutionalized setting.

This could not be more perfect. My research has increasingly focused on the ways in which identity is categorized and institutionalized into things like software. At UCI I will actually get to sit down with developers and clinicians as they implement their system. It is a priceless opportunity. Needless to say, an EMR is a giant leap forward from Facebook and craigslist.

5 more years of details to follow, but for today, one last anteater:

I am a bit bleary eyed, but I am done.

I completely dropped off the face of the earth for the last month, but I am done!

Everything is signed, PDFs have been uploaded — I have finished my Master’s degree at Georgetown.

I owe you a blog post. It has been too long. My blog appears unkempt, more or less keeping pace with my bedroom.

I blame the thesis; nothing seems to exist beyond it. My mother called me today asking if I was going to send out graduation announcements.  I had to admit I had no idea when my graduation was. “May, right?”

So what are we missing?

• I owe you a review on that comic book based on Missed Connections. (good so far!)
• You might be wondering how my interview with craigslist founder Craig Newmark went. (great, but in none of the ways I anticipated.)
• I certainly owe my advisor more thesis writing. (umm…)

However, for the next couple of weeks, the dominant question is “Where will I be living next fall?” I am flying around the country visiting schools, and attempting to figure out (typically in 48 hours or less) where I would like to spend the next four years (roughly 34,944 hours, for you math types) of my life.

Where am I going?

(more…)

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…)

A new book has just been released by cartoonist Julia Wertz, entitled “I Saw You…: Comics Inspired by Real-Life Missed Connections“. Wertz gathered up some favorite Missed Connections and handed them to some of her favorite artists in order to give life to the anonymous posts anxiously hoping to be discovered online.

According to the NYT:

Ms. Wertz writes that she started reading Missed Connections not because she wanted to post an ad herself (oh yeah?) but because she was “intrigued” by the idea of “a subculture of people who feel they missed something great because they didn’t have the courage to speak up.”

I have always felt lucky studying Missed Connections. They are stories that tell themselves, and so I can only imagine how beautifully they must turn out once illustrated. Besides, this way I can justify reading some comics for my academic research! I have One-Clicked it, and will let you know how it is once it arrives next week.

(Thanks Barbara for the heads up!)

I have an article running on gnovis right now about privacy, Facebook, and its third-party partners. Facebook has a new system called “Facebook Connect” which is attempting to do a number of interesting things on the internet, but with the history of Beacon’s privacy debacle haunting Facebook’s reputation, it will be interesting to see if Facebook can expand into other services on the net.

This leaves me with the following question: What is the price of our privacy? Or, more to the point, when do we decide that our privacy is valuable? No one seems to mind the potential privacy issues surrounding social networking sites until something horrible like Beacon happens. So who is responsible for our privacy? And how can Facebook and its partners make sure that these mistakes don’t happen again?

Read more here >>
gnovis Journal – Facebook and the Price of Privacy

So my inauguration was great… but apparently I wasn’t the only one. This lovely Missed Connection (aka Some Jewish inauguration debauchery in craigslist form) floated my way when it popped up in the Washington D.C. channel.  Love in D.C. is, well, so D.C.

You: Jewish, attractive and drunk

Me: Not Jewish (Gentile), dashing, gazelle on the dance floor and drunk

In case you were as blacked out as I think you were, I feel as though I should reintroduce myself… (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.