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By employing ultrafast lasers to rotate the spin of an individual electron, Stanford researchers have come one step closer to fulfilling the promise of quantum computing. They announced their success in a paper published in the journal 'Nature'.

Eighty-seven boxes of files from the Supreme Court terms between 1969 and 1974, along with the notebooks and a journal William Rehnquist kept while studying at Stanford Law School, were opened Monday, Nov. 17 at the Hoover Institution.

Stanford professors discuss the practice, ethics and structure of Cardinal sports.

Susan Maher retired from her position as associate registrar for the university from on Friday, Nov. 14 after more than 30 years of service.

Venture capitalist Vinod Khosla warned that the world cannot simply conserve its way out of the current environmental crisis and must instead create technology alternatives that are both affordable and widely accepted by consumers across the globe.

I’ve lately been rereading some of my favorite short stories, from a collection by Richard Yates called “Eleven Kinds of Loneliness.” In “No Pain Whatsoever,” Myra visits her husband Harry, who has been quarantined in a tuberculosis ward for more than four years. Normally, Myra takes the bus to visit Harry, but on this Sunday she has been driven by three friends, including Jack, her lover, whose wandering hands in the backseat of the car mortify Myra’s sense of decency and propriety. Inside the hospital, thin and haggard, Harry is nonetheless in high spirits. One of his old…

Your brother was crying, his cat euthanized and his father paralyzed by the river inside of him–– in the water that seeped into the basement that March we saw the temper of the plains, we watched it like pioneers–– the fish your mother would make, entire, head and everything, like it was before America, before we ate meat on Fridays–– I was eating lemon slices from a bowl taking one bite then tossing the rest away imagining this must be the height of opulence–– sitting across from me, you touched my foot with yours at dinner, between us on the table we had the flesh of Christ,…

“Once out of nature I shall never take My bodily form from any natural thing, But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make Of hammered gold and gold enamelling” -W.B. Yeats, Sailing to Byzantium Slate drape of your dress, cradling Memory of stone, of quarries spent, Granite chiseled to mold The pleat in your skirt. You blink, come to life, Bow to a child’s twisted curls And serenely incline your Head at the coin. But the silver veneer At the base of your neck is cracked. And cotton betrays your Dress from its stony home. The next day you are gone. In your stead is a loud young man Pulling…

We drifted from dusty velvet seats, ghosted black floors, crawls and stretches skyward while spots overhead wept fluorescent. Impatient we dusted off our damp spandex. You chided how we flaunted our young pudge. My first shudder on the stage in your big hands, my first kiss in the greenroom. I felt through your leotard. Sex, you assured us, was not hold your head carefully in my hands pulse in your eyelids, in your bleating chest. Unwinding that taut curtain rope, your plaster mask laughed, my mask hated that youth you conjured from suicide and seduction. We all had faces scratched in our…

Oh, bless be Your perfect, divine greatness—that once again failed to notice me. I sat and watched it all this morning, with Your irresistible graces yet to cloak me in that sacred warmth of rebirth. When do I get to be chosen? When do I get to hear Your voice? During today’s worship, Abigail Johnson made sure we all knew where she belongs in Your holy heart. She stood clutching the collar of her cape, placed her hand to her brow, and moaned in a manner of a cow needing to be milked. She looked up at Pastor Baldwin and exclaimed that she had been reborn in the Lord’s glory, felt His…

Attending the American Anthropological Association meeting at the San Francisco Hilton & Towers, November 20-23? Please come by our booth—#416/418 in the exhibit hall! Stanford University Press will be holding a special OVERSTOCK SALE throughout the exhibit, and a MEET-THE-EDITOR RECEPTION on Friday afternoon at 3:00.  See our new books; find classic SUP Anthropology and related titles for only $5 (paper) and $10 (cloth); and meet our new Anthropology Editor,  Jennifer Helé. We look forward to seeing you there.    

Bruce Fuller, author of Standardized Childhood: The Political and Cultural Struggle Over Early Education and professor of Education and Public Policy at UC Berkeley, has been contributing to the New York Times' Campaign Stops: Strong Opinions on the 2008 Election blog. Fuller weighs in on topics such as John McCain's misconceptions regarding school vouchers and the bilingual education debate. Most recently he wrote a November 8 blog entry that provides clear, specific educational policy advice for our new president-elect Barack Obama, including recommendation of an economic stimulus…

In a follow up to the post from Nov. 3, Ray Fair writes:The vote equation did well in predicting the 2008 election. The following chart lists the nine predictions that were made from November 1, 2006, through October 30, 2008. The most important prediction from the point of view of judging the vote equation is the last one, which uses the actual economic values (actual as of October 30, 2008). The two-party vote was 53.0 percent for Obama and 47.0 percent for McCain.Nine Predictions from the Vote Equation      …

Professor Ray Fair who published Predicting Presidential Elections And Other Things has called the winner for every election since since he started predicting in 1978 (with the exception of 1992).  So we should listen carefully to what he has to say this time around. In an email earlier today Fair writes, "My work explaining voting behavior suggests that the economy has an important influence on votes for president. If the economy is good, voters are more likely to vote for the incumbent party, and vice-versa if the economy is bad. For the current election the Republican party is…

 In an article and podcast in the WSJ,  Samuel Culbert answers this question with the an emphatic no. Although an army of HR consultants, HR professionals, and change management gurus would have us believe that managers should devote more time and energy to performance reviews, Samuel Culbert author of Beyond Bullsh*t, dismisses performance reviews as no more than "disorienting corporate theatre."  Inevitably they are political and subjective. According to Culbert, this is because the boss and subordinate approach these appraisals from starkly different…

[An earlier version of the following thoughts were posted on an internal online forum of the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR). The material was further discussed and developed at CLIR's symposium on Promoting Digital Scholarship: Formulating Research Challenges in the Humanities, Social Sciences, and Computation.]The Stanford Infolab has enjoyed a multi-year string of active, cross disciplinary collaborations. We have worked closely with biodiversity researchers, physicians, and political scientists on projects of mutual interest. Several publications emerged from these…

Entity Resolution (ER) is a process of identifying records that refer to the same real-world entity and merging them together. For example, two companies that merge may want to combine their customer records: for a given customer that dealt with the two companies they create a composite record that combines the known information.However, the process for matching and merging records is most often application-specific, complex, and error-prone. The input records may contain ambiguous and not-fully specified data, and it may be impossible to capture all the application nuances and subtleties in…

Hello there. We've now been posting to the Stanford InfoBlog for a few months. We hope you've enjoyed the posts so far, but we'd like to know a little more about who you are and what you like in order to better serve you (and to get an idea of how our own research fits into the world of research outside of Stanford and outside of academia).If you have a few minutes, we would really appreciate if you could fill out a survey here. We'll try not to give out any identifying details (not that any of the questions are that personal), and we'll use the responses to improve the InfoBlog. We might…

I recently came back from VLDB 2008 in Auckland, New Zealand where I gave a talk on my Simrank++ paper (see also my previous post, and Greg Linden's related post). The conference took place in the SkyCity Convention Center, located next to the Sky Tower, the southern hemisphere’s tallest tower. It was quite an experience, while heading to the conference and passing through the tower every morning, to watch people jumping from 320 meters high. Several conference participants were actually brave enough to claim that they were planning to take part in this or a different adventure activity in…

In his blog entry, Anish argues that maintaining uncertainty through the data management system (Approach-M) can yield benefits. Processing uncertain data correctly involves capturing dependencies (or correlations) along with probability values in the system. For example, consider a simplified weather forecasting system which predicts that it will rain in either Palo Alto or Sunnyvale with probabilities .3 and .7, because of uncertainty with regards to wind direction. It also predicts that it will rain in Fremont with .2 probability if it rains in Palo Alto, since Fremont is downwind from…

It’s that time of year again…no not Thanksgiving…well, yes, but also….(drum roll) the Facebook fbFund competition! The competition is an opportunity for new entrepreneurs to receive funding for applications they have created. It may seem hard, but the purpose of this competition is to bring new depth to the incredibly deep pool of apps that already exist on Facebook. The 2nd round of the competition is going on right now between 25 apps that have been selected out of a group of over 600. The top 5 of these remaining apps that get the most votes by Nov. 30 will receive over $225,000 in…

Today at noon, Stanford students will unexpectedly gather en masse inside Stanford's student union (Tresidder Memorial Union), to protest the passage of Proposition 8 and remind California residents that the passing of Proposition 8 sends a destructive message to the nation's gay youth. According to one study, one in three queer and questioning youth in America attempt suicide. "On November 4, Florida, Arizona, and California banned same-sex marriage. Arkansas banned adoption by people 'cohabitating outside a valid marriage' after banning same-sex marriage in 2004. With the passage of…

Two-hundred and sixty five Stanford students gathered today at the Women's Community Center on campus for a "MEGAPHONEBANK MARATHON to Defeat Prop 8", according to a representative from the Stanford Student Coalition for Marriage Equality (SCME). This makes the effort the single largest phone bank organized this year in California to Oppose CA Proposition 8. Proposition 8, which would amend the state constitution to eliminate the right for same-sex couples to marry, has been a key focus for activism, campaigning, and education this political season. Stanford's White Plaza has been a host to a…

I've always disliked Apple for very specific reasons: its insistence on closed and propriety systems and its general hipsterish I'm-so-much-cooler-than-you-simply-because-of-my-computer's-branding attitude being among the top reasons. But, I could never deny, nor would I ever try, that they have not pushed the envelope as far as technology goes. The company has found a way to consistently be at the forefront of innovation (that something may be known as Steve Jobs). But in that way, I respect Apple. They make gorgeous products (even if they're prettifying and borrowing heavily from BSD) and…

Every Stanford fan I know practically had an aneurysm when they heard Jim Harbaugh's critical comments about fan support. We know that Jim Harbaugh will someday leave Stanford, and by someday we don't mean in Joe Paterno years. No, it will likely be sooner rather than later. But it would be terrible to lose Harbaugh because of something within our control, i.e. attendance. If a Notre Dame or a USC or an Alabama (hypotheticals all, of course) happened to come calling, then whatever. I could deal with that. But I'd hate it to be because of something that seems to be within our control.

Please join us in extending our congratulations and warm re-welcome to Rich Crandall!We are pleased to announce that Rich, one of our 2007-2008 d.school fellows, has agreed to remain at the d.school in a director's role, leading the K-12 Lab through at least Summer 2009. Rich started with Susie Wise and the K-12 Lab team in the Autumn of 2007, and has been guiding these efforts since the Spring of 2008. He's been continuing the work of developing K-12 design thinking curriculum and has been spinning up teaching teams with the Nueva School, East Palo Alto Academy, the Henry Ford…

The d.news extends congratulations to our friends and neighbors at the graduate Program in Design for their sweep of the PICNIC Green Challenge in Amsterdam recently! The 2008 PICNIC Green Challenge is the annual international creative competition, sponsored by the Dutch Postcode Lottery and cross-media event PICNIC, that challenges entrepreneurs worldwide to create greenhouse-gas-reducing products or services that encourage consumers to adopt a sustainable lifestyle. With a revolutionary material EcovativeDesign has won this year's PICNIC Green Challenge, and Veranda Solar won a surprise…

Future innovators, prepare yourselves to become breakthrough thinkers and doers. Cross the boundaries between technology, business, and human values. Use design thinking to work on BIG projects with multidisciplinary teams. Be human-centered, prototype driven, and mindful of process in everything you do. Get a jump on your skills for d.school classes and Labs offered in the Winter and Spring quarters. Topics include design processes, innovation methodologies, need finding, human factors, visualization, rapid prototyping, team dynamics, storytelling, and project leadership. We are looking for…

Congratulations go out to d.school regular David Baggeroer, whose thesis-work in the Joint Program in Design, a glorious innovation on triathlon handlebars, won a BusinessWeek 2008 International Design Excellence Award (IDEA). Fantastic work among fantastic competition!

Fast Company has a nice article this month about a recent exercise in design thinking experienced by the staff of New York's WNYC.  Executives from WNYC and PRI spent some time hanging out at the d.school learning about design thinking by doing design thinking.  The fruits of their new skills and approach are documented here:  Startup Radio Show The Takeaway Recreated the Morning Edition

From the CC Blog: The ever innovative Brooklyn-based singer songwriter Jonathan Coulton has teamed up with Creative Commons to release his greatest hits compilation “JoCo Looks Back” on a 1gb custom Creative Commons jump drive to help support our 2008 campaign. If that weren’t enough, JoCo and CC have also included all of the unmixed audio tracks for every song on the drive. That’s over 700mb of JoCo thing-a-week goodness. Since all of JoCo’s music is released under our Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license, this is an incredible opportunity for the public…

A Change Congress supporter writes:"I am a supporter of your Change Congress movement and have followed your work for a long time. I am also an Obama supporter. I am writing to urge you to share your thoughts with your blog readers about what an Obama administration might entail for the Change Congress movement, and whether you think Obama is committed to government reform...." Great question. I think many of us are so used to disappointment, we're looking for it, and so not even a week after that extraordinary night, many are beginning to wonder what "change" here will really mean? But I…

So a new President means (the chance of a) new Chairman of the FCC. Before he passes, it is timely to begin to reflect a bit upon the chairmanship of the current chairman, Kevin Martin. A clue that this is an interesting and important chairman is the fact that he's an equal opportunity anger-er -- the left has loved and hated him, the right has loved and hated him. I'm an increasingly strong admirer. His contribution to sensible thinking about infrastructures was established with his taking the lead in imposing network-neutrality-like rules on Comcast. But it is the unanimous decision freeing…

This is a democracy. We win when we persuade people of our ideals. I believe strongly that Proposition 8 is against our ideals. I have so argued. But we have failed to convince the other members of this democracy. We need to try again. Let us launch, now, a new petition movement. Let us spend a year talking to people who disagree with us. Let us win this battle by persuading the other side. I volunteer to do whatever would help, including traveling to every church or community in this state to make the case for equality. But please, let's not try to win this battle by summoning the Supremes.

News from the UK of government proposals to crack down on the clients of prostitutes, with the aim of protecting trafficked women. Some controversy over whether it will actually achieve that goal. See the Associated Press story.

Fascinating article in The Stanford Report, November 12, on "intersex babies": i.e. babies born without a clear sex. The Stanford Report story draws on a new book, Fixing Sex: Intersex, Medical Authority and Lived Experience (Duke University Press) by Katrina Karkazis. Intersex people used to be called hermaphrodites. Sometimes they have mostly male characteristics, sometimes mostly female; the intersex characteristics may be at the genetic, gonadal, or anatomic level.Dr Karkazis talks about changes to the way doctors view these babies. They no longer tend to treat assigning a sex as…

I will be leaving the Clayman Institute on December 17, after more than three years as Associate Director. We are (obviously) looking for a replacement - go to the Institute's website at http://gender.stanford.edu to look for more details on the homepage. We'll also be looking for two part-time maternity cover posts for an events co-ordinator and a fellowship program manager, January to June 2009.

Watch out for new research this week from the Clayman Institute at Stanford in collaboration with the Anita Borg Institute for Women in Technology. It's called Climbing the Technical Ladder: Women in Mid-Level Positions in Silicon Valley High Tech. Based on survey and interviews at six leading Silicon Valley high tech companies, it examines why women drop out of the technical ladder, and why so few women make it past the difficult mid-level tier to senior management. It reveals that women want much the same as their male colleagues - and that to improve employee loyalty and retention,…

I just spent the past two days in a seminar hosted by Catherine Orenstein, founder of the OpEd Project, on how to write and pitch an opinion piece. She has amazing experience of freelance writing to share, and a host of great ideas. Do you have something you want to say? Did you know that over 90% of op-ed pieces in newspapers are written by white men? Speak out! Take a look at the Op-Ed Project's website and see if they are hosting an event near you soon. You'll be surprised to learn that YOU are an expert too!

While I have never before used VentureBlog to discuss anything other than entrepreneurship and venture capital, I have decided to make an exception to discuss why it is I oppose Proposition 8 here in California. I have not made this decision lightly. I don't believe in mixing business and politics. But I believe that Proposition 8 runs sufficiently counter to the basic tenets of fairness and human decency that power our democracy that I can not sit idly by. I was not yet born when Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his famous "I Have a Dream" speech at the March on Washington in 1963. Had I…

I just flew back from Europe and boy are my arms tired [insert rimshot here]. Actually, I just flew back from Europe and boy are my eyes tired. I have this bad habit of accumulating magazines until I have a long plane flight then powering through 30 pounds worth of reading. My typical airplane reading starts out with a zillion of those alumni magazines we all get. If you can wade your way past the inevitable articles on anthropology, sociology and pop psychology, you can often get a first glimpse into some really interesting scientific and technical innovation in these magazines. I'm tempted…

If you have not yet experienced "Digital Natives" in their natural habitat, come on over to my house on any weekend. When I wander down stairs on a Saturday or Sunday morning, the scene is always pretty much the same. The TV is on and yammering away. But my kids are far more engaged in their respective laptops than they are in the TV making noise in the foreground. My 6 year old is likely buying a new go kart for his Webkinz monkey. My 8 year old is busy shooting balloons on Addicting Games. My 11 year old is blogging about some great new Japanese rock band video he found on YouTube. My 13…

After watching a bazillion venture pitches, I've come to the conclusion that every VC Pitch should end the same way -- with the ask. If you want to crescendo into it, feel free to summarize why it is your technology is life changing, but finish with the ask -- "we are looking to raise six million dollars." Don't beat around the bush. Come right out and ask for the money. After all, that's what you're there for. There are a number of reasons VCs want to hear what you're raising. And it isn't just the obvious one. Yes, it is helpful to know how much money a company is hoping you will invest.

Over the course of the last week, Fred Wilson has been writing about "Venture Fund Economics" at the newly-redesigned AVC. Fred has tackled topics like how venture capitalists are measured, the impact of management fees and carry on net returns, and the impact of big winners on venture returns. What's more, Fred has done the unthinkable -- he has described venture economics in the context of his own fund's specific economic terms. While he hasn't posted the economic performance of his fund to date (that is probably more naked than even Fred is willing to get), he has posted the model he and…

Real quick Friday Field Foto today … busy, busy. This is one of my favorite photos in my collection. I like the way the light is reflecting off the river. Rio de las Chinas, Ultima Esperanza, southern Chile (© 2008 clasticdetritus.com) We climbed up this ridge (note people on right side of photo) to get a look at the siltstone and shale exposed in the gulley, which is mostly out of view. I think we spent more time enjoying the view of this beautiful meandering river down in the valley instead of looking at the rocks. Posted in Friday Field Foto, Patagonia, patterns, photographs I've…

I’ve had some photographs on Flickr for over a year now. I haven’t really done too much with the account besides upload a handful of photos every once in a while. This past weekend I finally spent a bit of time and played around with their map functionality. To see some photos of Patagonia (that you’ve probably seen before in a Friday Field Foto) go here or click on the screenshot below. You can also see some of my photos from around the San Francisco Bay Area — go here or click on the screenshot below. I think Flickr’s map function still needs a bit of work.

Note: This post is the third in a three-part series — please see Part 1and Part 2from earlier today before continuing — you’ll need the context. The numbering of the figures in this post continues from Part 2. Geophysical Imaging of the Cascadia Continental Margin Let’s get back to the Cascadia region — if you need a refresher of the area, go back to Part 2 and look at Fig. 1a for the regional bathymetric/topographic map of this continental margin. The seismic-reflection data shown below (from Calvert, 2004) is from the northern part of this region, near…

Note: This is the second post in a three-part series — Part 1 from earlier today is required reading. Without it you will have no context for most of this post. After reading this, go to Part 3. Alrighty … so the overall objective here is to discuss the Cascadia subduction zone and why it does not have a distinct and discernible trench like other subduction zones do.  My claim to Anaconda was that (1) there has been a significant amount of sedimentation across this margin, and (2) the Cascadia margin has a robust accretionary wedge — you can see my original comment as I…

My regular readers are going to need some context and backstory to what motivated writing this series of posts. It’s a three-part series — here is Part 2 and Part 3. I recently had an exchange with some Earth hypothesizers on a blog that claims convergent plate boundaries are a “myth” and in fact the Earth has expanded significantly (about double the size it was ~200 m.y. ago). The post in question can be found here and has all the information you need to learn about the expanding Earth hypothesis. Here’s the gist: since subduction doesn’t occur but…

It’s Only a Matter of ZerosIn the mid-1990s I was conducting research on the operations of local stock exchanges in the Caribbean. Sitting in the office of an individual I was interviewing, he interrupted our conversation to place an order for U.S. government bonds.The company for which he worked was an offshore pension fund of a major multinational energy firm with headquarters in the United States. The reason for the funds location in a Caribbean jurisdiction was the absence of a corporate income tax, which enabled the fund to earn a pre-tax return on its investments until money was…

Saving Detroit’s Big ThreeLabor unions played an important role in helping get out the vote for President-elect Obama, and expect a payback for their efforts. In addition to the $25 billion appropriated by Congress for retooling by General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler, the big three are seeking another $50 billion lest they run out of cash in 2009 and declare bankruptcy. If President Bush refuses to go along with Congressional support for additional aid, it is almost certain that the new Obama administration will place such financial assistance at the top of its agenda.Additional federal…

Sales Tax Hike in CaliforniaTo close the state of California’s large budget deficit, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has proposed a combination of spending cuts and a (temporary) increase in the sales tax of 1.5 cents. Without new tax revenue, the state cannot meet its proposed budgetary expenditures.This situation raises the question that few public officials are willing to confront. How can the people meet their budgetary commitments if the state takes more money from their pockets? Homes are being foreclosed, wages and benefits are being frozen or reduced, workers are being laid off or…

Fixing Social Security—An Obama PriorityPresident-elect Obama has proposed to fix Social Security by transforming it from a partial contribution-linked, old-age benefit program into a more explicit tax-and-transfer regime. The transformation will further shatter the myth that payroll taxes represent an individual’s contribution to his old-age government pension by further breaking the link between contributions (payroll taxes) and benefits. The transformation will be done in a few short steps.First, Obama has proposed to create a “Making Work Pay” tax credit, the principle source of…

Some for the Love of Ireland, More for Hatred of PeelSir Robert Peel held office as Conservative (Tory) prime minister of Great Britain during 1841-46. Seeking to foster economic growth in heavily protectionist Britain, he undertook two revisions of the tariff in 1842 and 1844-45 to free up trade. Although tariff revenue declined £192,000 and £204,473 respectively, the corresponding value of trade due to lower duties rose £410,000 and £835,760. Peel compensated for the lost revenue, in part, with an income tax of about 3 percent (7d./£) on annual incomes over £150. Despite lower…

We got the Main AS back up and all looks good on that box.  The main systems will take some time to get completely back in order (say a couple of hours), but it's looking good so far.

The main AS is down.  The two consequences of this are that the secondary AS is handling all of the load and the main stats update have been suspended until this is resolved.  The points are being kept locally on the servers, so WU's are being credited, just not showing up on our web site.

Engineers at NVIDIA (notably Scott LeGrand) have come up with a theory for the EUE's seen in core 1.15 (and a few others in the 1.15 to 1.18 range) on certain hardware. They found that this core had code optimizations that drove the GPU so hard that it would draw a lot more electricity (one sign of this was running hotter). In some boxes, this was too much electricity and this lead to numerical instabilities. When the same machine was given a beefier power supply, the problem went away.We've been told that 8800's require 600W power supplies, but we're finding that even a…

The forum at foldingforum.org is down.  We are in contact with the hosting company and they are working on it.  We don't have an ETA from them, but I hope this will be resolved later today.Folding@home servers are up and running and is not affected in any way from the forum hosting company.

We're happy to announce that the PS3 client for Folding@home has won a prestigious design award:The PS3's Folding@home service has nabbed a prestigious Good Design Award, AKA "G-Mark." Since 1957, the Good Design Award has been instituted by the Japanese Ministry of International Trade and Industry to award outstanding design in industrial and consumer products.Here are some more links.  First a news site discussing ithttp://kotaku.com/5078119/foldinghome-wins-japanese-design-award and the Sony Press Release http://www.scei.co.jp/corporate/release/081106de.html

Barack Obama's Facebook Page has unprecedented activity for a leader and will continue to serve as a growing social media monument. Just think about it for a second... will your actions online persist alongside Obama for generations to come? When else in history have you seen millions of people from across the world contribute themselves to a digital movement? If you have comparable examples, please comment! As of today, the actions of 3,134,949 real people on Obama's Facebook Page are echoed by: -578,708 Wall Posts -1,670 Notes (1000+ Comments) -41 Videos (700+ Comments) -21 Posted Items…

How would you respond to a handwritten or mass mailed letter asking you to vote in 2004? At least initially, you might assume the handwritten letter was more sincere and open it because it was not simply sent through computer spam. The handwritten message might persuade you to vote, however, it's impact would be limited unless you were inspired to handwrite letters to other people too. Fast forward to election 2008 and ask yourself how you responded to a Facebook Status Message Update (SMU) from friends asking you to vote? Your response is influenced by the perception of interpersonal…

WARNING PG-13: Possibly inappropriate for young viewers Pay attention to the following steps and watch how to text your way to love: 1. The first text 2. Flirxting 3. Drunk Texting 4. The phone call 5. 80's party 6. The text message breakup Enrique Allen

Loic Le Meur (Founder, Seesmic) showed an interesting example of a video conversation thread challenging people to improve their diet and lose weight at the MIT/Stanford Venture Lab (VLAB) event last night. Social software challenge to lose weight, join us! Do you think that video lifestreaming can improve your health? Let us know what you think in the comments. For more information on the importance of online video check out the recent conference we hosted at Stanford. --Enrique

Sometimes we all need a reality check after hours and hours in front of our screens developing and engaging in the Web 2.0 space. With natural disasters affecting millions of people across the world I thought I should look into the role of social media during Hurricane Gustav. What is the net effect of our digital conversations and connections during Gustav? How can we show that people changed their behavior, hopefully to make better decisions, because of social media? I address these questions here: http://www.techforpeace.org/? p=122 Look forward to your feedback on measuring our tangible…

At the GSB, we define diversity in the broadest possible terms. Instead of limiting our focus to gender, nationality, ethnicity, industry experience, etc., Deans Bob Joss and Derrick Bolton encourage us--and you--to think of diversity as the breadth of perspectives you contribute. One of the diversity initiatives I oversee is our annual "Many Voices: Perspectives on Diversity" conference which took place a couple of weeks ago. The idea behind Many Voices is to give prospective students who believe that they will make a unique contribution to the diversity of the class a chance to visit, and…

First, congratulations to all of you who submitted your applications in Round 1! Many of you have asked whether there is a relationship between the timing of your interview invitation and your chance of admission. You'll find the "what" and "why" of interviews covered on our website in Interviews , so I'll focus on the "when." Please be assured that your likelihood of admission bears no relationship to when you receive your interview invitation; the timing of your invitation simply depends on when we review your file--and there is no pattern to application review. Interviews for Round 1…

The Grameen Fellows program at the Stanford Graduate School of Business aims to support promising Bangladeshi students with financial need in obtaining an MBA at Stanford. This fellowship program, made possible by a generous gift, allows Stanford to extend its outreach within Bangladesh to the best and brightest MBA candidates, regardless of their financial situation. The program is dedicated to developing the next generation of leaders in Bangladesh who are committed to the country's human and socio-economic progress. This generous fellowship will cover all financial costs related to…

First, let me congratulate all of you who submitted your applications by the Round 1 deadline yesterday. We are looking forward to getting to know you via your essays, letters of recommendation, and all the other information you are sharing with us. Today, I wanted to address your questions about how the contracting economy might affect your job prospects. I was able to discuss this issue with Andy Chan (MBA 1988), Assistant Dean and Director of the MBA Career Management Center: Rita Winkler: Given the economic downturn, how does this affect the job prospects for applicants considering…

Many of you have shared your concerns about the economy and its possible impact on securing student loans. As you may have read, Citibank announced that it is suspending private loans for international students. I asked my colleague Jack Edwards, Director of Financial Aid at the GSB, to help clarify the impact of this announcement. His words: "International students at the Stanford Graduate School of Business will not be impacted by Citibank’s decision. The GSB Financial Aid Office has a close working relationship with Stanford Federal Credit Union and for the past two years we have made…

I’ve been feeling a little down lately, and one thing that always perks me up is sharing a night of karaoke with friends. So last night a few of us met up and went to karaoke downtown, and had a great time. As usual, I was one of very few black people in the bar, although there was a strong Samoan contingent and a fair number of Asian folks, and people who could really sing in both groups. People tended to select song you can dance to, as opposed to ballads, and as I watched people dance, I noticed something I hadn’t before in these types of situations. I quickly texted myself so…

Win a certificate for some healthy cereal! [Written as my kids eat Clifford's Crunch...]       

My hubby said I looked like I could slap the shit out of somebody. It’s one thing when you mess with me, but when you start messing with my babies? It’s on. I promised my hubby not to divulge details here, but what I will say is… Pediatricians beware!!!       

What, you ask? Deleting all the emails notifying you of close-out sales and deals from your favorite stores. The Gap, J.Crew, Victoria’s Secret, Target, Sears…they just don’t stop. 30% off. Final Sale - up to 50% off. Appliance Sale. This is the first time in my adult life that I automatically delete. Before the economy started to tank, I’d still browser-shop, imagining myself in pretty sweaters and dresses looking like the models on the screen. I’m trying to change a habit. When I have money, I spend it. When I don’t, I don’t. So I usually…

…to change my mind. Cause I do it often. But my problem is that I tell everyone of my Major Life Decision as if it’s permanent when it, in fact, is not. The Major Life Decision that I informed everyone of was that I was no longer going to pursue the law degree. I was having a bad couple of weeks health-wise, and really doubted my ability to be a good mother and a good wife and a good student without losing my mind. I thought that just focusing on one degree was the best thing for me and my family. But this week I’m feeling better and I’m freaking out. Cause when I feel…

There is always an interesting crop of fresh arrivals showing up on the Jackson New Books rack, located near the Trader's Pit. Code Red: An Economist Explains How To Revive The Healthcare System Without Destroying It (RA395.A3 D743 2008) by David Dranove, a leading expert in healthcare economics, offers pragmatic remedies, some controversial, designed to restore the existing system to vitality. Reviewing the plight of the uninsured, he proposes a new direction for national healthcare, and explains why a century of public and private sector efforts have failed. Face Time (E906.H54 2008) by Dan…

Have you ever wanted to try an e-book reader? Jackson Library has Amazon’s e-book reader Kindle available for you to check out with a sample of five e-books. Get the details in JacksonLine. In addition to digital books, please check out some of our analog versions. Peter Drucker’s Managing in Turbulent Times is a classic and still relevant today. This month’s JacksonLine has all of this and much more.

Yahoo! (YHOO) announced today that Jerry Yang, who helped build the company and has been its CEO since June last year, is stepping down. Upon the appointment of his successor, Yang will return to his former role as Chief Yahoo! , and will remain on the company's board. "Having set Yahoo! on a new, more open path, the time is right for me to transition the CEO role and our global talent to a new leader. I will continue to focus on global strategy and to do everything I can to help Yahoo! realize its full potential and enhance its leading culture of technology and product excellence and…

Sallie L. Krawcheck gained national attention in 2002 when Fortune magazine put her on its cover. She was a largely unknown research director at Sanford C. Bernstein then, and the magazine called her one of the “last honest analysts” — at a time when Wall Street was plagued with conflict-of-interest scandals. She was recruited to Citigroup in 2002 in a bid to burnish the bank’s tainted reputation, her $15 million-plus pay package made headlines. She gained even more prominence two years later when Citigroup, then the world’s biggest bank, appointed her its chief financial officer. A…

GSB Alum Alvaro Fernandez continues to keep us posted on developments in brain fitness research. In his latest dispatch from the front he refers to a blog on the site of his firm, SharpBrains.com that speaks to the challenges of our ageing society, the need to maintain both cognitive and physical fitness, and the importance of developing a healthy ageing agenda for our society.

We got the Main AS back up and all looks good on that box.  The main systems will take some time to get completely back in order (say a couple of hours), but it's looking good so far.

The main AS is down.  The two consequences of this are that the secondary AS is handling all of the load and the main stats update have been suspended until this is resolved.  The points are being kept locally on the servers, so WU's are being credited, just not showing up on our web site.

Engineers at NVIDIA (notably Scott LeGrand) have come up with a theory for the EUE's seen in core 1.15 (and a few others in the 1.15 to 1.18 range) on certain hardware. They found that this core had code optimizations that drove the GPU so hard that it would draw a lot more electricity (one sign of this was running hotter). In some boxes, this was too much electricity and this lead to numerical instabilities. When the same machine was given a beefier power supply, the problem went away.We've been told that 8800's require 600W power supplies, but we're finding that even a…

The forum at foldingforum.org is down.  We are in contact with the hosting company and they are working on it.  We don't have an ETA from them, but I hope this will be resolved later today.Folding@home servers are up and running and is not affected in any way from the forum hosting company.

We're happy to announce that the PS3 client for Folding@home has won a prestigious design award:The PS3's Folding@home service has nabbed a prestigious Good Design Award, AKA "G-Mark." Since 1957, the Good Design Award has been instituted by the Japanese Ministry of International Trade and Industry to award outstanding design in industrial and consumer products.Here are some more links.  First a news site discussing ithttp://kotaku.com/5078119/foldinghome-wins-japanese-design-award and the Sony Press Release http://www.scei.co.jp/corporate/release/081106de.html

Just the other week I met with the teaching team for the 2009 edition of Creating Infectious Action (CIA) at the Stanford d.school, and we spent a few hours coming up with a new point of view for the class.  In previous years we've focused students on building something up, from finding ways to spread the idea of saving money to recruiting more users of Firefox.  This year, however, we want to try something different: we're going to have students try to take something down.  Really take it down, down to downtown.  The mission of CIA 2009 will be to kill…

As I've learned over the past few years of teaching the Creating Infectious Action course at the Stanford d.school, it is possible to consciously design something to be viral.  If you have a remarkable offering and a system to spread the word, all you need to be viral is a sticky, memorable message.  Easier said than done, but at least there's a list of reliable design guidelines.  That's progress.Last week Tom Perriello won the battle for the congressional seat of the 5th District in Virginia.  An underdog in the race, Perriello won the election in no…

... what your politics are.  In my book, any week where Lewis Hamilton can become World Driving Champion and Barack Obama can be elected President of the United States of America is a very good week.  A very good week for humanity, indeed.  Optimism, perseverence, and courage will take us far.

I participated in The Business Summit at Harvard Business School earlier this month.  If you were to plan the most interesting time possible to gather 2,000 business leaders from across the globe, you couldn't have found a better time than October, 2008.A highlight of the conference was hearing Professor Niall Ferguson lecture on the origins of the current macro economic climate.  His lecture was instructive and riveting.  You can see the video here.He also penned a great article for Time magazine earlier this month: The End of Prosperity?

At IDEO (the firm I work at), we recently held a "chain reaction" event across all of our offices:  Shanghai, Munich, London, New York, Boston, Chicago, San Francisco, and Palo Alto.  Self-nominated teams in each office crafted their own chain reaction experience, each of which was triggered by another chain reaction experience sitting in another office.  It all took place on one Friday morning...Why?  Because... just because.  Because it is fun.  Because it is there.  Because cultures that play on a routine basis are more likely to be…

For real. At $9.99 its an expensive app, so I’m looking for reviews.

They are counting again up there. Stevens trails in the ongoing vote count, at least in this screen shot (3 votes!):

On the Political Methodology List, Carla Osorio asked: Hello,I would like to know what is the best way to calculate and report bivariate correlations when multiple imputation (Amelia) is employed.Is it OK if I calculate the correlations between the variables of interest in each of the imputed datasets and just average them?Also, I have read that it is fine to average coeffients over the imputated datasets, but I do not know if standard errors can also be treated in that way. thanks. The question here is really about the right way to compute the variance of an estimand that has been multiply…

This is a story that got some exposure on HuffPost, and (independently?) was brought to my attention by my colleague Josh Cohen who in turn forwarded it from Steve Ansolabahere. The current vote tally in Alaska seems to be indicating that substantially fewer people voted up there than in 2004. It seems hard to believe. This is worth a closer look. Does the vote just take a long time to come in up there, or was turnout way low there for some reason we just don’t know about (despite Palin on the ticket?!?) or do we have widespread voter fraud….? The Associated Press currently has…

Charles Franklin has some graphs like this over at pollster.com, but I couldn’t help myself… The Master-Scraper Jeff Lewis gave me code for reading updated/quasi-real-time vote tallies from the web, so the 2008 counts reported here are hot off the press. First up, poll margins versus actual margins, using the final state-level numbers on pollster. The 45 degree is where the data should be if the polls were perfect. The polls haven’t done too badly, particularly in the battlegrounds (the cluster of state close to the origin), where (duh) there was a lot of polling. If we…

RDR Books, represented by Anthony Falzone of Stanford Law School's Center for Internet and Society, has appealed their case to the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.

Anthony Falzone writes about the court's decision to stop publication of The Harry Potter Lexicon, ruling against Fair Use. All is not over. He writes: Finally, remember that avada kedavra -- the killing curse -- is not always fatal. One wizard survived it. Three times. And it was he who cast the spell (and won't be named here) that ultimately suffered for it. Maybe someday the Lexicon will be known as The Book That Lived. Here is Stanford's offical press release: STANFORD, Calif., September 8, 2008— Stanford Law School’s Fair Use Project has released the following statement on behalf of…

Minow: Tell us about the new Digital Copyright Slider. How does it work and what is its purpose?    Brewer: The “Is it Covered by Copyright?” Slider was created as the first in a series of simple tools to help librarians, educators and others with their copyright questions.  We first created a print version as a slide chart, but realized that a digital version could be much more useful, though perhaps not as fun to play with. Thus, the digital version was born.  Both versions of the slider help the user to determine whether or not a work is in the public domain in the…

The outcome of the hearing we previously blogged about is that the Oregon Legislative Counsel Committee will not assert copyright on the Oregon Revised Statutes.Public.resource.org has put up video of the hearing in 6 segments.  Find out more on public.resource.org/oregon.gov/.

Audio recording of Legislative Counsel committee hearing in Oregon on copyright status of Oregon Revised Statutes - June 19, 2008.  Listen for Tim Stanley's vision of building on the Statutes with technology and community. E.g. include earlier versions, tagging,  allowing law professors and others to add comments, and more. Here's the Justia site. http://www.leg.state.or.us/listn/archive/archive.2007i/JLC-200806191025.ram  (thanks, Tim, Cicely and Nick) 

Karen Coyle has posted the slides from her presentation at the California Library Association conference this past weekend, along with the slides from Vivian Pisano (San Francisco Public Library) and me. Kathy Lawhun moderated.http://www.kcoyle.net/privacy_audit.html Eli Edwards also gave a great presentation on social networking, libraries and privacy. She posts her slides and discusses her experience giving it on her blog http://edwards.orcas.net/blog/archives/000432.html

Helen R. Adams has a new book out, Ensuring Intellectual Freedom and Access to Information in the School Library Media Program (Libraries Unlimted: 2008). Helen and I coauthored a chapter and a chart with Helen on First Amendment and school libraries which you can download: Chapter2 The First Amendment in School Library Media Programs.doc   Table of Court Cases on Intellectual Freedom Involving Minors' Rights.doc  

From Susan: I've prepared two charts. One shows the law regarding section 215 orders before the PATRIOT Act, after  the PATRIOT Act, and after the Reauthorization Act. The second chart does the same for national security letters.Each chart briefly describes the records that can be requested, the standard to issue the order or letter, the requirements for any gag order,  the review process, if any, any special llbrary sections, and the status of any sunset provisions.

Word is slowly spreading about Ancestry.com's new grant program for state archives.  Ancestry is promising to provide $1.5 million dollars in digitization services (though no money) to state repositories.  Best of all, it has promised to keep the application requirements simple.  The program is described at http://www.ancestrydps.com/programs.htm. No archives has enough money for digitization, so the natural question to ask is whether this is a good deal for archivists and for the public.  Unfortunately, the terms described in the agreement appear to be a step back from…

Bob Miller, President of HarperCollins' new Harper Studio imprint, describes his plans to use new digital tools in marketing his list. Click once to play movie (3:07). Flash version.BONUS audio coverage: Click the left arrow on audio player (below the picture) to hear the full session or click the right arrow to download (45:26).

Shari Cleary advises clients on how to use web analytics strategically. Here she describes her formula for success. Click once to play movie (2:09). Flash version

Razorfish VP RJ Hilgers identifies and describes four major online marketing trends: the proliferation of content, consumer expectations of control, distribution and accountability. Click once to play movie (2:34). Flash version

Consumer Reports VP Kevin McKean describes five ways that sites are making money beyond advertising. Click once to play movie (3:35). Flash version

Molly Wood describes how organizations can look within to find talent that will engage their audience in a genuine way. Click once to play movie (1:43). Flash version

more online at http://studentarts.stanford.edu SUNDAY NOVEMBER 22 * Stanford Symphonic Chorus and Guests 1:30 PM. Memorial Church. $20/$10/$9 * Stanford Chinese Dance 2:00 - 4:00 PM. Roble 42. FREE

more online at http://studentarts.stanford.edu FRIDAY NOVEMBER 21 * Dance Marathon Registration Deadline! dm.stanford.edu * Stanford Symphonic Chorus and Guests 8:00 PM. Memorial Church. $20/$10/$9 * Gaieties 2008: Dazed and Cal-fused 8:00 PM. Memorial Auditorium. $10/$15/$20 * Stanford Block Party: SCN Presents DJ Milkman + DJ Liggy 10:00 PM - 1:00 AM. Columbae Lawn and Sigma Chi. FREE

more online at http://studentarts.stanford.edu THURSDAY NOVEMBER 20 * Tales From the Product Realization Lab 12:00 PM. Hartley Conference Center. FREE * "The Race Card" Reading/Discussion 12:00 PM. Stanford Law School, Robert Crown Law Library. FREE * Film & War Memories In Asia: Yamato (Japan) 5:15 PM. Philippines Conference Room. FREE * MIX, Third Thursdays At The Cantor Arts Center 5:30 - 7:30 PM. Cantor Arts Center. FREE * Studio Lecture: Ward Shelley 5:30 PM. Nathan Cummings Art Building, ART2. FREE * Storytelling Project: Taking It For Granite 6:00 - 7:00 PM. KZSU 90.1 FM. FREE * Spoken…

more online at http://studentarts.stanford.edu WEDNESDAY NOVEMBER 19 * Rodin Sculpture Tour 2:00 PM. Cantor Arts Center. FREE * Innovation Tournament Showcase (EWeek) 4:30 PM. Kresge Auditorium. FREE * The work of Tillie Olson, Film + Discussion 7:30 PM. Terrace Rm, Bldg 460, 4th Floor. FREE * Lively Arts: Concierto de Camara: Imani Winds & Miami String Quartet 8:00 PM. Dinkelspiel Auditorium. $17-19/$34-38 * Stanford University Singers 8:00 PM. Memorial Church. $10/$5/$9 * GAIETIES 2008: Dazed and Cal-fused 8:00 PM. Memorial Auditorium. $10/$15/$20