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Net Negative (Is Sort of an Understatement) But so what? Graph via Andrew Rudalevige and the Monkey Cage (and Kantar Media’s Campaign Media Analysis Group). UPDATE See also John Sides: At this point, I would say there is suggestive evidence that Mr. Romney’s advantages in advertising helped him win in Florida – but it qualifies as circumstantial. The longer the campaign goes on, and the longer Mr. Romney’s advertising advantage persists, the more data we will accumulate to test these effects.

Net Negative (Is Sort of an Understatement)

But so what?

Graph via Andrew Rudalevige and the Monkey Cage (and Kantar Media’s Campaign Media Analysis Group).

UPDATE See also John Sides:

At this point, I would say there is suggestive evidence that Mr. Romney’s advantages in advertising helped him win in Florida – but it qualifies as circumstantial. The longer the campaign goes on, and the longer Mr. Romney’s advertising advantage persists, the more data we will accumulate to test these effects.

“  In Florida, as you go north, you go south.” — Walter Mebane quoted in a 2004 Washington Post article on Bush’s reelection

“  Yes, Hollywood does spend a lot of money on politics. But so does tech. The Motion Picture Association of American reported $1.3 million in lobbying expenditures through the first three quarters of 2011, and is now run by former Senator Chris Dodd. But Google spent $7.1 million over the same period, and has hired former House Democratic Minority Leader Richard Gephardt, among the 112 lobbyists registered to lobby for the company. Google’s PACs and employees have given three times the money as the MPAA.” — Lee Drutman on SOPA and PIPA

“  I’ve always thought this was the real story behind the software that John Gruber highlights in his occasional User Interface of the Week posts. It’s not so much that the designers of these applications have no taste, it’s that their users have no taste. There’s something about an ugly, cluttered user interface that says ‘computer’ to the great majority of users out there.” — Dr. Drang on browser chrome

“  Piracy is when peo­ple use vi­o­lence, or the threat of it, to trans­fer your pos­ses­sions to them­selves (after which you no longer have them), place you in cap­tiv­ity in pur­suit of a ran­som, and in many cases in­flict death on you as a side-ef­fect of their busi­ness model…. [A]ny­one who claims that unau­tho­rized trans­mis­sion of bits is anal­o­gous to piracy is at least a liar and is deeply dis­re­spect­ful of the peo­ple who are suf­fer­ing the ef­fects of theft, kid­nap­ping, and mur­der right now today in the In­dian Ocean. They de­serve your con­tempt, and they have mine.” — Tim Bray writing about SOPA

“  I love the process of unpacking something. You design a ritual of unpacking to make the product feel special. Packaging can be theater, it can create a story.” — Jonathan Ive

“  ‘Don’t be evil’ has been over for a long time.” — John Gruber on Google’s new privacy policy

“  What has been said about Newt is pretty much true. He had to step down because Republicans, conservative Republicans, wouldn’t vote for him again as Speaker. Because he’s not really a conservative. I mean, he’ll tell you what you want to hear. He has an uncanny ability, sort of like Clinton, to feel your pain and know his audience and speak to his audience and fire them up. But when he was speaker, he was erratic, undisciplined.” — Former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (so this could be true)

iBooks Assessments

The two most reasonable assessments of iBooks, iBooks Author, and the near future of ebooks more generally come from Andy Ihnatko on 5by5’s podcast The Ihnatko Almanac: Some Assembly Required (episode #16) and Duke Sociologist Kieran Healy’s blog post Apple for the Teacher.

Both are recommended.


UW–Syllabus

I was under the impression we were required to make our syllabi publicly available. However in response to an open records request from an allegedly conservative political group, the University of Wisconsin System says not so much:

UW officials contend that university course syllabi are not public records because they are subject to copyright, and therefore exempt from production under Wisconsin’s open records law.

“We’ve long held that those syllabi are not subject to open records requests,” said David Giroux, spokesman for the UW System. He confirmed that the schools the NCTQ queried did indeed deny the group’s requests for information.

Perhaps we are only required to make them available to the university community?

I always post the syllabi for my courses on my website.