Erik Moe Art & Design

Senator Obama’s first act as top Democrat was to bring the clean fund raising policies of his campaign to the Democratic National Committee. Funds from Political Action Committees and registered lobbyists will no longer be accepted at the DNC. As a first move, it makes me very hopeful for things to come. Since moving from Minnesota’s squeaky-clean political atmosphere to the smoggy air of Philadelphia machine politics in 2001, I’ve realized that cleaning up democracy needs to be job one if real progress is to be made on most any other issue. Taking the high ground on campaign funding is a great place to start. It also signals that anyone who wants a job with Obama (particularly Vice President) will need to dedicate themselves to openness and financial disclosure as well.

I am truly moved by last night’s clinching of the Democratic nomination by Senator Obama. It is a good day to be an American after so many not-so-good ones. Might I suggest now is a good time to donate to the nominee’s campaign.

…And Historic Documentation in St. Paul

Some reports claim 50,000 turned up last night for the 18,000 seats in the Xcel Center. From TV coverage, it looked as though nearly everyone brought a camera. It is no surprise then that flickr is accumulating huge pools of images dated yesterday and tagged “obama minnesota,” “obama stpaul,” or “obama xcel.”

Someday will we re-assemble in virtual reality massively documented events such as this? Imagine if we had 10,000 small cameras at Lincoln’s inaugural.

WalkScore is a tool that evaluates locations based on how walkable they are. The tool has been around for a year or more, but is getting a lot more attention these days as gasoline costs force people to think more about their built environment. Since I’ve avoided car ownership all these years, I’ve always made walkability a big priority in my housing choices. The resulting WalkScores for most places I’ve lived are pretty high, and I was curious what my cumulative WalkScore would be. To calculate the statistic, I started with my first apartment* and looked up the WalkScore for any place I lived for at least a month.


MAIN STREET, RIVER FALLS, WI == 85
SOUTH MINNEAPOLIS ============= 58
DOWNTOWN SAINT PAUL =========== 95
MACALESTER, SAINT PAUL ======== 78
UPTOWN MINNEAPOLIS ============ 91
UNIVERSITY CITY, PHILADELPHIA = 94
WEST PHILADELPHIA ============= 83
UNIVERSITY CITY, PHILADELPHIA = 94
ITALIAN MARKET, PHILADELPHIA == 94
CENTER CITY PHILADELPHIA ====== 97
POWELTON VILLAGE PHILADELPHIA = 86
ANDERSONVILLE, CHICAGO ======== 91
ECKINGTON, WASHINGTON, DC ===== 63


I then weighted the WalkScores for each based on the number of months I resided there to come up with the cumulative number of 87.39.

Obviously there are a lot of elements WalkScore doesn’t capture. Chicago’s Andersonville was a great place to live, but in the winter I’d probably drop the WalkScore a bit. As near as I can tell the site gives you as many points for having a grocery store like this across the street as it does for an upscale organic Co-Op. Also, neighborhoods change over time: Downtown St. Paul (probably) has more amenities now then it did when I briefly lived there in the mid 1990s. Likewise Eckington will see a lot of change over the next few years that will probably raise it significantly above its current score of 63.

Still, any tool that helps people put more thought into how dependent they are on cars to get around is a useful one.

*I chose to start with housing after I left college dormitories since WalkScore’s algorithms don’t seem able to find on-campus amenities. Dorm life is usually pretty walkable, though.

Luigi Montanez at TechPresident and Matthew Yglesias both helpfully point out a nanosite that is attempting to simply and elegantly debunk the scurrilous (and often typo-filled) email chains that ask “Is Barack Obama Muslim?” The answer is of course “No,” and sites like this will hopefully make sure the truth is easy to Google.

I’ve noticed a similar and equally bizarre allegation being made in some of these emails. I’m hoping to put the matter to rest with my own nanosite: Is Barack Obama muslin? Link to it and help the typographically challenged. Thanks!

While reading Sunday’s New York Times Magazine feature on Gary Slutkin and the application of epidemiology to urban violence, I kept thinking of the implications for the media. As a longtime city-dweller, one of my biggest gripes with the media is the way urban violence is covered, in particular by local TV news. If the media were to treat an outbreak like Philadelphia’s upsurge in murders more like a disease or virus outbreak, what would it look like?

Coverage of traditional viral outbreaks certainly has its share of irrational fear-mongering for ratings – think about recent years’ SARS and avian flu coverage. At the same time, I feel like the media also spent quite a lot of time explaining ways to reduce exposure and prevent outbreaks from spreading. This despite the remote chances of exposure to most people.

Typical TV coverage of a violent crime shows a map of the incident (message: be afraid of that part of town) and maybe a sketch, mugshot, or security camera footage (message: be afraid of people who look like that). This limited coverage only amplifies the effects of the crime since virtually no one in the broadcast audience is at real risk of being the next victim. A very small minority of crime victims are strangers who are at the wrong place at the wrong time. Most crimes instead are responses to personal gripes. I’m not sure what kind of information might be more effective in avoiding fear and helping the public assist in containing an outbreak of violence. The Chicago program discussed in the Times article primarily uses specialists to intervene with persons directly associated with criminal incidents, but surely the media has a role in helping communities fight outbreaks of violence.

Somehow my consumer choices have made it possible for marketers to confidently address me as “Yankees Fan.” I’m not sure where it all went wrong. Was it the arugula?

P.S. Win Twins!

In the future will our children hear stories about how we had to eat generic Lucky Charms and stay at mid-priced hotels during the recession of ‘08?

The erosion of our civil liberties under this administration has been well documented and alarming, but did any of us ever foresee a day when we would lose our right to dance to our iPod at the Jefferson Memorial. What would old Thomas have to say?

At last night’s Oscars, Alex Gibney’s Taxi to the Dark Side won the Best Documentary prize. I finally had a chance to catch the film late last week at the National Archives* and think that (for once) the best – and most important – of the nominated films definitely won. Taxi is a well-researched and troubling look at the expanding use of torture in the U.S. military since 9/11. Gibney builds a strong argument that very specific methods of torture have come into use through a carefully orchestrated fog of conflicting demands, intentionally leaked documents, and purposefully vague orders from the Department of Defense and the White House. These indirect orders leave low-ranking troops vulnerable to court marshalls while shielding top level officials from war crimes trials. The film takes its title from the case of an innocent taxi driver named Dilawar who was captured along with his passengers at an Afghan army checkpoint and eventually died as a result of repeated beatings while in U.S. custody at Bagram Air Base. Taxi goes on to explore the suspension of habeas corpus rights – unprecedented in U.S. history – that make it impossible for detainees to find out why they are being held and tortured. The film can be tough to stomach for its use of footage of physical abuse and sexual humiliation at Bagram, Abu Ghraib, and Guantanamo, but since these crimes are being done in our name and in violation of our own Constitutional principles, the film is essential viewing.

UPDATE: *Yes, I appreciate the irony of watching a film about the Bush administration’s abuses of the Constitution in the very building that the executive branch displays the Constitution.

TechPresident sent a belated valentine card yesterday to our disbanded cohort of digital Dodd Squad-ers. Joshua Levy critiques Maverick McCain’s emails and thinks the Republican frontrunner should call us up for advice. Somehow I don’t think that would work out well for any of us, but the sentiment is appreciated.