• net neutrality
• politics
• technology

Good news. The FCC is expected to announce the beginning of its formal rulemaking process for net neutrality regulation.

The FCC's process is a great model of "open source" government. And it's going to be an interesting conversation when the FCC issues its Notice of Inquiry. Network providers don't like net neutrality, as it prevents them from determining how fast various packets of information travel across their networks. But advocates of net neutrality insist that a healthy Internet requires a "neutral" network.

• Jim Brown's blog
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• agency
• bailout rhetoric
• politics

So, yes...I am a Nate Silver fanboy. I'm willing to admit this. I got to see his keynote at SXSW Interactive, and it reminded me of how jealous I am of his career path (from baseball statistics to political analysis). Silver has the ability to make statistics not only understandable to the layman but also relevant.

• Jim Brown's blog
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• politics

This weekend’s Saturday Night Live featured Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson as an Incredible Hulk-esque Barack Obama. Aptly dubbed The Rock Obama, he emerges from the President during irksome meetings with Republican senators (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/03/08/snl-the-rock-obama-dont-m_n_172...). Has the idolization of Obama reached an even higher echelon?

• Joe Sery's blog
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• diversity
• politics

George Mason is one of the top two most racially diverse universities in the country (it regularly swaps out the top spot with Depaul in Chicago). But this month they showed a little gender diversity too, voting a drag queen as the school's homecoming queen this year. Most interesting, perhaps, is that this has really created no stir at all, even among student republican groups.

• Byron Hawk's blog
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• politics
• rhetoric

I don't know how many of you caught Harry Markopolos on CSPAN this monrning, but he was pretty engaging. No Quarter seems to sum up my impressions of his testimony about Madoff and the SEC. The video doesn't seem to be working yet on the CSPAN site, but here's his original letter to the SEC.

• Byron Hawk's blog
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• politics
• technology

Via Clay, I learned of a new blog today: techPresident.

• Jim Brown's blog
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• composition
• politics
• web 2.0

Following up on Adria's post about MixedInk, here is a collaboratively written inaugural speech put together by Slate readers (and previous Presidents).

• Jim Brown's blog
• 1 comment

• politics
• web 2.0

President-elect Obama will hire the first Chief Technology Officer of the United States, and ObamaCTO.org asks people to suggest what the priorities of that CTO should be. Clearly, these are just suggestions, and the CTO will not be checking with "the crowd" before making decisions. But it's nice to see the incoming administration asking for input.

• Jim Brown's blog
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• obama
• politics
• web 2.0

I continue to wonder what a continuation of the Obama "movement" will look like. This Slate story asks whether Obama can continue the participatory ethic of his campaign when he moves into the White House:

• Jim Brown's blog
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• education
• politics

In "Professors' Liberalism Contagious? Maybe Not" the NY Times reports on a study that counters the widely held conservative view that academia is indoctrinating students with liberal politics...and changing them. Not so, says this study. So much for the pressure to create faculty positions in conservatism and watchdog departments. Now, if those conservatives would just stop stealing our Obama signs from our front yards, come Nov 5th we might just teach them a thing or two about rhetorical ethos.

• Cynthia's blog
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