For those who want to see NYC streets turned into more humane, hospitable and especially bike-friendly places, this blog is for you. I love NYC because of its active street life but there is certainly almost endless room for massive improvement and these folks are pushing just for that.

And for those involved in disability rights activism, Stop Eugenics looks like a good (and important) new blog.

Canada in many ways looks and feels like the United States (and vice versa) but upon closer inspection, there are some pretty large and important differences and I think the more Canada walks away from the US path, the better. So when I heard that Canada is considering a DMCA like bill, I was of course disappointed. If you are Canadian, do your political stuff to stop it (write your MP, etc. etc. etc.) and help keep Canada unique!

It is hard to believe that I have been blogging for over five years. And what is clear is that being an assistant professor is not all that conducive for blogging and this is materially evident in my sparse posting pattern over the last few months. It has been particularly bad in the last month thanks to a week long international trip, back-to-back sickness over Thanksgiving week, and finally going to Washington D.C. for the AAAs.

But this retreat from blogging as well as teaching on so-called Web 2.0 software, like blogs, has made me rethink the value and limits of the craft of blogging and so I am going to take some time (that I feel like I don’t really have, but oh-well..) to write them down as I am preparing a short piece for on the politics of Web 2.0 and I hope I can transfer some of these ideas there.

So as I have already mentioned, I am an now infrequent blogger. Prior to the era of RSS, this could have meant the death of my blog because if people went to visit my page and there was no new post and then this happened a few more times, they would just stop visiting.

The magic of RSS is that it brings the blog post to you and this alters the landscape of possibilities within the context of what has been nothing short of a seismic explosion of blogs. What I am finding—and this will be no surprise to anyone—is that it is just too difficult to keep up too many of a certain class of blogger—the prolific poster who posts medium to long posts and worse, nearly everyday! To make a point about the effects of this, allow me to tell a story: Two blogs I really like are Joe Reagle’s blog on Open Communities as well as Tenured Radical. Both provide captivating posts but I recently unsubscribed to Radical Tenure and not Joe Reagle’s. Why? My decision was purely pragmatic. Because she posts way too much, I just can’t keep up. If I stop reading her blog for 2 weeks, and then pay a visit via bloglines, I am faced with a blogolanche and I am trying to avoid, at all costs, overwhelming situations. On the other hand, if I stop reading Joe’s blog for 2 weeks, there may be one or two posts so I feel like I can spare the time to continue reading. Ironically, I will now visit Tenured Radical every month, much as I did prior to the RSS era, just to take a quick scan and see if there is anything I must read.

There is another class of blogs, such as Sivacracy, that update their site frequently but the posts are tidy and short and so I can usually keep up and they provide important news for my projects. But the type of blog that provides longer ruminations has proliferated (and I really like reading those) but I suspect that as the blogosphere has expanded, less people can commit to those types of blogs. In other words, today, you may hang on to more readers, if you only blog 1 to 2 times a week instead of 3-5 weekly posts that are medium to long in length.

Now I may be completely OFF the mark with this by generalizing my own experience so I would be interested in hearing people’s experiences or better, if anyone could point me to someone who studies these types of pattern, I would really appreciate it.

On a related note, last week I taught a now famous piece by Cass Sunstein on political balkanization on the Internet that is in part secured by blogging. His core argument, which I think stands to some degree, is that the blogosphere is less an arena where people with different inclinations and views meet to debate, and thus change their views, but is an arena where your pre-existing ideas are reinforced because you are simply reading and debating with people who hold your worldview.

As I mentioned, I think this is true in so far as you don’t see people on the left and right engaging in some debate that substantially transforms their ideas. But the argument is faulty or missing something crucial about the nature of politics, in so far as that the so called left or right or so called liberal and conservative positions are truly not unitary so that if different types of liberals/lefties are engaging with each other to change positions and ideas within that group, well then, the critical function of blogging is in fact well and alive. To state using an example, there are plenty of liberals who, in my opinion, could use a little radicalization and perhaps this is happening in the blogosphere because people come across a spectrum of ideas and positions from within their political pole.

Finally and this point really is not mine but I am poaching it from Jeff Juris who made it last weekend at the AAA meeting during his presentation on activist videos. One of his findings was that activists were the only ones watching video’s documenting protests when hosted on radical political sites like Indymedia. When they were placed on Youtube, the audience expanded considerably: conservatives were also watching them, but they effect was not to make their more sympathetic toward the left and their political points, but simply to reinforce their position, which is evident in the archived comments expressing their great distaste of the left. This is a perfect example of the Balkanization that Sunstein talks about but with an important reversal: it comes from confronting difference not avoiding it!

But Jeff made the excellent point that there is a critical function in preaching to the choir: it ensures that the choir will not stop singing! That is, your political passions are not simply ensured, they must be renewed and given the massive amounts of apathy peppering our population, renewal by confronting what you believe in, is vital.

So my advice is keep producing posts, keep reading even if it tends to be stuff you already believe in BUT please, post less. Less, I think, is really becoming the new more….

Since I am too tired (well really sick) to write anything about Tokyo, here are some of my pictures and here is one I am quite fond of.

Can you get more geeky than this?!!!???

Number of Inhabitants per doctor

So this Sunday I am off to Japan along with a few other members of my department for a week long visit. I am going to attend a conference being hosted by the Interfaculty Initiative in Information Studies at the University of Tokyo. The number of faculty members housed under this initiative is simply impressive and I look forward to meeting many of them and learning how they are conceptualizing and moving forward with the interdisciplinary study of digital society.

I have not had much time to think about the trip outside of 1) how do I get to my hotel 2) preparing for my presentation but I will have a little free time on Tuesday, Thursday morning, Sunday morning and a few evenings to see some sights and see some people.

With the help of Junichi and others, we are organizing a gathering with Debian developers as well as the local and some visiting Creative Commons folks on Wed night, the 14th of November. Do come around if you are there and interested (and you can leave me a comment or email me at biellaATnyuDOTedu too.

While I basically am going to be like-a-lemming and follow my colleagues who have made some plans, if you think there is something Not To Be Missed in Tokyo, do leave a shout out in my comments or ping me via email. I would appreciate it!

It is nice to read the New York Times and get some good news. Nadia Abu El-Haj was granted tenure after a bitter public battle opposing her appointment. As someone who has taken graduate courses with her in Chicago and who was advised by her, I know Columbia and Barnard made the right choice.

Two nights ago I was having dinner with a colleague who recounted a truly horrible experience he had with the modern-day American health care “system.” While in Montana over the summer, he got bit by a bat and well, as a result, he and his entire family had to get rabies shots. These shots are hard to get and priceeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeey. The final bill was $ 20,000 and his NYU based health insurance, United Health Care is claiming they are not responsible!### Like getting bit by a bat and the possibility of rabies are not bad enough. Isn’t the point of health insurance to take care of the unexpected??

Someone also pointed me to The Daily Kos’ wrangle with BCBS of California and well, they picked the wrong guy to mess with given there are so many many many many eyeballs tuned to his blog, everyday (just check out the number of comments). I wonder if the public relations director will contact him as they did with me after I blogged about my trials and tribulations. I certainly don’t have the audience and readers he does, so I am always surprised they ever contacted me in the first place.

The Daily Kos also provided a link for a site that I was thinking of creating if my problems with BCBS were not solved (glad to see someone else has) called Sick of Blue Cross. I personally like the name I came up with a little better Blue Cross No Shield but the important thing is that a site like that exists and it is very good site, design and content wise. There should be a site created for every health insurance company and they should federate and pool resources to gain more visiblity.

While I am not hopeful that the health insurance industry will change within, I think mounting and steady consumer pressure can do a lot to force the industry to change their awful ways. And while I think the bad publicity is a key part to putting pressure on the health insurance to change, I actually think that the power of the consumers also can come from elsewhere, and this elsewhere is overwhelming the administrative channels within and outside of the health insurance. The gist is if they send us a lot of (useless) paperwork, send them A LOT of paperwork back.

On the Daily Kos, a lot of people noted that things got moving when they complained to the Department of Banking and Insurance. While my own complaint to that department did not produce any immediate fruit, it did get the ball moving for the appeal process, which eventually panned out for me. That is, I learned a lot and started to get decent customer service. Doors opened.

Now, it took me weeks to find out that I could complain to the Department of Banking and Insurance and I am sure many find themselves in that situation of walking in a no man’s land of confusion and frustration. If more and more people know that you can file a complaint to these Departments (and why are doctor’s offices not relaying this information??!!), they and the health insurance companies will get inundated with that which they love to inflict on us, paperwork.

This may slow things down for you but at a certain point, state governments will get the message that something is deeply wrong. So, people MUST use these channels and overwhelm these agencies with complaints, faxes, emails as this is a powerful and very material message that something is deeply wrong and broken and must be fixed.

Also, send faxes and letters to various departments in your health insurance company (appeals, customer service, medical director’s office, public relations office…) get people’s email’s and send them emails. Inundate them with a barrage of administrative paperwork. If they are not being helpful, send a fax or two a day concerning your case until you get clear answers. While individual faxes won’t make much of a difference, imagine if there are 300 a day coming in or 3000…. This can work with the numbers are there and I have a feeling that the numbers Are There.

So spread the word for housebreaking your health insurance and push the paperwork back on them.

There is a debate raging in anthropological circles over the role of anthropologists in the military and the Iraq War Purse Lip Square Jaw has a nice round-up of of articles on the topic. I have only read bits and pieces here and there but this morning I finally gave my full attention to this intriguing article by David Price, which not only covers the vexing debate but discloses the rampant plagiarism in the The U.S. Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual.