Today MIT and 13 other major universities submitted an amicus brief (PDF attached below) to the U.S. Supreme Court in defense of using race as a consideration in the admissions process.

The case is Fisher v. University of Texas. Oral arguments will be heard on Oct. 10, with a decision expected in early 2013.

The core of the schools' brief is summed up on page 2:

As a type geek, I find this Michigan court battle inspiring. As a citizen, it's uglier than Comic Sans:

At issue is whether a summary of the question, used on a petition to gather signatures to get the question on the ballot, was written in a type size specified by state law: 14-point boldface. The typeface used on the petition was 14-point Calibri produced by Microsoft Corp.'s Word software, but a dispute has arisen over whether the font renders the type at the full 14-point size.

The difference in size, as pointed out to the Michigan Supreme court, is the width of a dime.

This infographic from Floor Gem blasts the Transportation Security Administration's prodigious terribleness (prodigious in the sense that the TSA is a terribleness prodigy, on the level of Bobby Fischer and chess). There's nothing that inherently lends this data to the infographic form. It's flawed. There's nothing that its graphicality adds to its data, except that it's just so good-looking, its imperfections don't matter. It affects you. You remember it. And that's really what counts when it comes to communicating data.

The MIT Technology Review just posted Campaigns to Track Voters with "Political Cookies". It freaks me out for a reason I'll get to below...

The technology involves matching a person's Web identity with information gathered about that person offline, including his or her party registration, voting history, charitable donations, address, age, and even hobbies.

Companies selling political targeting services say "microtargeting" of campaign advertising will make it less expensive, more up to the minute, and possibly less intrusive. But critics say there's a downside to political ads that combine offline and online data. "These are not your mom and pop TV ads.

(This post stretches in different directions, but the question I'd like your thoughts on is: what would a civic media tool look like that helps people make decisions in their community's long-term interest?)

The front page of Boston.com yesterday was filled with articles -- both new and re-promoted -- about Boston's transit agency's budget paradox.

The MBTA's debt has many fathers: from the too-young dads who didn't plan for the future, which every city seems have, to absentee fathers, like agencies outside the MBTA who thought it was a great idea to cover any cost overruns of the Big Dig by dumping that debt on the MBTA. (Perversely, environmentalists and fans of interstates were on the same side of this...balance the environmental impact of constructing a highway by, in turn, expanding the mass transit system, yet have no real plan to pay for either.)

Read a detailed run-down on our blog: civic.mit.edu/blog/mstem/jay-rosens-three-layer-journalism-cake

Co-sponsored by the Center for Civic Media; Comparative Media Studies; Science, Technology, and Society; and the Program in Writing and Humanistic Studies

New communications technologies are revolutionizing our experience of news and information. The avalanche of news, gossip, and citizen reporting available on the web is immensely valuable but also often deeply unreliable. How can professional reporters and editors help to assure that quality journalism will be recognized and valued in our brave new digital world?

In my nearly four years here, I've seen the rise of some great solutions to communications challenges.

MailChimp and other email marketing platforms have made signing up and emailing friends and followers dead simple while avoiding the worst practices that lead to spamhood.

Twitter not only works as a broadcast medium but also makes rebroadcasting more respectable than it had been. (You think I'm kidding, but older professional communications folks still reflexively hesitate, wondering if featuring others' news weakens one's own brand or, worse, constitutes a copyright violation.)

Eventbrite helps manage ticketing and major event promotion without ever having to print out a spreadsheet, set up a cost object, or beg a former cop to help guard a cash box.

What's been the relationship between social media and social movement activity during the current global cycle of protest? Our own Sasha Costanza-Chock says it's time to find out...

Media Culture in the Occupy Movement From the People's Mic to GlobalRevolution.tv

Thursday 5pm @ MIT

Sasha Costanza-Chock is Assistant Professor of Civic Media in the Comparative Media Studies program at MIT. He is a Fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, co-principal investigator of the MIT Center for Civic Media, and cofounder of the Occupy Research Network.

===================================

Are you an MIT undergrad with a coding background and interest in media? Check out this great opportunity with the AAGO project:

UROP Positions: MIT Center for Civic Media and the Comparative Media Studies Program
Faculty Supervisor: Prof. James Paradis

Project Title:
Aago: Mobile Media Diaries for Youth Citizen Journalists

One feature of the Center that we love to, well, feature is our completely unique set of courses. This semester we have three of them -- two taught by professor and Center co-principal investigator Sasha Costanza-Chock and the other, in his MIT class debut, by our director Ethan Zuckerman. Registration is still open:

CMS.362 Civic Media Collaborative Design Studio
S. Costanza-Chock
Project-based studio focusing on collaborative design of civic media provides a service-learning opportunity for students interested in working with community organizations. Multidisciplinary teams create civic media projects based on real-world community needs. Covers co-design methods and best practices to include the user community in iterative stages of project ideation, design, implementation, testing, and evaluation. Students taking graduate version complete additional assignments. Limited to 16.