Andrew

Recent blog posts by Andrew

My Introduction to Making, a Family Story

Submitted by Andrew on October 12, 2012 - 4:11pm

My mother's father was a machinist.

He had a stocked workshop, and I can't picture him without a blue jumpsuit on, speckled with the light-brown — a sugary scent — of machine oil.

Even as cigars browned his fingers and arthritis froze them, he worked with his hands. His father, an Iowa corn farmer, did too.

Link: 
Marcus Ritland, Denali 3D Design
Shapeways

Dispatch from the Online News Association conference

Submitted by Andrew on September 21, 2012 - 3:12pm

A quick note pecked on my phone from the ONA conference in San Francisco...

At the end of this morning's "Business of Collaboration" session, I had the chance to ask a panel of editors, "Why have you only talked about how you collaborate with other news outlets? Are there particular ethical concerns about generating stories and data with non-profits, local governments, advocacy groups?"

I thought it would be a tricky question to answer, but it wasn't: "Yes, there are ethical concerns and they're not ones we can compromise on" (I'm paraphrasing ProPublica's editor).

I followed up: "So if a mayor in upstate New York asked Abrahm Lustgarten to analyze the fracking data the town couldn't, ProPublica wouldn't collaborate with the mayor?" His answer was accommodating but clear, that a journalistic outfit still has to remain removed to ensure impartiality, but they could cite the data and would still need to compare it to what the company doing the fracking would provide.

"Enhanced Delegation" Model for Participation in Local Governance

Submitted by Andrew on September 19, 2012 - 1:51pm

What if residents could allocate their town's spending like some people do their 401(k)'s?

I've been a homeowner for a little over a year, so for the first time I'm tracking town expenditures and, as important, listening to other residents' town-solvable needs and frustrations.

Arlington's issues can feel piddly. (The divisive issue this year was a leaf blower ban.) But dissatisfaction can grow faster than my crabgrass, and my own dissatisfaction doesn't have to do with present issues as much as the process we'll have to use when things really do get serious.

How to Game the System? Voting-Rules Tweaks for Better Representation

Submitted by Andrew on August 30, 2012 - 12:42pm

What geeked-out little changes to our voting system would you make to result in huge benefits to representative government?

On Becky's recommendation, I've been reading Elinor Ostrom's Governing the Commons. The extraordinarily fun part of the book is how quickly it gets you out of the "government is either the solution or the problem" debate. Now, Ostrom tightly circumscribes her research, limiting it to common-pool resources (fisheries, grazing land, and the like), excluding common goods (which is what I focus on below, in terms of voting), and suggesting the self-governing, self-regulating structures she studies can't be broadened to the largest organizational structures...like national governments.

But that doesn't mean I'm not tempted to do it anyway.

To Supreme Court, MIT defends using race in admissions

Submitted by Andrew on August 15, 2012 - 2:22pm

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:

Link: 
SCOTUSblog: Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin
MIT News: "MIT and peer institutions file Supreme Court amicus brief supporting consideration of race in admissions"

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