• The Plotz Thickens: Slate Editor Sends Staffers on Sabbaticals
  Oh, yes please. "For Slate to be a great magazine, for us to be as good as we can be, it’s not simply enough for us to be responsive to the news of the moment…We have to do work with a longer time horizon." Maybe it takes a web-born magazine to push back against the medium's ceaseless appetites.
• Google Maps Car Hits a Deer, Records Entire Ordeal on Google Maps
  Talk about a privacy violation.
• Who’s Undercutting Obama? CJR
  Lot of chatter out there about Obama's press operation sucking it up.
• Go Slow, Foodies. It's the Way to Win.
  Shorter version: You're confusing the President with all this "good food" talk!
• HerdictWeb
  Crowdsourcing the closed Internet.
• Mirror, Mirror on the Wall – Errol Morris Blog
  Bush through the eyes of photographers. Morris really, really wants to lead them into divining the "meaning" of the president from the photos. Some bite, others don't. (Thanks, Jed Cohen)

• Steele pledges to bring the Republican party to America's boardrooms. Too easy. #
• Steelers win the Super Bowl! I think. I haven't been paying very close attention. #
• [techPres] Daily Digest: Obama Organizes While Republicans Regroup. Much evolving today, but had to just pull the trigger. http://ow.ly/7NL #
• Shouldn't Twitter auto-link something like herdict.org? Anyhoo, to save you all the copying and the pasting: http://herdict.org #
• Neat. Berkman's herdict.org crowdsources (sorry — ain't no other way to say it) reporting on which websites are blocked from where. #
• [tP blog] Progressives Have a Hashtag: http://ow.ly/7wU Kodos and Kang are pleased. #
• Just discovered two fun facts: (1) Henry Waxman plants flag on health reform this year: http://ow.ly/7uU and (2) @henrywaxman is taken. #

• An Interview with Kevin Sprouls – WSJ Portrait Artist
  Dude who does the Journal's famous dot portraits admits he makes people he doesn't like look bad: "For instance, I thought Judge Rehnquist was a bum, and did give him a rather sinister countenance."

• Meant to note this last night: Real World Brooklyn is so exactly what it looks like where I live. You should come by. We'll go boating. #
• [techPres] New White House Citizen Participation Director is bringing in the mechanic to drive the car: http://ow.ly/7uo #
• [techPres] Daily Digest: Forget Sod. Will Obama's Bill Stimulate the Grassroots? http://ow.ly/7pt #
• With Ledbetter signed, what happened to the White House's five-day transparency rule on non-emergency legislation? http://ow.ly/7oP #
• Best bit on Ted Stevens' move: it's to *Congress*, AZ. "Dear all, things are swell here in Congress…" http://tinyurl.com/ch3gwk (via MBH) #
• First the oath, now Ledbetter v. Goodyear. #stuffjohnrobertsgotreallyreallywrong #fairpay #
• Savvy day-in-the-life video from Boehner et al showing what went down yesterday. Kinda eating Dems' lunch with this stuff. http://ow.ly/7jL #
• Still grooving on @JohnWonderlich's post: http://bit.ly/2YlfUJ Recovery.gov is a chance to turn transparency from a "what" to a "how." #
• The bad: I'm on the slowest train in the history of the New York City subway. The good: It smells like caramel. #

• Love me some @stevenbjohnson, but as Candy Land goes, anytime you can teach a kid not to cheat through yelling? Okay by me. http://ow.ly/73D #
• New piece of mine on techPres on why Obama hasn't called on his networks during the stimulus debate: http://ow.ly/72W #
• Good stuff from @JohnWonderlich: "[A] Web site is not oversight" (channeling Jerry Lewis). #
• [techPres] "If I knew you were coming I'd a baked a digest, baked a digest…" http://ow.ly/6ZL #
• Checking out SarahPAC, I coulda sworn there's some rule against naming a leadership PAC after yourself, but I guess I'm misremembering. #
• The first thing that StumbleUpon plucked from the Internet for me was a recipe for scallion pancakes. It's like it's inside my brain. #
• Remembering how Clinton was vilified at Netroots Nation for refusing to draw and quarter lobbyists. #
• Heh. Just caught the tail end of Lou Dobbs praising Sen. Levin and my first thought was, "eh, crap, what did Carl do wrong?" #

Just stumbled upon this old photo of mine and thought it was a good time to play with how photos show up on the blog. Carry on.

• The Associated Press: Iceland to appoint first openly gay woman as PM
  Nice.

• [techPres] Daily Digest: Stimulus, Subsidies, Scurvy and More (Man, just how great a word is "scurvy"?) http://ow.ly/6D3 #
• Giant screen behind Gibbs during briefing read "WHITEHOUSE.GOV." But U.S.'s innovative rep a bit dinged by all this talk of an archaic WH. #

• Who Should Progressives Root for in the Super Bowl?
• The End of Solitude
• Michael Lewis Gets Honest on How his Eggers-produced Anthology "Panic" Came to Be
  "Dave is a friend, and he has this philanthropy that is forever in need of dollars. And he came over here in early 2007 and we were having lunch. And he asked me if I would edit one of these anthologies for McSweeney's. And they've had some very distinguished people do them — you know, David Sedaris and Michael Chabon and so on. But they never sell. But there's an advance — you know, ten grand or twenty grand or whatever — and so we schemed. What could we throw out there that we could fool people into buying that would actually generate real dollars? And so we weren't thinking, Oh, there's going to be a financial panic and this would be really good for that. Remember, this was February 2007 and we were just thinking, What could we fool people into buying?"
• Unsavory Snacks — Science Progress
  What to make of the peanut butter recall. Kicker: "The current system is nuts."
• Mumbai slum residents object to 'Slumdog's' name
  "I just made up the word. I liked the idea. I didn't mean to offend anyone." Aye. Generally calling folks "dogs" is ill advised.
• From a Portuguese Marsh, Salt, the Traditional Way – NYTimes.com
  “What we are selling is ocean saltwater without the water. Call it sea dust.”

• Steven Johnson's case against Candy Land – Boing Boing

• Seriously thinking about suing Beyonce. "Single Ladies" has been stuck in my head for three days. I'm about to put a spike through my eye. #
• Ooh, what's this? A brand spankin' new techPres Daily Digest? Interesting… http://ow.ly/67k #

• Radio Spreads Taliban’s Terror in Pakistani Region – NYTimes.com
  The dark side of connective tech.

• Of Forbes' "25 most influential liberals" in media, four are women, and they're Maddow, Huffington, Dowd, and Oprah. http://ow.ly/5xI #
• [techPres] Daily Digest: New Guard Stumbles Upon a Few Bugs http://ow.ly/5wc #
• When critiquing WH tech, can't forget communications is at the very core of a campaign, but is only part of what an administration does. #
• Among what I've learned writing today's techPres digest: Beyoncé is indeed written with an acute accent mark. Never stop learning, kids. #
• It was once told on the Hill that Ted Kennedy's office smuggled Macs into his Senate Office Building under the cover of darkness. True? #
• Saw @stevenbjohnson talk "Invention of Air"/modern politics at the Court Street B&N last night. If the book tour's near you, worth going. #
• Deep thoughts: maybe we should forget about WhiteHouse.gov being a destination site. The goal instead: "everywhere government." #
• Really quite upset that the White House web team has neither regrouted my shower nor taught me to stir fry yet. Lazy assed… #
• [techPres] Daily Digest: Through the Wormhole, Into the White House — This one's chock full, if I do say so myself. http://ow.ly/5cL #
• Teaching an NYU Gallatin class on "new media, new democracy" starting today. Know any interested Gallatiners? Plz send 'em my way. #
• One thing I don't get about Obama's Blackberry: Congress uses 'em all day long, managing to balance security with staying in touch. #
• Imagining the headlines if Bush's robot.txt file was this brief: "Bush Attempts to Break 'the Google' with Careless Coding!" #
• On Fairey, gotten some interesting comments. But fair use is one (legal) thing. Respectful collaboration as an artist is another. #
• Oh my. Fairey on criticisms he "borrows" too heavily from movements of color: "It's stupid…I'm friends with Chuck D." http://ow.ly/4Xd #
• Hmm. Now knowing who took the photo behind Shepard Fairey's HOPE poster, is "referencing" fair to the artists before him? http://ow.ly/4X2 #
• [blogging] techPres Daily Digest: First Peeks Inside the New White House (Website) http://ow.ly/4Uo #
• Number of mentions of the word "Iraq" in GWB's new whitehouse.gov bio: zippo. http://www.whitehouse.gov/about/presidents/georgewbush/ #
• Roberts: "Hey, should we do a dry run?" Obama: "Nah, I'm good." Roberts: "Yeah, yeah, me too. Me too." #
• Wow. About half of whitehouse.gov's "Civil Rights" page deals with LGBT stuff: http://tinyurl.com/9aodvy #
• [blogging] Got up extra early to make you an Inauguration special Daily Digest: The Dawn of Day One http://ow.ly/4Az #
• For my DC people open to a religious experience, check out All Souls Unitarian at least once — but make sure Rev. Rob is preaching. #

• Facebook | Alliance of Youth Movements
  I get that this is part of the State Department's "Public Diplomacy 2.0" outreach, but what I can't tell: whether State is taking an active role in growing the "grassroots" movement.
• Revolution, Facebook-Style – Can Social Networking Turn Young Egyptians Into a Force for Democratic Change? – NYTimes.com
• Congress's Top Security Officer Admits Inaugural Security Breach
  D.C.'s police chief sets up a weekend meeting with the founders of the Facebook "Survivors of the Purple Tunnel of Doom" group.
• ChangeCamp
  Canada's getting on the change train.

Get 'er here. (Via Justin Hart)

• Ground Zero: Google Maps and Nuclear Weapons
  Wow. Pull up a place on the map and see what nuclear weapons from "Little Boys" to DF-31s would do to it. Kablooey. (Thanks, Craig Stoltz.)
• Service Outage (a note from the USA)

• Of Forbes' "25 most influential liberals" in media, four are women, and they're Maddow, Huffington, Dowd, and Oprah. http://ow.ly/5xI #
• [techPres] Daily Digest: New Guard Stumbles Upon a Few Bugs http://ow.ly/5wc #
• When critiquing WH tech, can't forget communications is at the very core of a campaign, but is only part of what an administration does. #
• Among what I've learned writing today's techPres digest: Beyoncé is indeed written with an acute accent mark. Never stop learning, kids. #
• It was once told on the Hill that Ted Kennedy's office smuggled Macs into his Senate Office Building under the cover of darkness. True? #
• Saw @stevenbjohnson talk "Invention of Air"/modern politics at the Court Street B&N last night. If the book tour's near you, worth going. #
• Deep thoughts: maybe we should forget about WhiteHouse.gov being a destination site. The goal instead: "everywhere government." #
• Really quite upset that the White House web team has neither regrouted my shower nor taught me to stir fry yet. Lazy assed… #

So, it looks as though I'm going to be teaching a class at NYU's Gallatin school this semester, on the topic of "new media, new democracy." I'm entirely thrilled about that, as it's a topic of both great personal interest and one that's entirely timely, given that the class will coincide with, oh, about the first 140 days of the Obama administration. I'm on the lookout for more students, though you, of course, have to be an NYU student (or someone with class taking privileges, I guess). But we're committed to making the class as open as possible, via the Internets. To that end, we've got a Facebook group going. I don't see anything wrong with anyone who's interested joining.

• @foodcoop
  Our Park Slope Food Coop is on Twitter.

• [techPres] Daily Digest: Through the Wormhole, Into the White House — This one's chock full, if I do say so myself. http://ow.ly/5cL #
• Teaching an NYU Gallatin class on "new media, new democracy" starting today. Know any interested Gallatiners? Plz send 'em my way. #
• One thing I don't get about Obama's Blackberry: Congress uses 'em all day long, managing to balance security with staying in touch. #
• Imagining the headlines if Bush's robot.txt file was this brief: "Bush Attempts to Break 'the Google' with Careless Coding!" #