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1/21/03:

Betacorpo evades Chinese censors (and other real-time open research metas)...

A Harvard Law school study of Internet filtering in China features an Engine wherein one can type in any URL to see whether or not it is filtered out by the routers that provide online access in China. I'm happy to learn that despite my mutedly liberal views, La beta corpo can be readily accessed in China. Actually, just about everything I typed in went through - Whitehouse.gov, Rushlimbaugh.com, Hustler.com. The only thing that I could get it to block was Playboy.com.

Another fun open research site - [via ExcitementMachine] Columbia University is testing the 6 Degrees of Seperation Theory on a global scale. Sign up, get a "target person" from anywhere in the world, and see how many mutual friends it takes for you to reach your target. Of course this assumes that you (and your string of friends) are all comfortable with freely giving away your e-mail addresses. This Columbia study is based off of the well-known Six Degrees study conducted in the 60's by Stanley Milgram. Ironically, if you were paying attention inPsych101 you may remember that Milgram discovered the frightening degree with which people are willing to trust large research institutions.

And more fun with faith in institutions, a quite mysterious case of form letters-to-the-editor [via Rebecca's Pocket] - go to Google, enter the query "genuine+leadership"+"contrary+to+the+class+warfare+rhetoric" and you'll bring up twenty identical letters to small-run newspapers praising Bush's economic plan , but signed by different authors - John Pinckney in Indiana; Sandra Rauschuber in California; and Derick Mfoafo in Virginia.

posted by jeremy @ 2:39 PM