I invite you to put on your creative thinking caps and participate in the book cover contest now running over at Worth1000 for my methods edited volume called Research Confidential. The winner receives $150 and the chance to have the design show up as the book cover.

You may recall the thread here and over at Crooked Timber a while back regarding the book’s title. I received many great suggestions. In the end, an idea I got from Jonathan Zittrain won out. The subtitle “Solutions to Problems Most Social Scientists Pretend They Never Have” came from a suggestion on the CT thread submitted by reader Vivian. Many thanks to both! (In fact, many thanks to all who participated in those helpful threads and convinced me to abandon my original idea.)

The title is not the only idea for which I owe JZ thanks. I’m following in his footsteps by running a contest for the cover design. His book on The Future of the Internet – And How To Stop It ended up with its cool cover this way.

The contest page gives a brief summary of the book and some ideas I have for a cover design although I’m very eager to see all sorts of other suggestions. The site also lists technical specifications for submissions. The contest runs for a week. If you can think of friends who are good at this sort of thing, please pass the word along. And thanks to my publisher, The University of Michigan Press, for supporting this idea.

• Online surfers look to the past in new photograph craze
  (Times Online) – too funny, friend of mine featured on photo
  (tags: article photography funny)
• Legal Education Commons
  from The Center for Computer-Assisted Legal Instruction – freely available materials
  (tags: teaching legal resource)

• Láthatatlan Kiállítás (Invisible Exhibition)
  things to experience in Budapest
  (tags: budapest)
• Barack Obama, Facebook, BlackBerry, White House employees
  (Salon) "In the tech-challenged White House, the prez's Blackberry-savvy aides feel like they've stumbled into the Carter administration."
  (tags: article technology politics)
• A Win for Free Speech Online
  (NYTimes) editorial
  (tags: freespeech article)
• A Vision for History at Community Colleges
  (Inside Higher Ed) – making history courses more relevant by teaching general research skills in class
  (tags: article teaching academia)

• CGS Project for Scholarly Integrity
  (tags: research resource)

• Obama’s Partisan, Profane Confidant Reins It In
  (NYTimes) "Mr. Obama said he was always happy to take calls for his chief of staff — a reference to an incident a few weeks ago when Mr. Hoyer called Mr. Emanuel, who was in the back of a car and claimed he was too busy to talk, so he handed the phone to Mr. Obama.

  In meetings, it is not uncommon for Mr. Obama and Mr. Emanuel to engage in teasing banter. One White House official recalls an exchange last week in which Mr. Obama said something to the effect of, “Well, I was going to do that, but I didn’t want Rahm to mope for a half-hour.”

  (tags: article politics emanuel)

• Basics – In ‘Geek Chic’ and Obama, New Hope for Lifting Women in Science – NYTimes.com
  (NYTimes) – We definitely need more research on why women are not pursuing certain scientific careers, but why isn't this funding being given to social scientists whose expertise it is to study questions of this sort? I find that part puzzling and frustrating.
  (tags: article science women gender research)
• Justices Reject Pornography Law
  (NYTimes)
  (tags: internet law legal article)

• Obama's People
  (NYTimes) – pictures of people, surprisingly unflattering in many cases
  (tags: photos politics)

• NizzOTE – Web based sticky note
  create notes, no fuss, although they are potentially public
  (tags: tools)

• Facebook has Whopper of a problem with Burger King campaign
  interesting
  (tags: article ads advertising facebook)

• Backblaze
  online backup service
  (tags: tools backup)
• Illinois House passes resolution in support of Israel
  (tags: politics israel illinois)

• A Couple in Chicago
  (The New Yorker) – 1996 picture of the Obamas
  (tags: article photo politics)

As some of you know, I’m a huge turtle fan. I just came across this video that should explain why one might become a turtle fan. Although the ones I had when I was little weren’t of this variety, they were this size. Too cute for words.

• Writing in the Age of Distraction
  (tags: advice howto writing)
• Whole Earth Catalog: Access to Tools and Ideas
  entire scanned copies available
  (tags: reference magazine resources)

• Ten Thousand Cents
  interesting digital art project using crowdsourcing
  (tags: art digital crowdsourcing creativity money)
• Whopper Sacrifice
  "Sacrifice 10 friends from Facebook for a free WHOPPER®" – great viral marketing campaign
  (tags: ads viral advertising social)
• Taxi fare calculator for various US cities
  helpful resource to figure out how much a cab ride will cost, seems reasonably accurate for cities I know well
  (tags: tools travel taxi transportation)

• How to get rid of sensor dust in DSLR cameras
  (tags: howto photography camera)
• The 10 Best Jobs in America Today
  sociologist comes in at #8
  (tags: article jobs sociology)

• Art Fire
  "online marketplace for handmade products"
  (tags: crafts arts sales)
• Lifetime, no see
  (Chicago Tribune) amazing story of two brothers unknown to each other for 80 years and then reconnecting; living just six blocks away from each other
  (tags: article chicago people)

It’s unusually cold in some parts of Europe and temperatures are expected to be especially harsh this coming weekend. This makes the following even more unfortunate than it would be otherwise: due to conflicts with Ukraine, Russia has cut off gas supplies to several countries some of which rely on Russia for the majority of their needs and have enough supplies for no more than a few days. There isn’t a ton of good coverage* about this out there (yet?), you can read up on some of it here and here (although some information in English already seems outdated when I compare it to reports in Hungarian papers, which presumably have more accurate updates for at least Hungary). Hungary has already shut down numerous industrial plants and has taken other measures to lower usage.

Let’s say you are a country and calculate that you have enough supplies for about three weeks. Your neighbor only has enough for two days and asks for your help. What do you do? (Judging from some of the reports, this isn’t necessarily a hypothetical.)

[*] Feel free to post links to additional coverage that you find helpful. New stories came up as I was writing this post, I suspect/hope that more will be available. (Don’t assume I didn’t search in the right places, there was very little on this when I first started looking for it earlier today. The only reason I even knew to look was a mention by my cousin in an email and a phone conversation later with my Mom. They are both in Budapest so they are following the details and seem to have more to go on.)

• Ariane Sherine: We did it! The atheist bus campaign is bigger and better then ever | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk
  "As Charlie Brooker – one of the first people to donate to the Atheist Bus Campaign – says: 'Public transport in Britain suggests there isn't a God anyway, but in case anyone hasn't noticed, or feels isolated for thinking such a thing, this campaign should help.'"
  (tags: article religion uk atheism ads)
• Twilight of the color photo
  (Boston Globe) – "As printed snapshots vanish, we're losing more than shoe boxes full of mementos"
  (tags: article photography books)
• Harvard braces for Kagan departure
  (Boston Globe)
  (tags: article harvard law)
• Survey Practice
  quick turn-around publication about survey research from AAPOR
  (tags: research surveys journal academic aapor)

I don’t like seeing you’re when your should be used and vice versa, but the following took it all to a whole new level: in a recent email I received, instead of your, the person wrote u’re. Yikes.

• Flickr: Cars With Plates That Match
  Flickr photo group for license plates that say something about the car upon which they are found – neat idea
  (tags: photos flickr licenseplates)
• Video of Lincoln Park Zoo Lights
  video I took while visiting the Lincoln Park Zoo Lights
  (tags: video christmas holiday zoo)
• Illinois Railway Museum – CTA Signs for Sale
  (tags: products-services chicago transportation decoration)
• Florence Kelley :: The Life and Times of Florence Kelley in Chicago, 1891-1899
  "From the beginning of her work as chief inspector of factories for Illinois she realized the importance of effective administration and all that it implies — a system of alert oversight, a permanent, trained non-political inspectorate, reliable statistics, illuminating reports as the basis of continuous public education"
  (tags: history resources reference chicago)