I’m planning a tour of the American Southwest over the next two weeks. Itinerary includes Death Valley, Las Vegas, Grand Canyon, Monument Valley Mesa Verde, Canyon de Chelly, Petrified Forest, among others.

So I’m doing searches on that there world wide internet, and come across http://www.americansouthwest.net/, a rich site filled with commentary, photography (1950 images!), maps, and all sorts of resources on the area. And it’s well-written, and the pictures are beautiful, as shown here:

And, clicking around, I realize it’s the work of one guy.

I love the internet.

As an information architect, I also have to give it up for his categorization scheme. Arches! Red Rocks!

The bag pictured above is the Designer Series Protege from Macally, which I’ve been using for the past month or so. I’m a big fan of the designer series — the bags look great, are durable, and reasonably priced (mine cost $49.99). And, to boost my vanity, the bag always gets compliments.

I love it when companies expose honesty in their URLs::
http://www.trendmicro.com/form/spam/default.asp?id=smb-wp

Among the most interesting election processes I’ve ever witnessed is currently taking place across the bay in San Francisco. Gavin Newsom and Matt Gonzalez are vying for the mayoralty in a hotly contested run-off.

Sure, it’s a relatively minor election (compared to, say, the recent California gubernatorial recall), but it’s smallish size has allowed a depth of coverage that has revealed a number of fascinating aspects.

It’s important to understand that the latest polls, for what they’re worth, show the run-off to be a dead heat. This surprises locals, as Gavin had a resounding lead in the initial election (41% to Gonzalez’ 20%). Gonzalez has been able to gain support from people who originally voted for others.

Perhaps the crux of the matter is political party affiliation. Gavin Newsom is the Democratic Party Candidate. Matt Gonzalez, represents the only other viable party in San Francisco– the Green Party. (Political Fun Fact: currently president of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, Gonzalez might currently be the highest ranking Green in the U.S. Another Political Fun Fact: In the 2002 Gubernatorial Election, the Green candidate, Peter Camejo, outpolled the Republican candidate in San Francisco.)

With Matt’s current poll standing and his party affiliation, a fascinating result emerged — the Democratic Party is campaigning scared in San Francisco. Democrats have pretty much owned the city since, I don’t know, probably the 50s. Their dominance has never been seriously threatened in this liberal union town.

But as the Democratic Party drifted toward the center, a dissatisfied electorate emerged. It first came to light in the last mayoral election, when Tom Ammiano got incumbent and presumed shoo-in Wille Brown into a run-off. It came into sharper focus with the 2000 Board of Supervisor elections, where far-left candidates prevailed over Willie-backed ones. The presence of this dissatisfied electorate is now firmly felt by the city’s politicos, and, clearly, it’s caught them off-guard.

So, now the Democratic Party is closing ranks around its own. The SF Democratic Party officially endorsed Newsom, meaning the California Democratic Party can now throw money behind his campaign. And the standard Democratic racial and ethnic groups are endorsing Newman — black leaders backed him earlier in November, and last week Chinese American leaders followed suit.

In one of the more bizarre expressions of Democratic Party machinations, Angela Alioto, who attacked Newsom’s politics in the initial election, ended up endorsing him in the runoff. This move was in exchange for a promise that Alioto would be given a “vice mayor” role in Newsom’s administration (no such position actually exists). But also, Alioto, who had served as vice chair of the state Democratic Party for eight years, feared Gonzalez attempts at building the Green Party.

These are the outcomes of the gears turning in machine politics. Alioto and the leaders of minority groups have acted not on principles based on policies (which are more closely aligned with Gonzalez), but on devotion to the Democratic Party, their organized religion of choice. Even though the Democratic Party isn’t really doing right by it’s fundamental principlines — it’s doing right by whatever political favoritism and cronyism that has enabled it to thrive over the last forty years. It’s calling in favors from trusted special interests, special interests that are now backing the candidate less truly interested in supporting their cause.

On this point, one thing that I haven’t seen in the news is the stance of another classic Democrat special interest – labor. I wonder if they’re being quiet, because labor realizes that their best candidate isn’t the Democrat.

Before this election, Newsom wasn’t really a machine politician. He was just a handsome guy, Kennedy-esque, successful local businessman, representing one of the city’s toniest neighborhoods, who promoted policies that tended towards business-friendliness. However, in order to become mayor, he gave himself over to the machine, obviously assuming that it would guarantee election. The surprising outcome is that this allegiance might be doing him more harm than good. A perceived independent candidate with his ideals would likely be farther ahead in the polls — the residue left by his glad-handing with the machine has engendered a lot of suspicion from San Franciscans (particularly the race-baiting driven by Willie, and the explicit politics of endorsement with Angela).

Such that, even though Newsom has outraised Gonzalez by a factor of 10 ($3.8 million to $391,000), the polls have the two in a dead heat. San Franciscans grew increasingly tired of Willie Brown’s back-room shenanigans, his greased-palms political appointees, his handing of contracts over to people with “juice.” Many are tired of this cronyist politics, and see Gavin simply as Willie’s successor. After their success in the 2000 Board of Supervisors election, this mayoral campaign feels like a culmination of the far left’s insurgence, and San Francisco has a remarkable opportunity to make municipal political history.

Spurred by Jakob’s latest column on Six Sigma and usability, and my own experience with financial services organizations trying to introduce Six Sigma methods into their design processes, I asked the CHI-Web mailing list if Six Sigma applies to user experience work.

There have been some great responses (more informative than Jakob’s original essay). I call your attention to two:

Julie Jensen talking about utilizing Six Sigma in the usability processes at USAA.

Robin Jeffries discussing how it really does enable smart user centered design (at Sun, at least.)

This is great stuff, and I hope to hear more!

(I originally thought of titling this post something like “I don’t know if I like all this discussion around “Sex Smegma”, oh wait, it’s “Six Sigma”? Never mind” in some Emily Litella-like fashion, but that seemed too confusing.)

…And read William Langeweische’s dissection of “Columbia’s Last Flight,” wherein he delineates the (mostly organizational) pressures that lead to the failing of the space shuttle Columbia. You probably won’t learn anything new, but Langeweische’s clear presentation lays out the sequence of events making crystal clear how and where the communication breakdown occurred. Particularly valuable for folks interested in organizational psychology — the NASA bureaucracy did all it could to protect itself, though such actions ironically lead to its ultimate failure and exposure.

So, I’ve been doing some research on information retrieval, visualization, social navigation, blahblahblah.

And one of the recurrent themes is that we are awash in information, and need tools to find the good stuff.

And it made me think. My problem isn’t finding the good stuff. The web has inundated me with good stuff. There’s so much good stuff, I don’t know what to do with it. Trying to do simple research on a topic is overwhelming.

How do I cope with this embarrassment of riches?

A pedestrian homage to Jenny Holzer. And an ongoing project.

It is impossible to take seriously anyone drinking Corona Extra.
(this is doubly true, if something can be doubly impossible, if there is citrus in the bottle)

You overhear the word “gynophobic” only in a college town.

I recently finished reading Charles Wheelan’s Naked Economics, an engaging primer on the discipline. Economics is everywhere, and we’re made to feel out of touch if we don’t understand the signficance of the latest unemployment report, the gross domestic product, why people hang on Alan Greenspan’s every word, etc. etc.

This book introduces you to the fundamental concepts underlying the field of economics, and it would make Chevy Chase-as-Gerald Ford proud — there’s no math. Well, no equations. There are the equivalent of word problems, I suppose, but they’re very easy to grasp.

As a bleeding heart liberal, it can be difficult coming to terms with what seems to be agreed upon as sensible economics. Not that Wheelan stumps for total libertarian laissez-faire-ism. He recognizes that markets are amoral, and, well, humans aren’t, and we need systems to bridge that (like, say, government). But he’s awfully convincing on the need for pretty much unrestricted free trade. Or rather, that free trade should not be restricted by issues of job displacement — the pain in the short run of having people out of work is more than made up for the fruits of a worldwide increase in economic standings that free trade provides. (Though we still need to keep a watchful eye on the externalities of unbridled trade, things like environmental degradation, and make sure that we’re not letting things get out of hand.)

And I found it interesting that Wheelan, who definitely promotes freer trade and less restricted markets than we have now, pretty much comes down on the side of universal health care as the only way to manage what is otherwise an unholy mess.

I also found myself wondering just what economics is. To a certain degree, there seems to be no such thing as economics — it’s simply what you get when you overlay business, political science, and sociology. This was brought home when Wheelan relates a study wherein researchers showed that a woman who auditions for a position with a symphony is something like 50% more likely to get the position if she is hidden during the audition, then if she auditions in full view. Showing, of course, sexism. This strikes me as straight-up sociology, but since the research deals with getting a job, all of a sudden it’s economics. Okay.

For those who followed along with my notes from the About, With, and For conference, you’ll be interested to know that notes for every session have been written up and posted.

Not super deep, but give a great overview of the experience.