Epistemographer

You might recall the moment from last week’s vice-presidential debate when Vice President Cheney mistakenly referred viewers to factcheck.com instead of factcheck.org, as well as the ensuing debacle when, for days afterward, factcheck.com redirected to georgesoros.com. Conspiracy theories abounded, and I personally was left grinning in bemusement at the cosmic irony of it all.

Now, the true story comes out from the owners of factcheck.com, and it’s a beauty:

The website “factcheck.com” is operated by Name Administration Inc., a privately held company based in the Cayman Islands. Traditionally, internet addresses ending in “.com” have been intended for commercial purposes, while “.org” has been intended for use by non-profit organizations, such as the “factcheck.org” website operated by the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania.


Name Administration Inc. is a leading domain name administrator, website developer and internet traffic syndicator. Name Administration Inc. utilizes a portfolio of generic domain names, such as antarctica.com, lipbalm.com, and others as stand alone websites which collectively form an integrated advertising network offering users relevant paid search advertisements and information. “Factcheck.com” was registered by Name Administration long before the U.S. vice presidential debate for use in providing a directory of commercial providers of information resources relevant to the generic term “fact check”.


When Mr. Cheney mis-spoke, viewers heeded his advice and visited factcheck.com in staggeringly large numbers. Name Administration re-directed this traffic for several reasons – to protect our servers from the potential for damage caused by Mr. Cheney’s error, and as a service to our advertisers. Our advertisers intend to pay for potential customers to their websites instead of observers of political current events.


Name Administration re-directed those visitors to a website relevant to U.S. politics. Name Administration chose the website of investor, philanthropist, and political activist Mr. George Soros, because his website is well-funded, does not seek to raise funds from visitors, and had greater capacity to absorb the load of visitors, reaching over 100 visitors per second during peak times after the debate. An administrator for the Annenberg Public Policy Center has since informed us that their web server system would have been severely crippled by the load, had we directed the traffic to them. Contrary to some imaginative rumors spun by some, our action was undertaken on a voluntary and emergency basis, with no prior communication or consultation with the Soros organization. As confirmed by our legal counsel in response to media inquiries, Name Administration Inc. has not been offered, and has not sought, any inducement, compensation, or other consideration from any individual or organization for re-directed the resulting web traffic.


Traffic to factcheck.com has begun to return to normal levels, and Name Administration Inc. has restored the website to its original and intended use. Name Administration Inc. wishes the citizens of the United States well in the selection of their leaders, whose actions can sometimes have unintended consequences beyond the borders of the United States.

The last paragraph just makes me chuckle…

Was laid low for most of the past week, at least in a technological sense – I sent my Powerbook in for repairs to fix the fact that the lower third of the LCD screen kept flickering in and out. Luckily, the Center had a spare 12” Powerbook lying around, so I wasn’t entirely cast adrift, but the experience threw two observations into sharp relief:

1. Screen real estate truly does matter. I found myself wanting to spend less time doing computer work, to the point that I caught myself actively avoiding things I had to do, because the smaller monitor felt cramped, claustrophobic. When I did finally settle in and work, my thoughts didn’t flow as freely, as if there was a blockage in the figurative pipeline between my brain and the screen. This was particularly a problem with regard to a particular project I’m developing in Flash (there just wasn’t room for all the windows I’m used to having open, and I couldn’t see very many lines of code at once), but also held true for writing in general (including blogging, as several half-finished posts languished in wait).

2. The Apple Store is the new video store. In my dissertation, chapter 5 deals with the culture of the video store, drawing on Ray Oldenburg’s exploration of the “third place,” a social space that is neither domestic nor professional. In their pre-Blockbuster days, video stores often fostered an enthusiastic social interaction between customers and the “expert” video clerk behind the counter. I spent a few hours at the Apple Store in Clarendon last week, and I was struck by the similarities between that dynamic and the ways in which customers interact with the Apple employees – particularly the “Genius” behind the Genius Bar, whose job it is to explicitly fill the same role as the video clerk in early video stores. Different technology, but the same sort of enthusiastic talk, both of hardware and software, and the same feeling of community around a technology that defines a subculture.

Wow [via CNN]…

RICHMOND, Virginia (AP) — George Mason University on Thursday canceled plans to have “Fahrenheit 9/11” director Michael Moore speak on campus five days before the presidential election.

The decision came after a Republican state legislator wrote a letter to university President Alan G. Merten protesting the Fairfax school’s plans to pay the filmmaker $35,000 to speak on October 28…

A message left seeking comment from Moore wasn’t immediately returned to The Associated Press, but he told The Washington Post he plans to come and speak anyway.

“I’m going to show up in support of free speech and free expression,” he said.