Hot off the heels of telling everyone that our fast-paced, short attention span culture was actually good for us, Steven Johnson‘s latest book casts the dawn of epidemiology as a thrilling page-turner. While I know a few people who visit London and either visit or feel guilty about not visiting the Broad Street pump in tribute to John Snow’s spatial analysis that elucidated the source of an 1854 cholera outbreak, I don’t think that I expected the story to break from intro methods to the bestseller lists.

Where Snow used a map to identify a contaminated water source, Johnson’s new web project uses maps to aggregate local content. Feed outside.in your ZIP code and it will show you what people are writing about your neighborhood. Aiming to unite the great surplus of data from hyperlocal bloggers, review sites, city government sites, and traditional media, the site looks like it will be like your favorite feed aggregator mashed up with google maps and collaboratively tagged.

Because the site opened to the public a few hours ago, the Seattle-based content [#] isn’t especially rich (yet). That’s where you come in. You can either register and go tag-happy, geocode your posts, or submit links, and watch the local content grow. If nothing else, all of this aggregated content should help improve the quality of our own “in other blogs” hand-curated aggregation.

I guess there’s something to be said about the failure of the American education system: A man in Whidbey island has pleaded guilty to convincing a young girl to come have sex with him, a plan that was foiled when the girl went to the wrong Washington [P-I]. She showed up in Washington, D.C. and the airport police there called the FBI and, presumably, her parents.

Creepy Whidbey Island guy could face up to 30 years in jail. On top of being a potential child molestor he also left the state during his investigation and admitted to using meth.

1. In just two weeks, it will be time to participate in our great democratic experiment. This means that today is the last day for slackers to sign up to vote in the 2006 elections. Print out a form, check all of the appropriate boxes and get it in the mail with today’s postmark to your county auditor’s office today. [secstate.wa.gov]

2. However, you should know that voting can be a little pricey [times]. This year, mailing your ballot will cost a whopping 63 cents (A seventy percent increase over last year!). Never fear cheapskates! You can drop their absentee ballot at a polling place [metrokc].

3. Still uncertain about who should get your precious vote? In need of some light reading? King County residents can entertain themselves with the thrilling voter guide and other tasty links [metrokc]

You knew it wasn’t going to be a good day to be a Hawks fan when you saw a Minnesota Vikings defender roll into quarterback Matt Hasselbeck’s leg. Hasselbeck went down, clutching his knee in obvious agony, and by all accounts the doctors are still looking at him.

Seneca Wallace made a valiant effort, but it’s clear he hasn’t had the time to get into a rhythm with this offense. Remember how long it took Hasselbeck to become as good as he is?

With Hasselbeck out, Shawn Alexander out, and Bobby Engram out, plus an offensive line that clearly isn’t what it was last year…yeah, the Hawks are trying to fly with ten pound weights tied to their ankles.

So, as Bill Lyon once said under similar circumstances, give that Super Bowl berth a long, sorrowful hug and a peck on the cheek, and don’t look back as you walk away. Maybe next year.

What an appropriate title for this week’s episode! I am just like the Seattle Grace Hospital people since I’m totally feeling guilty as well. You see, Josh usually gets his recap up right away and I, on the other hand, have completely slacked and didn’t get this sucker up until Sunday. In my defense I was down in Portland and did not have my laptop with me. Seriously, I’m not lying. Why would I lie? But rest assured I am in town this week and will have no excuse for not recapping promptly in our fair leader’s absence.

And now without further ado, the recap….
(more…)

Following up Har Mar Superstar at the Stranger Genius Awards this evening was Aqueduct, who had the difficult task of topping the musical equivalent of Deuce Bigalow. Lucikly they came on strong out of the gate, with an homage to both the Geto Boys and Dan Savage — surely the first time such a thing has been attempted — called Damn It Feels Good to Be a Genius. When you think about it, the song really writes itself:

Damn it feels good to be a genius
Feedin’ the poor and helpin’ out wit’ they bills
Although I was born in Tacoma
Now I’m in Seattle makin’ deals

The 2006 Stranger Genius Awards were held tonight at the UW Henry Art Gallery, and Minneapolis cult favorite Har Mar Superstar led off the evening’s musical entertainment with a show that exposed Sean Tillmann’s body no less than his sensitive soul.

Nothing gets the art set going like crowd interaction, so Tillman peppered his musical performance with various thoughts, observations and questions. “Who here has a DUI?” was a crowd favorite. Other requests — aimed mostly at the women in the audience — involved stuffing Tillman’s sole remaining item of clothing with $1 and $20 bills.

Others, probably intimidated by his sculpted physique, stayed in the safety of the crowd, tossing up onto the stage various items of intimate apparel. In fact, Tillman wore the underwear of a Stranger account executive’s girlfriend wrapped around his head for most of the set — an undisclosed conflict of interest that may soon rival the Great Line Out Controversy of 2006 if not promptly dealt with on the Slog.

image, via Fuel Coffee

I stopped by Fuel Coffee’s new location last night on 24th in Madison Park, and it looks like they’re planning to open for business, well, today. They were still finishing up some of the details and the chairs weren’t out yet, but the space looks great, and they’ve got a fantastic old bar behind the counter.

The address is 2300 24th Ave. E. Full disclosure: All of the photos that will be up on the walls sometime today were taken by my fellow.

Friday

• Connor Oberst thinks Cursive‘s album is “better than good”. Tonight, Omaha’s second favorite indie sensation meets the pride of Portland for a high-energy double feature. With their last record, The Thermals turned their messy lo-fi power pop to warn us from following a path to a total information awareness fundamentalist future. Dystopia and angst have never sounded this good. [neumos]
• After four years of radio silence, Peter Parker [myspace] gets the gang back together for a show at the Fusion Cafe. [ymca]

Saturday

• The Hold Steady provide a literary scream rock travelogue concerning their cross-country adventures. [crocodile]
• Fancypants golfers take over Capitol Hill for a nine hole drinkathon. [seattleurbangolf]

Sunday

• Eat a burrito for all three meals! [upcoming]

Until recently, I haven’t had any particular feelings about the Weekly. Sometimes I read it but mostly I didn’t, and I think the Weekly and I were both alright with that arrangement. I watched with a little interest all of the quitting and firing that happened when the New Times took over, and then I forgot all about it.

Only recently has Geov Parrish has written about what went down, and it’s a very small train wreck’s worth of interesting. “I found out later that while I was on vacation Van De Voorde told Skip Berger to fire me. This is chickenshit for two reasons: ambushing someone while they’re on vacation, and setting up an outgoing editor as the fall guy for a move sure to be unpopular with readers.”

The moral of the story is that the New Times did a very good job of screwing things up, and I like to think that this complete lack of decency is why they chose to run a six-month-old story about a dead man. Parrish says, “the new Seattle Weekly is being run by an enormous corporation that will run it the same way they’d run a widget factory–a cheap one–and it will show.”

And really, it does show.

(Thanks to Seattlest for continuing to pay attention to these things.)