UC Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism is hosting an event entitled "Weblogs, Information, and Society" on April 10.

Speakers include: Dan Gillmor, San Jose Mercury News; Ross Mayfield, CEO of Socialtext; Donna Wentworth, Harvard's Berkman Center; Ed Felten, Princeton; Scott Rosenberg, Salon; and Ernest Miller, LawMeme.

Description: The Weblogs Information and Society panel draws webloggers from academe, business, and journalism to explore how weblogs continue to change the way groups and individuals work, learn, and communicate.

The panel will also explore how weblogs, and social software in particular, facilitate civic and creative engagement by increasing the fluidity of information between individuals and organizations. This developing relationship between weblogs, information, and society is significant and deserves further discussion.

Weblogs, Information, and Society | Event at UC Berkeley

"Turn it up, but keep quiet about it. A group of anonymous dance music DJs are here to inject the S.F. scene with a desperately needed dose of renegade flavor -- on FM radio, pirate style. The tech-savvy team recently launched Pressure FM -- seven years in the making -- on 88.1, where it pumps out top-notch styles of house, U.K. garage (2-step), and broken beat every Friday from 6 p.m. to midnight. We can't disclose the details of the operation, but like a map point for an old-school underground, the actual location will provide you with everything you need to know: that quality dance music is at the people's disposal. ..."

'Pressure FM' is new Pirate Radio Station in SF

So he did what an increasing number of senior managers uncertain of their job prospects are doing: He set himself up at his own company." ...

Hard Times Prompt an Entrepreneurial Itch

Jobless in SF/SV? Go job-shopping on Thursday, December 13 at the Fairmont Hotel in San Jose. Bring your security know-how and mingle with important people at "The Technology and Homeland Security Summit and Expo." A panel session will address R&D in "biosecurity, cybersecurity, financial services, and human resources. It will also highlight growth opportunities for employment in these industry sectors."

Also, bring your checkbook; this event is non-free (but not non-US.)

Silicon Valley to make security pitch

(Do you think WebMD and Eli Lily would be willing [and able] to provide 30 days of free Prozac for an entire state? We may soon know ...)

California has been suffering ... Even good news is bad news. ... California is a famously rewarding source of drive-by anthropology. ... In truth this great freak show of a state embodies all the generalizations and defies them, depending on which valley you visit. ... Bright young techies are voting with their U-Hauls ... Optimists will tell you that Silicon Valley has always been cyclical ...

"Failure is an essential part of our ecosystem," said Paul Saffo, a Menlo Park technology forecaster. "It's like a forest fire burning space for new growth." [Saffo runs the Institute for the Future.]

[A recent opinion poll expressed] "a wish that things will be O.K. ... I don't want to call it denial, but it is not really sustainable."

In a State of Denial

Regular readers of Suck (suck.com) may remember Polly Esther. Well, Polly has a weblog now, into which this was written yesterday (that's Thursday, November 15, 2001 -- at present, it's about 20% of the way down the page):

"WHY I DON'T LIVE IN SAN FRANCISCO

1. It's cold.

2. It's small and brightly lit and filled with cute stores and cute restaurants and butt-white people, like a big, indoor mall, except without the central heating.

3. It's arguably more provincial and goofier than a much smaller, more isolated town.

4. It's a well-established, widely-known fact that the women are all smart and funny and great and the gay men are great but the straight men either have bed-head and play in joke-rock bands, or they're sort of wiener-y.

5. It's chilly and wet and you never have a coat with you, because you're a moron who'll never learn.

6. It's filled with perpetual adolescents who share a scornful attitude toward mainstream America, like you're not cool unless you drink green tea with soy milk and listen to This American Life and have the inside scoop on Salon. Snore.

7. Yeah, I like those people just fine, too. But still. It's cold.

8. Ambition is seen as an affliction that only strikes the shallow and the soulless.

9. There's a fundamental flavor of alienation in the air, like you're all living in some huge hipster ant farm. You tire of the other ants, but you're afraid of the real world. It's sort of like college, really, only everyone's dumber and uglier and you have to pay for the beer. And it's really fucking cold.

Yeah, I'm generalizing. What else is there to do? I'm a fucking rabbit!"

SF crew: With which of these points, if any, do you agree? Disagree?

Polly Esther (of Suck fame) on San Francisco | rabbit blog

"Venture capitalists are all saying: `This is the best time to invest,'" said Jesse Reyes, vice president at Venture Economics. "But if you look at these guys' portfolios, they're just not doing it," he said."

Venture funding down in Bay Area

See how the San Francisco Bay Area has developed over the last century.

From the Scout Report:

The University of California Berkeley's Earth Science's and Map Library has produced a Website that highlights historical maps of the San Francisco Bay area from 1895 to the present. The maps, produced by the US Geological Survey, are scanned topographic 7.5 and 15-minute quadrangles and can be zoomed to impressively fine detail. The site allows visitors to choose from the quadrangle index, search by place name, or browse by clicking on the general overview map. Researchers in cartography, general history, or the San Francisco Bay area should find this site enjoyable and informative.

Historic Topographic Maps of San Francisco