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"n her New York Times bestseller Between You & Me, Mary Norris delighted readers with her irreverent tales of pencils and punctuation in The New Yorker's celebrated copy department. In Greek to Me, she delivers another wise and funny paean to the art of self-expression, this time filtered through her greatest passion: all things Greek.Greek to Me is a charming account of Norris's lifelong love affair with words and her solo adventures in the land of olive trees and ouzo. Along the way, Norris explains how the alphabet originated in Greece, makes the case for Athena as a feminist icon, goes searching for the fabled Baths of Aphrodite, and reveals the surprising ways Greek helped form English. Filled with Norris's memorable encounters with Greek words, Greek gods, Greek wine--and more than a few Greek men--Greek to Me is the Comma Queen's fresh take on Greece and the exotic yet strangely familiar language that so deeply influences our own.I"--

Governments face new and serious risks when striving to protect their citizens. Of the various information technology tools discussed in the political and legal sphere, data mining applications for the analysis of personal information have probably generated the greatest interest. Data mining has captured the imagination as a tool which can potentially close the intelligence gap constantly deepening between governments and their targets. Data mining initiatives are popping up everywhere. The reaction to the data mining of personal information by governmental entities came to life in a flurry of reports, discussions, and academic papers. The general notion in these sources is that offear and even awe. As this discourse unfolds, something is still missing. An important methodological step must be part of every one of these inquires mentioned above-the adequate consideration of alternatives. This article is devoted to bringing this step to the attention of academics and policymakers. The article begins by explaining the term "data mining, " its unique traits, and the roles of humans and machines. It then maps out, with a very broad brush, the various concerns raised by these practices. Thereafter, it introduces four central alternative strategies to achieve the governmental objectives of security and law enforcement without engaging in extensive data mining and an additional strategy which applies some data mining while striving to minimize several concerns. The article sharpens the distinctions between the central alternatives to promote a full understanding of their advantages and shortcomings. Finally, the article briefly demonstrates how an analysis that takes alternative measures into account can be carried out in two contexts. First, it addresses a legal perspective, while considering the detriments of data mining and other alternatives as overreaching "searches. " Second, it tests the political process set in motion when contemplating these measures. This final analysis leads to an interesting ...

As datafication progressively invades all spheres of contemporary society, citizens grow increasingly aware of the critical role of information as the new fabric of social life. This awareness triggers new forms of civic engagement and political action that we term "data activism". Data activism indicates the range of sociotechnical practices that interrogate the fundamental paradigm shift brought about by datafication. Combining Science and Technology Studies with Social Movement Studies, this theoretical article offers a foretaste of a research agenda on data activism. It foregrounds democratic agency vis-à-vis datafication, and unites under the same label ways of affirmative engagement with data ("proactive data activism", e. g. databased advocacy) and tactics of resistance to massive data collection ("reactive data activism", e. g. encryption practices), understood as a continuum along which activists position and reposition themselves and their tactics. The article argues that data activism supports the emergence of novel epistemic cultures within the realm of civil society, making sense of data as a way of knowing the world and turning it into a point of intervention and generation of data countercultures. It offers the notion of data activism as a heuristic tool for the study of new forms of political participation and civil engagement in the age of datafication, and explores data activism as an evolving theoretical construct susceptible to contestation and revision.