Libyan Strongman Ditches Government, Keeps Female Bodyguards

Well, Muammar Qaddafi’s back in the news.  I know you were wondering what was up with him. After all, according to his Wikipedia bio the dashing desert prince is now the world’s longest-serving head of government (thanks, Fidel!).

The U.S. electorate may have just taken a turn to the left, with even George W. Bush sanctioning a massively larger role for government through the Wall Street bailout. But I was tipped today by an astute observer (she’s @krbstr on Twitter) that Qaddafi has announced a breathtakingly libertarian plan “to distribute the proceeds of oil wealth directly to the people and abolish government ministries,” according to a Financial Times story (“Qaddafi Debate Signals Change“). More below on the controversial proposal, but first a personal note.

Washington Post Puts Microsoft on Page A1 – For Good Research!

Stop the presses! Microsoft Research is getting national front page coverage!

The work of Eric Horvitz and Jure Leskovec got top coverage in major newspapers and news sites today.  With that fame, Eric will probably never again be willing to just while away a Friday afternoon with our Microsoft Institute folks, brainstorming some outside-the-box ideas for future work, as he did this week with us in Redmond’s Building 99.

Right after that meeting, I bugged out of Redmond for a red-eye to the east coast.  Back home in DC this morning (Saturday), I opened my Washington Post to find on page A1, “Instant-Messagers Really Are About Six Degrees from Kevin Bacon: Big Microsoft Study Supports Small World Theory.”

“The Largest Social Network Ever Analyzed”

FACT: According to ComScore data cited in a story in Monday’s FInancial Times, “Facebook, the fast-growing social network, has taken a significant lead over MySpace in visitor numbers for the first time… Facebook attracted more than 123 million unique visitors in May, an increase of 162 per cent over the same period last year… That compared with 114.6 million unique visitors at MySpace, Facebook’s leading rival, whose traffic grew just 5 per cent during the same period… The findings mark the first time that Facebook, launched in 2004, has taken a significant lead in unique visitors, [and] come at a time of change inside Facebook, as the one-time upstart attempts to transform itself into a leading media company.

ANALYSIS:  This week several members of the Microsoft Institute met in Redmond with a visiting friend from government, and among other talks we had a very interesting discussion with Eric Horvitz, a Microsoft Research principal researcher and manager.  Eric’s well known for his work in artificial intelligence and currently serves as president of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI).

We talked about one of Eric’s recent projects for quite a while: “Planetary-Scale Views on a Large Instant-Messaging Network,” a project which has been described by his co-author as “the largest social network ever analyzed.”