A piece on Japan's bullet trains published today by John Glionna is datelined "Nagoya, Japan." Some of it, though, could have shared a byline with the world's greatest collection of trainspotter trivia. Compare Wikipedia's entry on Japan's high-speed Shinkansen trains to Glionna's description of the advanced rail system:

Designed to traverse Japan's mountainous terrain, the trains use tunnels and viaducts to go through and over obstacles rather than around them. They travel on elevated tracks without road crossings and apart from conventional rail. An automated control system eliminates the need for signals.

Wikipedia:

In contrast to older lines, Shinkansen are standard gauge, and use tunnels and viaducts to go through and over obstacles rather than around them. With a minimum curve radius of 4,000 meters (2,500 meters in the oldest Tōkaidō Shinkansen), the system was built entirely from the ground up on elevated tracks without road crossings and separate from conventional rail. It employs an ATC (Automatic Train Control) system, eliminating the need for signals.

Glionna:

Officials boast that on average the trains are less than half a minute late each year, which includes delays caused by earthquakes, typhoons and snow. During the line's 45-year history and transport of 7 billion passengers, there have been no deaths from derailment or collisions.

Wikipedia:

During the Shinkansen's 44-year, nearly 7 billion-passenger history, there have been no passenger fatalities due to derailments or collisions, despite frequent earthquakes and typhoons.

The Wikipedia article has a note from the site's volunteer editors that the article's "sources remain unclear." We'll give Glionna, who became a foreign correspondent the Times last year, some credit on that count: At least it's obvious what his source was.

(Photo via Lassie, Get Help)

Some inside the Googleplex believe that Crowley got the code for his new friend-finding startup Foursquare from Dodgeball, the startup he sold to Google for an estimated $40 million in 2005. And after Valleywag reported their suspicions, a source tells us Crowley has been going around telling people at South By Southwest that he did reuse the code, and that he doesn't expect Google will do anything about it.

But that's not what he told Dan Fost of the Los Angeles Times when asked about the charge. Fost credulously printed Crowley's reply:

The code is all brand new. I didn't understand that story. I'm sick as a dog and pasty because I've been holed up for two months writing this stuff.

If only Fost had thought to factcheck that with, say, any of the South By Southwest attendees to whom Crowley confessed. Or with engineers who have inspected Foursquare's code and found elements directly lifted from Dodgeball. That would be work, though — an element curiously missing from much of today's tech journalism.

(Photo by thenextweb)

Jarvis, a former ink-stained wretch, calls it a historic moment. Perhaps it is for him, since the Entertainment Weekly founder has made a career out of guiding old media organizations into digital nirvana. To make his living, it helps if he can argue that there's a pot of gold at the end of the online rainbow.

So LA Times editor Russ Stanton's recent disclosure that the newspaper's website revenues covers its editorial overhead — print and online — makes a handy PowerPoint slide for Jarvis.

But Stanton's claim doesn't withstand casual scrutiny for anyone familiar with the economics of online-only publications. The LAT newsroom, even after considerable cuts, still houses 660 people. And yet, in December, according to the newpaper's own figures, its website only generated 120 million pageviews. At that rate, that's 2.2 million pageviews per employee per year. One Gawker Media blogger, in a much-cited example, did double that figure in a month.

And fishiest of all, Jarvis's scenario doesn't include any expense for actually selling those ads. Do Stanton and Jarvis think ads, online or off, get magically sold through the simple grandeur of the wordsmithing to which they're attached?

Perhaps the Tribune Co., the publisher of the Times, is phenomenally good at running its business, but I doubt that, since it recently filed for bankruptcy. More likely: Stanton is engaging in wishful accounting. And since Stanton's tale suits Jarvis's needs, he's reprinting it without applying a media critic's needed skepticism.

Speaking of which, the crowd included Chuck Phillips, the president of Oracle; Accel Partners' Jim Breyer; Google angel investor Ram Shiram; Gavin Newsom; former California governor Jerry Brown; Jessica Guynn of the Los Angeles TimesBarron's; AllThingsD's Kara Swisher; former Chronicle editor Phil Bronstein; MarketWatch's Therese Poletti; Craig Newmark; and renowned San Francisco socialite Denise Hale, who rather liked my tie.

Zittrain's book is about the tradeoffs between freedom and control, security and creativity. New devices like the iPhone provide a safer, smoother experience than the uncontrolled Web — but at the cost of having a gatekeeper, Apple, dictating what can and can't run on the device. That kind of chokepoint, in turn, makes it far easier for government regulators to get involved. The alternative, though, is not particularly attractive: an Internet ruled by spammers and hackers.

Like his counterparts in politics, Zittrain is seeking a third way. I couldn't help but think this impulse is driven by an early experience he related at the party: Getting beaten up in high school. (He thanked the hostess, Melanie, "for not beating up on me.") Having been bullied, Zittrain doesn't want revenge: He just doesn't want anyone to bully, or be bullied. This moderating impulse is seen in a passage where he discusses how neither governments nor citizens ought to be able to wholly circumvent the law through technology:

Perhaps it is best to say that neither the governor nor the governed should be able to monopolize technological tricks. We are better off without flat-out trumps that make the world the way either regulator or target wants it to be without the need for the expenditure of some effort and
cooperation from others to make it so.

And yet Zittrain's career could well exceed Lessig's. That he was able to fill a room — an impeccably furnished, tastefully modern room in one of San Francisco's wealthiest enclaves, at that — speaks to his draw. Liberal San Francisco politicans, self-made entrepreneurs, and the Web's wacky fringe can all find things they agree on in his work.

The danger for Zittrain is that his work might be nothing more than a justification for compromise and tradeoffs. Will he find a third way for the Web — or just point out the middle of the road? His calls for a "generosity of spirit" are reminiscent of the assumptions that turned eBay, a marketplace of strangers, into a very profitable community of traders. Hoping for the best really can pan out, as it happens. But the answers Zittrain will have to find, or inspire, are far more complicated than asking someone to be on their best behavior.