From the Washington Post’s An Attack That Came Out of the Ether: “Allen set her sights on dissecting the modern version of a whisper campaign, even though experts told her it would be impossible to trace the chain e-mail to its origin. Along the way, even as her hunt grew cold, she gained valuable insight into the way political information circulates, mutates and sometimes devastates in the digital age.” (She has this kind of time because, after winning “a $500,000 MacArthur ‘genius’ award at the age of 29…she joined the faculty of the Institute of Advanced Study…where she works alongside groundbreaking physicists, mathematicians and social scientists. They don’t have to teach, and they face no quotas on what they publish. Their only mandate is to work in the tradition of Einstein, wrestling with the most vexing problems in the universe”). [Not a bad gig]