4 out of 5 Doctors Agree

That my other blog helps fortify your bones.

Not really, but with 74% of all statistics being made up on the spot you’ve no way of double checking my claim. I’ll have to come back to this blog later, but until then I’ll be updating that one more regularly since it’s linked to my Flickr account already and I’ll be posting pictures at least semi-regularly. Mostly frisbee pictures, but I’ll hopefully start finding more time to take pictures of other interesting things. If I’m ever feeling intellectual or anything I’ll be sure to head here, though so keep that RSS rolling.

Below is a picture I took at the park across the street from my house about five or six years ago when we got three inches of snow in a few hours.  I think that has to be one of my favorite memories of living in Irving.  I don’t know if I’d enjoy 20 inches of snow every year as much, but I certainly wouldn’t mind getting nice amounts of build up on a yearly basis.

 

Assignment: Assignment Zero

Wired and NewsAssignment.net’s  Assignment Zero(AZ) project set out to crowdsource  the definitive report on how crowdsourcing is turning  the way  businesses  are operating online on end, and I believe that it did just that.  Just as Rheingold sets out to find how smart mobs are(or might someday, anyway) revolutionizing our world, AZ came out a big proponent of the potential of the masses to collaborate efficiently enough to have a tremendous impact soon and for the rest of our lives, but came to find out that the mass mentality is, in fact, chock full of great ideas and potential for brilliance, but digging the brilliance up and turning it into something as tangible as nearly 100 pieces of high quality group-created journalism is a much harder task than tossing a group of children a ball in the middle of the field and watching them establish a structured game of soccer.

Like the children, the group involved started out kicking the ball around, excited with their new toy and seemingly having more kicks in them than could go around for the single ball, or articles as the case is in AZ.  As time progresses, however, the children grow weary of kicking a ball around without any foreseeable  end result.  So, too, did the amount of and intensity for collaborating begin to diminish as the children realize they want to play and keep score and be able to leave with a story of something they accomplished but that doesn’t seem to be on the agenda.  Eventually the AZ team found they needed to make changes from a completely open-ended structure full of anonymity to an operation that had teams and players reaching for goals and knowing a bit about who they are working with and where they are coming from with their side of the story.  Once the social networking aspects of AZ came about, individuals working on the same thing became a group and they started playing ball.

I think that just as some of the children in the pickup game of soccer may find they enjoy it and pursue the game further, so will some of the pro-am tandems and groups continue to create content and grow the area of crowdsourcing into something that may at some point be used by the majority of people connected to the web, and with the success that some projects, such as A Million Penguins show, crowdsourcing and the hive mind may one day become the most popular sport in the world.

I may be a cynic, but I hold out hope.

 

Bin Laden Arrested By Aussies…OY OY OY!

An Osama Bin Laden impersonator got within 30 feet of the hotel President Bush is staying in Australia. The group of comedians from Australian television show “The Chaser’s War On Everything” staged a fake Canadian motorcade to infiltrate the barricaded area around the hotel the Asia- Pacific Economic Cooperation forum is taking place.

Gemma Daley reports for Bloomberg.com that the group breeched the “Red Zone” designated in Sydney to keep any protesters out and keep the diplomats safe. Her story comes to a conclusion that Foreign Minister Alexander Downer comes to that is “They were arrested, so that shows the security system works.”

Blogger Sea Eagle of Nothing’s Too Sacred reports the story as an embarrassment for the security forces involved that put hundreds of millions of dollars into this operation (roughly $250 million). Sea Eagle thinks the stunt at least helps lighten the mood of those in Sydney who have been inconvenienced by all of the increased security forces put in place for the gathering.

Both articles report that the comedians have been arrested, Bloomberg’s Daley quickly states that charges have not yet been filed, but policy in place allows for incarceration of those protesting that breech security. This leaves some wiggle room for interpretation where a judge would have to determine if the group were protesting or merely highlighting a flaw in the security. Sea Eagle, however jumps straight to the fact that the comedians arrested could face up to six months in prison for their actions and leads a reader to think that the security forces will try to punish the group to the fullest extent of the law for the public embarrassment.

Sea Eagle says it best, however

I guess the breach of what is considered one of the biggest security operations ever mounted shows just how easily the best laid plans of mice and men can go askew.