The Garage Sale Blog Network

Optimized Synergy

I recently attended a show at the Tongue and Groove in San Francisco that my buddy's band played along with an amazing artist I hadn't heard of before. I couldn't help but be envious of the means of synergy. On the performer side what a great feeling to have all your passion and work come into fruition directly in front of an audience, what a directly raw passage of energy. On the audience side knowing that their source of passionate energy derives from a performer five feet away in real time gives a more enriched experience and appreciation of whats being produced.

I miss that feeling, one I experienced with running. That symbiotic relationship of performer and receptor was in its purest form when bystanders could realize the agony, passion, skill and determination by the cringes in the runners' faces as they climb the hill.

I realize that I currently have many sourced streams of passion but nothing that equates to the power imparted by the pure synergetic dynamics that musical performances and long distance races inherently yield, but I'm looking.

Social Capital II

I'd like to add some additional thoughts to my last blog post. I think social networks (friendster, linkedin,orkut) face some challenges ahead. On the one hand they rely on simplicity to render the networking viral. After this initial tier things can't be as simplistic. For example "friend", "acquaintance" or "good friend" ontologies don't fully encapsulate relationships nor their full context.

Obstacle two is giving incentive for hollow social capital. The new formed relationship has got to seem as if it can give a relatively similar amount of social capital as one formed without meditation, incentive or pressure. I mean lets face it once a relationship is established arbitrarily there is a certain assurance and trust that follows as opposed to one formed with an ulterior motive.

These are two of many obstacles but there is an advantage to social capital via social network vs. arbitrary connection. I think in terms of upgrading a relationship from good to better or acquaintance to friend there is a time limit in arbitrary connected relationships for someone to initiate the move before awkwardness becomes a barrier to upgrade. For example if you meet someone and then the next ten times you see them you just wave and dont talk the awkwardness of actually talking after such a gap in time may inhibit growth. In social networks such as Friendster, time gaps such as the latter example don't have as much power in inhibiting growth.

Social Capital Abroad

When first entering my dive into social software and social networks (e.g. friendster) I thought a barrier to entry in the global market would be intrinsic social capital abroad. The high social capital found within the immediate family and community would preclude a need to go online and risk damaging existent ties. I would think that compromising time spent with your strong ties for time spent on weak ties when starting off on Friendster might insult and damage your strong ties.

Without sounding like a 9th grade essay there seems to be more of need for branching out and creating social capital on a weak tie to strong tie development path in Uk and North American culture. This due to cultural norms fostering independence where you have kids debating whether they should miss holiday family dinners to attend the game with their buddies.

All this being said it surprised me to see in Danah Boyd's paper on "Friendster and Publicly Articulated Social Networks" that most of the 1/3 accounts she had access to for her study on Friendster were predominantlhy in Asia. I would like to see or hear of some statistics that support this information and substantiate a claim that supports my initial view or that indicated in Danah's paper.

Somethins fishy

You know something is up when Santa Cruz ranks as one of the most stressed out cities in the nation. Now I took a look at the metrics of the study and they all seem to be stressors but the difference in Santa Cruz is that they may not react the same to these stressors as the rest of the nation.

Conspiracy Theory Volume 1

Alright, to all my loyal readers I want to announce here and now the forthcoming series called "Conspiracy Theory". No more talking about why Bush flew the Saudi Royal family including those linked to Al Qaeda out of the country right after 9/11, its time to get down to the nit and the grit. For example why those girl scout cookie boxes get smaller and the price seems to get bigger, why one of the franchise players in the girl scout cookie game, the Tagalong, hasn't been mimicked by another company and given shelf life between the girl scout selling hiatus. But I digress, Conspiracy Theory Volume 1:

I reside in Davis, Ca. and used to be a pizza delivery boy. I know all the street short cuts ("You got $5 Ill tell you the fastest and least cop congested route to that party on Villanova). This being said, I seem to catch on to the signal schemes this town is pulling before the rest. Living in a Pleasantville-esque university town, Davis gots to make money on the people some how.

So heres what they do: Traveling on W. Eigth street towards Oak, even if no one is coming on Oak, that signal will turn from green to yellow just in time to catch those who will floor it to get through the light and then get pinned for running the red and speeding. I'm on to you coppers and the blogosphere will liberate us poor students by exposing your schemes and tricks and return Eigth street to the guile free air it once had. NOW WHO'S WITH ME??

Well. . . uh . . I mean . .

It's amazing to me how vivid the lies are and still there is a huge chunk of America that refuses to accept the fact that we were lied to. What will it take? Take Spain: now the reactionaries will have you believe the socialist party's victory was a victory for terrorists but why not a victory for democracy and the pursuit of truth? Aznar lied to his people claiming the Basque separatist group ETA was responsible for the bombings, saving face for his support of Bush and the war in Iraq.

I'd like to think that rancor inspired by lies and deception fueled the victory in Spain and tipped the balance towards Zapatero. I say tipped because before the election the Popular Party was polled at having 42% of the vote compared to %38 from the Socialists, a dead heat considering four percent is well within the margin of error.

Well a start is to embarass the likes of Rumsfeld and expose the lies publicly as is so apparent in this video clip.

Problem with working out

Ive been hitting the gym now for about four months. I took a one year hiatus after burning myself out. After some anaysis Ive come to this conclusion: I think I feel worse after I've worked out for a while and I miss a couple of days than in the middle of my one year hiatus knowing I hadn't worked out for months. Is it the same for you?

Hilarious

Found this in blogosphere:

Top Ten Things Heard Outside The New Mel Gibson Movie

10. "Hey -- no shoving, Monsignor!"

9. "I don't know why they added subtitles -- everyone speaks Aramaic"

8. "I'm hoping my medium Mountain Dew will miraculously be changed into an extra large Mountain Dew"

7. "These 'Lord of the Ring' films are getting odder and odder"

6. "Was this really based on a book?"

5. "Twelve dollars for a movie ticket? Now that's a sin, am I right, people?"

4. "The Pope loved it almost as much as "Barber Shop 2'"

3. "Uh...I don't feel like dinner right now."

2. "That was awesome when Trump fired Pontius Pilate"

1. "Don't tell me the ending"

Courtesy of the Letterman show

Be Careful Where You Protest

Need proof that the Bush administration and his cronies are taking away our civil liberties. Doing it to make us feel safer? How safe do we feel when we question whether or not we can participate in a protest without spies, check out a library book without our records being checked or can be interrogated without reasonable cause?

In the early 1970s, after the exposure of COINTELPRO, a program of widespread FBI surveillance and sabotage of political dissidents, reforms were put in place to prevent the government from spying on political groups when there was no suspicion of criminal activity. But once again, protesters throughout America are being watched, often by police who are supposed to be investigating terrorism. Civil disobedience, seen during peaceful times as the honorable legacy of heroes like Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr., is being treated as terrorism's cousin, and the government claims to be justified in infiltrating any meeting where it's even discussed. It's too early to tell if America is entering a repeat of the COINTELPRO era. But Jeffrey Fogel, legal director of the Center for Constitutional Law in Manhattan, says, "There are certainly enough warning signs out there that we may be."

Full story visit Salon

Objectivity and Sports

Running is probably what I miss most from high school. The commorodity, the passion, the intensity and objectivity. Now I am currently doing work for a social software company; one which I feel is grounded by excellent and much needed principles for a new vibe in business. Their product serves as a decentralizing force in business, integrating wikis and weblogs to allow an opportunity where more people have the chance to add value to a shared repository of information. Their survivability depends so much on timing, the market and each company's assessment of the suitability of the product to the nature of their business. If its halloween 365 days a year, a tech start up's success is grounded by a costume called subjectivity.

Okay now that you've felt the shrapnel from my "this is what Im doing and here's the inside scoop" bomb, let me return from my digression back to running. It is one of the few sports that does not use a referee. It's a sport where when you win you know you win and it was you who won it for you. Now I am a bit biased towards my sport since it was how I spent a good chunk of my time in high school , although these days my heart resides on the soccer field (There's a garage sale in all of us). But a lot of this objectivity spans across all sport domains.

My point is that its nice to have something in your life governed by objectivity. Something that provides security in knowing you did your job and the metrics disallow confusion; you won or you lost, you completed twelve reps in your last set at the gym or you did not. You can go home assured that the economy, the pundits, and the magazines have little power in diminishing that feeling.