How did THAT land in my cart?

I went to the store for cat treats and came home with a cat from the Humane Society. Still not sure how that happened. The rest of the Posse is not pleased.

Facebook as digital plagiarism

OK, I don't mind Facebook. I don't love it. I'm not obsessed with it. I do enjoy reading about what my friends are doing. I like the pithy comments most of all.

What I don't like? I don't like that so may people use FB as a retweeter system for posting every single damn news story they read. If I want to read the entire Huffington Post, I'll surf there myself and read it. In this day and age of digital news sources proliferating worse than H1N1, why do you think I need your help in finding news?

Even if you think the story is important or raises pertinent issues that should to be discussed, why do you think just posting a link to the story is enough to get that conversation going? You posted no thoughts of your own on the topic with the link so all I have is a headline. Here's where the methodology falls apart. You posted the link to a story about the obesity epidemic, the strains this puts on the health care system, the cultural movement to treat it as a disease rather than an individual's weakness at the buffet. You know what I saw in the link? A hilarious headline that said nothing more than Obese People Pushing Back. I laughed at the hilarity and didn't bother reading the story. Whatever point you thought you were making fell noiselessly into the ether.

How about telling me why you think the story is important? If you turned in someone else's work like this in school, you would have been in the dean's office so fast for plagiarism your head would spin. Simply reposting an article is not a far leap from the actions of the Dittohead army of Rush Limbaugh. You get a 0 for effort, let alone critical thinking.

You really needed more clues?

You are in a bathroom.
You are at the sink.
This is on the wall above the taps.
You really needed that extra piece of info to tell you what's inside?

Top 10 Internet Laws

1. Godwin’s Law
As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1.

2. Poe’s Law
Without a winking smiley or other blatant display of humour, it is impossible to create a parody of fundamentalism that someone won't mistake for the real thing.

3. Rule 34
If it exists, there is porn of it.
See also Rule 35: If no such porn exists, it will be made.

4. Skitt’s Law
Any post correcting an error in another post will contain at least one error itself.
Or: the likelihood of an error in a post is directly proportional to the embarrassment it will cause the poster."

5. Scopie’s Law
In any discussion involving science or medicine, citing Whale.to as a credible source loses the argument immediately, and gets you laughed out of the room.
Whale.to is a conspiracy theory site which includes such items as the complete text of the anti-Semitic hoax Protocols of the Elders of Zion, as well as claims that Aids is caused by vaccination programmes, and that Auschwitz never happened. Clearly credible.

6. Danth’s Law (also known as Parker’s Law)
If you have to insist that you've won an internet argument, you've probably lost badly.

7. Pommer’s Law
A person's mind can be changed by reading information on the internet. The nature of this change will be from having no opinion to having a wrong opinion.

8. DeMyer's Laws: Zeroth, First, Second and Third Laws
The Second Law states: “Anyone who posts an argument on the internet which is largely quotations can be very safely ignored, and is deemed to have lost the argument before it has begun.”

9. Cohen’s Law
Whoever resorts to the argument that ‘whoever resorts to the argument that... …has automatically lost the debate’ has automatically lost the debate.

10. The Law of Exclamation
The more exclamation points used in an email (or other posting), the more likely it is a complete lie. This is also true for excessive capital letters.
According to Pratchett, five exclamation marks is an indicator of "someone who wears their underwear on the outside"

You want more info? Go here.

Found via Neatorama

Collaborative animation

Nice walk

I'm just posting this here so it's easy to find when I want to watch it again. This commercial would be an example of superb timing.

Farewell summer

If only it were this easy

Spin rinse repeat

My first mistake was watching The T get into Facebook. That was a small step but a major one. I could feel my mind split into two. I followed her down the FB rabbit hole and now I suffer from online schizophrenia. This is just like in Stephen King's The Drawing of the Three, the second installment in the Dark Tower epic when Roland has two sets of memories those that really happened and those that also happened. There was a boy. There was no boy.

My mental split happens along the line my virtual existence. You should post that to your anonymous blog. You should post that to not anonymous facebook. Once that mental debate gets rolling, I turn on ye olde iPod and continue listening to the Gunslinger series. Hence, nothing gets posted anywhere.

FB is an odd world. Just what is a friend? Anecdotally some meatspace friends and I have meta-FB discussions about the environment of constantly checking in for status reports, the politics of who to friend and whom not to and which way the friend requests flow, the politics of accepting or ignoring or accepting and then quarantining friends. Granted, we also just post like crazy and continue this little run down the stairs (we've got momentum now and dare not look at what our feet are doing lest we fall).

But it seems strange to me nevertheless. What event is worthy of a status update? I enjoy hearing about what folks are doing but gosh and golly the sun is out and why don't we just meet for a cup of joe or a brewski and chat? Reading the feed is a weak substitute for face to face. I know I am not the first to say this but I am coming to understand it in my own time. I have selfish underpinnings. I think I am much funnier in the flesh. I like hearing people laugh at me or with me, it matters not most of the time. When the FB crowd does not respond with a "Jane Doe likes this', I feel like the humor fell flat.

My incessant feed checking is much like Tourette twitch. What is Sally doing right now? She hasn't posted in 12 hours is she all right? Should I call her? Should I call the police? OK, I agree that bringing in law enforcement is a bit extreme but I truly think I am wearing out the refresh button in my browser's URL box.

I've got errands to run and cat boxes to empty. Right after I read the feed one more time.

Back in school

Here I am at a major research university in the Emerald City for a
week long class in how to lead discussions. Some of my colleagues
wonder I feel I need this class. I think the fact that I am
questioning my skills as a discussion leader reveals differences in
our perceptions of our classrooms. That is a blog topic for another day.

I love being in a university setting. There is an energy unique to
this setting I didn't know I missed. And you have to love that the
prof started us off by telling us where the best drip coffee on campus
could be found.

Caffeine is the fuel of academe.

Sent from my iPhone