a thaumaturgical compendium

Just shuffled back to B-lo. No time for real postings, so, here’s what I might have talked about:

• Scholars Who Blog, from the Chronicle, with an online colloquy this Wednesday
• First International Moblogging Conference
• Another anatomy of a meme
• Call to join a p2p video-sharing syndicate
• Call for edited volume on Educational Democracy and the Internet
• “Discussion and Citation in the Blogosphere”
• Corporate Mofo reloads The Matrix
• poo haiku
• I am an extreme geek
• DARPA is funding the uberblog
• And a question: If a computer can create impossibly attractive faces, do these fake handsome men also have faster sperm?

I’ll put this up in HTML format soon, but for now, the paper I am presenting in a few hours is viewable in pdf format. It is a methodological note on measuring “idea bursts” over networks and nodes. I’ll post more (including some notes on the conference) tomorrow if I get the chance.

Record time for burnout on a conference! I think it is, at least in part, that I was pretty burnt by the time I got here. Everyone I talk to seems to agree that the quality of the presentations are fairly middle-of-the-road, or maybe that’s just the jaded eye of intellectuals. I don’t think that most of them are bad, but the signal-to-noise ratio seems a bit low. For whatever reason, everyone seems to be dragging a little, but that may just be me.

So, I should be downstairs at the reception “mingling.” I used to think that I just didn’t like not knowing anyone, a fairly natural reason not to want to be at a social gathering, but now I know a fair number of people in this room, and still I hate being there. It’s a bit ironic, really. I feel like I should be down there, but I honestly don’t want to be there.

At least I went for a few minutes. I had no difficulty chatting with folks on the way there and on the way out, but I felt confined, enclosed, and confused within the room itself. This is something I’m going to need to overcome. I know this. I know that I am missing out on important opportunities because I cannot force myself to socialize. But it’s going to take a very long time before I can learn to enjoy it.

I need a personal trainer. Not to help me get in shape—wait, no, I need one of those too, make that 2 personal trainers—but to walk me through these social occasions. Jamie has been very helpful here, but this isn’t at all her crowd and it’s not fair to ask her to be my interpreter. I need someone who can teach me how to work a room. That wouldn’t stop the fight-or-flight reaction that being in a crowded room triggers, but it would give me a set of objectives to concentrate on and I would hopefully be able to make it through my current record of 15 minutes. Don’t they build simulators that can help you train for this?

And that is my neurotic post of the day.

These domestic violence PSAs from HomeFront in Calgary are disturbingly violent, and have not been allowed to be shown on television. Can’t you watch the Sopranos on CTV? Is that really cartoon violence, when compared to this?

I guess the big question is whether it is an effective commercial—whether it shifts the agenda. I think it does. (via MF.)

I’m off to San Diego for the ICA meeting soon. I’ll try to blog some of the presentations if I get the chance, though I may have trouble getting time/access to upload. I am really sorry I’m going to miss the BlogTalk conference—maybe next year?

Matt posted a link to this T-shirt. I have to get one. It might solve the problem of having to ask permission I am sometimes vexed with. (I might also need this one.) He’s one of the summer seminar pariticipants who are testdriving the not-ready-for-primetime blogs.informatics site.

“If you take away the government, you have the people. And that’s the way it should be.”