Blogging for lazy people
Blog memes are for lazy bloggers. I am a lazy blogger. Blog memes are for me.
Things I’ve done are in bold.
Things I am indifferent towards or actively would like to avoid are crossed out.
Things in normal type face are things I’d like to do.
Comments in parentheses are my addition. I got this version from Quod Her, though it has shown up in several blogs in my reader:
Start my own blog
Sleep under the stars
Play in a band
Own a cell phone
Visit Hawaii
Watch a meteor shower
Give more than I can afford to charity (I’m not really sure what this means. I can afford nothing, and have given something, so…)
Visit Disneyland / Disneyworld
Climb a mountain
Sing a solo
Bungee jump
Participate in a traditional Japanese tea ceremony
Teach myself an art from scratch
Adopt a child (not that I’m morally opposed or anything, just no burning desire at the moment)
Purchase real estate (Assuming Second Life counts.)
Had food poisoning
Visit Parliament / Capital Hill (Heck, I’ve lived on Capitol Hill)
Grow my own vegetables
See the Mona Lisa in France
Sleep on an overnight train
Have a pillow fight
Hitchhike (Again, not opposed, just not seeking it out.)
Take a sick day when you’re not ill
Build a snow fort
Hold a lamb (if you count the shank :) )
Go skinny dipping
Run a Marathon
Been on television
Ride in a gondola in Venice
See a total eclipse
Watch a sunrise or sunset
Hit a home run
Go on a cruise
See Niagara Falls in person
Visit the birthplace of my ancestors
See an Amish community
Teach myself a new language
Have enough money to be truly satisfied
See the Leaning Tower of Pisa in person
Go rock climbing
See Michelangelo’s David (seriously Italo-centric list here)
Sing karaoke
See Old Faithful erupt
Buy a stranger a meal at a restaurant (Would they still be a stranger?)
Visit Africa
Walk on a beach by moonlight
Be transported in an ambulance
Have my portrait painted
Be arrested
Go deep sea fishing
See the Sistine Chapel in person (and again!)
Go to the top of the Eiffel Tower in Paris
Go scuba diving or snorkeling
Kiss in the rain
Play in the mud
Go to a drive-in theatre
Be in a movie
Visit the Great Wall of China
Start a business
Take a martial arts class
Visit Russia
Serve at a soup kitchen
Sell Girl Scout Cookies
Go whale watching
Get flowers for no reason
Donate blood, platelets or plasma
Go sky diving
Visit a Nazi Concentration Camp
Bounce a check
Fly in a helicopter
Save a favorite childhood toy
Visit Quebec City
Eat Caviar
Piece a quilt
Stand in Times Square
Tour the Everglades
Been fired from a job
See the Changing of the Guards in London
Been on a speeding motorcycle (and off one :( )
See the Grand Canyon in person
Published a book
Visit the Vatican (OK, so not technically Italy, but still…)
Buy a brand new car
Walk in Jerusalem
Have my picture in the newspaper
Read the entire Bible
Visit the White House
Kill and prepared an animal for eating (I’m iffy on this one. Some part of me would like to know how to do so, but I’ve never been a big fan of killing things.)
Had chickenpox
Save someone’s life (I’d be willing to do this as long as I am then not responsible for the outcome of their life.)
Sit on a jury
Meet someone famous (Aren’t I famous?)
Join a book club (Do grad seminars count?)
Lose a loved one
Have a baby
See the Alamo in person
Swim in the Great Salt Lake
Been involved in a law suit (I’ve been certified as the member of so many classes I lose count.)
Been stung by a bee
Ride an elephant
I’m too lazy to count the totals :).
And he looks so cute…
… in his little red suit.
Jasper is coming up on five weeks old now, and is starting to develop a personality. He was very into crown moldings and lights from the day he came home, but now he is starting to recognize voices and look at that person, and looks at different parts of your face, or at your mouth when you are talking, or checks out his look in the mirror. In other words, he gets more human by the day, though he is still 90% spider monkey, and will likely continue to be indefinitely.
We have found, however, we enjoy many of the same things:
* architectural details
* eating
* staying up late
* lounging at home
* boobies
* friendly dogs
* walks in the park
* snuggling with Jamie
* The Rolling Stones and Bob Marley
* sleeping on our bellies (and not on our backs)
* having our toes free to wiggle rather than crammed into socks and booties
In all, I think we got the best Christmas gift ever this year. Hope yours was filled with magnificence as well.
Knowledge everywhere: the distributed memory of social media
We know almost nothing about the college years of the 43rd president of the US. We know that George Bush attended Yale University, was a cheerleader, played rugby, and did not excel as a student. Compare that with what we will know about the 49th president. It is very likely she will have a Facebook profile. She may have had a blog. Chances are good that her emails to friends, colleagues, teachers, and lovers will all be preserved, not in a centralized archive, but in the distributed memory of the web. This way of experiencing and recording the world provides new means of learning and of creating and distributing knowledge, and successful knowledge-centric institutions must adapt to this explosion in second-hand experience.
Such a distributed form of memory is by no means new: we would know nothing of the trials of Ulysses or of Jesus without it. But social memory has been extended electronically, providing us with ways of experiencing more of the world, more easily, without having to be there in person. This revolution in surveillance is remarkable. That is true of the sort of visual experience of the world we more readily express as surveillance: the ability to check in on our pets while we are in the office, or later stages of a Google Maps that will allow us to view a street-corner as through a time machine. But the kind of second-hand surveillance—one of the functions of the news media that Laswell identified in the late 1940s—is also becoming far more common. I know more about what my family members, who are flung around the globe, do than I ever would have ten or fifteen years ago. I follow their Tweets, they Skype me from work, we see each other’s photos on Flickr.
There is reasonable concern, particularly among national libraries, about archiving these ephemeral materials. Most early approaches attempt to bend existing tools and techniques of archiving to networked media. As knowledge creation more closely resembles a tapestry woven by a crowd than an organized warehouse, creating an archive—a distributed memory—necessarily requires new strategies. An examination of some of the theoretical concerns (fidelity, privacy, selection) provides a framework to understand existing technologies that enable archiving, and suggests practical, incremental steps toward exploiting these opportunities to provide for a democratic, layered, distributed archive of the social web.
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