I sniffed the blogsphere and smelled a thought that might be friend or foe.

From http://bokardo.com/archives/the-one-crucial-idea-of-web-20/ :
If there is one idea that encapsulates what Web 2.0 is about, one idea
that wasn�t a factor before but is a factor now, it�s the idea of
leveraging the network to uncover the Wisdom of Crowds.

Before we get too hypnotized by our shiny google like toys, we should remember:
Lynch Mobs are the Wisdom of Crowds Too

Crowds are not wise. In following a crowd your are being lead. That is not the same as wisdom.

I watched the Oscar acceptance speech for the movie Crash. The person accepting the reward, shockingly, said something interesting. He said: art is not a mirror, it's a hammer.

And like in so many TV shows these days, a vision drilled its way into my head. The immediate overwhelming image plunged into my mind was of a giant hammer slamming towards my head and me thrusting my arms up to block the attack. Just before my death, the last thing I saw was the word "Art" written blood red on the hammer's head.

What the heck is a vpop? A vpop (virtualized program) is a program
designed specifically to run in it's own virtualized CPU environment.

With vpops we don't need an OS anymore. What do we use instead?

Let's make the move to virtualization instead of
virtual machines.

In this future we download highly optimized, fully verticalized, bare metal
programs into their own virtualized CPU environments.

These stand-alone virtualized programs (vpops):
* Cooperate by talking over IP.
* Use a shared nothing architecture.

While watching the Pittsburgh vs Colts game I couldn't help but think the game had all the elements of a Greek Tragedy, with the referees playing the modern version of gods. The gods may dress better and get all the mortal chicks, but the power refs hold within a game are those of metaphorical life and death.

And the gods were whimsical this week. This week marks some of the worst NFL refereeing I can remember. You may think I simply can't remember because of too much beer consumption, but you would be mostly wrong.

Technically we might be in the post post post modern period, but I think we are really in the pre-modern period. The next generation will see such changes in technology at all levels that it will be reconsidered as the new modern period. So that leaves us as the pre-modern period.

Our pre-modern world has so many new social situations brought on by technology that I am finding all the manners I learned in kindergarten aren't of much help anymore. How do you handle the following situations?

The minuteman say they will build a fence across the US Mexico border even if the US government won't do it.

Not considering any political issues, a fence won't make a difference because all they have to do is build nice, safe, hard to find tunnels. Didn't any of these guys watch The Great Escape where prisoners of war built tunnels right under the Nazi's noses? How will you stop tunnel building across 1000s of miles of open border?

If you had real wings and could fly majestically through the sky would you want a drug that would "cure" you? What if the simple touch of your hand would kill another person, would you want a drug that could cure you then? What if some people had scary powers that could cause great harm if abused, would you want them to be forcefully cured against their will?

This is the conflict at the heart of the latest Xmen movie. Similar themes are being explored in USA Network's 4400 series. And it's also an emerging issue at the heart of our ever growing understanding of how our minds work.

I noticed this relationship after playing the games for a while. Millionaire and crossword seem ornate where Deal or No Deal and Sudoku had been whittled down to the sparest combination of elements that are fun and appeal to a large audience.

And by "poorman" I don't mean to be snarky. I am horrible at all of the games, so no real or implied elitism is going on. Oh, and I would never make it to the final round in Jeopardy either. What I mean by "poorman" is the pure genius of the conceptual economy in the design of the new games.

I have had some experience with building real-time behavioural targeting systems, so I think I've developed a new appreciation for the grand strategy behind google's seemingly disconnected moves.

They are building a real time customer profile based on your real identity. This is a very valuable commodity as it gives google the ability to sell high value campaigns to advertisers.

The internet is more like the giant interconnection of jail cells than it is the polymorphously perverse heaven of free information. Not that there isn't a lot of excellent free information on the internet. There is. But when you are searching for something really important, like a study on the effects of statins on mortality, the study is usually kept in an info jail called a journal or a magazine. You can bribe the guard to let you in, but boy will it be expensive.

It may not seem obvious from knowing me, my clothes aren't sharp and my car is rarely shiny, but I like my house neat and clean. Very neat and mostly clean. Not everyone feels the same. There are neat people and there are cluttery people. Cluttery people can somehow live with levels of messiness that send neat people into agonizing convulsive cleaning jags. Us neat people are always cleaning up after the cluttery people, muttering deeply under our breaths about what filthy pigs other people are.

We read where Junk Science is leading us astray. Apparently thousands of dedicated climatoligists are far dumber about Global Warming than the Junk Critics who don't even know how their electric toothbrush works. I am afraid though. I am afraid of the rise and acceptance of Junk Criticism. You see, science has a way of eventually stopping Junk Science because science must eventually be verified. Junk Criticism serves only to make a political point and never has to be proven right, it just has to cast enough doubt to justify another course of action.

Our little border collie puppy offers me ample opportunity to test the absorbency claims of paper towel manufacturers. I have been a bounty buyer, but decided to try the costco paper towel brand to save a few pennies. They couldn't be that different could they?

One line of thought has it that our IQ was able to take a big jump once we switched to higher calorie food sources. Our brain uses 20% of all our calories. More calories means more brain work is possible. We became meat eaters which provided a higher density source of calories from fat and protein. In addition we harnessed fire so we were able to cook, which made a wider variety of meats and vegetables available.

Moving to the present, we have been seeing a somewhat mysterious rise in IQ in modern times. We seem to be getting smarter. Why would that be?