madness

It may not make sense, that's ok.

changing of the guard

Personally I find it hilarious (not uproariously so however) when people try to diagram a network. How is it possible to diagram something as dynamic and ever changing as peoples’ emotions and how they connect with other people? You can do it, but it’s simply lines without meaning.

In the reading, The Hidden Power of Social Networks the author talks about what happens if the head of social network leaves. Such as if the boss left a department store what would happen? Rebellion, riots and mayhem! The author makes it very clear that the system would crash and buckle around its self because the person on the top had all the connections, he was the rainmaker. However he doesn’t take into account, what if the boss is a nincompoop? What if it benefits the company that the previous leader has left because of his ineffectiveness? In tying this in with life I have two examples.

I’ve been watching Band of Brothers with my roommates, we’re on episode six. In the beginning Easy Company (I’m just talking about it assuming you know the show) was going to be led by the guy from Friends. The problem was he’d freeze in actual combat situations and make stupid decisions which would have killed his company and cost massive causalities. A few people mutiny, the general sees the cause of this and promotes him to a different non-com position and promotes Winters and he leads Easy Company with great success. Because the leader was changed in that social network everyone benefited, by not being killed.

A more closer to home example that doesn’t involve the life and death problem, KCOU. The student radio station at MU (88.1) was (has been) god-awful for the past few years, because of the management. Now that person has graduated and the torched has been passed to someone else, who knows what he’s doing. Because of the last management we lost the rights to play a record companies music and we stopped receiving cd’s from them as well. DJ’s wouldn’t show up to their shows and people would disorganize cds and other nonsense. Now that the old social network is gone and a new head as been implemented changes for the better are happening. Instead of there just being one person in charge of all music there are department heads, an equal time distribution of the genres has occurred, we’ve updated our technology(!) and now have a live stream on the internet kcou.missouri.edu, all of this is awesome! We’re becoming a radio station! All of this thanks to an old leader being removed and a new one taking his place.

why I'm gone

Sorry I missed class today, but it's my birthday. 21st! w00t! It's the rule to skip class on your birthday, it's a universal law and I can't ignore that. To possibly make up for it check out this music video by Porcupine Tree, the song is Fear of a Dark Planet. The song ties into this class kind of as it talks about kids today becoming more and more desensitized and technology becoming a bigger part of our lives. This isn't the full song, but it's still excellent.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=sUnAxegUJu0

Identity nonsense

From the discussion in class on Thursday, and in the past, there’s several stances on the thought that on the internet we’re different people. Er, not to say that all of us are different people on the internet or that we even do that but this possibility exists. While it’s true that some people can go on and skew their personalities, I think that the internet more so allows our true personalities to come out.

General chat rooms are obvious falsities. Anonymously get an account and pretend about who you are. There are some chat rooms that have commonalities between the people that go on, such as if their spouse or loved one is suffering from a disease and people get together to talk about this or sports, but mostly when we think of chat rooms we think of the trapping a predator specials we see on tv.

For Facebook and other social networks, we have the possibility to present ourselves in a light that we want to be seen. However this can’t happen. With so many people that know us in real life getting on the internet and having access to our accounts, if someone tried to change their appearances in a way they’d desire, someone can naturally point out that character trait. More so what facebook and social networks do is they make us more honest with who we are and present ourselves the way we wish we could be or deep down inside are. This can be seen from peoples music likings, quotes, pictures or wall conversations, everyone of these (others as well) can be hand crafted to present what we want to present but each one allows a glimpse into the personality of the user. The rhetoric of facebook one could say. Looking at quotes and seeing the general theme they have can tell more so about a person. If it’s filled with a bunch of quotes from their friends you can tell about their social life and how they value their friendships. Also were the quotes come from and how original they are can delve into someone’s personality as well. This applies to everything, music likes, pictures, etc not just quotes. I just picked quotes because I’m someone who painstakingly handpicked the ones on my facebook.

By the anonymity of the internet, which is at the same time public, we can have a sense of security else-wise not possible in everyday situations and conversations. By typing a message we get time to craft the message to our liking and the length and detail put into a message has a certain sense of rhetoric attached to it and studying this one can see certain traits of another person. Their emphasis on grammar, emoticons, how clever they are, jokes, or if it’s just gossip or typed in a hurry. Every part of the internet were we have our names attached to it, secretly betrays us (or openly) by revealing who we are on a deeper level.

Primaries and a Plug

After the epic Super Duper Tuesday (Saturday too I guess), candidates have to think about their campaigns a little more. Such as Clinton and Obama are neck in neck, Clinton won the biggin’ California whereas Obama won more states then Clinton. Clinton won the big ones, but Obama has won more states in total making them almost matched for delegates. On the other side of the fence the Republicans have to pick up the pieces and deiced where to go from there. That is, of course, unless you’re John McCain. Ronmey and Huckabee are still hanging in but they’re not looking so hot. Oh, Ron Paul is there to. Ronmey has suspended his race and Huckabee is still campaigning despite being behind McCain by 500+ delegates. His hope? He wants to be vice-president on the inevitable McCain ticket for the Republicans. Last year when the news was broke that Ronmey was a Mormon and he pussyfooted around the issue, I declared his campaign dead. I was right. Now if only Huckabee would disappear, but no need to worry about him. Bush has backed McCain and Huckabee is left in the dust.

What we’re looking at now is a clear McCain/X ticket from the republican side. The Democrats will be in more turmoil as the rest of the primary is really still needed to decide who their next nomination for the president shall be. It’s always possible to have both Hilary/X and Obama/X running for president, but that’s not likely in this case. The democrats are at an exciting time in history because they have the possibility to have the first black man or first woman president and at this point most people are so disenchanted with Bush’s presidency that they may vote for a democrat as a way to avoid a president who comes in shadowing Bush’s politics. Which is what I fear McCain (or any other republican candidate [minus Ron Paul]) would do. Our role seems to be done, for now all we can do is silently wait and hope for that Obama/Edwards ticket.

Also check out ‘Sick of It’ Thursday’s 4-6pm on KCOU’s 88.1 where my friend John and I have a faux-political talk show

some unholy war

The Writer’s Guild seems to be coming to an end, which means that new television shows may begin filming (writing) by the end of this month. One sign that it’s nearing an end is the Writers Guild allowing the Oscars to go on unhindered. They promised not to picket.

For the Grammys however, things are going fine, unless you’re Amy Winehouse. I discovered her back after the new James Bond movie was released and they said that the British born Amy Winehouse was possibly going to do the opening song for the next movie. So I looked her up and got some of her music. She’s really excellent, if you haven’t checked her out I suggest you do at some point. Back to the Grammy’s. Amy Winehouse has always had drug problems, hence the song and her hit single, Rehab. Amy Winehouse was going to perform this song at the Grammy’s but due to her drug problems that’s not going to happen. She was caught by some sort of footage somewhere in Britain smoking a crack-pipe. It happens. In seeing this, the US Government deciding to uphold its strict morale code decided to veto Amy’s visa. Nice move government. The Grammy’s decided to just fly over to Amy and have her perform live via satellite. Where visa’s need not apply.

My point is what does our government have against British born musicians? Lennon had constant battles and was nearly deported. Amy Winehouse is allegedly caught with a crack-pipe (she’s done it before, I’m just stating that there’s no definitive proof) and we don’t allow her in our country to perform a song? Yet. We allow Britney Spears to see her children and ruin their lives. Other famous Americans have used drugs and are allowed to continue on their lives. One’s president, i.e. Kiefer Sutherland is allowed to go to jail at his leisure (though I’m glad there, I love 24). We allow celebrities to go overseas and adopt children like it’s the exotic cool thing to do. Free Martha! Martha was caught in an insider trader scandal. Insider Trading! When it comes to the stock market very little is more heinous than that, yet she gets house arrest. I think it’d be a really interesting study/report/book if someone looked into the biases that Americans (or the American government) has against celebrities from other countries versus the treatment of American born celebrities. The rhetoric of bias.