A Portrait of the Dumbass as an Old Man

Donating Cycles to the Group Mind

Too bad I already had this title picked out, because, according to Blogger, this is post #100 to "Portrait of the Dumbass". First post was May 4, 2003, that is ~ 1500 days ago -- so I've averaged 2/month. Not enough, no wonder I have so few fans.

So I noticed, blogger now has a place to enter labels. I am entering them, good practice at tagging / classification / taxonomification. The whole web 2.0 tagging stuff like del.icio.us got me wondering tho. The wisdom of the group mind is at the bottom of google's ranking scheme, has created wikipedia, and in general surprises me with its ability to produce good results. The question is, how many cycles are you willing to donate to the group mind?

For me, the answer is, not a lot. I really don't have the time. Funny tho, some of the science fiction classics where the group mind takes over or tries to take over, like Swanwick's "Vacuum Flowers" blogged earlier or the Meme Wars from John Barnes "Kaleidoscope Century", the group mind makes you An Offer You Can't Refuse. Don't see that happening anytime soon, but it seems funny that it is a voluntary activity instead.

Recently have read two by Elizabeth Bear: a novel "Hammered", 1st of a trilogy, and a short story collection "The Chains That You Refuse". I liked one of her stories in the year's best, but neither the novel nor the short stories really work well. The novel is going for a noir feel, but, I think it's main problem is that the heroine just isn't enough of a badass. I will read the two others tho, see if it gets any better.

Also read two by Larry Niven. I remember in the late 70's some of the guys I worked with at DEC thought that Ringworld was The Greatest Thing Ever. So, read "Ringworld's Children", was kind of surprised when it kind of came to a conclusion -- one of those that just kind of meander pointlessly for a while. Also read "The Draco Tavern", a short story collection that had some cute stories. Still, no links for either.

My daughter the graphic designer has applied an appropriate style sheet to this blog, it looks much nicer, thanks Erica. Also has a links area, I can think of 2 appropriate links in addition to the family ones that Erica initialized it with, I'll see if I can add them.