Many Many articles on Google+ (at Techcrunch.comand ArsTechnica.co ) made me think a bit.

I’ve come to the realization that google+ is the next evolution of sharing+;  I mean, email sharing+ (and every thing in between). Seriously, If it were open source, if it worked with Google company profiles, I’d use it as email for a company.  It would be awesome. Here’s why:

As much as I think about the authority based access control (I get to control the content posted, what people see, and where people go) possibilities of Google+ let’s be clear about something. It is basically threaded email, which the User controls.  It allows the user (me) to limit who sees a post, to stop forwarding, to control commenting, and I can “recall” or delete a message (assuming I don’t send it to the person’s email, and it stays in g+), something that outlook (and every other email on the planet) fails to do.   Social, yes, but still, email +.  Why is it better than email? I have those same controls over video, pictures, and so on, basically, I have fine grain control over MY content, unlike Facebook or twitter.

No, I don’t need fine grain control over twitter, and I can surely do Facebook Lists, but that’s not the point is it? There is also gmail, hotmail, yahoomail.  I’m not saying it’s not the same, I’m saying it’s a better version of the same. Way better.

One big problem (which you identified) however is that people cannot jump into a “general” conversation I start. It’s not a forum, where anyone can join, answer, talk, and leave.  Such a place would be great, offering two types of control. “General 1” User retains control of their content, but the group controller can control the addition of new content or “General 2” The Group owner can impose more restrictive actions (halt commenting, sharing or even delete wall comments) in this case, users still can delete manipulate their own posts.

The first is great for a business page, and the second is good for just “announcements” like a blog page.  I would also as a company establish “group topic area’s’ and Work topic areas. So employee’s could follow the “new product ” design page or the “HR benefits package page.”

Think of it, a company using Google+ every employee all comments saved. (If they get fired, yes, some admin controls would be necessary for retention.), Topics pages could be established which Employee’s could follow, or Create. Team pages which anyone can join (which don’t exist, I can hope can’t it), but most importantly, email control.

I’m just saying, instead of trying to revolutionize “Social.” They should revolutionize sharing. Better than email, better than posting on some social site. My stuff, my control, all the time. Personal, Public, even in a company.

I can dream people, and you can too.

 RPG. Remember when that used to mean something? Role. Playing. Game. Role playing.  Immersive, complete, take over Role.  As much as a love a good MMOrpg , and the graphics that come with it, I can’t help but feel, there is something missing.  I enjoyed Neverwinter Nights beyond anything I could dream or fathom, and it was so close to perfect I still think about loading it up for another try.   Almost everything I wanted to imagine could be done with it.  I recreated my greatest characters, DMed games and made items and lands, quests, and even (dare I saw) dropped in few zingers.   But…I was missing something… That something about “The time when we [all our characters] were all splayed across the floor, every item used, every potion expended, and T Man stood up.., pointed at our DM and said ‘this is done. I’m rolling a 20.” Stepped back, and opened up the heaven of woop ass.”

We.  Our.  My.  It was real (within the context of the game world.).  I was invested, (and still am). I remember to this day, the incredible feeling and awfulness the first time (after years) my character died, and how it made my next character an obsessive defense master. 

But I also remember Diablo, and shouting and yelling as we had a “Leroy moment”[running into the room, activating all monsters] and realized someone had aggrooed all the guards in hell….that first character death was bitter, more so when I looked up from my computer walked out of the room to yell at my roommate who had gotten us all killed.  It wasin’t the playing, but the social interacting of the panic, the yelling at the screen and of course talking about it at lunch with the other Diablo players.  That shared experience about hell and wild panic.  A hidden geek social contract.

  Online playing vampire, and Mage and so many others, I still have stories about the man cliff hangers, the tension and the 20 character rooms waiting for the pin to drop.  RPG at it’s finest.   We knew each other by character colors, descriptions, methods of typing.  Who knew who ruled, in truth and online… it was a community.  What did they have in common?

1. The Social aspect.  Whether it’s net gaming, internet chat, or Xbox, being part of the group was always about… being part of the group.  Things happened in the group, the jokes, the Coke, the “I can’t believe you just jumped off a cliff” and GM reacting to the whim and craziness of the players. My chat room days was just as fun describing a battle as being in the battle afterwards, and my good friends relived mass moments of gaming lore, where someone did something we’d remember together.

2. I love seeing it, but I also like describing it.  Gamers talk with their hands, and their imagination.   There is not a GM, DM, storyteller, et al on the planet who has not had the perfect game fall apart, as the player does something ….unintentional.  Better yet, the adversarial (GM vs Players) nature of the game is preserved, and trust is rewarded.  The GM is not out to get you, because you CAN win…. But you can fail, and it will be more than creating another character or rebooting.

This game up because I saw a slide for a website. The slide had “RPG” on it, and described real mechanics, gorgeous graphics, storyline and epic quests, and strategy based battles, and right then I figured out what I didn’t like about modern RPG’s of the video game Varity. I figured out what was missing in today’s RPG’s.  They are Role playing  in title only.  You are not “Grandro, King of Servat.  Or Jim Danger, unlikely mage.” No, you’re playing a video game, where you get to make choices, sometimes, but it has an end, it has a story, and when you play again, it will be the same story, and no record of it will be kept.

Immersion is missing.   No, it’s not Mass effect.  Or Bio Shock. That’s just you, and some hanger on NPc’s you get to drag along, and when you die you curse and restart.  You’re forced to know about the world, because you need it to get the shotgun, and the “bio weapons of Boom” you really could care less about why.

Yeah, how many people know or care about the actually WORLD in Warcraft? Halo? It’s just a nice mechanics.  Very nice mechanics.  The backstory is Useful for if you raid or guild or which character you start as, but.. what about when you enter a town and the towns people boo? Or if you and the other players assemble to take the Castle and can’t overcome the defense.  Just long on and try again right?

Why does this matter? For years, I’ve had this game in my mind, and everyone who plays get’s invested in the game, their characters, and more importantly, the people they play with.  The game is mechanics heavy, but truly, it’s not (not if I can work it out) but it does require trust (as all rpgs) and time.

When White Wolf Studios closed their chat, I realized we’d lost something.  Many many people couldn’t find a group, lost the ability to really get into roleplaying as much as they could.  Furthermore, it was very much the way the game could  be played, exposed to sooo many people, and so many lives, it showed me a microcosm of life I didn’t know, as much as it sucked away my weekends.  I miss it.  I know it’s gone for the best (and my eventual growth) but just once, I wish to once again type out … “I enter.”

The Masses, those who have come to the internet now, the late adopters have recently run into something us long time users know: their are trolls amung us.
I bring this up because i’m starting to see more and more of these posts.  In the NY times, poor Richard made a (Gasp!) comment about Stephen Fry, the British writer, actor and television personality.  (he called his tweets boring).  The writers and actors of Stargate Universe are actually getting depressed.

These are choice examples, but still, a wave that’s growing.  From twitter under the control of it’s user mob. To backlash against something (google wave: at the time) not yet even finalized.
I have something to say to you all, thou i admire you all:  “Welcome to the internet.  Now ignore the fools on it and go back to doing awesome work.”

Trolling has but two purposes: Provoke a emotional “negative response” and make express a (angry) and not always wrong point of view. But Trolling, and getting yelled at have been part of life forever, using the internet just requires more “emotional armor” than most people are used to. Admittedly, many people have to have a thick skin to do their jobs (think journalist and Politicians.) but ordinary people are not prepared for “vitriol” backlash they get after posting an otherwise innocent comment.  Thank fully i spent many times back in the BBS and Forum era.  You learn to read and ignore something a majority of internet users are JUST coming to grips with.

What hurts, is that someone you don’t know, who knows nothing about you, feels the need to call you a “dirty, lying bastard who should have his mother killed” it shocks, it raises your hackles, but I have both sympathy and yet none.  If i say Madonna sucks, and her twitter 2000 followers get angry about it (i don’t even know or care if Madonna has a twitter account btw)… these are the same people who would (in the past) flood my email if they could find it, who would send me hate mail if they knew my address, but in reality, would share a beer with me at a pub or ask me a sane questions in real life (“Why do you think that?”).  The other 2 million people who care about Madonna don’t give a damn what i think!  They would just laugh of my comments and keep going with their decidedly busy lives (listening to Madonna i might add).

I say again. “Ignore the fools and move on.” better yet, Disenvowell them!

My word of Advice: No matter what you do, their  is ALWAYS backlash.  Accept it. It’s a bell curve.  Humans must disagree with each other.  It’s something we all know: The squeaky wheel get’s the grease;  the loud person is always listed to; Most people who write their congress men are the ones who disagree.

Furthermore, these people think they are in the majority (See Sanford Study) , often times, unfortunately, they are not.

We know they(Trolls & Angry Vitriol) are not in the Majority..

Sticks and Stones, people, sticks and stones.

New ways of tackling Cancer are always being highlighted, -See below- but, there have been no advanced  changes in the fight of this disease.  One thing that has been identified at contributing to this slowness is the funding process (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/28/health/research/28cancer.html?em ). We think there is something else, we think capitalism wide, there is no real incentive to cure cancer. It’s not a conscious focus, it’s just the situation we’ve worked ourselves to.  

Cures, we believe, are one of the true governmental fixable problems.  Governments should dive in, collecting the Altruistic focus of us all, and then, finishing, switch gears.   A government should decisively work on curing cancer or anything else (like how they fund DARPA – Five years, all the money you like).  But the time limit is important.  The problem with Cancer now (40 year later since Nixon declared war) is the number of industries dedicated to it and a bureaucracy self interested need to survive.  This self interest now prevails, in the funding system- no one wants to fund a bad Grant so the grant system plays it safe, and few “leaps” can be made without risk-, in the Drug dispensing system, in hospitals and so on.

Admittedly the medical business model – for profit healing-; is flawed.  It’s not even cancer; seriously, where was the last time we cured something?  The capitalist business model for subscription based essential goods (or perceived essential –like internet service) is too compelling, and profitable.   Game developers and applications developers do it, Cellphone providers are doing it.  These are sure fire cash flow and so are cancer drugs and charities and sponsorships.  Entire industries (which have matured for 40 years) now solely exist on the cancer existing. There are numerous charities, charities events, grants, section of the NIH (national Institute of Health) dedicated to cancer.  Think of all the men, women, and events that would need to go away, find new jobs or even have to learn an entire new skill if cancer were cured.

Curing cancer is an end to a cash flow stream.  It means a couple of treatments, then done, over.  No 20 years of drugs and $100,000 medical bills.  No need to explore being an Oncologist in Medical college.   But if we, as a species, are going to say “There is something more than survival of the fittest, but also the extension of a health species.” We can’t keep figuring costs into keeping our fellow human alive.”

Ok, we are being too cynical. But if we cured cancer to morrow, I believe we’d have to slow roll a cure in over 10 years, so people know it’s coming, wind down. If a miracle cure were delivered tomorrow, shock would hit the medical community; people wouldn’t know what to do with themselves.   And you thought the bank collapse of 2008-2009 was interesting.

Promising Cancer technologies: Lasers (directly burning the cancer, Sasers vibrating the cancer,  Blocking protein and toxin injections.)

Lasers in Cancer

http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/factsheet/therapy/lasers

Nano-tech laser kills cancer cells, leaves regular sells intact.

http://news.stanford.edu/news/2005/august10/nanotube-081005.html

Injected Isotopes type Cures or Toxins

http://gizmodo.com/379952/guy-invents-potential-cancer-cure-with-radio-machine-built-out-of-pie-pans-and-hot-dogs

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/29/health/research/29drug.html?em

Iran with its unrest here in the June 2009 is learning a lesson that oppressive regieme seem to never learn, what those drunk on power never seem to grasp. If you are going to pretend to give people the right to vote and chose their own way, you cannot also treat them like complete sheep and idiots.

People will accept their injustice, their oppression to a degree, but they will not accept a shell game. What do i mean?

No Choice.

Back in the Old Soviet union (and lots of dictatorships like Iraq) people were given the right to vote.  There was one candidate and he generally won with 99% of the vote (and most of the population), even when most people stayed home.  The election was a sham, everyone knew it, and that was the state of things, you went on with your life.

Choice

In  contrast, in Venezula they had a close election, In America 2000, and 2004 they had a close election.  People were upset and they voiced it… and their countries and govenment still stand. Why…  Many countries have had close elections, there is always talk of voter fraud and ballot fixing, but in actually democracies, the expectation matches that of what has been reported in the run up. Further more after one side loses, and there is obvious bitterness, it’s not that people don’t take to the streets and protest, its’ that the ruling powers acknowledge their protesting and basically ignores them, until they tire and go home.

General Conclusion

In a true democracy (right to vote, press freedom, right to assemble and speak), or let’s say a place where even if people don’t believe their guy lost,  They demonstrate, They bitch and then, They move on, why? because they trust the eventually digging.  Those who lost, and who think they should not have lost never stop seeking answers, questioning every machine, balot, they file every legal challenge and WE LET THEM!  because, that way we let them exaust themselves.  They are not following some fallacy either. If they found evidence they know it would be reported, the courts would listen, etc

The Problem with Pretending.

Those pretending to be a democracy always overreach.  Instead, not only do they stack the vote but they also stack the vote into the unbelievable range.  This is their crime or, real mistake.  Then after some initial disturbances the ruling class feel so shaky, so not in control, they then crack down on the people.  Often enough, this works –people like living after all.

The cause of the disturbance is the same- overreaching.  Whether or not the Voting in Iran was fixed two things have happened.  a) the expectation of a close election was a landslide (over reach) and then, telling the people that protesting the result would have grave consequences. (over reach).

The fix would have been simple. Let the people have the retally and then bring the counting in close with expectation, say 52/48 and still declare your guy the winner.   After all, those pretending usually have control of the media. It’s too late now anyway. The people are starting to figure out their are more of them, than the ruling class. This will only end in blood.

In the end, Pretending you are a democracy is bad, or just works until fear grips the ruling class. Just admit you’re not, and people accept it because they understand it, they understand those rules.  The rules are not going to change suddenly.   The Mob does not like change they can’t anticipate.

Web 2.0 is more than technology; it’s about openness, sharing and relinquishing control.   It is a fundamental way of thinking about data, in that the owner of the data, cannot possibly think about all the ways –good or bad- that data can be used, but with enough users, force more good than bad effects from the data source.

Social networking is a very small part of the Web 2.0 schema.  For instance, Social networking is mainly about socializing.  While all data sharing has a social concept; the Department of Defense forum for Lessons Learned for Officers serving in Iraq isn’t about dinner and wine, it is about keeping soldiers alive.  Likewise, the interactive latitude and longitude map of known improvised Explosive Device (IED) locations in Iraq is Web 2.0 application which focuses on not losing vital Intel when solders go off duty and rotate back to the United States.

While many people do not understand twitter (a popular text blogging site) a user using an API is now sending arrest records across twitter using the open sheriff database.  A police officer or detective can now have every arrest sent to his phone, important if he has an informant he’s keeping tabs on.  He can have this same service in his car, but he can’t take his car laptop with him everywhere he goes.  If he could text back instructions on what to do with that suspect, from the field his ability increases immensely. [1]

Harnessing Collective Intelligence.

The lesson: Network effects from user contributions are the key to … dominance in the Web 2.0 era.

·    Hyperlinking is the foundation of the web. As users add new content, and new sites, it is bound in to the structure of the web by other users discovering the content and linking to it. Much as synapses form in the brain, with associations becoming stronger through repetition or intensity, the web of connections grows organically as an output of the collective activity of all web users.

Tim Orielly suggests Web 2.0 strengths lies in the independency of linking and crosses over relationships, the “Drill Down” ability of the endless links.  Why is Wikipedia great? Because each article has multiple links to many other topics. Face book? Click on a friend, click on a birthday, find other people with the same birthday, find interests, find other people with same interest, and so on. What about a site like Politico.com? It aggregates other news sites, and you can follow their links, to other news sites, meaning a story can followed forever in a widening circle.

Ease of User manipulation: Trickle down Smarts.

Part of the Harnessing of intelligence is that someone one has never heard is doing his best to share his ideas with the world.  People who by day go to an office can and often in his spare time goes back to the web and creates a Facebook interface that shows real time location of friends flicker photo’s and locates it on Google Maps, and is able to be shown on any smart phone.  The motivations are many -needed the app himself, thought it was cool, proof of concept effort- but the ability to share it with the masses is what makes the entire project worthwhile.

Web 2.0 would not be possible without companies or project makers willing to make data accessible through API (Application interfaces).  The most popular sites release API’s and tools which allow the sites data to be minded based on rules set up in the interfaces, where interested parties (people, companies, developers) create mini programs to manipulate accessed data itself. 

Most of the users on a site are simply consumers of the world of the coders or programmers, but the shear number of ways and ease of use to manipulate what they find is what draws people to a site.

Web 2.0 benefits from silent people tolling away to enhance the data and then sharing with the masses; consumers who are always seeking ways to manipulate their links and connections to other people or their own data.

Key Drivers

Web 2.0 lesson:

• leverage customer-self service and algorithmic data management to reach out to the entire web, to the edges and not just the center, to the long tail and not just the head.

Web 2.0 principles: Lessons of Technology and Adoption Life Cycles[2]

• The service must share, and keep sharing, even allow its own content off site.
• The service automatically gets better the more people use it.
• Service must be easy to use for everyone interested in using it and allow new users to learn instantly.
• Service must help users interact with other users easily.
• The service content must keep evolving, and become more “robust” and mature.
• Speed of updates is paramount.
• Achieve critical adoption by targeted userbase.

What is not Web 2.0

As mentioned, a supposed Web 2.0 site can quickly fall behind.  MySpace is by all traditional measures a web 2.0 site, but it suffers from lack of use and innovation.  A flooded market can also reduce sites effectiveness still, these are not static.  However for a traditional definition, these are areas where the information is not only static it cannot be added or made, “more useful.”

The key therefore to Web 2.0 is interactivity and access; social networking sites usually lead the way in both these fields, and are usually the first people think off for “Web 2.0” examples; however, one must remember that email would be the 2.0 version of voicemail but it wasn’t until email on the cell phone that messaging achieved true Web 2.0 status, always there, every present.

In effect, anything can be remade to allowing users to work with the data, however, not all things area accessible.

The Innovation Life Cycle[1] 

The 2.0 moniker means innovative, different, Wow! And yet evolving, and filled with potential able to reach past its original function or intent.  Any 2.0 means the system (service or technology et al) has evolved or transitioned to a second phase, an “exciting” every present, “We can’t believe we lived without this” Stage.  It’s also a signal of “reinvention.” The 2.0 moniker fits right between early adapters and early majority.

The Innovation Life Cycle

• Stage 1.0: Creation for Specificity - A system is targeted at a specific group or to fill a perceived need. This comprises of Innovators and early adopters who tend to expand the service by adding and discovering other uses and are the major force of influencing others to use the product. 
• Stage 2:0 Extension – The System achieves a critical mass by extending beyond its core target audience, and targeted users.  It becomes “The next big thing.” And suddenly it is the conversation. This is where Early Majority comes into play.
• Stage 3.0 Ever Present – The system is so ever-present it becomes a verb. (Google, Tweet, Xerox, Phone, Email.) The system is no longer Novel, and is dis-attached from the technology that spawned it and many other systems or technologies are created to support it.   A new category of classification may even be created for it.  This is the state where Late Majority and Laggards adoptors are literally pulled into the massive forward wave.
• Stage 4.0 Reinvention and/or Abandonment – At this stage, innovators again take over, but the system is clearly on its way out.  Laggards only exist here, and branded as “not with it.”  It should be noted that Laggards can sometimes drive the innovation model in an effort to preserve the “idealistic” or cultural feel they had as in Stage 2.0.  (Roller Skates to Roller Blade, VCR to DVR, 8 Track to Tape, Return of Vinyl, and the remodeled PT cruiser car.)
• Stage 5.0 Obsolescence – Few things truly reach this level of obsolesce without force.  The Vacuum Tube for TVs is totally gone, even thou TVs still exist.  8 Tracks are gone, even thou the ability to record and copy Information still exist.  Often times, part of the technology that has been redesigned.

To understand 2.0 moniker as part of the Innovation Life cycle, let’s me first use an example.

Twitter is not a web 2.0 Site by itself. It’s static and rather boring.  If one had to go to twitter web site all the time, it would not be a great website, forever lost in a niche; with the publishing of a twitter API, the ability to interact with twitter and twitter users in many different ways has allowed twitter to grow.

Twitter is now used for more than talking about or describing breakfast. It is now used for Alerts, to deliver news and to garner almost real time views on a subject better than a focus group. I can twitter from my computer.  My cellphone can twitter. My Friends twitter. I can embed twitter on my web site. The news uses twitter. The police use twitter. People expect other people to tweet and wonder why they don’t. I expect that when I tweet someone I get an answer. Twitter is used in warnings and notifications, to aggregate news and for statistical study.

What is interesting about this example is that this is also the definition of email when it started.  This is the pager 10 years ago, this is instant messaging (Aim, Yahoo Messenger, ICQ, and Jabber) 8 years ago, and this is Myspace 5 years ago.  Now those technologies seem either ever present (stage 3.0), tired, or defunct, or no longer “novel.” (  Clearly Stage 4.0 or 5.0)

Innovation Phase definition.

It is during the stage 4.0 that a system fractures, and moves to either a new medium (tape to DVD) or the current medium continues to be reinvented (Telephone to cellphone).  Because of this its is important to note be clear about the boundaries of the Innovation Life cycle we are using.

We can say we are in:

• Email 3.0 (everyone has email, it’ not novel) or instead Messaging 4.0 (after voice mail, email, Aim, and it’s clear twitter is a reinvention of messaging)
• Skiing 4.0 (Skying is clearly being reinvented with the introduction of the snowboard or Snowboarding 3.0 (people are starting to ask, don’t you now board, you should try) or Winter Activities 2.0 (winter activities are fun again, with the X games leading the branding)

The “2.0” moniker was originally used to draw a line separating the state of the Web before and after the dot-com bubble burst in 2000.  It has since taken on new meme[1], which is “An interconnected Web of services” and data manipulation.[2],  The Term of Art[3], was original crafted in 2003 by Craig Cline, Dale Dougherty, -web pioneer- and Tim O’Reilly -VP of Oreilly- during a conference planning session; that conference became the Annual Web 2.0 Conference. 

Web 2.0 is about sharing first and foremost, and  the term now encapsulates the ways we use, interact and manipulate the information, data, and relational links of the World Wide Web (“Web”) in order to enhance the Web’s delivered contents (such as Wikipedia, where any person can edit the presented information).  Without sharing of the data, no one benefits.  Furthermore, a website once designated as a “Web 2.0” site can transition out of that phase, if it becomes stagnant or its user community abandons it.

In Web 2.0 users don’t just retrieve information, but can also manipulate, delete, add, reduce, comment on, -et al-, data, but more importantly, can also remix (ex. Youtube), re-present (Playlist.com) and even enhance data (Flickr, Yahoo Web Traffic CAM for navigating the morning traffic ported to Tivo DVR[4]), sometimes creating new forms of information (real time California Wild fires information linked to Google Maps).  Users can do this manipulation with data they own, or data they are allowed to access (posting of arrested people on Twitter, accessed from static Police dept. Websites). 

As more people participate in enhancing the data, the usability and usefulness of what is being manipulated increases, forming a neural net of information that is deeply informative, simple to use and encourages its own use.  The potential for increased analysis, worthwhile participation, and enhanced work product of its targeted users is what separates Web 2.0 from forum users of Web 1.0 users who would delete, remove or corrupt the data (Individually inputted Statistics for Fantasy Sports vs Official Feeds).  While data corruption is entirely possible in Web 2.0, the “wisdom of the crowd” eventually overcomes this attempt to undermine the data and in the end produces a superior product.

As more users join in the manipulation of the data, the means of delivering data becomes feature rich, and features begin to anticipate the needs of the users. As the data repository grows, more users enter and begin to use and create more data, generating more content in a never ending cycle.  However adoption by a critical mass of the particular targeted audience[5] does not happen until the data becomes easy to use, and that is when a site has achieved its true Web 2.0 status.

Therefore, the key to naming something Web 2.0 is whether the site or service has made the transition to allow users to interact, access or manipulate the data presented to the user, especially if the user were not able to manipulate the data before, and allow the user to interact –share- with other users of that data and finally extend the new data to the world beyond to even other users who are not on the original accessing site, i.e, the long tail.(ex, Facebook buttons, Trackbacks for Blogs and links on news websites to other web sites.)

Among the insatiable desires we, as humans have, is the need to constantly change and rework our food.  I marvel at the culinary delights we concoct, and just the natural ones. I’m not even going to go in to the lime green, day glow, chemical ones we also love

*shout out to Jello.*

Still, every so often I am struck -usually over dinner- about how odd it is I’m eating something, or something I’m eating is actually edible.  Let’s examine a few:

Coffee: Someone thought it was a good idea to ground up beans (mind you, black, dark beans instead of nice green beans) instead of eating them, and wait, pour water over this ground up soup…, and drink it!  Really?  A vile, bitter tasting stuff which tastes like licking the bottom of burnt wood?  Here…, taste this, isn’t this awful?

Blow fish: Who’s the second person to try this? If you don’t know, blow fish has a deadly nerve toxin.  I bet the first person didn’t know that.  Or the second, but really, how hungry do you have to be to keep trying to eat the damn thing?  Sure, put it on your spear and stab someone. However…, eat it? Really?!

Still, these are but two examples of things that I find interesting… the other? Deep fried Twinkies.

Nuff said.

“When the conduct of men is designed to be influenced, persuasion, kind, unassuming persuasion, should ever be adopted.” Abraham Lincoln

There seems to be a problem with phones, and information in the courts. 

This article is astounding, more so I’m astounded by the silliness and stupidity of the courts.  Let’s go back to oh, 1980. I am on a Jury and I am told to go home at the end of the day… I do so. The court has to TRUST that I do not look up, speak with or discuss the case.  Now, let’s be serious, people probably did but it was to whom and impact: Your wife, your next door neighbor, they read up on the latest in the news paper…

When they came back to court the Court had to judge they didn’t violate the rules. However, if they were found to, they were dismissed or there would be a mistrial.  In short we accepted out of sight, and out of mind.

Fast forward to 2009.  It’s the same thing, people looking up info on their iPhone or twittering.  Only difference “instance and magnitude.” The solution is still the same… BAN cellphones in the court room. I mean seriously, how difficult is that. When do you so, you return right back to 1985, and you didn’t know if people broke the rules then, and you wouldn’t know now.

The twitter users are different. IF someone goes home and twitters such info, then, just as you did in 1985, you dismiss them or the trail. It’s no different. Infact, you can “ask” for such blogs and Twitters, and i’m sure defense attorney will monitor them, but better yet, attach a fine to blogging or twittering about a trial during a trail as a modified GAG order, which has existed for quite some time. 

The first time someone gets a $5000 for doing it, i bet no one else will do it.   No new laws needed, no new rules; just impose the ones you have and get back to the business of the courts.

The Point: Don’t make something a big deal with laws exist already to handle the problem…, laws and a little common sense.

Solution. Ended.