Month: April 2007

China: Cleaning Their Internet

CNN reports (link):

Chinese President Hu Jintao on Monday launched a campaign to rid the country’s sprawling Internet of “unhealthy” content and make it a springboard for Communist Party doctrine…

I will be studying intellectual property in China over the summer. The idea of censoring the content so that it better conforms with a doctrine seems to run against the principles of free thought, imagination, and entrepreneurship that I regularly associate with cutting edge technology.

I’m beginning to think I have big issues with such an approach. However, I’m keeping an open mind as to the possibilities and hope to be surprised when I’m actually there.

Personal Public Timeline

The title seems to contradict itself right? Well, there was a time last year when I wanted to compile all of my personal communications into a general timeline. I’m talkin’ email, IMs, texts messages, pictures, blogs, bookmarks, etc.

I didn’t do it. Partially because I don’t have the technical ability to do it, which is a lame excuse. And partially because after voicing the idea to a few people, privacy became a concern. Not wanting to cut my ties, or at least my digital communications with anyone, I let the idea go.

Then Twitter.com came rambling ’round the corner. It’s like IMing with no one in particular. You just post what you’re doing for the world to see. You can subscribe to friends timelines, and they yours. But it isn’t direct either way.

You can check out my twitter timeline here.

While twitter is great, you tend to mutter to yourself, what’s the point of all this? Who cares? (Turns out a lot of peolpe.) I don’t have an exact answer. It’s like instant blogging without worrying too much about content. Twitter gives you something to do when you have nothing else to do. And it’s a way of contacting a lot of people at once – without ever really trying.

Just this morning I found a similar site called Jaiku.com. Jaiku is a lot like twitter – you post what you’re currently doing and you can see what your friends or strangers are doing. The base is almost exactly like Twitter.

But Jaiku allows you to add feeds to our timeline. In my case, I added my flickr account (photos), my del.icio.us account (links), and my blog posts from here.

Very cool.

America’s Blogiest Neighborhoods

Outside.in is way to discover people and places in your neighborhood and community. I used to be a member, but never found enough information on my location to justify continued use. Regardless, the resulting data is somewhat interesting.

From outside.in:

What exactly are America’s bloggiest neighborhoods?The results below are based on a number of variables: total number of posts, total number of local bloggers, number of comments and Technorati ranking for the bloggers.

1. Clinton Hill, Brooklyn
2. Shaw, DC
3. Downtown LA
4. Newton, Mass
5. Rogers Park / North Howard Chicago
6. Pearl District, Portland
7. Watertown, Mass
8. Harlem, NY
9. Potrero Hill, SF
10. Coconut Grove, FL

Creativity Crunched

Steve Jobs makes an interesting point:

You know, we don’t grow most of the food we eat. We wear clothes other people make. We speak a language that other people developed. We use a mathematics that other people evolved… I mean, we’re constantly taking things. It’s a wonderful, ecstatic feeling to create something that puts it back in the pool of human experience and knowledge.

Writing has been my creative outlet since college. Whether it is public or private, it is what I do to express my thoughts, feelings, and imagination… to get away from the stuff I have to do.

Learning to balance my school obligations with my other interests has been one of the most difficult tasks this year. Having been away from a school setting, and entering a more intense school setting than I’ve ever experienced has been shocking. Still is, and will probably continue to be so for the next few years as I chase my diploma, a job, a family, etc.

What’s my point? Not sure… just that I agree that being creative, whether on a large or small scale is an incredibly rewarding endeavor.

UPDATE: I just came across this video of Sir Ken Robinson talking about the role of creativity in education at the TED conference.

Proximity to Family

Paraphrasing The View’s Joy Behar:

Wealthy families and poor families tend to stick together, while middle class families tend to disperse geographically.

There are a few ways to take this. Rich and poor children tend to be more dependent on their families than middle class children. Although I don’t have data, it would make sense that poor children would work with their parents to support a larger family unit, while children of wealthy parents are likely to remain under the family “umbrella” for a longer period of time. Conversely, middle class children seem to strive for more financial independence from their families.

I moved away from my family for college, but I stayed in-state. After college, I moved further away from home because I was eager to work and prove my independence. I think as many 20 to 25 year olds will agree, proving your independence is easier said than done. After working for a couple of years, I opted to return to school and chose a law school further, rather than closer, to home.

My motivation has been necessity, independence, and a desire to explore. I have not strived to be away from my parents, but rather followed what I thought to be the most enriching opportunity available.

From being away from home, I’ve learned to appreciate my home town. My attitude has evolved from thinking there wasn’t much going on there to recognizing it is as busy and fulfilling as anywhere else I have lived or traveled.

Party Walls

In England a long time ago someone important decided that the buildings should be made of brick and mortar instead of wood. In order to support the increased weight of the upper floors, wider walls were needed. To avoid significant loss of square footage on the lower lever because of thicker walls, “party walls” shared by neighbors were erected. Each neighbor had a duty to maintain the wall and to refrain from damaging the integrity of the “party wall.”

New England’s adoption of the “party walls” approach to fences and other such developments between property owners was the inspiration for Robert Frost’s poem, “Mending Wall,” which ends with, “Good fences make good neighbors.” (link)

Applying for a Mortgage

Interesting tidbit from Property Law, which may be obvious to home-owners. (I don’t own a home.)

Often we hear people say they have a mortgage, or they’re going to get a mortgage. But, they actually give a mortgage as collateral to get a loan.

Definition:

A charging of real property by a debtor to a creditor as a security for a debt (esp. one incurred by the purchase of property), on the condition that it shall be returned on payment of the debt within a certain period.

I just saw in the news that mortgage applications have fallen for the fifth week in a row.