Practical Penumbra

Good stuff you may have missed

I haven't done a ping storm in a long time, so I'm out of practice, but here are some pointers to a few interesting posts I've stumbled across...

A wonderful and witty point from John over at Conservative English Major, regarding the tendency of liberals to sue whenever a ballot issue doesn't turn out the way they want it to:

If liberals controlled America, there would obviously be no need for elections, since they would already know how voters SHOULD vote, and since voters have proven to be so dumb as to actually vote for conservative measures occasionally .........

Read the whole thing!

Over at My War--Fear and Loathing in Iraq, there are too many great posts to just link one. Stop by and read this post, at least. Things are a lot different that they tell you on CNN....

The Gray Monk is participating in an experiment, and so the rest of this post is my contribution to scientifical advancement....If you are feeling scientifical today, you can play too!

Testing Meme Propagation In Blogspace: Add Your Blog

This posting is a community experiment that tests how a meme, represented by this blog posting, spreads across blogspace, physical space and time. It will help to show how ideas travel across blogs in space and time and how blogs are connected. It may also help to show which blogs (and aggregation sites) are most influential in the propagation of memes. The dataset from this experiment will be public, and can be located via Google (or Technorati) by doing a search for the GUID for this meme (below).

Please join the test by adding your blog (see instructions, below) and inviting your friends to participate—the more the better. The data from this test will be public and open; others may use it to visualize and study the connectedness of blogspace and the propagation of memes across blogs.

The GUID for this experiment is:

as098398298250swg9e98929872525389t9987898tq98wteqtgaq62010920352598gawst

The above GUID enables anyone to easily search Google or other search engines for all blogs that participate in this experiment, once they have indexed the sites that participate, which may take several days or weeks. To locate the full data set, just search for any sites that contain this GUID.

Anyone is free to analyze the data of this experiment. Please publicize your analysis of the data, and/or any comments by adding comments onto the original post (see URL above). (Note: it would be interesting to see a geographic map or a temporal animation, as well as a social network map of the propagation of this meme.)

INSTRUCTIONS

To add your blog to this experiment, copy this entire posting to your blog, and then answer the questions below, substituting your own information, below, where appropriate. Other than answering the questions below, please do not alter the information, layout or format of this post in order to preserve the integrity of the data in this experiment (this will make it easier for searchers and automated bots to find and analyze the results later).

REQUIRED FIELDS (Note: Replace the answers below with your own answers)

(1) I found this experiment at URL:
http://www.guru-international.com/gray_monk/

(2) I found it via “Newsreader Software” or “Browsing the Web” or “Searching the Web” or “An E-Mail Message”: Browsing the Web

(3) I posted this experiment at URL: http://pp.mu.nu/

(4) I posted this on date (day/month/year): 08/08/04

(5) I posted this at time (24 hour time): 13:51

(6) My posting location is (city, state, country): (city), Indiana, USA

OPTIONAL SURVEY FIELDS:

(7) My blog is hosted by: mu.nu

(8) My age is: over two decades past the legal drinking age

(9) My gender is: Female

(10) My occupation is: Movie Theater Manager

(11) I use the following RSS/Atom reader software: What's "RSS/Atom reader software"?

(12) I use the following software to post to my blog: MovableType

(13) I have been blogging since (day, month, year): 25/04/2003

(14) My web browser is: Mozilla

(15) My operating systems are: Windows ME

Posted by Susie at August 8, 2004 01:09 PM