Life can be pretty bizarre.
Thursday, January 17, 2013
Wednesday, January 16, 2013
Happy times to blogspot.
I'm mainly intersted whether you go to blog spot? Do you?
It's goodbye nuclear, hello renewables as Japan prepares to build the world's largest offshore wind farm this July.
By 2020, the plan is to build a total of 143 wind turbines on platforms 16 kilometres off the coast of Fukushima, home to the stricken Daiichi nuclear reactor that hit the headlines in March 2011 when it was damaged by an earthquake and tsunami.
The wind farm, which will generate 1 gigawatt of power once completed, is part of a national plan to increase renewable energy resources following the post-tsunami shutdown of the nation's 54 nuclear reactors. Only two have since come back online.
The project is part of Fukushima's plan to become completely energy self-sufficient by 2040, using renewable sources alone. The prefecture is also set to build the country's biggest solar park.
The wind farm will surpass the 504 megawatts generated by the 140 turbines at the Greater Gabbard farm off the coast of Suffolk, UK – currently the world's largest farm. This accolade will soon pass to the London Array in the Thames Estuary, where 175 turbines will produce 630 megawatts of power when it comes online later this year. The Fukushima farm will beat this, too.
Friday, January 11, 2013
Here's a post with lots of text
As a musician, one of the more interesting and revealing questions you can ask yourself is: why do I play music? The answer is usually something like, “because I enjoy it.” It’s not the most illuminating answer, but it’s essentially true. Playing music is fun. It makes you feel good about yourself.
Of course, there’s two kinds of playing music. There’s playing for yourself (or casually jamming with friends) and then there’s performing music live, in front of an audience. Musicians experience varying emotions related to playing live. It’s doubtless a time of great excitement but also a time of anxiety. You worry about whether or not you’re going to hit a wrong note and be revealed as a musical fraud in front of your peers, cast forever into the social abyss. But you also dream about creating a brilliant musical moment which causes the audience to collectively gasp and then chant your name as you dodge a hail of women’s underwear (or, if you are a woman, soiled boxers.)
This is a text post
I was always something of a late bloomer in regards to using social networks. Friends had to pester me for years to join Friendster, until I finally signed up just in time for its implosion. I also took my sweet time getting involved with MySpace which now also appears to be on its death bed. But I had learned my lesson by the time Facebook —- the most successful of the online social networks —- arrived at the doorstep of popular consciousness. I signed up, and regularly visit the site. I even admit to experiencing some of the “Facebook addiction” that is often commented on by pop psychologists and cultural nannies.
What makes Facebook so popular? On the surface, it’s merely a collection of pre-existing Web technologies —- status updates (which can be thought of as mini blogs (or to use the modern nomenclature, “tweets”)), the ability to comment on such status updates, e-mail, embedded video and audio, and simplistic video games whose appeal is entirely lost on me. There’s not a whole lot new here —- certainly nothing Friendster or MySpace hadn’t already developed. So why has Facebook succeeded whereas the others failed?
I suspect there are many answers to that question, some having to do with managerial decisions, timing, marketing etc. But there is one concept Facebook employed that no other social network ever got right: the “stream.” The stream is the core of the Facebook UI —- the descending tower of status updates, links and videos created by your social contacts. The power of the stream is that it allows you to quickly answer the question, “what are my friends doing/talking about/thinking about right now?”
One could then ask, “why do I care?” And, indeed, a lot of what ends up in the stream is essentially uninteresting fluff. Do I really care that my neighbor from five years ago is going out for coffee? (Frankly, do I care that my life mate is going out for coffee?) But enough of what’s in the stream is of interest to keep us coming back. It is something of a thrill to find out that your cousin is reading a book you raved about three years ago. And it is intriguing to discover that the chick you dated in Los Angeles happens to be a friend of someone you know in Chicago, even though they travel in completely separate social circles.
So is that the magic of Facebook? Is it simply the modern town square, bringing folks together for the sweet pleasures of human companionship? Anyone familiar with my writing knows that such a warm, inspirational answer is not enough to satisfy me. There must be some other need, deep within the dark selfish recesses of the human unconscious, that is being satisfied.
In the past, I’ve posited that social networks allow transactions of what I call “social currency.” You can think of social currency as favors. In the old days, I might have done my neighbor a favor by bringing back his stray goat. But I did so not for purely altruistic reasons; secretly, I expected him to keep an eye on my fenced cow. And if he failed to do so, I would hold it against him. This concept of doing favors and expecting favors in return is what’s often referred to as reciprocal altruism. In the realm of economic studies called game theory, they refer to the strategy of reciprocal altruism as “tit for tat.” Tit for tat says, in essence, that people will do favors for other people, until they get screwed, in which case they stop the favors. However if the person who screwed them suddenly does them a unprovoked favor, their faith is renewed and they will return the favor.
Now, you can see reciprocal altruism and “tit for tat” all over social networks, especially Facebook. To do so, let’s first acknowledge the rather obvious truth: people want to be popular. They want to appear to have of friends, and want their friends to be interested and involved in their lives. Facebook literally tells you how many friends a person has (at least how many “Facebook friends.”) And you can get a pretty good sense of how involved a person’s friends is with their lives by looking at how often that person’s status updates are commented on and the nature of the comments. If I comment on a friend’s post, I am aiding them in their universally human need to be loved and admired. BUT, I’m not just doing it out of the goodness of my heart —- I expect them to return the favor or some equivalent when I post an update. And, if I feel like that favor is not being returned, I may stop posting on their comments. Essentially, I’m angry because I’m not getting a tit for my tat.
Of course, it’s not quite that simple. If it were, everyone Facebook would probably have a generally equal amount of friends, and replies to their posts equal to their own output of replies. But there are people who have 3000 friends, while others have 30; there are people whose benign statements are lauded as profound, whereas there are people whose brilliant observations seem to go by the wayside (I feel that I often fall into that latter category.) Some people are social hubs, others are social duds. Why is this? Well, partly because of the real world outside of Facebook. Attracting even middling attention from the gorgeous girl in your French class is much better than inspiring total devotion from your best friend’s little brother. There is such a thing as a social hierarchy, and some people are higher up on it than others. A dollar of social currency imparted from a king is worth more than five dollars of social currency imparted by a fool.
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