Now Using Twitter

I'VE STARTED TO USE TWITTER. I plan to use it for microblogging -- the brief, remaindered links that I have usually stored up and then posted in bulk, leaving Seat1A for longer items. I've updated my blog template to include the five seven most recent posts to my Twitter feed, and if you'd like to follow my feed you may do so here.

While Twitter is a recent Web 2.0 rage, the user community is still comparatively small. Still, usage has increased dramatically of late, and I'm starting to notice more of the geeks in my circle using Twitter. One of these is Michael Hyatt, who is not a personal acquaintance but someone whose blog I follow. He recently posted a Twitter 101, which follows two other posts on the topic. The Wikipedia article on Twitter also is a nice primer.

Frankly, I just love the ability to post via a text message from my phone. I so often see random things on the road and think, "That's a great Seat 1A post." Now I can fire it off with a simple text. The 140 character limit is also a nice creative constraint, forcing a sort of blog haiku form.

Going Green(er)

KATE AND I HAVE BEEN READING the NY Times Magazine Green Issue from several weeks back, and it's prompted us to make another wave of changes in our habits (the first wave came after we watched An Inconvenient Truth: CF lightbulbs, insulated water heater, and wind energy from our utility). What we're doing:

• A set of changes as part of the renovation we're doing to our house this summer: New energy-efficient windows, furnace, and water heater. During the demolition we've also learned our home was not insulated (!) other than by its siding, so we'll be adding fill insulation throughout.
• Buying groceries that are as close to local, organic, and seasonal as possible, with a preference on seasonal.
• To help with that, joining a local produce CSA.
• Using cloth bags at the grocery.
• Buying products with the least possible packaging.
• Leaving off the furnace and aircon as much as possible (helped greatly now that, due to the construction on our home, we have no aircon!).
• Line-drying much of our laundry.
• Leaving the lights off as much as possible.
• Using cruise control in the car as much as possible, and leaving the current MGP monitors on so we can better judge our consumption.

There are other changes we hope to make soon: Walking to any destination within a mile's distance is one. I've also been toying with getting a bike or scooter (90 mpg!) for local trips. Next summer we'll be planting a large garden in the yard, and will begin composting as much of our garbage as possible (probably now) in anticipation of the garden (with one of these).

The real problem is air travel, and my personal carbon footprint is enormous as a result (over 50,000 lbs of C02). I'm not certain how I'm going to crack that, save via carbon offsets. But there has to be a way ...

@Google Talks

WHAT A GREAT FIND: Goolge has created a YouTube channel for their "@Google" series of in-house lectures and presentations. There are 341 online as of this moment. Many authors, policy wonks, and nearly every 2008 presidential candidate (go here for Obama, Clinton, and McCain). I'll be watching Michael Pollan.

The Greatest

AND THEN THERE'S THIS.

Triple Crown Brown?

IF YOU MISSED THE DERBY OR THE PREAKNESS, (I missed the Preakness), here are Big Brown's performances in each. Perhaps this is the year? If so, we'll call him Triple Crown Brown.

The Derby

The Preakness

Is Urban Violence Viral?

IS URBAN VIOLENCE VIRAL? It might be according to experts cited in this New York Times magazine article. The essence:

CeaseFire’s founder, Gary Slutkin, is an epidemiologist and a physician who for 10 years battled infectious diseases in Africa. He says that violence directly mimics infections like tuberculosis and AIDS, and so, he suggests, the treatment ought to mimic the regimen applied to these diseases: go after the most infected, and stop the infection at its source. “For violence, we’re trying to interrupt the next event, the next transmission, the next violent activity,” Slutkin told me recently. “And the violent activity predicts the next violent activity like H.I.V. predicts the next H.I.V. and TB predicts the next TB.” Slutkin wants to shift how we think about violence from a moral issue (good and bad people) to a public health one (healthful and unhealthful behavior).

It seems plausible, and interestingly, very similar to our approach to stakeholder management at the office--except in that case, we're trying to foster the spread of behavior rather than hinder it.

Either way, the central issue is network effects, and in particular, the role of hyper-connected actors within the network. Think of it this way: If someone catches the cold, but only interacts with a few other people, the rate of transmission is likely to be low. If on the other hand the ill person shakes 100 hands a day, well, a lot of people are probably going to get sick. Substitute the willingness to enact violence, or support for your company's SAP implementation, for the common cold, and it's clear that not everyone in the network is equal in the effects they exert on the whole. It's all about dealing with the critical few.

For the seminal academic piece read Rogers; for the seminal popular piece read Gladwell (the book or the original article).