Run for your life!!
Things southern: Kudzu
As I’m wrapping up my stay here in Atlanta, I thought I would document some of the wonderful and spetacular things that I’ve encountered while in the south.
Kudzu is a plant that was promoted in the 1930’s for erosion control, but has since grown out of control. Drive around South Carolina or Georgia and you will quickly realized that Kudzu is slowly devouring the land. Soon everything here will be covered by a warm, green blanket of this leafy vine. With the capability to grow one foot per day, it doesn’t take long to take over.
Maybe it’s the name, or maybe it’s the beast-like qualities, but in my head somewhere I anthropomorphized Kudzu as a kind of angry giant:
KUDZU EAT TREE!!!
KUDZU EAT CAR!!!
People are really starting to worry… it might be… KUDZU EAT SOUTH!!!
Email and social viruses
All day today I’ve been receiving W32/Sobig.f@mm-related emails. This is another nasty attachment-based email virus that spreads through the thoughtless clicks of unwitting email readers. I’m not trying to be condescending; I can’t really since I’ve been the victim before. Once upon a time I received an email containing some pictures of an attractive tennis player from an equally famous Media Lab professor, I couldn’t help but wonder what it was all about. I learned my lesson on that one (I ended up infecting my mom, among others).
These email viruses are social viruses, depending on real human networks to propagate. Since they typically come from trusted sources, they have the necessary believability to make users take action. They have decreased in popularity substantially over the past couple of years thanks to the collective browbeating of IT professionals worldwide who have educated us on the topic. Most email users now know not to trust anything that comes from your friends. So how is it that the W32/Sobig.f@mm virus is having such success? What differentiates it from it’s former ancestors?
Low threshold links
Sometime around the beginning of this year, I realized that I was encountering way too many sites to write an individual weblog post about each and every one. My threshold for what to post was way to high to catch many of the sites I was laughing at, engaged by, and sending on to my friends. Instead of losing these links thanks to my imperfect brain, I decided like many others to create a separate weblog just for the ephemeral sites that didn’t deserve discussion.
And so my oddments was born.
Ever since, I’ve become obsessed with finding more of them. They’re like crack. The part I love best is that when I’m truly bored, hitting reload in my RSS reader almost always turns up something. And more than anything else, these new lists facilitate the rapid spread of memes across the universe.
Following is a list of my favorite low-threshold link sites, roughly in the order that I discovered them. Send me an email or post a comment with yours and I’ll add you to the list.
Google underscores filenames
Google’s ranking algorithm takes into account much more than just the infamous PageRank. In fact, they claim to use over 100 factors in determining the order of results returned for each query made. The specific features and weightings that go into this calculation are the special sauce that makes Google so wonderful.
One of my jobs recently has been to explain to various branches in the Division of STD Prevention here at the CDC the meaning of their rankings, and how to structure their site to be most effectively indexed by engines like Google. For example, I was posed with the question of why a searches for different STDs show the Division pages at different rankings:
Search for syphilis: #1
Search for herpes: #10
Good question. Why was the CDC winning with syphilis and outranked by herpes.com? Was it because of a commercial interest in herpes treatment? Or perhaps that because herpes is so much more prevalent, there is more competition for providing information? And of course, there is always the possibility that it is related to the quirkiness of Google’s ranking algorithm.
The medieval church, heresy and memes
Richard Dawkins is typically cited as the inventor of the concept of the meme (he did coin the term). It is also a well known fact that Dawkins is a staunch athiest. Religion is the prime example he gives to elucidate memes
I find it a little ironic that the conceptualization of ideas as infectious diseases dates back far beyond The Selfish Gene. In fact, one of the first notable observations of this ideology is from the medieval Catholic Church, circa 12th century. Heresy was considered to be an infection of the mind which spread from person to person:
Heresy (from the Latin, secte) meant treason to God, the worst offense against Christian society. Heresy meant contamination — an infection from which true believers had to protect themselves.
It appears that the church knew full well that ideas worked like disease, and perhaps that their own docterine was in competition with the ideas of heretics. And this a full 700 years before the discovery of evolution. I find it mildly ironic that Dawkins would cite the Church as his prime example, but forget to cite their invention of the concept.
Historyguide.org: Lecture 27: Heretics, Heresies and the Church
The Globe and Mail
Something tells me that if America had a national newspaper, this story would not run on the front page. At the same time people argue that Canadians are just like Americans. I’d like to submit the following as evidence on both of these points.
The Globe and Mail
This is not a match-making service
Before I decided to sign up for friendster, I probably received five or so solicitations from various friends of mine who happen to be early adoptors (or probably more accurately "innovators"). Today for the first time I received yet another invite, a surprising event since I’m already a member.
After staring at the email for a few minutes I realized that the recipient was not actually me, but rather the giant email list SOCNET which is delivered to the inboxes of most social network researchers worldwide. As I’m sure you can imagine, this prompted a few quick retorts, one of which I thought was priceless (all names have been changed to protect the innocent)
Please be my friend.
——————
Amy Jones has invited you to join Amy’s personal and private
community at Friendster, where you and Amy can network with each
other’s friends.
——————
Amy Jones has invited you to join Amy’s personal and private
community at Friendster, where you and Amy can network with each
other’s friends.
Could we, perhaps, avoid sending personal solicitations to SOCNET?
Friendship is a wonderful thing, but this is not a match-making service….
Amen.
Bacterial media
After nearly reaching eradication in America, syphilis rates have been on the rise among gay and bisexual men for the past few years. Most major cities have seen exponential growth in the number of cases over the past two years, and this is causing alarm in many state health departments.
Syphilis is a curable STD. After the initial infection, symptoms can disappear while the individual is still able to pass along the disease to others. Syphilis prevention then is largely targetted around creating awareness of the disease and an urgency for testing among those who think they may have contracted it.
Two complementary awareness campaigns have been started in Los Angeles and San Francisco aimed at gay and bisexual men. The former features a anthropomorphized syphilis sore named Phil while the latter is in the image of a healthy and personable penis. Of course these two campaigns struck my attention because their purpose is to reach as wide of an audience as possible. And in an ironic twist of fate, the syphilis sore beat the penis.
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vs. |  |
I want the big bag!
Last week I was in Ottawa attending the International Society for STD Research (ISSTDR) convention. By far the funniest thing that transpired during the entire event was a commercial played midway through King Holmes’ keynote lecture. After a bit of searching, I found a copy on the homepage of the source company (Zazoo). Apparently some people have already seen it, but it was a total shock to me. In order to preserve the element of surprise, I won’t go into any further detail.
Zazoo: Advertisement (quicktime, 6.8MB)
Zazoo: Advertisement (mpeg, 3.2MB)
Update: Anil says my coolness share just went down because I posted a dated meme. If it’s not in Blogdex, how could that be possible?
Update: Aisling says I’ve lost my edge. Has any one got an extra?
overstated 