One on One time with Alec, originally uploaded by steveray.
Jen and I are making an effort to spend time with the twins individually. Today Alec and I went hiking and then to the bowling alley while Jen and JJ shopped and went to LACMA. Good times! Tomorrow we’ll switch it up.
My twitter circle is having a little tiff about suitability of twitter posts. Specifically, @emayoh has been bombarding everyone with Hype Machine updates for the last few weeks. So about every 2 or 3 hours during the day everyone who subscribes to him sees a text message on their phone saying
emayoh just loved Peter Presta – Set Sail (Scuola Furano Remix) http://hypem.com/track/469035
And some people who follow emayoh are starting to twitter back asking him to tone it down. Which of course is often the worst part about spam – all the stop spamming spam.
This reminds me of the spam wars I had to endure during the first few weeks at B-school. Every student in the school was on a list-serv from which they couldn’t unsubscribe and to which any other student could post. With over 600 full-time students on the list obviously a strict etiquette was required. The funny part was how fierce the (admittedly 99% type-A) student body was in mocking and calling out the poor souls who complained about prices at the coffee shop or otherwised spammed the high volume list. People got seriously called out, and once it almost came to blows. The community quickly figured it out, and the rudimentary social networking tool worked fairly well for the 2 years I was there.
Twitter is way more advanced, and the policing and self correcting that needs to take place on the network is orders of magnitude easier and all in your control.
Asking someone to twitter less so you can follow them is, by the mores of social networking, rude. Its like asking an author to write less or a photographer to take fewer photos. Twittering is self expression and works (like all social networks) because its opt-in. If a twitter user is interested in having a lot of people follow them, he/she will self moderate.
So @emayoh: Heart all you want on Hype Machine. I turned off device updates for you a few weeks ago. 
But every so often I check out your pick via a quick click on Twhirl.
PS: The group of people whom you follow (and who follow you) on Twitter need a name. Like a pride of lions or a covey of quail. What should it be called? I sort of like “my twique”, or “my tweeps”. But then again, those are really terrible names.
Posted: May 21st, 2008 under portable devices, social networking.
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The world’s food system is highly stressed. And it’s unhealthy for people. And cruel to livestock. Over the holidays while on vacation with my family I read Michael Pollan’s incredible book An Ominivore’s Dilemma. It was nformative and inspiring. The general thesis is that human beings in the 21st century have lost track of our food chain – we really don’t know what we’re eating most of the time. Where does it come from, who produces it, who processes it, at what cost?
It being the holidays, the subject of food was on my mind when it came time to formulate my 2008 resolutions. I’d never seriously confronted the idea of vegetarianism before. Lots of friends and family members are vegetarians, but seriously? In the words of Vincent Vega “Yeah, but pork chops taste good. And bacon tastes good“. I’m a foodie. Some of my favorite places and things are…. meaty. Making the leap all the way to vegetarianism just wasn’t realistic.
But I did want to do something. So I came up with 2 things that I thought could be personally meaningful.
I haven’t told too many people about the second one, and when I do, the usual reaction is nervous laughter. Like I’ve just told a not too funny joke that doesn’t really make sense. In fact for the first few months I didn’t really tell anyone – even Jen – probably because I thought it was somewhat nonsensical myself. My semi-coherent rationalization(s):
After 4.5 months of keeping these resolutions, I have to report that I’m really, really, happy with the results. The biggest unintended consequence of the Monday plan is that I eat way less meat now every day of the week. Fewer meals contain meat, and the portions I eat are smaller. I crossed some psychological barrier I didn’t even know was there – every meal doesn’t have to have meat as a focus. Another outcome is that I have become a lot more curious about the provenance of the meat I do eat. Researching the food chain, buying the $15 chicken at the farmer’s market instead of the $5 Purdue broiler. Now the goat-cheese guy sells eggs and ducks too, not produced ag-biz style. And Candido the butcher is getting pasture-raised beeves from the Central Valley and calling me to see if he can put anything aside for me. It costs more, but I eat less. Changing the lifestyle.
Maybe “Meatless Monday” isn’t right for you. But read the books and articles, and find a realistic change. See where it takes you.