Cognitive Knowledge Networks & Local Know-How

"It’s not who you know, it’s what who you know knows."  Or so suggest cognitive knowledge networks.  Noshir Contractor can tell you all about it.  Rob Curley can tell you all about who knows who knows in Lawrence, Kansas.

This adds a lot of challenges to the veracity involved in traditional borders, both in space and mind.  Watch these networks appear at CommonCensus, who is letting you map where you think you live, or marumushi, who is mapping social networks in flickr.

A crash course on spontaneous order may be appropriate for those kindergarten classes soon.

House Plan: Folding Shirts

Throw this one in the blueprints.  I am definitely folding my shirts this way from this day forward.  (Slow-mo recommended.)

Hopping New Year

Good day and happy New Year!  I hope for you, at least; I missed it this year.

In fact, my whole trip went well besides that little glitch, of which I have now become quite proud.  Upon leaving California the Tuesday after Christmas, the rain stopped.  I had arranged Jack (my car, in the spirit of Kerouac) into the ultimate travel machine.  I laid the back seats flat dividing the hatchback into two parts: 1) a row of boxes, topped with the essentials and 2) two pieces of egg-crate style foam bedding decorated just as you would a bed, in a little less space.  Conveniently, my passenger seat also folds flat, so I could comfortably pull into any rest-area type space and snuggle under the warmest of comforters for a good night (or mid-day) sleep.

I enjoyed the sunrises of Flagstaff, Arizona; Santa Fe, New Mexico and the grasslands of western Oklahoma.  On the flipside I enjoyed the sunsets of Memphis and Nashville, Tennessee.  Georgia OKeeffe’s New Mexico is the autumn of landscapes.  While perhaps I like the grasslands for the same reason that Andy Warhol likes mechanized art: its very repetitive, but there are so many imperfections.  In Nashville, I caught the Grand Ol’ Opry, the staple of live radio shows for your bluegrass and country diet.  And, having had such a pleasant evening, I decided to wrap up my New Years celebration right there at 9:00pm.  I hit the road.  As I had been stopping at internet cafes and surfing Craigslist, scheduling house visits for potential places to rent upon my arrival in Virginia on New Years day, I still had a long road ahead of me.

Around 11:45pm is when it hit me.  I believe its called teleportation.  I was trying to decide on the best way to start violently honking my horn and flashing my headlights at the nearest car on the desolate highway without provoking that person into a road-rage-like response (to share the celebration of the New Year, of course).  But then I saw a sign.  Not just any sign, but a street sign.  It read: Crossing into the Eastern Standard Time Zone.  Poof.  12:45am.

By any means I arrived safely in Virginia.  Within a half-hour I had a room and after a few trips to IKEA (I finally understand), I am happily situated in Arlington.  Take a look. I live right near that little red arrow.  I work down at the green one.

And that gets you close to up to date.  I haven’t told you about how much I enjoy the details of work, or why.  Nor have I told you much about the place I live and my mysterious and pleasant roommates.  Those will be stories for another time.