New term: Geekification

SourceForge Inc. has changed its name to Geeknet Inc. The company changed its name to better “articulate” its business: serving the wants and needs of the expanding world-wide geekdom.

The following quote is from Scott Kauffman, CEO of Geeknet.

“The geek demographic is bigger than most people realize,
and it is growing every day in both scope and influence.
Its product appeal extends beyond servers and slide rules
to include video games, soft drinks, automobiles, fast food,
fashion, entertainment, consumer electronics and other goods.
We call this phenomenon the ‘geekification‘ of the world, and we believe that our network provides the best platform
for advertisers to reach this highly coveted audience.”

Geeknet “communities” consist of Slashdot, SourceForge.net,
ThinkGeek, Freshmeat, and Ohloh. In addition, they handle advertising for the Linux Foundation’s Linux.com. According to Geeknet, the company serves more than 40 million tech-savvy geeks each month,

Given I’m a shareholder in Geeknet Inc. (nasdaq: LNUX), I hope the company plays a key role in the geekification of the world.

New term: Informavore

I like reading the informative stuff at Edge.org. The other day Edge.org had the headline “The Age of the Informavore: A Talk With Frank Schirrmacher.”

Edge.org defined informavore as follows: “The term informavore characterizes an organism that consumes information. It is meant to be a description of human behavior in modern information society, in comparison to omnivore, as a description of humans consuming food.”

For the last few years I’ve written a lot about 21st century Informatics*. In a nutshell, informatics feeds the informavores.

* 21st century Informatics is data/information processing supported by a cyber-infrastructure of high-performance computing systems.

Edge.org::The Age of the Informavore

Voter apathy in Tempe, Arizona?

Tempe, Arizona, voters voted YES for the $77 million Tempe Elementary Schools bond. This came as no surprise, but I was surprised that less than 8000 Tempeans voted. I admit I was going to blow off voting, but I didn’t.

5359 Tempeans voted YES for the schools bond, but it would have taken only 2496 YES votes for passage. I have no data to support this claim, but I suspect a large percentage of the 5359 YES votes were from education workers (teachers, administrators, etc.).

7854 Tempeans voted on 3 November 02009. Tempe’s population (02006 est.): 169,712. Approximately 20% of Tempeans are under 18, which implies about 135,769 Tempeans are of voting age. I don’t know how many Tempeans are eligible voters; however, whatever the number is, it does appear as if voter apathy is alive and well in Tempe, Arizona.

The power of twitter

I was reading what some psychologist had to say about Facebook and Twitter and the following quote caught my attention.

“On Twitter you receive an endless stream of information, but it’s also very succinct,” Dr Alloway said. “You don’t have to process that information. Your attention span is being reduced and you’re not engaging your brain and improving nerve connections.” (via news.com.au)

I understand Dr. Alloway to an extent; however, tweets can contain hyperlinks that in turn, if clicked, take us to a constantly growing world wide web of information. In other words, tweets can exploit the power of the hyperlink.

I think of tweets as expanded headlines/titles/subject-lines and the effective use of these communication objects can be a powerful tool.

In a nutshell, for me right now, the power of Twitter is in who I follow.

Confucius say… Thanks for H.Res.784

I didn’t LOL, but I did SS (snicker softly) when I read the Arizona Republic’s Dan Nowicki report on the House of Representatives voting “Yea” on House Resolution 784 to honor the 2560th anniversary of the birth of Confucius.

The fact that our politicians spent time on this bullfoo made me think of Styx singing “I’ve got too much time on my hands” and the Pink Floyd lyric “wasting away the moments that make up a dull day.”

Note to politicians: Confucius said… “He who will not economize will have to agonize.”

Confucius was right! These days many of us are agonizing over having a bunch of politicians who can’t economize.

I mined the following Confucius sayings from various quotation websites…

“He who learns but does not think, is lost! He who thinks but does not learn is in great danger.”

“I hear, I know. I see, I remember. I do, I understand.”

“If you think in terms of a year, plant a seed; if in terms of ten years, plant trees; if in terms of 100 years, teach the people.”

“It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop.”

“Never contract friendship with a man that is not better than thyself.”

“When you know a thing, to hold that you know it, and when you do not know a thing, to allow that you do not know it – this is knowledge.”

“Old age, believe me, is a good and pleasant thing. It is true you are gently shouldered off the stage, but then you are given such a comfortable front stall as spectator.”

I wonder how Confucius (d.00479 BCE) defined “old age?”

I voted NAY on Tempe schools bond

I voted “NAY” for “Tempe Elementary Schools Bond” because bonds are an instrument of debt and we need to stop spending money we don’t have.

The state of Arizona is broke and many of the cities in Arizona aren’t in any better shape. Given the depth of today’s economic uncertainty (e.g. I’m not certain I’ll have a job next year), I believe local taxes are going up. I also believe that the federal government will be increasing “taxes.” Just yesterday I heard Valerie Jarrett say: “The President doesn’t want to raise taxes.” Hmm… Why didn’t Valerie (a senior assistant to Obama) say “won’t” instead of “doesn’t want?”

Passage of the $77,000,000 Tempe Elementary Schools Bond will result in a tax increase and the estimated Average Annual Tax Rate will be $0.2174. This tax would increase our cost of living by $35 per month.

Hello world!

I’ve been blogging since the fall of 01997. Back in those days I blogged almost exclusively about computing; however, over time I started blogging about  topics such as road tripping, biotech, nanotech, robotics, math, stocks, politics, community, and life in general.

I keep reading about the popularity of WordPress, so I created this blog to help me learn about this popular blogging service.

I like how WordPress creates an initial blog entry that says “hello, world!” When it comes to learning new programming languages, the tradition is to begin by writing a program that prints the phrase “hello, world!”

By the way, I am Gerald Thurman and I live in Tempe, Arizona. These days I’m a computer/math instructor at Scottsdale Community College. I am in the process of developing the RoadHacker, TempeHiker, and MathBabbler characters.