saraewood.com

I wake up to the sound of the older kid rummaging through the kitchen cabinets presumably looking for cookies or pretzels or some other not-appropriate-for-breakfast food. Immediately after, I hear the scream of the little one who apparently hadn’t made it to the bathroom on time and had peed all over his PJs and the floor.

So there I am cleaning him, disinfecting the floor when I remember we are dog sitting. I get the dog out the door for a little walk.

Come back, negotiate breakfast, the kids settle on bagels & cream cheese with a side of fruit (strawberries, blackberries and raspberries — this is important to Tobias, b/c they all have the word “berry” in their name). Get them dressed. Plop them in front of the TV for Spongebob Square Pants to buy me enough time to make lunches, gather up the dirty clothes and hop in the shower.

I then dial-in for my 8 a.m. conference call, put the phone on mute while I dress, check on the kids, and start packing everything up.

I put on their shoes and coat. Grab the backpacks, my bag, the dirty laundry. Clean the dishes. Turn off the TV. Herd the boys to the garage and into the car where they both insist I help them with their seat belts even though they are both more than capable of doing it themselves.

I am still on the call.

I start the washing machine. Get in the car. Drive the kids to the first school drop off. Take both boys into the school, sign Caleb in, watch him find a friend to ask to play. Take Tobias back to the car, strap him in, drive to the coffee shop. The street is really noisy, I am afraid it will be my turn to speak at any second, so we stay in the car a bit longer.

I can’t take it anymore. Tobias is talking non-stop about Harry Potter. We run out, order coffee and donuts at Dynamo where we stand in a long line behind no less than 4 men in their early forties with longish out of control curlyish hair, ducati-style leather jackets, tightish jeans — the early middle age hipster as opposed to the twenty-something hipster. Get back in car. Still on the call.

After an hour of having the earphones on, listening to others rambling on during their part and the laughing in between speakers, the call disconnects before I get a chance to speak. The phone system doesn’t let me back in when I try to redial.

I phone my boss who says “too bad you missed the call.”

This happens two or three times a week. Every week.

Thank god for the Twitter Trending: Worldwide feature or I would have no idea what the modern male finds attractive. Or more interesting, unattractive. So much so, they are wiling to share it with the world. This is soul searching at its finest. Humanity, digging deep.

This morning a friend sent me a link to a video of a fight on a bus in Oakland because, as she put it, “I know you love trashy.” Which, in the 24 hours since it was posted, has garnered 654,889 views and 10,948 ratings.

Then came the related Craigslist ad (since deleted) that said:

Bus Fight – 22 (oakland west)
Date: 2010-02-16, 4:20PM PST

You were on the 805 in purple spandex, I wasn’t there but I saw the video. Old man beat up young black guy; you just sat there with your headphones on. If you’re single I would love to meet up and talk about how cute you are.

PostingID: 1604132287

(She was pretty cute, I went back to look.)

Then came the over vigilant SFist on the case with latest updates and background information. Mainly about how the person who shot the video (who was also, I presume, the voice egging the two men on) granted a local TV news interview. And how the old white dude who beat up the young black dude, according to some random other dude, used to “… walk by my shop, wave a loaf of sourdough in my face, and scream obscenities about the San Francisco 49?ers.” Oh, and he was also apparently tasered at an A’s game last year.

It seems there is not a whole lot an internet full of drama-addicted gossip hounds armed with video cameras, google and craigslist can’t find out. I mean, how else would you know everything about Julia Allison and her love sagas. Or how The Sartorialist and Garance Dore are dating. Or who wins The Bachelor even before the season starts.

Man, I love the internet.

UPDATE: Buy the tee shirt!

MORE!: The fun never ends. (Thanks to Josh for all the new links!)
http://memegenerator.net/Instances/646/Iyanna-Washington-IM-IN-YOUR-BUSSES-STEALIN-YOUR-BAGS.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/56guk.jpg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTIbFJrUYF0&feature=player_embedded

http://i49.tinypic.com/okwkeh.jpg

AMBER LAMPS: Fan page

Charlotte Gainsbourg - Heaven Can Wait from Charlotte Gainsbourg on Vimeo.

Great video. Nice song. Charlotte Gainsbourg is gorgeous too.

[nerd alert. super old content i found unpublished in the bowels of my word press install. given my new job, it is fun to think about this stuff again.]

Last week I had the pleasure to be invited by the Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers to speak about the future of publishing and what role data might play. The panel I was on was comprised of folks from Nature, Wiley-Blackwell (think, Dummies books and CliffNotes), the Royal Society of Chemistry and was chaired by Geoff Bilder of CrossRef.

Data plays an important role in the process of getting an article into a journal. It is the raw material from which researchers extract meaning and analyze their findings. But once the article has been written and the sources cited, that is normally the end of the road for the data so far as consumers of the information can see.

What normally happens then is that the people reading the article who want to explore the issue further embark on a laborious text mining exercise. They find the numbers among the prose so they can put them back together to have a look for themselves.

There are many obvious problems with this, not the least of which is that in an attempt to keep control of the data, the authors are essentially losing track of who might be doing what with it anyway. The integrity of the data is compromised due to invariable human-error in the extraction. And the sapling of exploration, innovation and derivative works is pruned before it has a chance to thrive.

While it will be a long time before both technology and attitudes change to the point that all raw data will be open and available, it is high time the derived data referenced in articles be made available to the people reading them.

There are around 20-25 thousand scholarly journals active today, and this is growing at a rate of 3 or 4% annually. Global journal readership is in the 10-15 million range, and about 6 million of those readers are also researchers and potential authors.

The number of scholars is trending similarly upward, fueled in large part by growing Chinese, Indian and other developing countries making massive investments in education, research and development.

In such an environment, how can we add to the experience for all key stakeholders: authors, readers, publishers?

Authors are motivated by a myriad of reasons. Top among them are recognition among peers and the need to publish (the old maxim “publish or perish” is as true today as it was 100 years ago). Including the data cited in their work will help engaged people quickly with their research and enable them to reach a wider audience – including people in other fields. Data becomes another work with ownership/stewardship for which authors and researchers would receive credit.

Readers of journals are motivated by the need to be kept informed. Clearly, trust in article findings is key. And if interests are piqued by the findings, they want to explore their own hypotheses. What better way to achieve trust, enable exploration and garner interest and good-will than to allow the reader to get in on the fun of analysis with real data?

Meanwhile, publishing companies are actively looking for new and innovative ways to engage both readers and authors, build brand loyalty and community, and generate income. Including data and interfaces by which to analyze it will open up many possible revenue opportunities while at the same time help build trust, further the open data agenda and, importantly, build a strong community of passionate users of their products.

New tools in distributing and sharing data will only make journals more accessible, which in turn will make knowledge more accessible while still continuing to enrich the experience of authors, publishers, and readers. I am happy that publishers are thinking about these kinds of problems and exploring solutions.