~Monday~ I thought I was taking the #9 Greek Village Wolfline bus in this morning, but what actually showed up was a “GV to DH Hill” (from Greek Village to the university library) bus instead. I’ve seen this bus in passing before, and figured it was kind of an “over-flow” bus that just serves the busiest part of the #9 Greek Village route. This is the first time I’ve seen it this far out, and it’s certainly the first time I’ve ridden it.
It got super-crowded along the way, and the bus driver had to say over and over, “Move all the way to the back please,” to those in the aisle. And, “All the way to the back, up the stairs, please.”
On the ride home the girl to my right and I shared a moment. When she sat down, the outside of our thighs were touching and after a few minutes, a powerful vibration took place between mine and hers. She pulled her phone out of her deep pocket, and I resisted saying, “It was good for me, too. You got a cigarette?”
A girl sitting across from me and talking to another girl told loud stories and every other word was, well, like this:
At a subsequent stop, a kid got on and stood in such a place that I could only see part of him between the people standing around him. I could see that he was holding something in front of him that came up almost to his chest. At a very quick first glance I thought, “My god. Is he toting an ironing board around with him?”
As the people around him shifted with the coming and going of the bus, I saw that it was actually, a big wide skateboard.
I had a glorious day of no meetings at work, trying to lull me into a false sense of security. But I know darn well that tomorrow there are five meetings on my calendar, two of which overlap by a half hour. Something’s gotta give.
I did spend an hour in the afternoon with Twanda and Jen strategizing about future training opportunities on WordPress and potentially social media in general. While there, Twanda had one of these on her desk:
which I haven’t seen in years. She gave me two of them.
Class was fun enough tonight. After a short 17 seconds (which turned into about 17 minutes) talking about a chapter out of Conversation and Community and about 4 seconds (which turned into about 14) about a chapter of The Wisdom of Crowds, Jen started her presentation on blogs until she had to leave, and I followed with my presentation on microblogging.
In the discussion on the reading from The Wisdom of Crowds, what Dr. Dicks highlighted—and critically so I would argue as I think most people absolutely do not consider this when they think about using crowd-sourcing techniques to gather information and make decisions—is that: All crowds are not wise.
According to the author, Surowiecki, these key criteria separate wise crowds from irrational ones:
| Criteria | Description |
|---|---|
| Diversity of opinion | Each person should have private information even if it’s just an eccentric interpretation of the known facts. |
| Independence | People’s opinions aren’t determined by the opinions of those around them. |
| Decentralization | People are able to specialize and draw on local knowledge. |
| Aggregation | Some mechanism exists for turning private judgments into a collective decision. |
My presentation was good, but not great. Fortunately, I’m only auditing the class, so it’s not going to get a letter grade. I did learn some things about microblogging (of which Twitter is the most renowned) that I didn’t know, so that’s good.
I had intended to go to the gym right after class at 7:30, but I didn’t actually get there until shortly before 9:00.
I did my lower body routine followed by 300 (15 sets of 20) ab crunches, for a total (according to dailyburn.com) calorie burn of 450 calories. I’ll take it. Tomorrow is weigh-in day.
Two items of interest as I was exiting the gym at just after 10:00:
- I asked one of the staff at the desk if there was a scale I could use, as I didn’t see one in the men’s locker room. “We don’t have a scale here,” he replied. Only a gym that serves free pizza once a month could not have a scale on the premises.
- Two people had called one of the other staff members from behind the desk to peer into a crevice at which they were pointing. Outside this “cave” if you will, was a pile of what looked like sawdust. “Termites,” I heard one of them say.