MotherPie

This Blog Earns a Million Dollars....

Not.  April Fools.  Gotcha.  Catchy and short headlines are important when you write for blogs and online news sites.  Maybe a thesis on an analysis of headlines in traditional media versus the new media?   As a writer who mainly wrote content and left the headlines to editors in the traditional mainstream media (MSM), the only time I wrote my own heads that stayed as I wrote them was when I produced newsletters; most often the editors would change them.    How to write snappy, catchy heads might make a good post in the future.  My p.r., advertising and journalism background converge on this topic.  Hmmmmm.

My mother used to wake me up with a good April Fool's each year.  She really got me when she told me I didn't have school because we had a foot of snow!  How I loved those snow days and making snow angels.  I missed the big NYC snowstorm in March as I wasn't in the city.   

Well, I'm just starting to ramble on and this isn't a Ramble.  A couple of April Fools sites:  Top 100 April Fools Day Hoaxes of All Time and CNNMoney.com's April Fool's greatest hits.

Cheers and April Fools!

P.S. I do not make any money from this blogazine. It is out of my own pocket.  If I do ever get any kind of sponsorship, we'll be transparent and let it be known.  MotherPie will be very very very selective for sponsorships.

P.S.S.  This is a volunteer media literacy project for the time being until I complete my Master's.

P.S.S.S.  What's your favorite April Fools trick? Write it in the comment section, please. 

3/31 Ramble...Brains, Jobs, Apple and Happiness...

MotherPie is rambling all over the place on this one...

Would later developing brains in more intelligent kids be due to the nurture or nature theory of brain development? A new article published today in the highly respected Nature journal reveals that human brains mature later in those people who have the greatest intelligence.  A heads-up posting by an evolutionary biologist on the article: "The scientists' data show that the outer portion of the brain, the cortex -- or the thinking part of the brain -- thickens and then thins during early childhood years, when the children were approximately 6 years old. However, they found that kids with greater intelligence show these same changes later than those with average intelligence -- some as late as 11 years of age." 

WashingtonPost.com's article has this snippet on the subject: ..."Richard J. Davidson, a brain imaging expert at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, said the fact that the region of the brain being studied is highly malleable suggests that experience and environmental cues may play a very important role in shaping intelligence."

Apple turns 30 April 1st. Steven Wozniak had been dabbling in computer-design for some time when, in 1976, he designed what would become the Apple I.  His high school friend Steven Jobs, who had an eye for the future, insisted that he and Wozniak try to sell the machine, and on April 1, 1976, Apple Computer was born.  The rest is history.

Creative types lean towards Apple and Mac Maniacs are a true breed. However, Apple computer users represent less than 5% of computer owners.  According to Greg Joswiak, Apple's Vice President for worldwide product marketing for iPod, in the first three years 10 million iPods were sold but in the last year alone over 30 million iPods were sold with 14 million sold in the holiday quarter.   With Microsoft announcing a delay until January 2007 of the consumer roll-outs of the new Vista platform, Apple may be seeing a surge.  If one were to shop in the SoHo Apple store on Prince Street in Manhattan, one would have a hard time getting close to the computer screens as they are two-deep in people taking advantage of a free way to play online and check in with emails.   

Apple has always had the edge on design. They are driving the online content with over 30 million videos distributed online since announcing the downloadable videos through iTunes last October.   MotherPie wrote about Apple ads here.  The Microsoft ads with the dinosaur heads are sort of insulting.  Or maybe just hard to "get".   Video iPods now have space age sunglasses from MicroOptical.  You can see over, under and through the optical glasses with integrated earbuds.  Wow.  Media as Extensions of Man, outlined by media theorist Marshall McLuhan years ago.

Steve Job's commencement speech to Stanford grads last spring was riveting and inspirational.  It struck a chord with college kids everywhere.

Would it be possible even for intelligent brains to just keep developing?  Isn't learning life-long?  Not use-it or lose-it but use it and stretch it?

What is happening to boys?  Are we not parenting them properly, or is our culture affecting them negatively?  The Boy's Project has something to say about it and so does Leonard Sax.  He is a family physician and psychologist in Montgomery County and the author of  Boys Adrift: What's Really Behind the Growing Epidemic of Unmotivated Boys, to be published next year.  See his article in the WashingtonPost.com.

Happiness...Is happiness based in the brain?  Here is Maureen Dowd's take on the subject.  MotherPie on happiness here and here. 

Brainy and Happy Cheers!

Curious Little Minds Want to Know...

The 1926 Source Book, a 10-v0lume International Encyclopedic Authority, had the answers to help parents and teachers answer all sorts of odd little questions children might have had about life and the world around them.  Prepared by more than 200 authorities in the fields of Literature, Art and Sciences, it was published by the Perpetual Encyclopedia Corporation. 

In the "Curiosity Department" we learn that in childhood "everyday is one of exploration of new fields."

"Parents have a wonderful privilege to influence the little mind that so confidingly trusts in them.  It is the parents' privilege to assist, to guide, to control this helpful faculty of youth (curiosity) that, like every other faculty, needs control, else, like a mountain torrent, it may wreck and ruin where it should perform a benificient work."

What did curious little minds want to know in 1926?  Here are a few of the questions...

• Why do ashes, spread over a fire, help to keep it? 
• How are pins made? 
• How are needles shaped? 
• How are hooks and eyes made? 
• How fast does a Wireless Telegram go? 
• How can you make a string telephone? 
• How does ivy climb a wall? 
• How does a blotter take up ink? 
• What was the origin of the custom of lifting the hat?
• Why do animals prick up their ears at a sound? 
• What makes a bee hum? 
• Why are dewdrops round?
• Why does water run off a duck's back?

"Time is short.  In the rush of American Life, the years of training are few and therefore the time is doubly precious...The child's training begins almost with its first cry," the authorities advised in 1926.

II. Wikipedia Will Win by Usage...

But will it be authoritative?  If it does have authority, what makes it so?    Continuing from Part One on Wikipedia, Will Wikipedia Win,  (yes it will - read the post),  MotherPie delves into the theoretical considerations as well as Media Studies graduate class notes on New, New Media.

Wikipedia, the free-content online encyclopedia, exists as a wiki and is written collaboratively by volunteers.  It has already become an authority in less than five years because it is dynamic and can operate close to real-time.  The highly respected scholarly publication, Nature,  studied the accuracy of both Wikipedia and the Encyclopaedia Britannica.  EB has been seriously jolted and has called on Nature to retract the article and is shooting up a storm in defense.

Encyclopaedia Britannica, founded well over 200 years ago as part of the Scottish Enlightenment, responds, reacts and creates with a formula from another era. The EB is compiled by scholars and experts from around the world.   Wikipedia Founder Jimmy Wales defended the process of Wikipedia in a March 24th article in the Wall Street Journal saying it had a greater accountability model because of the dynamic nature as opposed to the gatekeeper model.

Nature.com responded publicly to EB's public attack calling Nature's study sloppy and indifferent to scholarly standards by not only rejecting the accusations and calling the comparisons fair, but announcing it does not intend to retract the article. 

Most importantly, though, the creaky EB process is spotlighted in Nature's response:  "While we were willing to discuss the issues, the company failed to provide specific details of its complaints when we asked for them in order to be able to assess its allegations.  We did not receive any further correspondence until the publication of its open letter on 22 March 2006."   The grassroots ability to correct, amplify, elaborate and discuss issues in real-time makes the new changes in these new platforms (Web 2.0) more dynamic.  Wikipedia will gain more authority because of its ability to be more transparent and quicker to correct mistakes due to the collaborative platform and the openness (and free cost) of its information.

However the most important reason that Wikipedia will win in authority is through usage.  The elitist approach, (harrumph-harrumph), can't contain and manage information when information yearns to be free.   It is CandyLand in GoogleLand.

If something is used and becomes a standard, even if by acclaim rather than authority-per-se, then it generates an aura of authority-by-use and social consensus. For example, the most popular books are not necessarily the best books. Because it is so easy to reference online, is more popular, has been more widely accepted and quickly embraced, is used for linkage purposes (Web 2.0) more, it can therefore be thought of as having more authority-by-use. 

This is similar to the authority-by-habit which is described as the Singapore traffic situation by James Surowiecki in his book, The Wisdom of Crowds.  Singapore traffic is managed in a much more efficient way than in the United States but the US would not consider such changes because the current system is so ingrained. Authority-by-use, once established, becomes ingrained.

This is analogous to the social linkage situation that has created an "air-of-authority" of the A-list of bloggers. By default, those blogs that receive more links become more popular and hence more influential and thus the slippery slope of authority is obtained not necessarily by better content but by authority-by-use.   Will the EB directors be able to put on their monocles to see the writing on the screen quickly enough to shift and capture the crowd?

Additionally, social software can create authority through collaboration.  Surowiecki gives a perfect example of this: research labs around the world were able to share information in close to real time (a relative novelty for serious academic research) in order to discover the Sars virus.  The tool/platform (collaboration) that enabled the result (rapid discovery) was more important than individual authority (the person who actually discovered the virus).  This is why Wikipedia and similar collaborative, conversational, real-time tools will be the way of the future.

Is this form of authority good, bad, or convenient?  The answer to this is why the dynamic shift of push-pull for information with new media formats are causing conniption fits for traditional media in much the same way but on a macro level.  The micro-level brouhaha started by the academic and highly esteemed Nature journal about the authority difference between Wikipedia and Encyclopaedia Britannica continues to resonate, echo and reverberate with relevance because it isolates in an understandable and debatable way the line in the sand between the past and the future.

The changes are happening so fast it is dizzying.  Wiki is not even a word in Merriam-Webster's  online dictionary.  Here is Scott Rosenberg's take on the Wikipedia/EB Hubub on Salon.com and he's pointed to a  new wry non-obtuse site by Farhad Manjoo - What I learned on Wikipedia today.  Click on this Manjoo link to learn about antibubbles.    MotherPie's favorite Manjoo gleaning from Wikipedia: Analytic language.  Noospherically relevant.

Interested in the free software that runs Wikipedia called MediaWiki?  Here is Gina Trapani's information on lifehacker.

This lengthy post is just one example of why brevity and simplicity will win out, too. 

4/27 UPDATE: Mark Glaser at MediaShift moderates an interesting three-way debate on Wikipedia featuring Wikipedia's founder Jimbo Wales.

Catch a Tiger by the Toe...

Baa Baa Black Rainbow Sheep????    The latter change was on a U.K. preschool site and a blogger wonders if it is political correctness and something that is being done by the population in general out of fear of litigation as opposed to the Orweillian governmental language changes that reduced complex language to simplistic terms to minimize opposition to the regime in George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four.

MotherPie sees a bigger siesmic shift happening.  Edward Lear coined runcible spoon because it fit with his lexiconical idea rhythmically of the cow jumping over the moon.  Times and tines both can change.

Language, culture and society are not static but dynamic entities that are active and evolving on a daily basis.  Nursery rhymes used to be passed down orally and generationally mother-to-child.  My grandmother remembered being sung to in Welsh but her mother no longer knew the meaning of the words. 

English, with an estimated vocabulary of over 1,000,000 words, is becoming the Lingua Franca of the world. German has approximately 185,000 words and French, Spanish and Russian have 100,000 - 150,000 words each.   Last week Jaques Chirac walked out of a meeting in opposition when a speech was given in English, not French.  Bonjour Hello World!

The noospherical ideas and technological changes coupled with globalization are driving language changes at warp speed.  A great cross-fertilization of ideas is fueling language growth and cultural changes. 

Eenie, Meenie, Miney Zygote...
Exciting learning is not rote.

One's vocabulary needs constant fertilizing or it will die -- Evelyn Waugh.

I. Why Wikipedia Will Win...

Because Encyclopaedia Britannica missed the moment and Wikipedia is an example of the Web 2.0 changes that will be driving social and cultural shifts-to-come.   The monumental moment of change is happening now.  It is about mastering and capturing the changing dynamics.  Those who do will win.  The new media is about mastering the community-usability platform and capturing the eyeballs/audience dynamically.

The last two meetings of Encyclopedia Britannica's board focused on whether or not the content should be free, according to a 3/24 article by Sarah Ellison in the Wall Street Journal.  In the meantime, Wikipedia, founded just five years ago by Jimmy Wales, is not only online-only, but free and user-friendly.  It uses the wisdom of the community rather than a board of scientific experts to contribute to the content.  In today's fast world of changes,  Wikipedia is in some respects more relevant especially in the areas of technology. 

The changes are happening so fast with the new collaborative, conversational online platforms that Wiki/Wikipedia was one of the top five Wikipedia references in 2005. 

The issue regarding which is more relevant -- Encyclopeadia Britannica or Wikipedia -- erupted in December 2005 when the scientific journal Nature ran a report comparing the accuracy of scientific entries in the online versions of each.   For every four Wikipedia errors, Encyclopaedia Britannica had three.   

Dead-tree, page-turning sociological shift: The toll of the bell ringing the social seismic shift for me came last summer when household items had to be pared down for a move to a tiny Manhattan bird-perch place.   The encyclopedias couldn't be sold or even given away for free during a two-day garage sale.

According to the Wall Street Journal article by Ellison, the Britannica's editors are firing back with a 7,000 word pdf rebuttal on their website (I had technical errors and couldn't open the document).  The company is also planning to run rebuttals in half-page ads in the New York Times, the London Times and the Chicago Tribune and is utilizing an email campaign as well.  Nature.com has also posted a pdf response to Britannica on its website.

Jimmy Wales and his community/participative/information ideas are moving beyond the non-profit platform.  Technology whiz and mover/shaker Joi Ito today announced he is investing in Wales' ventures and will be a board member.  Ito talks about these moves here. Nicholas Carr's article about the brou-haha between the EB/Wikipedia issue is here.  The commentary response in Carr's space is not only interesting but is indicative of the heat of the debate: Sam Hiser in his opening commentary fires the first shot and calls it a "tempest in a teapot...Wikipedia's good enough for me."    Other bloggers on the issue here and here.

Why is this issue both relevant and scary?  Why is this an example of the cultural and sociological shifts happening today with the advent of new technology?  MotherPie continues the conversation in Part II, Wikipedia Will Win By Usage. 

MotherPie's 3/27 Daily Ramble...The Grass is Greener...

Thanks to fertilizers.  Farmers used to plant clover in their fields because clover captures nitrogen from the air and adds it to the soil.  When did clover become a weed to be eradicated?  Dandelions are edible and nutritious and besides, dandelion chains are fun to make.    Spring is here, grass is turning green and in New Mexico Zeriscaping seems more natural.  Seems we need to get smarter about what we are doing here.

This blog is one month old, sweet BabyPie!  Started as a project for a graduate class in New New Media, the class has now ended, my grade will be announced in a week or so, and the greener grass ideas of taking this on past beta are playing in my mind.

For my first six months in NYC, my feet left concrete only once - stepping of the pavement in Central Park.  Taking a break from the city, my feet look forward to feeling a little green grass beneath my bare feet before heading back to the city of concrete.

Cheers!

Texas Men...

Texas men put their BlackBerries away in their belt holsters like they used to put six-shooters away when they were kids. 

Texas men aspire to having at least one pair of custom-made cowboy boots in their closet.   They take their sons to the Alamo as soon as they can toddle.  Their first heroes are Davy Crockett, Jim Bowie, Sam Houston and William Barrett Travis.

According to Fort Worth, Texas magazine's March '06 issue, real hat-wearing, rope-toting, gun-using, horse-riding, rugged-to-the-core, cry-only-at-Gus McCrae's-death-scene tough men have broken at least one bone at some point probably someone else's, as well.  Other distinguishing factors about a Fort Worth real man: he's gone to the same barber for 25 years;  he's killed something, and proof hangs above the fireplace; he prefers jeans over coat and tie; he loves the outdoors; and he always carries a pocket knife.

The big thing about turning 16 for my Texas born-and-raised Daddy was that he was old enough to get his first pair of custom-made cowboy boots.  They had his initials cut through and stitched into the leather on the boot fronts.    Today if you order a pair of custom-made boots from Leddy's in Ft. Worth, you might be lucky to get them before '07.   The Texas President had Leddy's make a custom-made saddle for Prince Charles and (what's-her-title) Camilla as a token gift when they visited the White House last fall.

MotherPie's Weekend Ramble...The Ides and Tides of March...

Benjamin Franklin was born 300 years ago this year.  Franklin would fit right in with the anonymous writers and blog commentators and off-the-record mainstream media sources.  He wrote under pseudonyms because he had extremely relevant out-of-the-box ideas that were threatening to the status-quo.  Understanding the past is helpful in understanding the present.  He is all duded up for St. Patrick's Day in this photo which was taken on the campus of the University of Pennsylvania.  Click to enlarge. 

Meanwhile in March the Irish in New York City celebrated St. Pats in a big rowdy way as usual. Because of the 1845 - 1849 potato famine in Ireland, around one sixth of Ireland's population moved to New York City.   

Way Out West in the Texas Panhandle, Borger, Texas celebrated it's 80th birthday on March 8. Asa P. "Ace" Borger founded the town in 1926 after establishing other cities in Texas and Oklahoma.   In January, 1926,  the Smith #1 oil well was drilled and black gold started to flow.  Borger became a boomtown overnight with a convicted murderer, "Two Gun Dick" Herwig, tapped as the city's chief law enforcement officer.    After about a year of boomtown rowdiness, the Texas Rangers were sent in to clean up the crime and corruption. 

And, if we're remembering important March dates, on the ides of March (15th in the Roman calendar), 44 B.C., Julius Caesar was assassinated. 

Tempus fugit (Time flies)...Cheers!

Long-term Marriages...Headed for Extinction?

When one in every three American babies has unwed parents today and with a 41% divorce rate, how rare will it be in the future to have 50th wedding anniversary celebrations?  In his article in the New York Times, Unwed Fathers Fight for Babies Placed for Adoption by Mothers,  Tamar Lewin cites the one in three statistic of babies born to unwed parents.   Marriage is for White People is the top emailed article on WashingtonPost.com.

It makes one wonder about the extensive societal changes that have taken place in just a few generations.  A new HBO television series starring Fort Worth native Bill Paxton married to three wives revolves around polygamy - something that has been hitherto taboo as a mainstream media subject but not uncommon among Mormons and cultures in the Middle East. Blogaziner Mamacita takes up polygmay and pedophilia with the "Big Love" HBO series theme here.  Charles Krauthammer wrote about the relation of polygamy to same sex marriage in an article carried in the Philadelphia Daily News. 

The swan-like lifelong bond of the traditional mom/dad marriage with the vows of "until death do us part"...how defunct is it becoming and how rapidly is it in decline?  It makes one think about these things.   How much can we learn about ourselves from the lives of primates in regards to cultural determinism?  Robert Sapolsky, a professor of neurology at Stanford, writes about this in the April '06 issue of Harper's magazine (not online yet but reprinted from the January/February issue of Foreign Affairs).

What a rare thing it was for my children to participate in celebrating their gradparents' 50th wedding anniversary. What are the statistical chances of any of my three children celebrating their own husband/wife traditional 50th wedding anniversary? Figuring the current ages of first marriages, the current estimates for life-spans and factoring in societal trends, what would the statistical data be on this question?