For decades social networks have been the best way to quit smoking. 12 step programs, support groups, organized religion. The innate human drive to belong to groups is not a new concept. What is new is the virtualization of these groups.

Addiction treatment is going online. Cancer survivor groups too. The lack of proximity, while a hindrance, is no longer insurmountable. This, again, is nothing new. Additionally,  a study also pointed out that online social networks seem to be grouping certain health problems together surreptitiously. These might be heart disease or obesity. These aren’t people seeking out other cardiac patients, but instead, it is a condition that is endemic to certain self selected networks of individuals online without regard to their health.

Current thinking places health issues like obesity and heart disease at the crossroads of lifestyle/environment and genetics. This would imply that these groups are forming for one of these two reasons (or a combination of the two).

In a completely unrelated article, the question of why are some nations taller than others was explored. I don’t want to ruin it, but they aren’t particularly certain. Most of the common sense answers don’t have data to back them up. Diet seems to make a difference, health and disease makes a difference, GNP makes a difference. None, on its own truly satisfy the question. Not to ruin the article (it is a fun read by the way), but there isn’t a specific consensus on why heights of nations move in sync, but they do. That is to say, that people tend to be roughly as tall as their society, give or take. And, that the population, as a whole, varies in hight relative to other populations over time. It is not genetic, as immigrants can assimilate rapidly to their societies’ heights. So it would seem to be a combination of genetic and lifestyle/environmental factors.

If God is love and Love is Blind. Ray Charles is God. Using a related logic, Is it possible that virtual social networks could create profound physiological changes of groups relative to each other? How much of it is a self fulfilling prophecy and how much is epigenetic?

I have been away for quite a while, but I’ve stored up a bunch of random stories from around the web. First was a story from Harvard Business about a unique practice at Zappos, the online shoe and apparel retailer. After a short trial period, they offer every employee cash to walk away from the job.

It is a straight forward concept. If someone is willing to quit for $1,000, Zappos feels they lack the passion Zappos wants in its workforce.

I do wonder, has the recession altered the take rate? With the job market getting tougher, maybe they will need a bigger check to lure employees lacking the emotional connection Zappos wants in its staff.

Another question, how much would you have to be paid to quit your job?

Yes, I know that to deactivate a bomb, you defuse it, not diffuse. In a connected world, is it possible fro these two concepts to become related. Another way of looking at it, can we use the borderless and free flowing nature of the internet to disarm anti-social ideas.

I, of course, am talking about Duncan Donuts, Rachel Ray and Islamic terrorists. A scarf Rachel Ray wore in Dunkin Donuts advertisement may look similar to garb worn by terrorists. Some bloggers were afraid that this show of support would embolden terrorists.

I was thinking about it from the other side. Maybe what we need is more Dunkin Donuts in the West Bank. If we appropriate the terrorists synbols and replace their insidious meaning with banality, don’t we win? Maybe one day young men in the middle east will think that Mujahideen is a custom coffee blend. Keffiyeh patterned napkins will keep the sugary crust of their Glazed Muchkins from getting on their fingers.

I talked with one of our soldiers in Baghdad. (aside - He is living proof that we have some smart, insightful, honest, competent people trying to fix this.) He half jokingly said that if we wanted to win in Iraq, we should bombard the country with gangster rap and pornography. That might be a little extreme, but Rachel Ray hawking donuts might be a step towards hearts and minds.

LOL Cats run the range of banal to incredibly clever. Their appeal is broad. I would venture to say they are the perfect low cal snack meme. My favorite take, however, is one order removed. A remix of the concept.

Jezebel, Gawker’s guilty pleasure gossip destination, took LOL Cats and created LOL Vogue, where they transfer the common tropes and text styling to fashion photography. What results is critique, satire, parody and entertainment all rolled into one. Here are a couple of my faves.

That headline is a rough paraphrase of one of my favorite quotes from William S. Burroughs. It cuts straight to the heart of the struggle between traditional media and new media. Once you place this filter on the world, the seemingly self destructive actions of the largest media companies is no longer a mystery but an obvious extension of their lack of autonomy from their own architecture.

Gerd Leonhard is blazing the trail with his writings on End Of Control. He covers the basic theory of how and why it is happening and a glimpse into both the current state and clues to where this post-control word is heading. Many of these ideas are captured anecdotally in Erick Schonfeld’s article on TechCrunch.

The Washington Post seems to think that the studios are getting the message. The headline “In First for Studios, Paramount Offers Snippets of Movies“, shows the lack of understanding on both sides. From the Reporter’s side, that this is somehow interesting or news worthy. Paramount offering snippets is just another example of the control first mentality of traditional media. The more profound realization is that these snippets have been there for a long time. Not only that, without the control of the studios, they have flourished into better marketing vehicles than any control obsessed executive could ever imagine or admit.

So, here is the dessert portion of the menu. One of my favorite youtube collections from Barringer82. His fan edits are authentic and full of craft in only the way a true fan can create. Here is a small snippet, if you will, of what studios are giving up by listening to control.

Couple of interesting videos today. First, Howard Rheingold put up a video of a WELL party. While most people probably focus on the personal style, I thought two statements in the video were particularly interesting. Twice people referred to The WELL as a television alternative. First, because television was boring, then a second partier quantified the amount of time he spent vs. the amount of time most people watch television. He posited that it was about 1/5 as much time.

This reminded me of Clay Shirky talking about the cognitive surplus being used by television at the Web 2.0 conference. By his calculation, Americans spend as much time every weekend just watching commercials as it would take to re-write wikipedia from scratch…. in every language.

I’m not certain that is actually true. One hour of work is not always equal to one hour of work. Fatigue and other factors can make working weekends less than full throttle. Even so, the rough tabulation is staggering. Clay needs a better yard stick than Wikipedia for the average joe to understand. Maybe how many episodes of CSI could be created or missions to the moon. Here is Clay’s stellar talk… below Clay’s video is Howard Rheingold’s vlog post.

I love mashups. Over at Waxy, he has collected an impressive list of fan edits. These are exactly mashups, but in their own right, just as interesting. He is calling them ’supercuts”, which i think is a great name.

I think this is a very interesting space for fan interaction. It isn’t a mashup and isn’t narrative. It is the creative equivalent of going through the bible and making all the words Jesus says red. Only in this case, all the words only have for letters and Jesus is an outlaw in frontier America. Which raises the question, Is this good for anything? Does this make better fans or bring new fans?

I think it does. At the least, it shows other fans that they are not alone. At best, it highlights a unique spirit of a film or TV show. These are my faviroites, like this one from House about lupus -

or this one from The Big Lebowski, featuring ‘dudes’

There are a ton more on the Waxy list, and i think this will only be the beginning. It is such a simple concept and it pleases fans in the places they like to be pleased.

Dilbert is getting a lot of press for their new website, some of it cynical barbs. The new site lets you play with Dilbert content. Put a little personal caption, fun bits like that.

I don’t have the time or energy to check it out. I’m sure it is great, and it makes me feel better about the Dilbert brand. For all the ‘cooler than school’ bloggers out there, I’ll take the counter position. Fair play to the Scott Adams team out there. Ajax ‘Web 2.0′ destination sites are this year’s neckties and word a day calendars. And, yeah, I’m sending this link to my engineering relatives.

I’m sitting in the terminal getting ready to get on an international flight. People are speaking so many languages around me, and it is amazing. I wish I could understand and speak to everyone. For better or worse, one day, everyone will share a language, but that language will be layers of the current languages in the world.

It reminds me of a study I saw on European Gypsy communities or, to be fair, Romani Communities. The study dissected the linguistic artifacts to retrace the origins of the secretive society. What they found was fascinating. At the root, they were able to tell the origins of the Romani language. They were from India. But, more than that, they were able to infer that they were of the Kshatriya caste, warriors. They could track the time down to an Asia Minor invasion where a large army repelled the invasion. It was the vocabulary. The base language and writing were from Sanskrit, but all vocabulary involving war and military were lifted directly from India during that time. All of the words dealing with agriculture were Persian. Metal working and industry, Byzantine.

A linguistic fossil record placing a whole peoples not only in locations but a narrative as to the color and shape of their daily lives.

One day, languages will converge. The human desire is to communicate. The internet is the universal tapestry for the stories of the individual. Decentralized society but in a common fabric. It necessarily undermines the concept of the nation state (I’ll get back to that thought another day).

I can imagine a single global language. Maybe fringes based on shared experiences. Certain peer groups will carve out an exclusive language for their purposes, but there will be a lingua franca of the internet that will then be the universal language on the streets of the world. It won’t be english or chinese or dutch. It will be an amalgam reflecting something about us we can’t yet perceive. When it happens, where will our words for joy and happiness come from? What language will be the language of our highest aspirations? Which will be the language of sorrow, anger and hate?

Walking down the street the other day and saw this. Just seemed ironic.

I also thought about how the ‘regular’ button on gas pumps is always abused.

and one for fun.

(for Dave)