flash mobs

i had never heard of smart mobs but i have heard of flash mobs. there was one on campus a few weeks ago where people gathered and bowed down to the UT tower. this site is pretty good in giving info on the latest flashmobs http://flashmob.com

here's a good one..


the brits do it way bigger...

the death of print

i had a fantastic conversation last night. two were MBA students, one was a physics professor, another was a statistics professor, and me. the statistics and physics professors are married, and nick and i were at their house for dinner. surrounded by so many great books, i asked them who liked to read those books. the physics professor said those books were hers, but she said that she reads much less these days. one of the MBA students said he used to read voraciously but now said he doesn't read much. you know, people say that a lot. that they don't read much. but they DO! and from our readings, people are reading in such different ways these days. he says he emails, he games, and he surfs the internet. all very legitimate ways of accessing literacy, i say. but the statistics professor disagrees. he says we're taking the definition of literacy too far. the physics professor agrees somewhat. she thinks books will soon become a hybrid of digital technology in the form of print. she fantasizes about a time when she'll order a book online, go to the nearest ATM to print it out, and have a hard copy in her hand. but when she's 90 or so, she'll probably be transitioning to all digitized text and she'll pull out a foldable computer screen from her pocket to read her 'book'. but, she'll still keep printed books as art around the house.
so she imagines these fantasies because she's a bookophile. one day when students have to go to a museum to see what a book is, a day when their teachers will say, "kids, these are what WE had to read out of," they will wonder how people ever read text that way and can't imagine reading books in any other way but through some digitized medium.

mormon undergarments

can i say that wikipedia has taken over my life? the hypertexting is endless. last week, someone told me that mormons wear secret undergarments under their clothes, even during sex. in my mind, i'm picturing it looks like some kind of chastity suit or something. and i'm really curious to know more! so there i am on wikipedia, my source for all pop culture knowledge, to learn more about the secret life of mormon undergarments. so i read about mormonism, about their garments, about how they engage in a special ceremony to wear them, about how they're burned when thrown away, about how they have crotch holes, and more and more. but, in exploring the world of mormon undergarments, i also ended up reading about the amish, the scientologists, and cults. while reading about cults, i was thus reminded of my home in FW, home to many cultish colonies. home to the infamous david koresh, robert tilton, the trinity network, kenneth copeland. what a crazy place to grow up!
hypertexting creates unbelievably long chains of thought, sometimes leaving me to wonder what i looked up in the first place. how in the world did i get from mormon undergarmets to david koresh in one thought? it's like playing six degrees of separation in your mind.
1. mormon undergarments
2. amish
3. scientology
4. cults
5. david koresh

soon i shall like to learn how to hypertext, add images and video to my blog, to connect it all together in the way i experienced it.