Shannon Warren.com

… or alternatively, go to this website to get some idea where the heck the Amorites lived. This site is neat!

Here’s something beautiful which articulates the state of the internet:

(Link from a Wired News blog)

I go through phases with this blog.

The idea of having a personal web site has always appealed to me.  I was among the early adopters on the web, creating my own site in the late nineties.  Since that time I’ve attempted to understand the evolution of personal web sites and lead in those technologies.  I even bought this domain to host my site, which didn’t seem near as nerdy a thing to do at the time I purchased it than it does today.

However, in the last 12 months something incredible occurred: everyone I know has crawled onto Facebook.  Simultaneously, the quality and terms of use for online photo sharing applications have become more liberal (i.e., pro-consumer). Consequently, many of the purposes for having a personal web site seemed to expire.

For the last year or so I have been trying out other ways of using the web to connect with people.  Instead of posting pictures of the latest party to this blog I have posted them to Facebook or a Picasa web album (a Google product).  On these sites I can open my photos up to only those people whom I want to share with.  Further, instead of commenting on world events and posting a hyperlink to this blog, I have “starred” items in Google Reader (which is much quicker, but much less likely to be actually read by anyone).

I suppose this blog has been neglected (in part) due to my busy personal life — did I mention that I got married this summer? — but more than anything, for some time now I have felt that blogging is dead.  That these third party options had stepped in and replaced my need for a personal blog.

Nonetheless, it has occurred to me lately that trusting a third party with my personal information is foolish.  The guys who run Facebook and Google (my current favorite Web 2.0 sites) are in deed brilliant, but I see no evidence to persuade me that they are anything more than evil geniuses.

For example, the guys who run Facebook are control freaks.  They may allow “applications” (ha!) to run on their servers, but they refuse to allow anyone link into user data (know to geeks as releasing an “API”), or to allow third parties to make a modest profit by offering services which they themselves are not offering.

Further, it will be a sad day when everyone realizes that Google is collecting volumes of information about them which will be used to create the most obnoxious targeted advertising in the history of human kind.  This is especially frightening to me because I have uploaded so much personal information to Google’s servers (calendar, email, documents, contact lists, notebook files, etc).

But where else would we go?  How else can social networking be accomplished without a benevolent Facebook dictator to connect us all together?

I don’t know the answers to this question.  The root of the problem is this: No matter how elegant a service is, it must be as easy to use and broadly adopted as email in order to pull in Joe-Six-Pack or your 80 year old relatives.  Currently, no body idea is succeeding without a central franchise to pull us all together.

For the tech-savy 20 & 30-somethings, there are some excellent alternatives to Facebook.  My current favorites are Plaxo (as a web service which promises to bring all of your various digital footprints together) and Xobni.com (a beta Outlook add-in which I can’t wait to test drive).

Don’t expect any big changes anytime soon.  No one is going to shift the paradigm (and thereby win as many users) as Facebook or Google have. No one.

…

But I’m losing site of the point of this posting: “The Blog is Dead, Long Live the Blog”.  My running theory on social networking is this: trust the big guys for some - but not all - things.

Facebook is great at weeding out all of the unwanted eyes and comments which this blog generates.  Consequently, I turned off “Comments” on this site a long time ago.  On the other hand, a Facebook “note” is not fully accessible from the web, which means I wouldn’t post a broad based thought there.

In the same way, Google is great at indexing just about anything.  They continue to amaze everyone by their almost god-like understanding of how to connect people to the information they need or have forgotten.  However, I want to control my web-identity.  I don’t want to be targeted by advertisers.

Blogging is not dead, but it must be “born again”.  This time, it must be less about ME (as to what happened to me at an event), and more about my opinion on and reaction to things OUTSIDE OF ME.  Such general postings belong on the WORLD WIDE web not a sub-set of it.

This approach is not perfect, but I believe it is the way forward.

…

If you’re interested in commenting on this posting, send me an email or give me a call.  If you don’t have my phone number or email address, I guess you’ll have to become my friend the old fashioned way first.

This article on the front page of ESPN’s college basketball site reminded me that Aggie basketball is not what it used to be.

I’ll admit it: I haven’t been paying attention to Aggie Basketball. In fact, as an undergrad I never attended a single game. Not even one.

But I wasn’t alone. According to Tom — who rarely missed a game as an undergrad — the regular attendance consisted of 50-100 fans (known as The Reed Rowdies) plus the players’ families.

Something happened three seasons ago which granted the wish of every Rowdy at A&M: Coach Gillispie arrived in Aggieland.

Today ESPN.com has the Aggies as the poster-boys of basketball turnarounds. The Ag’s are being grouped in with North Carolina, Florida, UCLA and Wisconsin:

Now, look at what’s unfolding this season. There currently are five teams ranked in the top 15 in both adjusted offensive and defensive efficiency (taking schedule strength and location of games into account), according to kenpom.com. Four of them you can probably guess, as North Carolina, Florida, UCLA and Wisconsin currently are the top four teams in both polls (a notable intersection of subjective and objective analysis). The fifth team [the Aggies], though, proves that sometimes numbers can — or should? — lead you to a conclusion different from what most perceive.

Due to our lack of a basketball reputation no one (including many alum) is paying attention.

�?� As recently as three seasons ago, in the year before current head coach Billy Gillispie arrived, A&M went 0-16 in Big 12 play. In Gillispie’s first two seasons, he was criticized for his team’s cream-puff nonconference schedules as he attempted to fix the morale of the program, both for the players and the fans. Two 20-win seasons and an NCAA bid last year fixed have helped fix that.

It’s time for everyone to pay attention to the Ag’s. We’re a legitimate team and deserve some credit. Alum (that’s me) need to pay attention.

The “Old Arm Reed Rowdies” deserve some credit too. They’ve stood by the team during our 0-16 Conference seasons. Good job guys.

I also hope that our Athletic Director will take steps to keep Coach Gillispie around. I like him, he’s hard working and smart. He’s also inspiring:

“Our motto [adopted from Kansas’ Bill Self, a friend of Gillispie’s] is ‘Play hard, play smart, play together,’ he said. “We’re not there yet. We’re doing about one out of the three. I think, sometimes, we’re a brutal team to watch, but we usually compete real hard, and that’s what we hang our hat on every day.”

Gig’em Aggies

According to a study conducted by Jan Brueckner at U.C. Irvine, people who live in the suburbs “have more friends, better community involvement and more frequent contact with their neighbours than urbanites who are wedged in side-by-side.” Story by Shannon Proudfoot about this study.

MY EXPERIENCE IN THE ‘BURBS

I suppose this does not surprise me. As a high school student I lived in Clear Lake (an affluent suburb of Houston). During those years I came to know and love my neighbors.

The people who lived near my family supported me and my ambitions, sometimes with their checkbooks, but very often they would step across the line of gesture and make a real investment in my life.

Next door lived Ron, a “baby-boomer” approaching retirement, who helped me build half a dozen physics projects in his garage workshop. Imagine that, he took several of his Saturday afternoons off and helped a teenager with his homework. What’s more is that during our time in his shop it was clear that he really cared about me. He helped me learn woodwork and a little bit of what it means to be a good man.

Across the street there was Jim. I remember him as this really neat family man who would often take the time to encourage me and shed a little light on my path. While I was in high school, he always took the time to brag on my clean car or on what a good job I had done mowing the lawn. Those little complements amount to a lot. Later on, when I was a freshman in college he gave me great career advice. Because he worked for SUN Microsystems his advice meant a lot to me as a fish in Computer Engineering. Maybe he realized that I was asking him questions about SUN in order to daydream or even to land a job, but that did not seem to bother him. He liked me and did not mind breaking from his day to talk.

The list should go on and on because Ron and Jim were not alone in their support. Both of those guys have lovely wives who treated me as one of their own, often greeting me with a hug and a snack when I dropped by. I never lacked for a mom in the suburbs.

Not that my parents failed me in any way, mind you. No one has better parents than I have. No one. The reality is — sorry Ms. Dole — that it does take a village to raise a child.

As a high school student, my village was in the suburbs. The men and women at my church, in my school and living in my neighborhood did a bang-up job. I hope my life will honor their investment.

The study mentioned earlier reinforces my experience. Its results challenge the accepted idea that suburban life is a socially alienating notion. That notion has inspired everything from the Academy Award-winning American Beauty to Harvard professor Robert Putnam’s book Bowling Alone. Proudfoot.

It even provides a little math formula for calculating the value of low population density (10% decrease in population density = 10% increase in neighborhood involvement). Cute.

A PARTIAL ENDORSEMENT

I like the idea of a promoting healthy suburbs filled with people who care about one another. It should be said, however, that there are some traits of suburbs which I am less than enamored with.

Last year, I posted an applicable quote by Rich Mullins on this site. Rich is one of my heroes in life and ministry, so his quotes mean a lot to me. Here it is again:

Christianity is not about building an absolutely secure little niche in the world where you can live with your perfect little wife and your perfect little children in your beautiful little house where you have no gays or minority groups anywhere near you. Christianity is about learning to love like Jesus loved and Jesus loved the poor and Jesus loved the broken.

(Emphasis added).

Rich’s criticism of the tendency of church-people to be isolationists seems to identify everything which is wrong with the suburbs. If the suburbs stand for thinning out the herd so that we can get to know our neighbors, I like them. If they stand for indulging bigoted worldviews for those people forced to live near cities, then I hate them.

It seems to me that in reality the suburbs stand for both. That is, they allow people to live in a less crowded setting AND to hide from people in demographics alternative to their own. Consequently, I can see how there will always be a love-hate feeling toward them.

FINDING A BALANCED VIEW

Nonetheless, the distinction between virtue and vice lies in the heart of man. Human action is the same whether noble or ignoble; i.e., living in the suburbs looks the same whether for right or wrong motives.

As for me, I currently live one and half miles from downtown Houston. I suppose that I known my neighbors, but not very well. We are all too busy to make any lasting investments in one another. The irony is that for this chapter in my life (studying for law school all the time) I’m pretty-okay with the strange tension between nearness and isolation.

I guess I feel like I’m too busy to invest myself in everyone near me. I realize that this is a selfish way to live, but I think my neighbors have a similar feeling. We’re not rude or unconcerned, we just�?� well�?� busy.

A distinction needs to made as to the city’s benefits. I enjoy living in the city for different reasons than I did in Clear Lake. From my townhome I am five minutes from most of Houston’s treasures (MFAH, Hermann Park, Rice University, Minute Maid Park, the Zoo, Houston Grand Opera, etc.), many of which I attend on a regular basis. Not to mention how much stress I save by not commuting on I-10 or I-45 for eight hours a week.

In my view, a love of tolerance and diversity stand for virtue, and the city seems better able to nurture these than the suburbs. The tapestry of cultures in Houston are astonishing this city’s soul is made up of contributions made by a thousand different groups, our cuisine and nigh-spots are proof.

But this post is meant to give the suburbs their due. They are not void of diversity or cultural events, but knowing what the urban-setting does and does not provide seem to punctuate the suburb’s appeal.

I love the suburbs for what they are, a good place to raise a family and know your neighbor without giving up all urban conveniences. Provided that its inhabitants are not running from the joys of diversity they’re all right with me.

In conclusion, if you live in a suburb, why not walk next door and introduce yourself. I’ll try and do the same down here�?� that is, when my neighbors have the time.

These are fun times in Houston. The free market economy would appear to be bringing some really cool stuff to us in November by way of AT&T.

The following is an email I just sent my dad on the subject. He is looking to change mobile service and consolidate his telecommunication bills. I told him to hold off just a little bit longer�?�

It might be wise to put off your mobile phone search just a little bit longer. It would appear that we are about to see market competition heat up, which will be very beneficial for consumers. The attached article is from the WSJ on 10/26. I sent it to Tommy last week who happens to be in the market for a new phone/service provider too. It discusses Sprint’s difficulties in growing their customer base. They are about to roll out a series of initiatives to retain old customers and grab a few new ones.

* * *

As for your remaining telecommunication services, my advice is to stay uncommitted for now. As we discussed telecom’s trend toward convergence will be sweet. AT&T is preparing a big announcement down here in the city next month. I’m sure Sprint will not be far behind in Kingwood.

In these fun times keep in mind that we’ve come a long way. Granddad’s Southwestern Bell stories about the nature of fiber-optics back in the 60’s jumps to mind. At that time the light which fiber carried was very dangerous. When the Engineers introduced it to Granddad they told him that hey only has two chances to look into a fiber optic cable, “your left eye & your right eye”. Today, that little strand of cable can simultaneously carry 400 digital television signals, broadband internet, voice phone calls, and anything else we can compress into 1’s and 0’s.

The real breakthrough is that our telecom providers are now bringing fiber into our neighborhoods. When they do rest assured that our family will be the famed “Jones” with whom the rest of the block tries to keep pace!

Unfortunately, the slogan for today seems to be, “hurry up and wait”. November promises to be a fun month in Houston. I’ll let you know if see any developments on this topic in the coming weeks.

In conclusion, “Yeah, Capitalism!”

I found this in an old journal & really like it.

Tom says, �??we may be the smartest & dumbest people of all time.�?� He was referring to our indescribable ability to foretell the future but incapacity to act on it.

Probability was one of my favorite courses in undergrad.  I remember liking it because it was both completely obvious and a total mystery at the same time. 

This quote reminds me of many a late night of study at A&M — all of which would end in an “AH HA” moment followed by an hour of kicking myself for not seeing what was hidden any sooner.

We see that the theory of probability is at bottom only common sense reduced to calculation; it makes us appreciate with exactitude what reasonable minds feel by a sort of instinct, often without being able to account for it… It is remarkable that this science, which originated in the consideration of games of chance, should have become the most important object of human knowledge…  The most important questions of life are, for the most part, really only problems of probability.

Pierre Simon, Marquis de Laplace
(Known as the “Newton of France”)

I like to think of data as being like a big bucket of tofu * * * whatever you want to do with it, that’s what it becomes. On its own its devoid of any real substance. There’s the savory and the sweet. There’s a lot of it out there, and its really messy depending on how you slice it up.

-Ian White on the Design of Data at Idea 2006.

Dad sent this email asking us for a little assistance in changing the rules at the FAA…  You’ve got 5 minutes to help out, don’t ya?

Hey guys,

Please go to THIS LINK and submit a request that the FAA change the age 60 rule for airline pilots�?? retirement. When you click on this link you�??ll see a screen to log in. There is no requirement that you register to submit a comment. The Organization is the FAA, the document number is Docket No. FAA-2006-26139 and the title of the document you�??re comment on is �??Age 60 Aviation Rulemaking Committee; Request for Comments�?�

You can use a comment something like this: (or just copy this exactly)

I fully support ending the forced retirement of airline pilots at age 60. The experience pilots over age 60 bring to the cockpit is a vital component to the safe operation of FAR Part 121 aircraft. I support making the retirement age for commercial pilots the same age as any other individual, that is, their normal Social Security retirement age.

Thanks for your help