Found poem but why?

I like it, but I don’t get why anyone would bother to send it:

Date: Sun, 29 Feb 2004 17:07:33 -0800
From: “Terry Rhodes”
To: Lenore
Subject: resurgent
toss divan
soon
sebastian infamous
tomato
boggle fortify
bellamy

Mental association jukebox

Nearly every week I shop for groceries at the Berkeley Bowl. Inevitably, near the end of my round, in the produce section, I find my mind humming the words “… yesterday don’t matter when it’s gone / Dying all the time / Lose your dreams and you will lose your mind / In life unkind….” Just when I start wondering why I’m thinking about a Rolling Stones song, the chorus kicks in “Goodbye, Ruby Grapefruit / Who could hang a name on you.”
Just this morning, doing some dishes, I found myself mentally singing Dylan’s Buckets of Rain, specifically the part that goes “Little red wagon / Little red bike / I ain’t no monkey but I know what I like….” As I reeled back the mental tape, I remembered looking at some unsorted laundry on the bedroom table, specifically a pair of gray socks I thought might have been mind instead of B’s, but then I noticed they were pretty small, so they probably are hers. This made me think of the cat in the comic strip Mutts singing his (her?) happy song while worrying a “little pink sock.” A few minutes later, my mind had completed it’s search for a related song and it was just a sohrt leap from little pink sock to little red wagon.
Yes, I know I am strange.

Metablogging STATUS: Publish

Scobleizer is back and hasn’t lost a beat. (These are metablogging items, not strictly PoM fodder, but hey.) First, Why Robert Scoble blogs:

Chris Prately, who has become one of my favorite bloggers (yeah, cause he was the guy behind Microsoft’s OneNote
product) asks “why should I
keep blogging?” and, taking it further, why does ANYONE keep blogging?

Isn’t the answer going to be different for everyone? …

Now, I won’t guarantee that it’ll change your life that much, but I believe that the world’s most influential
and most interesting people (who are often the same) are only reachable via weblogs.

Then, a link to FOAF, now on LiveJournal:

LiveJournal now is exporting FOAF (Friend of a Friend) data. I need to learn more about FOAF and
the scenarios it opens up. I still don’t get social software. Who’s my friends? It’s the people I link to. Linking
to someone is a far stronger social statement about someone than saying “yeah, they’re my friend” to Orkut or
Linked Up.

And finally, he goes around the blog-dev world
in 80 characters:

Dave Winer is asking for visions of what
the future of Weblogging tools and services might look like. I’ve already seen the future. How can I say that?
Because it’s already here. The problem is that no one tool has wrapped up what’s cool. Let’s look …

Why would a VC blog?

Ed Sim is a venture capitalist and explains why
he blogs about it. (Link via Scobleizer)

Recently, a number of people asked me why I blog as a VC. Isn’t privacy a good thing for VCs? Don’t you want
to keep the good ideas to yourself? For the past couple of years, I had my own personal blog which I mainly used
as a bookmarking tool so I could retrieve interesting news stories and my running commentary from any web browser.
As I made the leap to the public blogging world, I really did not know what I would find until I threw myself out
there.

So, after my first 6 months or so, here is what I like about blogging. Blogging provides me with an outlet for
my views on technology, venture capital, and other current affairs. Yes, like most VCs I am opinionated, and what
better way to express them than through a blog. Instead of beta testing a product, I get to beta or alpha test my
opinions or thoughts and receive instant feedback no matter how far-fetched my ideas may be. I find this
incredibly valuable as a number of people either email me directly or post comments and tell me I am off the mark,
on the mark, or point me in new directions to further research my ideas. People send me information about new
companies or even their resumes based on some of my current interests. As a VC, this is a great way to have an
ongoing dialogue with an active and participatory audience. BTW, any product companies out there should think
about using blogs and other technology like RSS to build long-term relationships with their customers and get
instant feedback on product direction and features. Secondly, based on my posts, I have built some new
relationships by engaging in conversation either directly or indirectly through my blog. Last week at DEMO, it was
actually nice to have met some of the bloggers that I regularly read and with whom I share similar interests.
Next, understanding the value of the blog, I actively read and subscribe to a number of other people’s feeds to
learn about the hot topics of the day and to understand what the early adopters are currently thinking before a new
technology or idea goes mainstream. I get to listen and participate in on the conversations about the next product
or idea that will reach the tipping point as many of today’s innovative thoughts gather steam and build momentum
through a word-of-mouth or word-of-network manner. Of course, the danger can be drinking your own kool-aid from
the blogger community (think Howard Dean-he seemed really hot with the bloggers but did not fare so well in the
primaries) so some balance is required here. Finally, it is alot of fun, and I hope you keep visiting and actively
commenting either privately or publicly.

Think globally, recycle locally

Not sure how I found my way to Freecycle:

Membership is free. To join simply click on your city under “Sign up” below. It will generate a automatic e-mail which, when sent, will sign you up for your local group and send you an response with instructions on how it works. Or, go directly to the webpage for your city’s group by clicking on your city’s link on the left. Can’t find your city? It takes about ten minutes to start your own (click on “Start your own” for instructions). Have fun and keep on Freecyclin’!
The Freecycle Network is a project of RISE, Inc., a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization whose mission includes reducing waste, generating employment training, and fostering cooperation between other nonprofit organizations and the public.
RISE started the Freecycle Network in May 2003 to promote waste reduction in Tucson’s downtown and help save desert landscape from being taken over by landfills. Freecycle provides individuals and non-profits an electronic forum to “recycle” unwanted items. One person’s trash can truly be another’s treasure!
How does Freecycling work?
One rule: everything posted must be free. Whether it’s a chair, a fax machine, piano, or an old door to be given away, it can be posted on the network. Or, maybe you’re looking to acquire something yourself? Respond to the posting directly and you just might get it. After that it is up to the giver to set up a pickup time for passing on the treasure.
Non-profit organizations also benefit from the Freecycle Network. Post the item or items you want to give away and a local organization can help you get it to someone in need.
Who can Freecycle?
As Abe Lincoln once said, “Think globally, recycle locally.” The Freecycle Network is open to all cities and to all individuals who want to participate. Freecycle groups are run by local volunteer moderators from across the globe who facilitate each local group – Grassroots at its best!

Orkut inventor's academic precursor

Google engineer Orkut Buyyokktoken and two collaborators published A social network caught in the Web, a paper about a social network Orkut created at Stanford University called Nexus, in a peer-reviewed web journal called First Monday.
In it, Orkut and his coauthors describe some preliminary findings about connectedness and attribute trends in the network which appears to have been a direct predecessor to Google’s already somewhat moribund Orkut YASNS.

Evil homeland security spam

Disturbing spam received today uses the the language of homeland security and currency manipulation to get you to log your identity information into an insecure site (the link claims to be pointing to http://www.fdic.gov but via HTML link formatting in fact points to a numerical IP address and port number – 211.191.224.108:3180 – presenting the false web address as a pseudo username with a forced linebreak to hide the actual destiantion).
I wonder if it’s targeted at recipients of the Nigerian-scam spam who might be afraid their bank accounts have been somehow compromised?
Full text of the email attached in the overleaf:

My pipes, my strings

The constant music is a reminder that I like to sing, especially when no one else is around to here, and that I like to dance, alone and in company. Singing unlocks my voice somehow my light-opera expressitivity, my comic whimsy, it loosens my neck and shoulders. Dancing gives my body a way to tell me where it feels sore and where it feels stuck. I have to pay attention. I at least don’t make the patterns worse that day.
I wondered recently if our sinews in our muscles can get twisted like a telephone wire. There are times when repeated backward Pete Townsendish windmill armswings feel as though I am unspooling a tightly wound rope of jute through the shoulder joint.

Jimmy Carter is blogging from Africa

The Carter Center’s website is publishing journal or weblog-style reports by Jimmy Carter from the field. He is currently in Africa. It’s not blogging in the sense that it’s not automatica and direct and easy, but their using the terminology themselves, so I think that counts.
First ex-Presidential blogger?

[via Seb’s Open Research (via Geodog)]

Standing on the verge of nonprofit blogging

One of the more popular (commented-on, linked-to) posts here in the last year or so was my somewhat sketchy Weblog strategies for nonprofits entry. At some point I was talking to CompuMentor about some kind of panel discussion on the subject in SF but I haven’t heard anything about it lately and I’ve been kind of busy with the campaign and writing my book anyway. There’s a chapter on nonprofits in the book, though, so I haven’t wandered too far away from this subject yet.
I just noticed my editor posted a link to an article called What’s a Blog, and Why Should Nonprofits Care? in the Nonprofit Quartery (NPQ).
Everywhere I look people are trying to build more interactivity and more personal voice into politics, activism, and nonprofit organizations, so now more than ever the time is ripe for some kind of do-gooder technorati-ish group to provide some kindling.