The next time someone jokes about you...  turn it into a sales pitch.

Way to go, Chuck.

*gives thumbs up*

If you haven't seen the Random Chuck Norris Fact Generator yet, go here.

For those of you not living in a cave that has no broadband, Supr.c.ilio.us has some great web 2.0 related additions:

Link: Supr.c.ilio.us: The Blog � Chuck Norris 2.0.

My favorite:  Chuck Norris doesn’t search Google. He just stares at the screen until Google pops the website he needs.

This blog is hilarious...    There's no reason why it should have half the RSS subs I do.  You should go subscribe to their blog now, or Chuck Norris will roundhouse kick you in the face.

Last Friday night, my Fordham Global Outreach team spent the night contributing to the local New Orleans economy on Bourbon Street.  It turned out that Anderson Cooper was broadcasting live from one of the balconies above.  After shouting to him for about a half hour, he came down after his show for a quick photo op.  Here's the video of the Fordham group calling out to him and him snapping a few pictures with us:

I'm finding myself glued to Indian music videos on Channel 73 this morning.  This isn't the first time I've flipped through and stopped to listen and watch. 

I have no idea what they're singing about and a lot of the dancing looks like its a fight between the Jets and the Sharks from West Side Story.  What's with the dancing in big groups?  There also seems to be a lot of rising overhead shots of guys singing with outstretched arms and shouting towards the sky... sort of like Kirk yelling "Khaaaan!" in Star Trek II. 

But yet, I can't stop from bopping along.  This is great stuff.

Music truly is the international language.  Attractive female Indian dancers don't hurt either, admittedly.

So, if anyone has any recommendations as to some of this stuff I should be listening to, let me know. 

Repainted hallway, originally uploaded by ceonyc.

We just finished repainting this hallway...  These ceilings are like 20ft!

FEMA Trailers  Arrive, originally uploaded by ceonyc.

Now the personal care attendants have somewhere to stay, after months.

At 3AM this morning, the NYC Transit system--the subways and buses--shut down, as thousands of MTA employees walked off their jobs.

So, I'll be biking in.  Unless it snows, you cannot stop me. 

You can't even hope to contain me.

Bike this.

On our way, originally uploaded by ceonyc.

All I can think of is...



Its 106 miles to Chicago...  We've got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, its dark, and we're wearing sunglasses.



Hit it.



New Orleans, here we come.

We have a blog going for my 5 year Fordham reunion.   (Yeah, yeah, the template looks suspiciously similar...   I've been busy and didn't have time to do a new template.)

People have been updating the class with stories about what they've been up to.  One guy wrote about what it was like to be the Fordham Mascot.  That was pretty good, but I think it might just been topped by the best wedding story I've ever heard...

Someone very sweet sent me some going away popcorn today.  :)

Matt wrote a follow up post to his popular "New Media Deal" piece and I just want to comment on one particular part of it.  Matt writes:

"A big part of peer production is that most people fundamentally, if quietly, want to belong to any bit of community they can find."

I disagree. 

I'm in the middle of reading Bowling Alone in America: the Collapse and Revival of the American Community.  Granted I'm only up to the collapse part, but so much of this story rings true to me. Participation in groups is generally on the decline.  Sure, there are "membership" groups out there like the AARP that are growing, but they're not actual groups, they're more like mailing lists.

I'm talking about real communities, both on the web and offline.  I think the average person is just more concerned with paying bills, raising their kids, etc.  Its really unfortunatel, but I don't think we are the society of "joiners" that the web makes us out to be.  (I hope I'm wrong, and maybe Meetup is proof of that.) Even on the web, most people spend most of their time with applications just meant for them.  Even e-mail isn't a way for most people to find new communities, its something that enriches their own small circle.

If peer production is all about depending on people's explicit interest in belonging to a community, I don't think its going to work.

In fact, I think the really successful "peer" efforts, like del.icio.us, wikipedia, last.fm, and flickr, hell, you can even through in Amazon's "people like me" engine" only work because they understand that people don't really care enough about communities to join them. 

• I don't have to care that there are hundreds of thousands of other people using del.icio.us.  It works for just me... its a better place to store my links. 
• If I see a wikipedia article, I don't care who wrote it, and if its wrong, I'll just fix it.  I don't need to be an editor or talk to other wikipedia editors. 
• last.fm shows a user what they're listening to and makes recommendations.  Frankly, if the recommendations were good, I think people wouldn't care of a person powered them or a computer did.
• Flickr being such a cool community was largely an accident.  I didn't join it because I wanted to be able to interact with all the other people who go to LVHRD parties and take photos... I just needed a place to store my photos and be able to blog and share them.

Now, of course I'm being extreme here.  Being single and in my 20's, I'm probably more interested in community than the average person, and meeting new people is still very important to me, but this seems to decline as people get married, have kids, buy houses, etc.

Depending on people to choose community over just caring about their own little world is a very tough proposition.   Now, if you help me to augment the communities I'm already in, that's helpful, but that's not quite the same thing.

So I'm going to change Matt's statement and offer a new thesis:

"A big part of peer production is that most people fundamentally want the benefits of community, but are not willing to invest much, if any, social capital to get it.  Successful peer production involves leveraging communities and providing value without the explicit intention of the individuals to contribute to a collective."

That's how mesh networks are going to work, for example... because its built into the phone/wifipoint/laptop/whatever...   and the default is on, not because I'm going to download something because I want to help fight the telco's and help my community get free wifi.

Link: New York Daily News - Mets - Bob Raissman's Tuning In: Mex marks spot in Met booth.

Make no mistake, Hernandez, who will work about 110 games, is the star of this show. In TV baseball the main analyst always is. Hernandez has earned top billing. It's not just about his knowledge of the game. Anyone who played big-league baseball for 17 seasons knows the ins and outs. It's his ability to communicate what he knows with clarity, passion and honesty. Hernandez has developed a style.

It ain't white bread and butter.

This is obviously the before picture, and to be honest, it came out so good, I totally forgot to take a picture of it after it came out of the oven.

My grandparents and I used to make pizzas all the time when I was younger.  Both my and my grandfather both liked anchioves and we'd eat them straight out of the can.  We'd also eat a good deal of the cheese before it got to the pizza as well... you know, to test it.

Ingredients:

My homemade sauce with garlic, fresh basil, oregano

Grated locatelli romano (grated the block in a food processor)

lightly salted mozzerella

green peppers

olives

sundried tomatos

anchiovies

mushrooms

onions

hot red pepper