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The kind of thing that gets me excited

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From Alps

Fig.1 Weather Events

If global warming puts more energy into the system so that more moisture is held, therefore extreme weather events will include great precipitation too, whether it falls as snow or rain. 

Or was it like this in the Alps in 1888 too?

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Everything is miscellaneous

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Monday, 29 Aug 2011, 16:11

Think of this as a leaf

We've gone through an era of learning as 'trees of knowledge'; now all the leaves have blown off. With everything tagged and searchable you can still find what you need on the ground.

This is the idea

I buy this, more or less. I'd been thinking of it like this for some years, but today I've moved on - it doesn't work.

It doesn't work given that the leaves can be any asset that can be digitised. With the leaf analogy we have to set parameters and have types of leaf (even across plant species, or across the cycle of seasons in temperate climate, there isn't scale or variety that is adequate).

I question digital data or aggregations of binary code being given an organic reference

I prefer to think of the Internet and the World Wide Web as an ocean and 'stuff' as water molecules.With this analogy we can throw in the water-cycle, icebergs and glaciers, clouds, rivers and tributaries ... snow and storms.

Everything is random

It is until you give it value, until you file or tag it. If you neither file nor tag, then your digital 'stuff' may was well not exist, not for sharing at least. How will you find it?

'Everything is miscellaneous' (David Weinberger) is a worthwhile read: cover-to-cover.

'The best digital strategy is to dump everything into one large miscellaneous pile and leave it to the machines to find exactly the table settings we need for tonight's dinner'. p85

I was reading 'The Cluetrain Manifesto' that includes a David Weinberger contribution too - I loathe it (for now). I'll keep wondering why:

Because it reads like a collection of smalmy articles for 'Esquire' ?

Because it invites dialogue but in print form there is none - like going to a party and only being in a position to listen to the guys who have had too much to drink and think they know it all.

Harsh?

(This may be a love/hate relationship developing here ... it challenges me to return to the text. Which reminds me, it was intriguing to find the OU Library copy of the book full of pencil mark highlights and notes. See, a reader couldn't resist i.e. it isn't content for print).

Weinberger imagined what it would be like to be sitting in a new home with 157 moving boxes all labelled 'miscellaneous' - (87) Sound like a great way to get out of a house, just box it up and go. I even like the random nature of what you then find yourself with.

Where is the role of serendipity in this searchable and tagged world of ours?

Thinking allowed?

 

 

(50366)

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Here we go again!

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When I took this picture in January I never expected to see the like of it again. Snow has been exceedingly rare the last ten years I've been living in Lewes. On the coast frost was virtually unknown.

 

Lewes Castle in the snow

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Woken by the silence of the snow

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Tuesday, 30 Nov 2010, 03:14

(or was it the fridge?)

I recall this from being a boy growing up in Northumberland - the silence of the night after a snowfal, waking to an eerie glow from outside, and pushing back the curtain to see the garden transformed.

The snow started to fall a few hours ago. An icing on the South Downs. I wish I was back in Northumberland.

I take the opportunity to study. This is the only time I'll get anything done. Tomorrow, if school is off I'll be off too. Off onto a hill with some body boards I turned into sledges in January.

I'll show you the set of 'How to' photos. A simple process reqiring some bamboo canes and duct-tape.

 

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