The Pea – Part III

August 31, 2009 under Uncategorized

 I’m trying out a little game I thought up. The game is to retell a fairy tale or children’s story while omitting one of the major characters.

This is the Princess and the Pea… so long as you don’t count the princess (Part III). Part I. Part II. Next Monday… Part IV!

It would be nice to say that the farmer lived happily ever after, but that sort of thing only happens in fairy-tales.

Life has a way of intervening in things, and happy though he was, the farmer was not immune. Nor, it seemed, was anyone else, because a dragon came to the kingdom. No one was certain why it came, although people were unanimous that its presence was a Bad Thing. Be it the burning or or the man-eating or the killing of the King’s knights, the dragon was most unpopular.

The King put out a ransom on the beast, and although many tried to claim it, all who tried were killed. In his desperation, the King raised the amount and raised it, until eventually he pledged half his kingdom to the man who would slay the beast.

The farmer did not try. He stayed with his wife and his son and his land.

One day, the pea spoke to him from above the mantlepiece.

“How long are you going to let this continue?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” said the farmer.

“I think you do.” said the pea. “There’s a dragon ravaging the country and you’re content to hide here and let your people suffer.”

“I’m a farmer,” said the farmer, “I don’t have people – only my wife and my son, and I take care of them the best I can. Let the king deal with the dragon – that’s his job.”

“You know who you are,” said the pea. “You can’t let this happen.”

“Watch me.” said the farmer.

“No,” said the pea. “I don’t think I will.”

The next day, the farmer awoke to find that the pea on the mantlepiece was shrivelled, dried and black. He spoke to it, but it said nothing back. The pea was dead.

The farmer cried for the loss of his friend the pea. His wife and his son mourned too, for the pea had been a friend to them all. Only the farmer knew, however, why the pea had gone. And he set out to find the dragon.

Finding a dragon is not particularly difficult – they tend to advertise their presence quite effectively. But the farmer was aware enough to realize that every knight who had found the dragon in a field – in the open – was now dead. No, he had to find the dragon’s lair. The farmer sat in taverns and listened to stories of the dragon’s pillaging, until eventually he had an idea of where the dragon came from, and where it returned to. And then, he went exploring.

The farmer had no weapons for his hunt, but he took his tools – his hoe and rake and gardening stakes. He trekked through the hills and forests where he knew the dragon must keep its lair. He found it mostly by the stench – a foul hole in the side of a hill. The entrance was littered with bones of men and animals, and it took all his courage for him to enter. But he lit his lamp and went in.

It was a loathsome cave, and the smell was nearly overpowering – the smell of death and decay. It was not large, and did not take much time to explore. The farmer knew that since he had discovered the creature’s lair, he must now lay some kind of trap for it. This was not easy, however, and he could think of nothing to snare or kill a beast so large.

His thoughts were interrupted by a noise – a snorting and a scratching at the mouth of the cave. The dragon had returned to its lair… and he was trapped inside.

The farmer did not know how he would fight the dragon, or how he would get out alive, but two thoughts occurred to him. The first was that he had no chance of fighting the dragon in the dark, and the second was that he must get away from his lamp. He placed it on the floor and darted to the opposite side of the cave, flattening himself against the wall.

The farmer could hear the dragon coming closer, the scraping and grinding of claws and scales on stone. He held back a gasp as it came into the glow of the lamp, and he saw the hulking shape of its blackness. As he had hoped, it turned directly towards the lamp, hissing and opening its jaws to devour it.

The farmer knew that if he was to live, he must take any opportunity. No sooner had the beast turned its back on him then he rushed upon it. His thought was that he must get close – too close for the dragon to use its claws or its tail – and so he flung himself upon its back.

The dragon screamed a piercing cry that made the farmer’s blood run cold. But in the confines of the cave, it could not beat its wings or shake him off. Neither could it reach around to seize him in its jaws. It tried; it lashed its tail against the stone walls of the cave and craned its neck, all the while giving forth its hideous cry of rage.

The farmer clambered atop the shoulders of the dragon. He had abandoned his tools on the floor of the cave, but he had slung across his back a single garden stake. This he reached for, noting as he did the way the scales of the dragon’s shoulders joined together.

And then he struck. He thrust the stake as far as it would go, sliding it home between the scales. The dragon wailed and shuddered… and then collapsed to the floor of the cave. It was dead.

The farmer descended from the dragon’s back. His heart was still racing, and he was filled at once with both triumph and disbelief. The deed was done – he had slain the dragon.

He looked at the corpse in the middle of the cave. It seemed smaller, somehow. Bereft of live, it had lost its intimidation and its terror. The farmer collected his lamp and his tools and turned to leave. But before he did, he took his hoe and struck off the end of dragon’s tail, which he put in his bag.

“This is for you, my friend.” he said, and went home.

The farmer said nothing to his wife or son about his adventure. He hid the dragon’s tail in a box beneath his bed, and went back to farming.

The absence of the dragon was quickly noticed, however. Once the King was satisfied that all danger had passed, he ordered a search of the land. His men found the lair and the dragon’s body. “The dragon is dead, sire.” they reported. “Whoever has killed it has taken the tip of its tail as a trophy.”

“Very well,” said the King. “The man who wishes to claim the reward must produce the tail.

But the tail was safe beneath the farmer’s bed, and so no one came forth to claim the reward.

The next year, however, a terrible drought came upon the land. The crops in the field withered and died. All across the land, people were starving. The king would spend nothing from his treasury to import food, instead leaving the people to fend for themselves.

The farmer looked at the gauntness of his son’s face;  he walked through his village and saw that they would not live. His thoughts turned to the dragon’s tail beneath his bed. He knew what he had to do – he had to redeem the tail.

The guards at the palace scoffed when a farmer arrived, seeking audience with the King. “We’re here to keep trash like you away.” they mocked.

“Please,” said the farmer. “Please. My people are starving.”

“And what is that to us?” they responded. “What is that to the King?”

So the farmer showed them the dragon’s tail. “Even if the people are of no concern to the King, perhaps this may be.”

The King was not fond of holding audiences with his subjects. He was afraid of them. He knew they despised him, and because he was afraid, he despised them and held them contemptible.When the farmer was brought before him, he was furious.

“Why are you wasting my time with this miserable peasant?” he cried. “I have enough of these, why must you bother me with this one?”

“He has the dragon’s tail, my Lord.”

“Is this true?” demanded the King.

When the farmer produced the dragon’s tail, the King was filled with hatred for him. In the time that had passed since the slaying of the dragon, the King had come to hope that perhaps he would not have to pay the reward at all. He was loath to part with half his kingdom.

He might have paid it, perhaps, to a nobleman or to a brave knight. But to a farmer?

“How dare you disturb me with this impostor?” the King screamed. “Farmers don’t kill dragons! This man is a liar and a fraud; he has cheated or stolen to gain this tail! Throw him in my dungeon and never let me see his face again!”

The farmer was taken to the dungeon, where he sat alone in the damp and the dark. His family and village were starving. His last hope – the dragon’s tail – was gone. His friend the pea was dead.

And he? He was helpless to do anything about it.

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Distance on the Internet – Part II

August 28, 2009 under metablogging

Part I looked at how we might think of distance on the internet, working from the concept of physical distance applying its principles in a digital network.

It got as far as Google, but it ignored linking.

Arguably, the straight line of the internet is a hyperlink. It’s the shortest distance between two points. It’s the magic statement, “I wish to get there from here.”

Because a link represents essentially zero distance, once you have a link to something, you essentially have the thing itself. So the distance to the thing is how far away you are from a link to it, and this is why Google is a distance shortener.

This is why important sites are bigger; why they are closer to everything, because there are links to them everywhere. This is why they are more findable on Google, because Google itself examines the number of links to something in order to determine its importance.

Because Google’s PageRank algorithm depends on linking between sites, it does not define internet distance, but rather reflects it. You can find something on Google because it was closer to you than other things online. It was closer to you because it was heavily linked.

Just as Google ranking is a reflection of linking, linking itself is a reflection of something else.

Linking is a representation of relationship. A link exists because of some real world connection. It could be a thought or a discussion or friendship or a business relationship… But somehow a real connection of some sort was formed.

The point is, something happened in the real world, and a link was born.

So then…

Internet distance is a measure of relationship.

Think of two forums on the same special interest topic. They’re heavily interlinked, visited by the same people. Visitors failing to find an answer on one are referred to the other one.

They’re close.

A forum on another topic? It’s a world away, but it’s a world away not because of any physical barrier but because a lack of relationship.

The distance exists in people’s minds, in people’s hearts, in people’s intentions and interests.

The instant I care about something, it becomes far easier to find – it is closer. Once I know the name of something it is closer to me. If I speak the specific language of a subject, I can find things on it; it is closer.

Once technical issues are taken care of…

The only distance left is the distance between people.

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There, I fixed it.

August 27, 2009 under curios, tongueincheek

Cute.

comments: 2 » tags:

The game is this:

August 27, 2009 under tongueincheek

Pick a great line, and work it into a piece of business correspondence so that it doesn’t sound silly or out of place.

This week:

“We’ll always have Paris.”

If you can slip that one past your boss,

a) You’re not focused on your work
b) Neither is your boss
and
c) You’ve got a great future ahead of you

Here’s lookin’ at you, kid.

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Distance on the Internet – Part I

August 26, 2009 under metablogging

A few thoughts on how far apart things can be in a virtual world.

I’ve previously said that distance doesn’t exist on the internet, and that the internet doesn’t have any corners.

This is true in some ways, but less true in others.

There are many ways you can try and conceptualize distance on the internet. The question is, which ones are useful?

How about physical distance?

The database and web server for this blog live on a computer in a room somewhere. They’re physically distanced from other computers on the internet. So it is possible to say that my blog is closer to some websites than it is to others, because my web hosting provider is a shared provider that hosts multiple websites on the same computer. There are a random handful of websites which are physically close to mine, because they are hosted on the same machine.

Of course, it’s not at all useful to say this, because electrons travel at the speed of light, so from the point of view of, “How long does it take to get there from here?” it takes electrons the same amount of time (practically speaking) to get from anywhere to anywhere else. It’s a weird property of the internet that means that our old concepts need not apply.

More relevant in making things take longer to get from one place to another place is the number of network things in the way. Routers, switches, network conditions. This is tough to measure, however, because in these terms, there’s no fixed distance between two points. Data Packet routing on the internet is dynamic; as certain networks become congested or undergo maintenance, there ceases to be one shortest distance from here to there. Or from there to here.

If physical distance is not particularly useful as a concept of internet distance, physical time is not particularly useful, either.

But at least thinking about the question, “How long does it take to get there from here?” is a step forward.

Maybe if it’s not a measure of distance per se, it’s at least getting to the heart of what we care about. Even in real world distance, more often we care about how long it takes to get there than how many miles (or kilometers) it is. And if we ever do care about physical distance, it’s because we want to know if we’ll have to get gas.

Well, if gas is cheap (and I mean really, really, fly around the world seven times on a drop cheap) we can afford to drop the need for distance altogether and just talk about how long it takes to get there.

We can bump it up from a physical time question to a personal question. How quickly can a person get from one place to another on the internet? That’s a fairly good measure of distance, isn’t it?

At last we’re getting somewhere, but once again the internet renders our proposed measuring scheme somewhat useless, because it has Google.

Via Google, getting from anywhere to anywhere else is pretty quick. It’s the magic teleporter. In a world with built-in teleportation, distance as a concept starts to diminish in importance.

There are still nuances, though. If you don’t show up in the first 10 google hits, are you farther away than the first page results? Not all sites are equally googleable. If you’re worried about the time it takes to get someplace, then some sites are closer to you than others, with the most googleable site being the closest.

Actually, Google itself is the closest, because it’s the most googleable site of all. It’s certainly closer than any other site on the internet.

Now it seems that the measure of distance seems to be the importance of a site. More important sites are closer. Bigger sites (and not in a physical sense of bigger)  are closer.

As soon as you say this, however, you have to step back and see exactly how different a world you’re playing in, becase if Bigger things are Closer, then you have to accept the fact that distance on the internet is directional.

Bigger sites are Closer to every other site.
Smaller sites are Farther from every other site. Even from the Big ones.

BBC News is close to me (big, important) but I’m very very far from it. We have this same notion in the real world, but it’s pretty weak. An example might be cycling on hills. Physically the distance from top to bottom is the same, but it’s a very different experience going up and coming down.

But so far, I’ve only talked about Google. It’s far from the only means of navigation on the internet.

I guess there’s more for Part II.

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Seth Godin – Social Networking

August 25, 2009 under metablogging

“Networking is always important when it’s real and it’s always a useless distraction when it’s fake.
What the internet has allowed is an enormous amount of fake networking to take place.”

The internet can be used to build real relationships. Perhaps it’s not the most effective medium for doing so, but it has its advantages as well as its disadvantages. I think however,  because the scale of it is just so big, there’s a real risk of trying to grasp too much of it, and losing the little you have in the process.

It’s dangerous to swap out flesh and blood interactions for textual ones.

Seth, as a marketer and a businessman, is looking at the business aspect of the issue. But there’s a more personal face to it, and who better than an Archbishop to explore it? You’d hope that an Archbishop, even if not versed on technology, would understand something about people.

“The Archbishop also warned of the danger of suicide among young people who threw themselves into a network of friendships that could easily collapse.
He said young people were being encouraged to build up collections of friends as commodities, and were left desolate when these transient relationships broke down. “

Food for thought.

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All secrets are revealed

August 24, 2009 under tongueincheek

Doggone!

I guess now that everything is out in the open, there’s nothing left but to skip town.

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The Pea – Part II

August 24, 2009 under Uncategorized

 I’m trying out a little game I thought up. The game is to retell a fairy tale or children’s story while omitting one of the major characters.

This is the Princess and the Pea… so long as you don’t count the princess (Part II). Part I Next Monday… Part III!

In his travels, the beggar had suffered many hardships and insults. They had been painful; at times he had felt utterly worthless and wretched.

But there was no pain to compare with what he felt as he watched the peasant girl walk away. His heart was being torn away from him with every footstep fading in the distance. She was a true princess, but what was he? He looked at his rags, at the ditch where he sat. A beggar. There was no chance of love, of marriage…

Who would marry a beggar?

Certainly no father in the world who would give the hand of a true princess away to a beggar.

He had been given the grace of a drink of water, certainly. He had found a princess, it was true. But the delight was being washed away with dread. He turned his pain into anger and poured it out upon the pea.

“Where is my fortune?” he cried. “What fortune have you brought me? You have brought me to the greatest treasure, my only joy… and it is beyond my grasp! It would be better if you had left me to die at my brother’s hand, than to live the phantom life of a beggar, seeing everything, having nothing!”

The pea was silent, and eventually the beggar’s tirade broke down into a quiet sobbing.

“Ah, my poor friend,” said the pea at last, “I see it has not been easy for you. But consider this – there once was a day where you wore different clothes: a day before you put on these rags and made yourself a beggar. Perhaps there will come a day when you will take off these rags, and you will no longer be a beggar.”
“Only one thing is certain…” continued the pea, “if you do not get out of that ditch and find out which village she comes from, you really *will* lose your princess.”

So the beggar got up from the ditch and so he followed the road that the girl had taken.

When he arrived at the girl’s village, he found it in turmoil. Every man, woman and child was gathered in the village square; men were shouting; the confusion was deafening.

“We’d better go.” said the beggar. “It seems there is trouble, and that is the last thing we need.”

“No,” said the pea, “we should at least find out what is going on. There may be a chance here to find yourself some new clothes, I think.”

So the beggar eased his way into the throng, and began to ask questions about what was going on. Piece by piece he put together the story of the uproar.

It turned out that it was time for the village to present its annual tribute to the king. They had gathered together enough gold for the smith to create a single golden ball – the wealth of the village.

But… the ball was lost! Some believed it had been stolen. The entire village had been searched, but no trace of the ball could be found.

Tomorrow the King’s man was to arrive, and if he were to find the village without its tribute, they would be taken as rebellious, and the King would be certain to exact a terrible reprisal.

“I am sure,” said the pea, “that the people of these village would offer a proper reward to someone who could restore their treasure to them.”

“Well,” said the beggar, “if they can’t find it, I don’t know how I would ever. And if it is stolen, how could I recover it?”

“Be that as it may,” said the pea, “it cannot hurt to ask. At least find out what is at stake before giving up.”

So the beggar looked over the throng, trying to find someone who looked an authority. He picked upon a barrel-chested man in the centre of the crowd. Making his way through to him, he asked him what would be given if someone could recover the treasure.

The man looked at him and began to laugh. Loudly. So loudly that people around them stopped shouting and started staring. Before long the entire group had fallen quiet and the only sound was the laughter of the barrel-chested man.

“This beggar asks,” bellowed the man to the crowd, “what we would give to the man who recovered this treasure.”

The beggar shifted awkwardly. He was acutely aware that every eye was upon him. He wished he could disappear, run back into the crowd. But then… he saw her face among the others. She was there too, watching him. He couldn’t run.

“Yes, sir,” he said loudly. “I do ask.”

“Well,” mocked the man, “what did you have in mind?’

The question stunned him. He hadn’t thought about what he actually wanted. He looked down at his pocket.

“Don’t look at me.” whispered the pea. “What *do* you want?”

“A house and land” the beggar blurted. He hadn’t thought; the words had just come out. As soon as they did, he was afraid. It was too much.

But the beggar had no way of knowing that Jameson had died last week – that he had been an old man, and childless -  that his plot, if unoccupied when the King’s man came, was forfeit to the crown.

It was to his shock that, after a brief consultation, the people of the village agreed. If he could recover the golden ball, he would be given a house and a plot of land.

Once this was agreed, the beggar lost no time in seeking an out of the way spot where he could consult with his friend the pea. To his chagrin, however, the pea had no better advice for finding the golden ball than to sit under a tree and rest for a bit.

Being himself completely lost as to how to begin, the beggar condescended to follow the pea’s advice, and, finding an elm at the edge of the village, he sat.

After a time, the pea spoke up.
“My friend the elm,” he said, “says it saw a very small child playing with a golden ball in the field over there. It says that it did not see what became of the ball, but that it is certain the child did not come back to the village with it.”

The beggar sprang up. “Then let us search the field at once!” he cried.

And so he did, but he found no trace of it in the field. He did find, however, an abandoned well in one corner of the field. He peered down into its black depths.

“Do you think…” he murmured.

“What are you willing to risk?” challenged the pea.

The beggar looked at his rags. “What do I have to lose?” he said.

The village awoke the next morning to see, in the middle of its square, a creature of the pit. It was filth and slime from head to toe. It stank – to a village accustomed to all the smells of life it stank – but resting in its palm… was a golden ball.

The barrel chested man approached it. He was followed by his daughter and the rest of the village.

“We are much indebted…” he began, but he stopped as he saw a flash of white appeared from out of the the grime – a broad grin was spreading across the creature’s face.

The beggar, for his part, was happy just to sit and hold that golden ball and smile at his princess. He knew that there was no way she could see through the filth to know it was her that he was smiling at… but… she was smiling too, standing behind her father and smiling at the creature of mud.

There was no way for her to see, and yet she knew, and so the beggar just sat there with a big, foolish grin on his face. “There’s a princess for you,” he whispered to the pea.

“No, my friend.” whispered the pea. “There’s a princess for *you*.”

And indeed it proved to be the case, for the beggar was no more a beggar. With his new home and land, he became a farmer, and if it was not a princely occupation, it was an honest and respectable one. He settled in the village. He courted and married his princess.

He introduced his wife to his friend the pea; they gave it a seat of honor on top of their mantleplace. They were happy; they had a son, who brought them much joy.

And they grew peas.

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What is “Internet Distance”?

August 21, 2009 under metablogging

Hmmm… Illinois doesn’t want sex offenders to use social networking.

Actually, the state is making it a felony for them to do so.

“The idea was, if the predator is supposed to be a registered sex offender, they should keep their Internet distance as well as their physical distance.”

For the longest time, I was able to make a very simple distinction.

There was stuff that was real and that was important and that mattered…

And then there was stuff on the internet.

The Internet was a fantasy world; it wasn’t a real world. People on the internet weren’t real people. That was the fun. They were characters. Characters being played by real people perhaps, but characters nonetheless.

This wild and wacky internet still exists to some extent (anonymous jerks and trolls still throng around) but it’s shrinking. It’s being crowded out by internet banking and e-commerce; it’s being replaced with social networking, where people have real names and real relationships, because they’re real people. Can’t the two internets co-exist? The internet may have infinite space, but people have limited hours, and they’re spending them differently.

It’s not as much of a game anymore, because when you post something from a Facebook profile, real friends can take real offence. Real crooks can steal real money from real bank accounts.

The real world is bleeding in, and it’s going to get worse. Taxes. Libel suits. Angry employers tracking what you post, when you post.

Certain aspects of the change will have to be approached carefully, because certain concepts just aren’t the same online.

Distance doesn’t exist on the internet. Well, maybe distance does exist, but it follows different rules entirely than physical distance. But these rules are going to be studied and mapped and understood, because the stakes are just too high.

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Smart Birds

August 20, 2009 under curios

Surprisingly smart.

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