Informational Geometry

Good bye Zeros. As a decade you sucked. You started off with a great personal loss for me, and turned into a big financial zero really quickly. Seemed like most of the decade was hijacked by backward, political & ideological systems that drove this country to the brink of collapse. Only good thing about you was the lessons you dealt forcing me to rely on myself more. I'm ready to forget about you now. * mom died of cancer, lost all my savings in the tech bubble, 9/11, hurricanes and tsunamis, and a painful realization of how corrupt all the "systems" are that I'm supposed to depend on to live.

I make this Hot Artichoke Dip every Christmas Eve... This year I'm trying it with an added teaspoon of habanero paste for extra hotness. I'll add a photo here very soon! Ingredients - 2 (13 3/4-ounce) cans artichoke hearts (drained & broken into smaller chunks) - 1 cup mayonnaise - 1 cup packed freshly grated Parmesan Cheese - 2-3 tablespoons habanero pepper paste (more or less to taste) - 1 large garlic clove, mashed - A few dashes of tobasco sauce - A few cranks of fresh black pepper Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Combine all the ingredients in a large bowl, stir well. Scrape into an oven proof dish, cover and bake for 40 minutes. Serve this savory dip HOT, with bagel chips, corn chips, crackers, bread... anything! Enjoy!

Crowdsourcing is this new way to get really cheap design work done. By using the internet to 'source' a large group of people to check out your project, you can get designers to propose ideas to you in a 'contest' like system. Effectively, crowdsourcing creates a 'marketplace' for design work, but since one designer 'wins' a job, many more designers loose... Here's a Wired magazine post explaining crowdsourcing and some issue facing designers (note, the comments are great): Is Crowdsourcing Evil? The Design Community Weighs In I DO think these sites are disruptively evil, and it's not because I don't think other organizations deserve affordable design. Crowdsourcing encourages cheapness and impatience from potential clients. These websites imply to clients that they'll get Saks like quality design work at Walmart prices, all at internet speed... but the design process doesn't actually work that way. Worse than marginalizing the design