Make it burn

I go to a Power Yoga class at the local YMCA twice a week. It's a tough work-out, something I would never have believed before trying it. I thought Yoga was all stretching and calming. Not this one. Lots of stretching, but a serious serious workout.

Today, though, was a whole new experience. Ever "sit" with your back against a wall as though you were sitting in a chair, but simply using your quads to keep you in that position? Remember how it makes your legs burn? That was today. We held a position for 2 minutes, switched to another position that used the same leg and held *that* position for 2 minutes. And onto another position on the same leg. And a fourth. And a fifth. And then we did it all on the other leg.

That's basically 10 minutes making one quad BURN. Burn baby burn. Man. It felt like someone had injected molten lava into the veins in my leg. I had forgotten what that feels like. It's definitely not the same as simply tiring out... it's burning out.

We won the Webby Award!

Yahoo! Podcasts, a product my team launched last September, won a Webby Award for best podcast site. Cool!

Panopticon

What a cool word. What is it? A very interesting type of prison where a very few number of guards can see all inmates, each inmate has a window to the outside world, and no inmate can see another inmate. Check it out on Wikipedia.

I heard the concept in the context of a talk given at Yahoo! by Jamais Cascio (cascio@openthefuture.com), where he talked about the Participatory Panopticon. The idea is that once everyone has a mobile phone capable of recording photos or videos at any time, without the target's knowledge, we basically are in a situation where you live your life as you do, but at any moment you might be recorded (seen by the guards).

Question: If everything is always recorded, does it destory social fabric, or does it require forgiveness, since nothing is forgotten?