I got a fever 

Tom thinks the latest version of the Hoisting Blues could use more cowbell. Well, that's all according to how your boogaloo situation stands.

New passage in my podcast game 

Here's a new round of my Who Said literature game. I'm up to 60 already, but it's easy when you usually talk for less than 2 minutes. Making podcasts that short helps with bandwidth expense too.

Speaking of podcasting, it has a naming problem, just like RSS 

Dave's talking about RSS -- that which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet?

Something like the same naming controversy is persisting if not raging about the term "podcast." I shook my finger at a leading elearning consultant not too long ago on my blog, asserting that the ship has sailed; get over it. Lots of people pay attention to this guy, and here he was, telling people who hang on his every word that the name is not firmly settled.

Not that I like the term podcast, or that I disagree with the argument that the iPod connection is confusing and misleading. It's just that after a certain point, you stop debating it.

Eventually the meaning of a name comes around to equate to the thing it names, and sheds any other initial associations, bad or good. Here's an example. I used to work for a franchise consulting firm. The initial client meetings lasted all day and they were fascinating. The entire morning would be devoted to listening to the founder or entrepreneur, telling his or her story and answering questions from all of us who would be putting the program together to clone the business: lawyers, operations manual writers, ad and brochure writers, the guys who churned out the pro formas.

At this particular meeting, the son of the founder of the Boll Weevil restaurants listened to the inevitable question about the name: "Um, isn't that, like, a really destructive, ugly insect? (And we're thinking "Might as well name a restaurant 'The Plague.'")

"Well, I thought that might come up," he said, nodding. "But where we come from, you don't think of bugs when you hear 'Boll Weevil;' you think of our restaurants."

I know the RSS issue is not just about public associations and marketing psychology. Names are important -- all the great religions think so. A name is a big deal and it's bound to prompt an emotional response because it's a representation, close to being the manifestation of a thing.

Fedex furniture 

Have you seen this? Looks like he's in some legal trouble over it now. I'll be embarrassed if everybody in the world except me has seen this already. I think I'm keeping up with things in net culture, then I hear about something that's been around forever and it bursts my bubble.

Yikes 

Just heard that a 16-year-old we know in our neighborhood was arrested for making napalm and burning it in a K-Mart parking lot. He's been grounded. I'd hope so. Hate to admit to thinking this, but there's something a little funny about it in a sick Darwin award sort of way?