Attracting talent.

The number of user-generated-content powered websites is mindboggling.Including blogger, wikies, the other infinite blog sites, flickr, youtube etc. , the challenge these days, (the days of Web 2.0) is to be able to organise the user generated content and to attract the maximum number of (hopefully good) contributors.

Uncyclopedia, a spoof of wikipedia has several impressive articles appealing to the sense of humour. Although the articles, in general, provide a similar approach trying to be funny(citing obscenely wrong timelines, putting celebrity names into everything etc.), there are some articles which are distinctly funnier. Although a 'nonsense' site, the challenge in front of an uncyc admin is to ensure that the nonsense is of high quality and that users do not actually copy paste from wikipedia and all that. For this, a very serious approach is needed, to filter out what is NOT funny from what is funny. And that, is no joke.

Proceeding to the joke(in a serious tone nevertheless), the joke was on the Zeno's 1st paradox, claiming that the paradox statement is correct and that it has various applications in the real world.

The paradox in short:"In a race, the quickest runner can never overtake the slowest, since the pursuer must first reach the point whence the pursued started, so that the slower must always hold a lead" :Achilles

The essence of the statement is that when the slower runner is given a headstart (i.e he starts the race ahead of the faster runner), the faster runner will always have to reach the point where the slower runner reaches, during which interval the slower runner would have run a further distance. The faster runner now has that distance to cover and so on.

The contributor to uncyc claims that Zeno's paradox is used by the US defence to its end.ESRs(Extremely slow Rockets) are always kept hovering over planet earth, ready for firing.When the enemy fires a missile towards the US, these ESRs are also fired to the same target(preferably just in front of the enemy missile).The missiles never catch up to the ESRs, which are slower than the earth's revolving speed, and hence the USA is invulnerable to missile attack!

Environmentalists, apparently are upset with this strategy, which results in a huge number of missiles floating around.There is also concern over the rising tortoise population, since the arrows shot at tortoises never reach them!:D

This post is a great example of user generated comment on user generated content: something that requires practically no effort(yup, i'm lazy:|).Furthermore, it strengthens the idea that in this time(don't take it literally, as in 1:45 AM IST) where data and content are plentily available, it is the organised presentation of data that really counts.

For the intellectually inclined reader, here is a page on Zeno's paradox on wikipedia.