thinking (with multiplication) ?

Okay now here's the second tagging post. Only this is not called tagging. It's got the rather grandiose title of 'the thinking blogger awards'. Much easier than the 'tagging' - no random facts or confessions. Here's the little thingamy that i'm sposed to put here-

and the obligatory link to the origin of the whole thing.

By the way, the picture up top has nothing to do with anything, but I gotta have a picture.

Firstly it was Arlee Barr of Albedo Design that 'awarded' me, then it was Helle of Gooseflesh, and then Marion of My Art Grows Around Me. Thankyou. So does that means I've got 15 awards to give? I'm not sure.Of course it is my own fault, I should just have done the 'awarding' when Arlee awarded me. But, as usual, I was slack and took my time....

Anyways I was thinking about tagging and stuff, and about how quickly 'the tagged' (or 'awarded') would multiply. So I did the sums and it's all slightly disturbing in an amusing sort of way. Well I think so.

Now, remember these numbers only work if everyone tagged actually does the tagging. And i'm sure they don't. They couldn't. But the potential is there. I should mention maths and that sort of thing is not my strong point by any stretch of the imagination, so perhaps I went about this completely the wrong way....

Each number listed on the left is each stage of tagging, i'll call it a 'degree'. For example, 1. is the people I tag, 2. is the people they tagged and so on. I've left out the sums after number 4, but you get the idea.


1. 1x5 = 5
2. 5x5 = 25
3. 25x5 = 125
4. 125x5 = 625
5. 3125
6. 15,625
7. 78,125
8. 390,625
9. 1,953,125
10. 9,765,625
11. 48,828,125
12. 244,140,625

So, by the time a tag has separated 12 degrees from its originator, over two hundred and forty four million blogs/bloggers have been tagged. Yes that is right. Unless of course i've gotten something very wrong. Which is entirely possible. I guess it works well for whoever starts these things, at least when they get you to link back to their blog....

The blogosphere report of April 07 (most up to date relevant info I could find) says technorati is tracking over 70 million blogs. Even double that and every single blog would be tagged within 12 'degrees' of an individual initiating a tag or whatever. No wonder I got the award three times, eh?

And only 36% of blogs are in english. 37% are Japanese. Not that tagging is limited to blogs in the taggers language. I have tagged (last post) at least one blog that is not in english, though i knew that the blogger was proficient in english (after all, it does seem that people whose first language is english are less likely to be bi-lingual, so there could be lots of 'inter-lingual' tagging).
While Babelfish is a great thing, it is a long long way from being perfect! Much as I would like to stick a babelfish in my ear, it is, after all, a towel that is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have. Not a babelfish. Sorry, very bad joke. Anyway I would think that the tendency would be to tag blogs in your own language.

Not that i think it would be bad if every blogger got tagged or awarded once (or even occasionally), but at the potential rate that these things multiply, we could all end up doing posts that are just tagging....
There are 120, 000 new blogs created every day (according to blogosphere) but i dunno if that's gonna be enough!?! Depends, i guess; if everyone is as slow as me when it comes to tagging we might be okay.

So, in light of this little investigation I have decided i'd better just give 5 awards. I'll try to avoid those I tagged in the last post as well as folks I know already have one. But probably i'll mess up.

So here are my 5 thinking blogger awards-

1. First has got to be Lauren of She Sees Red. Partly just to get her back. Just kidding, actually it's because Lauren really is a thinking blogger. And a thinking artist, too.

2. Then there is Mandy the Feltbug. I love Mandy's work, and her blog too. I just noticed Mandy was tagged and then was too thoughtful to tag anyone back, just listing some blogs she likes, including this one. When I first read the post I thought Mandy was tagging me. Luckily that was not the case, otherwise i'd be hassling even more bloggers. Sorry Mandy, I am not so considerate as you, but at least this one is 'non-confessional'. And please ignore this if you like, or take five or six months (see last post!). That goes for all of you.


3.Next is Shula of POPPALINA. Shula makes fabulous things, and does some extraordinarily thoughtful blogging.

4. Jan of In My Spare Time. Just to get her back. No, really the blog is great, very thoughtful! And marvellous work, too.

5. Fiona Long. I've known Fionas work through flickr for quite some time but somehow missed the blog/website for a while there. Anyways the artwork and blog are both very thoughtful, and altogether wonderful.


Apologies to anyone already awarded. You can completely ignore it. Fine by me, it's probably for the best. And you can ignore it even if you have not been previously awarded, that is also more than fine by me. Bound to come back round and bite me on the bum anyways.