Ja fa molt de temps que des de l’entorn de les Indias s’està intentant explicar i fer veure que la filosofia que hi ha darrere el rankisme, la mania de fer llistes dels millors, és una estupidesa perniciosa. D’aquí neix feevy una fantàstica eina de blogrolls dinàmics.

Fa uns dies Nichoas Carr va publicar al seu bloc una nota sobre un nou ranking calculat “científicament”:

The problem of detecting contaminants in a public water system is analogous to the problem of figuring out what’s going on in the blogosphere, write a team of Carnegie-Mellon researchers in an award-winning paper called Cost-effective Outbreak Detection in Networks

En llegir això no vaig dubtar en escriure un comentari, us el deixo aquí per tal que quedi arxivat:

Rankings are just silly. Finding contaminants isn’t.

When one is looking for contaminants, knows exactly what he is looking for, a set of known molecules which are bad for health or for the environment. The target is always the same for everybody. But looking for what happens on the blogosphere is meaningless. What is interesting for me, probably won’t be interesting for you. We all are looking for different things! After reading the list these guys produced, I found few blogs I already read and I didn’t find many blogs that few people read but which are of high value for me. Not to mention that most blogs in the list are in English and that I read blogs in four more languages.

Rankings are made for the ranked and for the media, which love this ordered world. But, fortunately, the real world is chaos, and there is no rank able to grasp a slight part of this chaos.

The Guardian [1] ha publicat una notícia que m’ha fet riure:

Google Earth used to target Israel

Palestinian militants are using Google Earth to help plan their attacks on the Israeli military and other targets, the Guardian has learned.

Members of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, a group aligned with the Fatah political party, say they use the popular internet mapping tool to help determine their targets for rocket strikes.

Aquest tipus de notícies em deixen perplex. Qui ha decidit que això sigui notícia? És notícia dia 29 d’octubre de 2007 que jo prepari les meves vacances amb Google Earth? És notícia que algú que fa la guerra també l’empri? Aviat trobarem una notícia del tipus:

Binocles de la marca Acme han estat emprats per atacar Israel.

Periodistes, poseu-vos les piles, que això fa pena.

[1]: Si fos periodista hauria dit “El prestigiós diari britànic The Guardian”.