Reading, Writing and Arithmetic

A fair number of you have rightly wondered whether I've been abducted by aliens or deported to Moldova. I'm happy to report the correct answer is ... Neither! In fact I'm ensconced at my cubicle in Wired's New York office pounding away at my particular version of the three R's: Reading books related to crowdsourcing, writing a book that is, I hope, all about crowdsourcing, and working on a deceptively simple mathematic formula: 3+1=4. According to this equation, our family will soon welcome another arrival. My wife is due on September 10—a boy, if the sonogram is to be believed. The tricky part is that I've been assured that a second child introduces a disproportional quantity of chaos to the household, so perhaps the common formula contains a flaw. Could 3+1 actually equal 5 or 6? I've actually been told the chaos increases exponentially, but as 1X1 = 1, that can't quite be true.

But impending labor doesn't quite excuse my silence in August. I know lots of writers who use their blogs as a tool to help them with their books. I offer them my admiration and absolute bafflement. I'm having trouble wrestling this topic to the ground while maintaining anything like a normal sleep schedule (Wired's editor, Chris Anderson, once advise me that "4 AM is your friend; the Web is your enemy." He spoke the truth.), much less wasting precious words on my blog. That said, I am in the thick of it at the moment. Perhaps once I've crested the mountain am on the descent I'll be able to enjoy the luxury of posting to crowdsourcing.com.

Which isn't to say you won't hear from me from time to time, but I do want to apologize in advance for more month-long absences. Until then, please give my rival blog, the crowdsourcing directory, a read (I'm a Shark; he's the Jet, for anyone who's wondering). I'm regularly impressed with it, in those rare moments I'm able to read it.

Hope you all had a good summer ...