The New Social Media: It Never Ceases To Amaze

This past year I picked up a book about blogging in which the author admitted upfront that in 2004 he thought MySpace and social media was going to be a passing fad. In three years MySpace was bigger than Mexico in terms of residents. And since late last summer FaceBook now has grown from 100 to 200 million... twice as big as Mexico.

My first foray into blogging was with MySpace maybe five years ago. I didn't get much out of it or understand it or devote any time to figuring out what it was about. Some guy named Tom became my friend, possibly for the purpose of guiding me into what MySpace could do. But mostly there were risque young vultures asking to be my friend only to be kicked out of the MySpace community shortly thereafter.

My daughter was on FaceBook around this time, but I avoided going there because I didn't want to appear to be a snoopy parent.

Plaxo, LinkedIn and other business networks began cropping up, and finally, I got some books and did some research so I could determine where to establish my own blogland real estate. The Google solution is Blogger. I like the price, too. It's free. It was also relatively easy. I hung up my shingle, Ennyman's Territory. Even the ESPN Fantasy game sites are social network communities. You can create your profile, fill in details, interact with others.

At some point in time last year the Twitter phenomenon blipped across my radar. By now, it is on a lot of people's radar. "Should I, or shouldn't I?" people are asking.

After all is said and done, here are a few things I like and don't like about the blogs and social media.

Likes
You can discover and meet interesting people whom you would have never come across in any other way probably, at least not in this lifetime.
It can be a form of cheap entertainment as millions of people share their most interesting thoughts, ideas, links of the day, or favorite quotes, or whatever.
I enjoy being part of something new, curious to see where it all will go.

Dislikes
A lot of these sites can be big time consumers as people tag and interact and play games.
I don't like having to log in to all the different networks in order to interact with people. I would rather do most of it by email me.
Because they are all Internet based, when you don't have Internet access, you're out.
Also, since other people are running the show, they can change things in how they're set up and you generally have no say.

Twitter
Of all the variations of social media, besides maintaining my personal blog, I like Twitter best. It is fast, easy, and influential. It looks to me like an especially great tool for journalists and net-related professions. You have to participate to get a sense of its potential. I intuitively felt it to be a very powerful tool early on.

Yesterday I came across an interesting blog article 10 Most Extraordinary Twitter Updates from this past year. Item 1 was a marriage proposal via Twitter. Interesting, but I can imagine someone doing that. Johnny Cash asked June Carter on stage, in front of an audience.

Item 2 was really unbelievable. Actually, it made me think of The Truman Show. Corey Menscher created a device and a Twitter account, kickbee, which sent out tweets anytime the infant in his wife's womb kicked his mom. Tyler, born on January 19th, 2009, now “tweets” from his new account, minimensch.

Many of us heard that news of the Mumbai terrorist attack broke first on Twitter. There have been other big stories in which Twitterers were first to break the news as well including a Continental Airlines crash in Denver and an earthquake that rocked China.

Obama used Twitter to his advantage during last year's campaign. Lots of other high profile persons are using Twitter. I've seen John Cleese and Richard Branson there. You can find Demi Moore and Twitteraholic Guy Kawasaki. My guess is that the Apostle Paul would have been tweeting from that Roman jail cell if he'd had access, but I doubt that Twitter was what Jesus had in mind when he told His disciples to "Follow Me," ...though this line of inquiry does raise the question WWJT? What would Jesus tweet?

Dangerous Places

"Do you feel lucky, punk?" ~ Dirty Harry

Feeling safe is a blessing. Yet sometimes that feeling of safety is an illusion, as is the feeling of insecurity one has in some situations that are unfamiliar. In general, however, we can not assume every place is safe. And even some places that seem safe may be unsafe.

For example, you would think that having an office in the World Trade Center would be safe. You go to work, fire up your workstation, do your thing, have lunch on the 110th floor. Go home. One day, this seemingly safe job routine costs you your life.

Likewise, in Mumbai this past November, you would not have expected a night on the town in this busy upscale commerce center to end in a bloodbath.

Last year the Coen brothers won an academy award for their film interpretation of Cormac McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men. When I read the book and later saw the film, it seemed to me that the violence was overblown. Like many Hollywood films, blood and violence goes beyond what anyone imagines would be “real” and serves to create a measure of emotional distance between us and the events happening onscreen.

Yesterday I came across an article about the escalating violence in the Mexico drug trade. Upon further investigation I learned that gangs are killing government agents, that kidnappings are now routine and that there are daily beheadings. The violence has reached epidemic proportions.

President Obama has already met with Mexican president Felipe Calderón to discuss these issues in an effort to restrain the lawlessness. It’s a multi-sided conflict that pits rival drug traffickers (cartels) against each. The result is pitched battles with massive amounts of killing. Many of these gang killings are excessively brutal with the aim of sending a message to their enemies. It’s the kind of mass slaughter we saw in No Country For Old Men, which upon first reading and viewing seemed like a well written, satisfying and compelling work of fiction. It's disturbing to learn that this fiction is really not a work of fiction to some extent. More that 8000 have been killed this past two years in the drug wars.

The multi-sided conflict pits rival trafficking groups -- the so-called cartels -- against each and the Mexican state, but has also seen pitched battles between rival law enforcement units where one group or the other is in the pay of the traffickers.

To my surprise I've now learned that some people suspect the Mumbai massacre was not an act of political terrorists, but rather the work of an Asian mafia involved in international drug trade. Tons of opium is still being grown in Afghanistan for export, even after decades of war. Do government leaders really want to eliminate this black market activity? I don't understand why they're unable to do so. I thought we had the most powerful military in the world? Modern technology and surveillance is such that they claim to be able to read the letters on a golf ball from a satellite in outer space. Why can't they eliminate these Afghan poppy fields?

As is often the case, I really don't know the truth. I only know that there are some dangerous people out there, and some dangerous places. And No Country For Old Men wasn't dreamed up out of thin air. There's some scary stuff goin' down.

And it's at this point where I identify with Larry Norman as he laments, "This world is not my home."

Footnote:

Speculations on Afghan drug trade / Mumbai connections here

Year End Review and New Beginnings

Don't know what came over me yesterday. I'd intended to do a year end review, something upbeat as we headed into the new year. But that WSJ story about the end of the U.S. as we know it just washed over me and swept me up in its current.

Yes, undertows are powerful and can be dangerous. No, it didn't wash me out to sea. Aside: Did you know that Jack Nicholson, while a teen growing up in New Jersey, once saved five peoples' lives who had been carried out into the ocean by an undertow? There were eleven swept out into the deep. Young Jack grabbed a lifeboat and headed out to save them. He says he puked his guts out after, but the newspaper only showed the shining face of the hero, which caught someone's eye, carrying him off in another current to the turbulent seas of fame in Hollywood.

Anyways, that WSJ story, popularized via the Drudge Report, certainly diverted me from my intentions. I don't really buy into the idea of our country breaking up into fragments by 2010. There are some who might enjoy seeing such things, like the Soviet analyst who saw his own nation crumble into pieces. Yugoslavia was similarly broken into fragments in recent history, which I can't help but think would weaken it and create inefficiencies. The most difficult problem is for geography students who simply can't keep up with all these changes. Yugoslavia was first broken into six parts in 1990's, into 8 a couple years ago and now, as of 2008, Kosovo has become a ninth entity.

A friend in Pakistan fears that the U.S., in an effort to strengthen its global stranglehold on that region of the world in the name of stability, has the same designs on his own nation. Some over there have expressed concern that the Mumbai tragedy will be used as a pretext for increased intervention.

We're not making much progress here in our year end review, though the last two snippets at least relate to the theme. Maybe I'm in avoidance mode since the collapse of housing, and the tsunami of bankruptcies and other financial disasters, culminating in the Madoff scandal as exclamation point, hardly bears repeating.

So, while all this tragedy was happening, what were the top searches for 2008 according to Yahoo Buzz? Number One, Brittney Spears whose police visit, hospital stay and psych evaluation were exceedingly important to Americans this year. Oh, she also appeared in a sitcom.

Number Two, the WWE heated up the cybersearchers in June with some kind of stir created when the effervescent Vince McMahon was purportedly injured in an explosion on a stage... or was it a staged explosion? Sorry, I missed it.

Number Three, Barack Obama. OK, this is a worthy number three. The guy overcame the odds, has charisma, defeated Hillary, steam-rolled the GOP and its veteran candidate John McCain... and has a lot of people rooting for him as he heads toward 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. My prayer is that we'll see miracles, because with the economic mess we're in and the international turmoil in every direction, it might take miracles to get us back to a place of stability and confidence toward the future.

Two additional quick observations. To my knowledge Obama has never walked on water. And despite his success in the primaries and election, president-elect Obama did not attract more buzz than Brittney Spears.

Rounding out the top ten stories as measured by Yahoo Searches, we have Miley Cyrus (the Hannah Montana siren), RuneScape, Jessica Alba, Naruta, Lindsay Lohan, Angelina Jolie, and American Idol.

No list of year end summaries is complete without those farewells to significant people who departed this year. I had a personal stake in at least two of the personalities on Yahoo's Top 10 list: Paul Newman and Boyd Coddington. Having the same name as a mega-star actor invariably puts him on your personal life radar from time to time. As a freshman at Ohio University in 1970 I had a room in Scot Quad, where I learned that Paul Newman had lived during part of his abbreviated attendance at O.U. I enjoyed many of his films over the years, especially his early classics The Hustler, Hud, and Cool Hand Luke. He lived a charmed life, married to his one true love throughout and generously giving tens of millions to charity.

My intersection with Boyd Coddington's life commenced in 2007 when AMSOIL began a sponsorship relationship with Boyd who, at the time, had a reality TV show building hot cars. Or cool cars, however you like to look at it. Coddington's influence on the Southern California hot rod scene was legendary. He lived his dream. At the end of 2007 I flew to Orlando where I interviewed Boyd and Jo, his good hearted wife, for a feature story in the AMSOIL Action News. It might have been the last published feature on Boyd as within weeks the effects of his diabetes put him in the hospital, from which he never recovered. Perhaps you'll enjoy reading my tribute to Boyd & Jo, Innovation and a Passion for Cars.

Other passings in 2008 included Heath Ledger, George Carlin, Tim Russert, William F. Buckley, Sydney Pollack, Charlton Heston and the European Bakery in Downtown Duluth.

On the positive side of the ledger, The Centerville All Stars produced and released a great new CD, Party with the Band. You can read my review and purchase your copy here.

In the meantime, have a great 2009, starting today. Hot Tip: Enjoy your friends, make some memories with your families, and avoid the land mines. Happy New Year!

Bread and Circuses

Are Americans indifferent to the events in the larger world because of their preoccupation with bread and circuses?

In the course of a lifetime I’ve often seen writers compare our American empire to that of Rome. As with all the great empires beforehand Rome, too, fell. In Gibbon’s classic analysis, the cratering of that empire was due to internal factors, not external.

By means of bread and circuses the ruling class of ancient Rome maintained their power and control of the people. As long as the masses were happy, their labors could be used to fuel the wheels of progress... or at least maintain the status quo.

Starvation, infant death, malnutrition, terror, slaughter, oppression, torture, violence… these things abound in our world today. Simultaneous to these global maladies, we have in this country a 24 billion dollar amusement park industry, a 30 billion dollar entertainment industry, a 200 billion-plus sports industry, and an even larger gambling industry. (Called “gaming” because gambling has negative connotations.)

Meanwhile, according to the World Hunger Organization, 800 million people go to bed hungry every night, mostly women and children. 24,000 die every day. Two hundred million children under five years of age are underweight due to lack of food, which can lead to mental retardation and stunted physical stature. And while you read this, one child will die of starvation every seven seconds.

By way of contrast, according to A.C. Nielsen stats from a recent year, the average American watches 3 hours and 46 minutes of TV each day (which would add up to more than 52 days of nonstop TV-watching per year). By age 65 the average American will have spent nearly 9 years glued to the tube. A few may be watching educational television, but most are simply watching whatever distraction the channel is tuned to at the time.

As tensions rise between India and Pakistan, most Americans have no clue what the fuss is about. As tens of thousands visit the grave of Benazir Bhutto, how many understand the significance of this woman who was killed in a gun-and-suicide attack one year ago already? How many understand that the Mumbai incident has significance nearly as important as our 9/11? Just because it is not longer in our U.S. newspapers, it doesn’t mean there have been no reverberations set in motion.

I’d be half willing to bet that most Americans don’t even know where Pakistan is located, let alone that there was a 1971 war fought between India and Pakistan that cost hundreds of thousands of lives. We were pre-occupied that year with All in the Family, Flip Wilson, Marcus Welby, Gunsmoke, and earning money for our next Disneyland vacation.

I realize I am being a little harsh. Let me say that I am not aiming to impose new restrictions to behavior. (“Don’t smoke, don’t chew, don’t go with girls who do.”) I am simply making an appeal to conscience. We live in a world where there is suffering, and the aim of our lives needs to be something bigger than next weekend’s bash. An Old Testament maxim from the Book of Ecclesiastes comes to mind here. “The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning, but the heart of fools is in the house of pleasure.”

Is it possible that those who control the marionette strings love the power they hold? Who gets the bailouts? Who has the golden parachutes? Who gets the wool when the sheep are fleeced?

A lot of questions in life have no easy, clear cut answers. One of the toughest: What should our relationship be to the culture we find ourselves in? Sure, the gladiators are putting on quite a show for us today. Is that what it’s all about? More bread? More circuses?

Returning to the Scene of the Crime

For some reason my mind keeps returning to the Mumbai massacre, much like an undisciplined fingernail continuously probes the edges of a scab.

As the media sifts the remains of the Mumbai disaster, news stories highlight a wide range of camera angles on this event. Some focus on who was behind this and what was their motive. Some focus on what happened and how it happened. Some seek to identify heroes such as the nanny who rescued a two year old toddler at Chabad House where terrorists possibly tortured and killed six Israelis.

And many ask probing questions. Why did the 1000 Indian commandos take 60 hours to kill 10 terrorists? How many clues were there in advance that were disregarded by Indian authorities? Who were the attackers? Were they from Pakistan or from within India itself? How could so few cause so much damage? What were their aims, besides death and mayhem? Did some get away? Who trained them? What will happen next? How will it end?

Israel buried six of her own in the Mount of Olives Cemetery this week. And this small part of the equation brought to mind for me additional questions. Why did the terrorists, who had ten men and supposedly aimed to take five thousand lives at the two hotels, go out of their way to find the Chabad House and kill six Jews? It doesn't make sense.

Another set of questions is being raised by this strange story. Since 2001 there have several major terrorist incidents in India. Among others, the Chattinghpura massacre, the Malagaon explosions, and the Samjhota Express incident were all under investigation by a team of officials. The men who had been researching these events indicated that a lieutenant colonel of the Indian army, Lt. Col. Purohit, was allegedly responsible for the attack. Purohit evidently had links with Hindu militant groups and purportedly provided training to extremists. These three officials, who were on the verge of finalizing their findings and releasing this information, were all killed in the Mumbai event. Coincidence? (Counterpunch story here)

The more you read, the more you realize how little you understand. It's far more interesting than any James Bond movie. Especially the latest one with its herky-jerky camera work and excessive commitment to "action." The real world unfolds at a little slower pace, though still much too fast for us to interpret all the meanings of its events.

In the end there will always be too many questions, and too few answers. We see once more what Robert Burns said rightly, "Man's inhumanity to man makes countless thousands mourn."

Peace In Our Time?

I remember many years ago reading a detailed article by futurist Alvin Toffler about the future of war. (Wired magazine, I believe, in the early to mid nineties.) In the article he made a case for the decentralization of war into world hotspots. Instead of a global war involving all countries lining up in two groups like the Axis and Allies, there would be the kind of world we have come to see today, with military action in Afghanistan, Somalia, Bosnia, Iraq, etc.

No one has perfect prescience when it comes to things future. In 1963 Decca Records, for example, failed to sign up the Beatles because their internal futurist believed "the guitar is on the way out." In this instance, it appears that Mr. Toffler not only made a good case for his views, history seems to be confirming them. The Mumbai terror assault is only the latest episode in the string.

When events like Mumbai occur, there is no way to predict what will happen next. First, we do not even have all the facts. Who were these people who did this? What was their ultimate objective? Were there really only ten terrorists in this special op? India and Pakistan have been on the threshold of war for years. And the Israel component in this equation is a similar unknown quantity.

Yesterday I addressed the issue of torture. Noting that many reports on the web seemed from one source, I wasn't sure how far to go with regard to pushing this notion. Today, the Jerusalem Post had a story suggesting that the hostages may not have been tortured after all. They were simply so shot full of holes that doctors were appalled by the destruction of human life. Even this matter is as yet an uncertainty.

Some are concerned about Indo-Pakistan relations because the future between these armed powers is potentially nuclear. Both have nuclear weapons; Pakistan 60-80 missiles and India an arsenal of bombs. Re-arrange the word NUCLEAR and it spells UNCLEAR.

The following is an example of the unreliability of prognostication. This is from a blogsite called Understanding Each Other, Diversity & Dissent The writer is a Pakistani named Agha, identified here as pacocalvary.

Having said that I must add one incident that my father narrated when he visited West Germany in 1988. He asked the hosts, " Can the Germanies unite?" "Not in our lifetime," came the reply.... and it happened in 1991. So prophecy in history is not easy. Sometimes all that we assess proves wrong. So let's hope for the best. ~pavocalvary

If you are seriously interested in following the analysis of these troubling events, there are plenty of voices out there in blogs across the cyber-universe striving to help bring clarity. Here's an interesting one: In From the Cold. And here's another: Tikun Olam

And if your only serious interest is pie recipes, Google will help you find those as well.

Why Mumbai Massacre Matters To Us

The amazing power of the internet is being demonstrated once again. A terrible assault occurs in a major city half a world away. It is posted on our Twitter feeds before it is on the news.

Then, as the story breaks in the U.S. newspapers, the magnitude of the crime appears muted, even distorted. The Internet, however, tells it like it is, as it happens.

When I first learned that the terrorists took hostages and then tortured them, I wondered why this was not yet covered in U.S. media. The torture has become a major feature of the story in Israel where six Jewish citizens where tortured so horribly the doctors became disturbed. Last night I watched a news broadcast from Israel via internet after these six dead were returned to their Homeland.

But as of yesterday there were no mentions of the torture in our local paper. And now today still nothing. In fact, nothing about Mumbai at all.

Blogs and news organizations around the world are talking about this event. Some are saying it is a landmark because it has the potential of starting an Indo-Pakistan war. Others cite the specific horrors done to Jews as a setback to Israeli-Muslim relations, especially if Muslim leaders do not step up and denounce these crimes.

But U.S. stories, when I Googled Mumbai torture have the following at this moment in time. An L.A. Times story with the sentence, “An infuriated Malvia said she would torture the attackers if she ever got her hands on them.” But there is no mention that the hostages were tortured, that the U.S., British and Israeli hostages purposely captured in this well planned horrorshow were tortured. It only talks of a “killing spree.” The out of context quote almost makes the U.S. citizen seem like the bad person in the story.

According to Don Feder, editor of Boycott The New York Times, it is a deliberate stance the U.S. news regime is taking because "The Times adamantly refuses to recognize a connection between Islam and worldwide terrorism."

The Washington Post downplays the torture in this way. In a story titled Terror Groups in India, the Post cites a report that calls torture in India “normal”, noting that more than 2750 people were killed across India in “terrorism-related violence” in 2006.

The article details a host of terrorist organizations that have been active in the world’s second largest country. Are they saying then that Mumbai is just another incident?

The world press is not treating it this way.

The story being repeated on many sites seems to have as its origen this Nov. 30 account account by Krishnakumar P and Vicky Nanjappa which appeared in the Rediff India Abroad.

Doctors shocked at hostages's torture

They said that just one look at the bodies of the dead hostages as well as terrorists showed it was a battle of attrition that was fought over three days at the Oberoi and the Taj hotels in Mumbai. Doctors working in a hospital where all the bodies, including that of the terrorists, were taken said they had not seen anything like this in their lives.

"Bombay has a long history of terror. I have seen bodies of riot victims, gang war and previous terror attacks like bomb blasts. But this was entirely different. It was shocking and disturbing," a doctor said.

Asked what was different about the victims of the incident, another doctor said: "It was very strange. I have seen so many dead bodies in my life, and was yet traumatised. A bomb blast victim's body might have been torn apart and could be a very disturbing sight. But the bodies of the victims in this attack bore such signs about the kind of violence of urban warfare that I am still unable to put my thoughts to words," he said.

In other accounts it is noted repeatedly that "the worst tortured were the Jewish victims."

Unless the media tells about these things, Americans will not understand if there is a strong Jewish reaction against what happened.

Maybe the torture accounts will eentually emerge in our media. Maybe the U.S. coverage is restrained in an effort to obtain second sources to verify these accusations. But there seems to be plenty of evidence. Doctors at the hospital saw and were made ill by it. The bodies were returned to Israel where other witnesses saw what was done to Rabbi Gavriel and Rivka Holtzberg, among others. You can see the pools of blood online in photos of the Chabad House Massacre where some of these terrible events took place. Very bad things did happen.

There are three reasons the events in Mumbai matter to us.

1. Indo-Pakistan relations have been jeopardized. Both countries have nuclear weapons. There may be political ramifications in U.S.-Pakistani relations.

2. Israeli-Islam relations set back. If the torture is confirmed, this could potentially become a catalyst for more incendiary events.
3. It forces us to question whether our U.S. news sources are reliable.

The power of the Internet to put all these stories, photos, and videos just a mouse click away is remarkable, though somewhat frightening as well. Pray for the peace of Jersusalem.

Mumbai Heartbreak Hotel

"The way in which the world is imagined determines at any moment what people will do." ~ Walter Lippman

The story broke on Twitter. Evidently someone in the middle of the Mumbai massacre was tweeting. Long before CNN could get a correspondent on the scene, the chatter was spreading 'cross the Internet. http://tinyurl.com/5g2a3n Terrorists went on a spree with assault rifles in Mumbai's financial district killing more than a hundred, leaving hundreds more wounded and bleeding.

One blog entry I came across stated this was a night life hot spot, with the upscale Oberoi and Taj Mahal Hotels being where the action was. American and British citizens were being sought as potential hostages. Other stories described the chaos and fear. There were photos accompanying some stories that showed blood stained sidewalks and streets.

It must have been a horrible thing to go through. But one of the stories I came across had a statement that especially surprised me:

"THE US State Department has consistently listed India as the country with the second-highest number of terrorism casualties after Iraq. However Western media has given scant regard to the problem and this is sometimes resented in India." ~ Sydney Morning Herald

Second highest number of terrorism casualties after Iraq. Wow. Something shifted in my thinking about India the fall. My image of India was painted by Thomas Friedman's The World Is Flat when he describes a golf fairway there with large corporate logos on the left and right of a long scenic fairway. 400 million Indians are moving into the Middle Class. These are people with money, brains, talent. This is a country on the move. The picture in my head was modern times.

This image ruled my mental pictures till recently when I read of the harsh and brutal assaults on Christians by Hindus in Orissa. The Orissa horror has gone relatively unreported. And despite the State Department warnings cited in the Sydney Herald, Americans are not reading about all these things in the news. More than a thousand churches have been burned. Missionaries and pastors hide in the jungles to avoid being slaughtered by very dangerous people.

Then we have this week's highly visible event, which did make world headlines... But how much can we understand what it all means if we have no context? It would be bad public relations for India tourism and commerce if Americans saw India as "dangerous." But if our State Department is calling it dangerous, how come no one knows this? How can we make decisions where we'll be vacationing if we are not told of the dangers in those places we're enticed to see? How can we feel safe on business trips if we're not told that Americans are being kidnapped there?

When the story broke, many people probably wondered where in the world is Mumbai. Well, it's old Bombay, with a new name. Externally, the city glitters, but at its heart there is grief.