In this season of divisive, rancorous debate over politics, with media sources entrenched on the right and the left, there's one thing you will see them in agreement on: Hyped up fear mongering of the H1N1 swine flu outbreak. My two youngest kids came down with swine flu the first week of school this fall, initially scaring the heck out their mom and I. About ten days, a couple of doctor visits, a few boxes of Kleenex, a gallon or two of hand sanitizer and some Tamiflu later, we came away a little wiser about the nature of this new flu. Sure, they got high fevers - both around 102, 103 for a few hours - and yes, they developed bad coughs, had sore throats, but you know what? It looked and acted a whole lot like any flu I've ever seen.
During the course of this, I did a lot of research on H1N1 and was surprised to see how trumped up much of the coverage about this "pandemic" was. Here are some widely reported assumptions:
1) It is disproportionately striking down the young and healthy. "Regular" flu is supposed to attack only the old, very young, and those with underlying health problems. The statement is essentially true, but it's what is not being said that tells the real story. The CDC itself is assuming that the reason older people may not be getting H1N1 is that that have been exposed to a similar strain at some time in the past. So, the real statement should not be "it's striking down young people", but "it's not striking older people". Same result, very different fear factor.
2) Swine flu is deadlier than the regular flu: The current death rate of H1N1 cases is about 1%, lower than that of the regular seasonal flu. This is a rate currently lower than the regular seasonal flu. But the significant fact here is not that it's any more virulent. It's just new. Few people have any immune defense against it.
3) Face masks work: Viruses are so small it has only been with relatively recent microscope technology that they have even been able to image them.They are thousands of times smaller than bacteria. Trying to stop a virus with a store bought "dust" mask (the disposable paper sort) is like trying to catch water with a tennis racket.
An old Poli Sci prof of mine said something once that I have never forgotten: "Media does not exist to inform you. It exists to sell advertising". And this is just as true of Fox as it is MSNBC. Whatever your politics may be, if you're concerned about swine flu, take some time to go through the CDC site's pages: Centers for Disease Control.
Friday, October 23, 2009
Why I Don't Do Follow Friday
To you on Twitter, you recognize this term as heralding the weekly day of friends referral in which you post account names to your timeline for others to consider following. Who knows how this started, but it certainly caught on. In the early days of Twitter (or at least in my early days) I was an enthusiastic participant. I've changed my views about it, however, as my number of followers increased.
Twitter, as a social network app, was originally intended to form small groups of "followers" to post updates to one another answering the basic question "What are you doing right now?" As a few trillion people joined the service, this basic concept had the doors blown off it as people (either through direct actions or by force of their celebrity) garnered thousands, even millions of followers. I have always sought to use Twitter as a means of communicating directly with people. This obviously becomes impractical, even impossible, if you have a few hundred thousand followers. Communicating with everybody is impossible, so of course some sort of selection or culling has to take place. This is where Follow Friday gets a little problematic. Let's say you have a thousand avid followers. Of these thousand, let's assume that 100 of them actively seek interchange with you. While you may be able to keep up with this many tweets as long as they don't all come in at the same time. It's kind of hard to say that you're really in communication with them, at least not on any kind of personal level. So, along comes Follow Friday, and you find yourself in the business of recommending people to others for following. Do you:
a) Recommend all 100 of them, being egalitarian? If so, all 1,000 of your followers will see that you have selected 100 of them, possible offending the other 900. At 140 characters per tweet, you will also flood your timeline, and that of your followers, with tweet after tweet of recommended account names.
b) Cherry pick the 15 or so that you really communicate with (either through @replies or DMs). This can really look snobby if not handled really well.
c) Select just one or two a week for really special reasons (offending the other 9,999 who are wondering why they aren't special).
d) or simply not engage in FF. Which is what I do. And which can also look snobby if others are recommending you and you're not returning the favor. In this regard, it can be a lot like Christmas cards (and about as sincere).
I have chosen option D, at least for now. I think in the long run, I'd rather not get into the cherry picking business at all. My favorite tweeters are those that engage me, and there are simply too many of them to refer each Friday. I guess I'd rather run the risk of offending all a little bit than offending some a lot.
I appreciate everyone who follows me. Moreover, I appreciate everyone who engages me by reading and responding to what I write. But Follow Friday has taken on the aspect of Mother's day where you are expected to show your love and gratefulness or risk offending mom. I always like my mom's view of Mother's day. 'I'd rather you showed that you loved me the other 364 days a year and not make Hallmark rich on this one day". I hope that in some way, through my tweets, I'm showing everybody who engages me that I appreciate them, and I hope they know that I implicitly recommend them all without having to prove it once a week. To me, your follower count is not a popularity contest. It's also not a marketing tactic. They are people that have chosen to "listen" to me, and the number of them is the least significant thing in the world to me. Each one is of value. Follow them all!
Later,
Jim
Twitter, as a social network app, was originally intended to form small groups of "followers" to post updates to one another answering the basic question "What are you doing right now?" As a few trillion people joined the service, this basic concept had the doors blown off it as people (either through direct actions or by force of their celebrity) garnered thousands, even millions of followers. I have always sought to use Twitter as a means of communicating directly with people. This obviously becomes impractical, even impossible, if you have a few hundred thousand followers. Communicating with everybody is impossible, so of course some sort of selection or culling has to take place. This is where Follow Friday gets a little problematic. Let's say you have a thousand avid followers. Of these thousand, let's assume that 100 of them actively seek interchange with you. While you may be able to keep up with this many tweets as long as they don't all come in at the same time. It's kind of hard to say that you're really in communication with them, at least not on any kind of personal level. So, along comes Follow Friday, and you find yourself in the business of recommending people to others for following. Do you:
a) Recommend all 100 of them, being egalitarian? If so, all 1,000 of your followers will see that you have selected 100 of them, possible offending the other 900. At 140 characters per tweet, you will also flood your timeline, and that of your followers, with tweet after tweet of recommended account names.
b) Cherry pick the 15 or so that you really communicate with (either through @replies or DMs). This can really look snobby if not handled really well.
c) Select just one or two a week for really special reasons (offending the other 9,999 who are wondering why they aren't special).
d) or simply not engage in FF. Which is what I do. And which can also look snobby if others are recommending you and you're not returning the favor. In this regard, it can be a lot like Christmas cards (and about as sincere).
I have chosen option D, at least for now. I think in the long run, I'd rather not get into the cherry picking business at all. My favorite tweeters are those that engage me, and there are simply too many of them to refer each Friday. I guess I'd rather run the risk of offending all a little bit than offending some a lot.
I appreciate everyone who follows me. Moreover, I appreciate everyone who engages me by reading and responding to what I write. But Follow Friday has taken on the aspect of Mother's day where you are expected to show your love and gratefulness or risk offending mom. I always like my mom's view of Mother's day. 'I'd rather you showed that you loved me the other 364 days a year and not make Hallmark rich on this one day". I hope that in some way, through my tweets, I'm showing everybody who engages me that I appreciate them, and I hope they know that I implicitly recommend them all without having to prove it once a week. To me, your follower count is not a popularity contest. It's also not a marketing tactic. They are people that have chosen to "listen" to me, and the number of them is the least significant thing in the world to me. Each one is of value. Follow them all!
Later,
Jim
A Reasonable Response to Swine Flu
In this season of divisive, rancorous debate over politics, with media sources entrenched on the right and the left, there's one thing you will see them in agreement on: Hyped up fear mongering of the H1N1 swine flu outbreak. My two youngest kids came down with swine flu the first week of school this fall, initially scaring the heck out their mom and I. About ten days, a couple of doctor visits, a few boxes of Kleenex, a gallon or two of hand sanitizer and some Tamiflu later, we came away a little wiser about the nature of this new flu. Sure, they got high fevers - both around 102, 103 for a few hours - and yes, they developed bad coughs, had sore throats, but you know what? It looked and acted a whole lot like any flu I've ever seen.
During the course of this, I did a lot of research on H1N1 and was surprised to see how trumped up much of the coverage about this "pandemic" was. Here are some widely reported assumptions:
1) It is disproportionately striking down the young and healthy. "Regular" flu is supposed to attack only the old, very young, and those with underlying health problems. The statement is essentially true, but it's what is not being said that tells the real story. The CDC itself is assuming that the reason older people may not be getting H1N1 is that that have been exposed to a similar strain at some time in the past. So, the real statement should not be "it's striking down young people", but "it's not striking older people". Same result, very different fear factor.
2) Swine flu is deadlier than the regular flu: The current death rate of H1N1 cases is about 1%, lower than that of the regular seasonal flu. This is a rate currently lower than the regular seasonal flu. But the significant fact here is not that it's any more virulent. It's just new. Few people have any immune defense against it.
3) Face masks work: Viruses are so small it has only been with relatively recent microscope technology that they have even been able to image them.They are thousands of times smaller than bacteria. Trying to stop a virus with a store bought "dust" mask (the disposable paper sort) is like trying to catch water with a tennis racket.
An old Poli Sci prof of mine said something once that I have never forgotten: "Media does not exist to inform you. It exists to sell advertising". And this is just as true of Fox as it is MSNBC. Whatever your politics may be, if you're concerned about swine flu, take some time to go through the CDC site's pages: Centers for Disease Control.
Later,
Jim
During the course of this, I did a lot of research on H1N1 and was surprised to see how trumped up much of the coverage about this "pandemic" was. Here are some widely reported assumptions:
1) It is disproportionately striking down the young and healthy. "Regular" flu is supposed to attack only the old, very young, and those with underlying health problems. The statement is essentially true, but it's what is not being said that tells the real story. The CDC itself is assuming that the reason older people may not be getting H1N1 is that that have been exposed to a similar strain at some time in the past. So, the real statement should not be "it's striking down young people", but "it's not striking older people". Same result, very different fear factor.
2) Swine flu is deadlier than the regular flu: The current death rate of H1N1 cases is about 1%, lower than that of the regular seasonal flu. This is a rate currently lower than the regular seasonal flu. But the significant fact here is not that it's any more virulent. It's just new. Few people have any immune defense against it.
3) Face masks work: Viruses are so small it has only been with relatively recent microscope technology that they have even been able to image them.They are thousands of times smaller than bacteria. Trying to stop a virus with a store bought "dust" mask (the disposable paper sort) is like trying to catch water with a tennis racket.
An old Poli Sci prof of mine said something once that I have never forgotten: "Media does not exist to inform you. It exists to sell advertising". And this is just as true of Fox as it is MSNBC. Whatever your politics may be, if you're concerned about swine flu, take some time to go through the CDC site's pages: Centers for Disease Control.
Later,
Jim
Sunday, October 4, 2009
Why I Unfollowed Alyssa Milano
Twitter can create the illusion of closeness. It’s easy to read a Tweet from Ashton Kutcher chatting about his lunch and think you are close to him in some way. You and 5 million other cozy friends.
I fell dead, deep, stupid in love with Alyssa Milano years ago. How on earth you can fall in love with someone you’ve never met, I don’t know. I suppose a therapist would say that I’d “idealized” love, and chosen some remote, safe, impossible epitome of love, free from any possibility of heartbreak. Which is, of course, exactly what I got.
I’ve been on Twitter for about 6 months I think. At first, I followed a few celebs just to get the feeling of the thing when someone from an old fan site of hers found me and told me she was on Twitter. I was following in 5 seconds. Amazingly, after a few weeks, she followed me back. I don’t really know how this happened, but you can imagine my delight. I promised not to geek out on her too much in a DM (direct message to you non-twitter users, only she and I could read), and things went along swimmingly for a while. Gradually, the reply tweets and even response DMs trailed off, then stopped altogether. In her final DM to me, in response to my asking if I’d said something wrong (don’t I sound like the pathetic guy in high school who just wouldn’t get a clue that you didn’t want to date him??), I got a terse response: “Been busy. Seldom check my DMs”. This is the Twitter equivalent of “I have to wash my hair tonight.” Alyssa follows almost exactly the same number of people I do. You have to follow a person in order for them to DM you. I get about 8 DMs a day. Pretty hard to miss.
In earlier days, when I’d first joined Twitter, she was open, unguarded, colloquial. But one could watch her follower count go up, literally by the minute, and as it did so, her tone became more reserved, official, distant. No longer a chat room, peer-to-peer network of any kind. She was now standing at a podium in front of a couple hundred thousand loyal faithful hanging at her every word. Her personal tweets virtually stopped. Her interaction with Twitter notables increased, however, most notably Jack Dorsey, the founder of Twitter whom she idolizes (probably because he early on ID’d her as a high end celebrity Twitter user. He’s no fool). I found myself suffering something of a heartbreak, and felt even more foolish than I had before.
Today, I unfollow her. A celebrity with 200 thousand followers who followed me, and I am unfollowing her. Most of her fans would think I’m insane. Last night, in a melancholy moment before signing off for the night, I wrote this:
Two words of endearment so casually spent,
Pliant, quiet, composed of light
I took them to heart, my heart spent their currency
And reflected the light of them harshly into a dark corner
Where there was no one to see the shimmer
The words, so impermanent, dimming, transient
I wanted to fix them to you like a brooch
You weren’t there. No one was.
A thousand million hearts at sea
Mine as small as a light bird trapped in the canopy
I want to own them, possess them – it’s not my choice
A random act of fondness lost
I run out of water before my boat has risen
Sitting in it, oar in hand, making the sign of the cross, the rose
I will, after time has passed, stand, rise, depart
And, leaving, curse the boat, not the water
Two words, misspent, like my errant youth
Two words, recalled, anonymously
Two words, released, relieved, retrieved
Two words, too quick to be believed
“Love you”
Above all, I think I am embarrassed. What a ridiculous old misanthrope. There is so much distance between the head and heart, though. The head knows too well the distorted logic I deployed throughout this. The heart, though, that lonely hunter, does not deal in logic. It was difficult to write this, to publish it. I am outing myself as a “celebrity stalker” of sorts, I guess, although it felt lot more real than that at one point. The lies we tell ourselves.
Just hit the unfollow button. There’s no fool like an old fool.
Later,
Jim
I fell dead, deep, stupid in love with Alyssa Milano years ago. How on earth you can fall in love with someone you’ve never met, I don’t know. I suppose a therapist would say that I’d “idealized” love, and chosen some remote, safe, impossible epitome of love, free from any possibility of heartbreak. Which is, of course, exactly what I got.
I’ve been on Twitter for about 6 months I think. At first, I followed a few celebs just to get the feeling of the thing when someone from an old fan site of hers found me and told me she was on Twitter. I was following in 5 seconds. Amazingly, after a few weeks, she followed me back. I don’t really know how this happened, but you can imagine my delight. I promised not to geek out on her too much in a DM (direct message to you non-twitter users, only she and I could read), and things went along swimmingly for a while. Gradually, the reply tweets and even response DMs trailed off, then stopped altogether. In her final DM to me, in response to my asking if I’d said something wrong (don’t I sound like the pathetic guy in high school who just wouldn’t get a clue that you didn’t want to date him??), I got a terse response: “Been busy. Seldom check my DMs”. This is the Twitter equivalent of “I have to wash my hair tonight.” Alyssa follows almost exactly the same number of people I do. You have to follow a person in order for them to DM you. I get about 8 DMs a day. Pretty hard to miss.
In earlier days, when I’d first joined Twitter, she was open, unguarded, colloquial. But one could watch her follower count go up, literally by the minute, and as it did so, her tone became more reserved, official, distant. No longer a chat room, peer-to-peer network of any kind. She was now standing at a podium in front of a couple hundred thousand loyal faithful hanging at her every word. Her personal tweets virtually stopped. Her interaction with Twitter notables increased, however, most notably Jack Dorsey, the founder of Twitter whom she idolizes (probably because he early on ID’d her as a high end celebrity Twitter user. He’s no fool). I found myself suffering something of a heartbreak, and felt even more foolish than I had before.
Today, I unfollow her. A celebrity with 200 thousand followers who followed me, and I am unfollowing her. Most of her fans would think I’m insane. Last night, in a melancholy moment before signing off for the night, I wrote this:
Two words of endearment so casually spent,
Pliant, quiet, composed of light
I took them to heart, my heart spent their currency
And reflected the light of them harshly into a dark corner
Where there was no one to see the shimmer
The words, so impermanent, dimming, transient
I wanted to fix them to you like a brooch
You weren’t there. No one was.
A thousand million hearts at sea
Mine as small as a light bird trapped in the canopy
I want to own them, possess them – it’s not my choice
A random act of fondness lost
I run out of water before my boat has risen
Sitting in it, oar in hand, making the sign of the cross, the rose
I will, after time has passed, stand, rise, depart
And, leaving, curse the boat, not the water
Two words, misspent, like my errant youth
Two words, recalled, anonymously
Two words, released, relieved, retrieved
Two words, too quick to be believed
“Love you”
Above all, I think I am embarrassed. What a ridiculous old misanthrope. There is so much distance between the head and heart, though. The head knows too well the distorted logic I deployed throughout this. The heart, though, that lonely hunter, does not deal in logic. It was difficult to write this, to publish it. I am outing myself as a “celebrity stalker” of sorts, I guess, although it felt lot more real than that at one point. The lies we tell ourselves.
Just hit the unfollow button. There’s no fool like an old fool.
Later,
Jim
Saturday, October 3, 2009
A Poem For the Person Who Will Never Read It
Two words of endearment so casually spent,
Pliant, quiet, composed of light
I took them to heart, my heart spent their currency
And reflected the light of them harshly into a dark corner
Where there was no one to see the shimmer
The words, so impermanent, dimming, transient
I wanted to fix them to you like a brooch
You weren’t there. No one was.
A thousand million hearts at sea
Mine as small as a light bird trapped in the canopy
I want to own them, possess them – it’s not my choice
A random act of fondness lost
I run out of water before my boat has risen
Sitting in it, oar in hand, making the sign of the cross, the rose
I will, after time has passed, stand, rise, depart
And, leaving, curse the boat, not the water
Two words, misspent, like my errant youth
Two words, recalled, anonymously
Two words, released, relieved, retrieved
Two words, too quick to be believed
“Love you”
Pliant, quiet, composed of light
I took them to heart, my heart spent their currency
And reflected the light of them harshly into a dark corner
Where there was no one to see the shimmer
The words, so impermanent, dimming, transient
I wanted to fix them to you like a brooch
You weren’t there. No one was.
A thousand million hearts at sea
Mine as small as a light bird trapped in the canopy
I want to own them, possess them – it’s not my choice
A random act of fondness lost
I run out of water before my boat has risen
Sitting in it, oar in hand, making the sign of the cross, the rose
I will, after time has passed, stand, rise, depart
And, leaving, curse the boat, not the water
Two words, misspent, like my errant youth
Two words, recalled, anonymously
Two words, released, relieved, retrieved
Two words, too quick to be believed
“Love you”
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