The idea of “and Jeremiah Wept” is both a fascination and a complication. If we weep for others, are we weak, or empathetic? Framing matters. A hundred years ago, openly weeping for a friend may have been seen as inappropriate, but today, a public weeping may be assigned as a sign of strength of character in the bleeding heart of dismay.
There comes a moment in a lifetime where there are no choices left except to stand up to a demon, face the torture of the confrontation, and either accept your death, or condemn your victory. Some fortunate folk in the world may never have to make that choice between the devil and the doom. Unfortunately, for us, we who live in America, that time for the deconstruction of the “them,” and resurrection of the “us,” is now; right now, and we either die trying to escape, or we earn the right to live free again under the magnificent wonder of what we once always believed was a democracy.
In what has to be one of the oddest, and least nimble — but purposeful Public Policy gaffes and pre-planned Public Relations stumbles — Twitter have doubled down on the bifurcation of their service into 103,000 Verified accounts vs. 271,000,000 active, monthly, non-Verified know-nothings:
And today we’re beginning to roll out two new features to verified users on the Twitter mobile apps: alerts when another verified user follows them on both the Android and iPhone apps and the option to view their verified followers from their own profile on Twitter for iOS only. We hope these two features will help verified users easily connect with each other so we can continue to deliver those only-on-Twitter conversations to users.
Continue reading → Twitter Doubles Down on Bifurcation by Verification
Surprise and imagination can be both wonderful experiences and dangerous concepts. We’re trained early in life to find surprise in the world around us, usually juxtaposed against the wilds of nature. We are often encouraged to “think outside the box” and to reimagine reality in ways that can fundamentally change the way we view the world and our role within it. Nothing is out of reason. Everything is possible.
Continue reading → The Wounding of Surprise and the Danger of Imagination
There were two remarkable, maddening, things that happened over the weekend. Both events were related to fame and the failure of human consequence against the living, but the terms of the punishments were different: Both eternal, but one forever ended.
On Saturday, we read in the New York Times about the harrowing child abuse Dylan Farrow suffered at the hands of her infamous father, writer, director, actor and movie producer, Woody Allen.
On Sunday, we learned of the early death of actor Philip Seymour Hoffman who, at age 46, lived up to his earlier prescience about fame and fortune leading to a quick Hollywood death. He made his point real in New York City with a needle jabbed in the arm of his corpse.
Continue reading → Philip Seymour Hoffman, Dylan Farrow and the Consequence of Fame
On February 17, 2012 I wrote an article — When Doctors Fire Patients — that dealt with, among other things, the anti-vaccination efforts of some people — led by debunked semi-celebrity Jenny McCarthy — who believe childhood immunizations cause Autism even though there is, and has never been, any empirical medical proof for that claim. When pressed for scientific evidence, the anti-vaccine believers simply talk about “mother’s intuition” and other nonsense that not only puts their non-immunized children at risk for disease, but the rest of society at risk as well as these unprotected children become certain carriers of diseases that should have been eradicated from the face of the earth.
Continue reading → When Anti-Infant Immunizations Become Childhood Onset Diseases
On Janna’s way to work this morning, she snapped this image with her iPhone and emailed it to me. She’s done that in the past with a copper moon, and a Steve Jobs memorial, but these flowers, and this mourning this morning was different.
This shrine was filled with hurt and rage and you can find it all right now at the Barnes & Noble bookstore on the corner of West 8th Street and the Avenue of the Americas; for this is the spot where Mark Carson, a 32-year-old Gay man, was gunned down a few days ago — shot in the face by an impromptu stalker just for being who he was — and so the latest Greenwich Village New York City hate crime is now on the police blotter, written in blood on a public sidewalk.
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