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The Heroism of a Two Year Old and a Mobile Phone

I have written at length about the obnoxiousness of mobile phones and the damage they have done to interpersonal communication in our modern age. It is an age in which people create social bombs to force in person conversation and talk shows tell the audience that mobile phones are prohibited just to get a pleasant show experience. On occasion there is a story that really reaches out and touches you ever so and reminds you that between all of the bad there is the occasional good thing that comes from mobile phones.

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The Arrogant American: Bad Parenting Alone at Sea

Over the weekend, 16-year-old Abby Sunderland was plucked from the Indian Ocean by a French fishing vessel after she activated two emergency beacons indicating her ill-fated attempt to sail around the world alone as the youngest person — was over.  The caustic, and nearly fatal, irresponsibility of Abby’s parents — Laurence and Marianne Sunderland — earn them year’s award for Worst Parents Ever.

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Tweeting for Help From ComcastBill

We all know I love Comcast — except when I’m rarely hating on them — and we all know I don’t like Twitter even though I use it every day, so what happens when your first beloved betrays you and the second coming of your loathing, meet?  You get a socially swampy, memeingful, mashup as ComcastBill rides to your rescue.  Here’s how the Comcast Crusade began yesterday at 10:11am with this Tweet:

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Vice President Joe Six Pack and Renting the American Dream

Yesterday, Sarah Palin said she wants to represent “Joe Six Pack” in the vice presidency of the United States.  Most an entire nation groaned in response. 

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Habeas Corpus: Rescuing the Original Writ

We know bad news is released on Friday and last Friday was no exception when the Supreme Court made history by reversing its previous decision on April 2 — and will now hear the case of Guantanamo detainees who argue they are being illegally held as “enemy combatants” without access to due process in the American federal court system. That Supreme Court reversal — authentic and historic in itself — is Bad News for the Bush administration even as Hamdan v. Rumsfeld rumbles in the distant hearts of many.

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The Overused Hero

It is Memorial Day in America. Today we mourn and celebrate the lives lost in war while in service to our country. The word “Hero” has become overused in our colloquial culture. Teachers who help poor children learn are not heroes. Fathers are not heroes to daughters. A person pulled from a burning building was not saved by a hero. A Hero has a specific meaning and — I argue today of all days — a true Hero is a soldier who donates a bit of their body fighting on foreign soil. Some leave a leg. Some leave an arm. Others leave their hearts.

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Shooting the Rescuer

People are shocked to learn in New Orleans gunshots are being fired at helicopter rescuers, cellular tower technicians and levee engineers. Why the shock? It all makes perfect human sense: There is profit in chaos. In a crisis, a grab for power can bring new life and tempt an old death. Right now those in power are those who best know the backwater streets and flooded alleyways.

Those who control the ground are required, as willful instruments of human impulse, to finally enforce their minority will on the majority with muscle and bullets. Those creating the chaos must perpetuate it with fear against those who wish for a quick return to law and order because there are riches buried in the Katrina rubble and restoring access and electricity and good people defeats the mission of those who seek to reap profit from death.

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