How 350.org changed the face of climate advocacy

Posted on October 2, 2012 by summysays

Remember “Kony 2012”? With almost 100 million views on YouTube and 17 million views on Vimeo, I’d be shocked if you hadn’t heard the name yet. Polls suggest that more than half of young adult Americans heard about Kony 2012 within days following the video’s release. Facebook friends posted their outrage at Kony’s human rights atrocities, followed just as quickly by their outrage at Invisible Children’s irresponsible use of funds and the filmmaker’s mental breakdown. Even my parents were asking me to explain “Kony 2012” (is he running against Obama?). Despite the negative attention and criticism, the video resulted in a resolution by the United States Senate and contributed to the decision to send troops by the African Union. Who knows how many lives that song may have changed.

From #Kony2012 to the Chick-fil-a gay marriage debate, social media is instant, far-reaching, and viral – the perfect conduit for opposing and supporting views to be heard across the globe. And on the information superhighway, information that was once readily available only to a few is now available for all to access.  But rather than news articles, encyclopedias or otherwise “scholarly” sources, the main impetus of the spread of information has been social media.

In the field of environmental justice, let’s look at how one social media campaign built a global climate movement.

“It’s a quiet revolution begun by ordinary people with the stuff of our daily lives.”

― 350.org founder Bill McKibben

350 means safety from the climate crisis

For those who have not heard of 350, it’s “an international campaign dedicated to the climate solutions that science and justice demand” by reducing the amount of CO2 present in the atmosphere. According to leading scientists, we can safely live under up to 350 ppm of CO2 but currently have 392 ppm. We can still do something to reverse climate change, but we simply must alter our course while we can. 350 is a prime example of effective and bold social media: the spread of research that was once reserved for scientists, made commonplace and easy for everyone to understand.

350.org was founded in 2008 by U.S. environmental activist and author Bill McKibben, who wrote The End of Nature, one of the first books on global warming for the general public. Like An Inconvenient Truth and Silent Spring, McKibben’s book and career focus on ways to bring the issue of EJ into the global spotlight.

There are several aspects of the 350 campaign that showcase the organization’s unique combination of roles: educator, advocator, lobbyist. First, social media played a key role in mobilizing concerned citizens to speak out against carbon emissions. For example, throughout the “Step it Up” campaign directly preceding the founding of 350, citizens held a banner with the message: “Step It Up, Congress: Cut Carbon 80% by 2050!” The people spoke out in large numbers and saw results. Within a week, presidential candidates John Edwards, Hillary Clinton, and Barack Obama signed on to the 80% by 2050 target.  Similarly, 350.org planned an International Day of Climate Action on Oct 4 and united over 5,200 separate in more than 180 countries, something that CNN later called “the most widespread day of political action in the planet’s history.”

Secondly, Tweets, Facebook and blogging helped 350.org stay connected with supporters; whether the 350 tweeter was in Copenhagen for an environmental summit, on Capitol Hill passing environmental legislation, or anywhere across the country on Climate Action Day, people could connect with 350 as easily as watching a YouTube video or reading from the blog.

Lastly, the use of social media allowed different people in the 350 campaign to connect with one another, encourage and learn from the efforts of others working towards the same goal.

Here you can watch a video of 350 explained without words, which is fitting for the new global face of climate change:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s5kg1oOq9tY&feature=player_embedded

As 350 showed us, social media, citizen journalism, blogs and twitter have the power to spark revolutions. On blogs, the information is oftentimes more digestible and available than a newspaper, while the ease and convenience with which you can reach hundreds or thousands of people with the click of one button and spread ideas is unmatched in history.

Read more: http://www.350.org/media/about350

Explain climate change like I’m 5: http://www.350.org/en/understanding-350#1

2011 stories and pictures: https://act.350.org/donate/2011_2

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PLACES: Fido Is (kind of) Like Twitter Inception

Posted on October 2, 2012 by Emma Grager

I spent my Friday morning in a familiar place for an unusual reason: a business meeting.
Yep – for music! We’re really doin’ it, folks! But more on that another day.
My manager and I met with fellow marketing geek Ben Walls (glad to see we’re not alone in that category!) for coffee at Fido. Ah, Fido: A beloved Nashville hangout for record executives and exam-cramming students alike. You see, Fido has the two things that we’re all looking for in life: good coffee and free Wi-Fi.
But if you’re a Fido frequenter, you are well aware that the popularity of this place comes at a cost – if it gets too busy, they’ll turn off the Internet.
That’s right. 
The Internet itself! 
Ok, or maybe just their own Wi-Fi… You can’t really be sure. 
And the whole world disappears into the emptiness of that space where five bars of beautiful network used to be. 
Though this experience is briefly frustrating, it has brought to my attention a strange phenomenon: social networking continues without the Internet. I hear the chatter of aspiring musicians interviewing potential band members, the negotiations of food aficionados with restaurant entrepreneurs, and the excited giggles of newly-deemed bridesmaids with their queen bee; people connecting with one another in language that mimics tweets and status updates. Some I even overhear quoting tweets or showing each other their latest Instagram pictures. In my lifetime, as I was “born digital” as Mary Cross calls it, I have only ever thought of and heard the phrase “social networking” in reference to one of various online person-to-person connections. 
Not so! Social networking lives on in coffee shop chit-chat, post-church brunches, and after class “did-you-do-the-reading?-Me-neither” mingling. Nowadays it takes on a much briefer form than those occasions that I have heard called “networking opportunities.” Sure, that might be what we still name those Fido morning business meetings, but in truth, we are conversing through a series of Twitter-like expressions, the only way to keep one another’s attention.
“Today, the average human attention span lasts about 2 seconds,” Ben informs Margot and me. 
“Well, at least we beat the goldfish!” I remark.
I cannot speak to Ben’s source for this factoid, but this aspect of instant transmission of information goes beyond our cyber-selves. It penetrates our daily lives in even our face-to-face interactions. The cyber and the real are now intertwined.
I realize that Ben’s tidbit of info was shared with us in a verbal tweet: certainly fewer than 140 characters, poignant, and you can almost hear “#didyouknow” at the end of his statement.
So from this tweet-y conversation trend I cannot exclude myself.  If anything, this brief form of information sharing is magnified in the music marketing pool in which I find myself like a four-year-old learning to swim.
And if Fido is home to many of Nashville’s music business meetings, then Fido is home to the Twitter inception of the music world. 
Twitter inception is the strange existence of social networking, as it is online, within social networking, as it is in person. In case you are not familiar with Twitter inception, we’ll do some background investigating.
Ever since Al Gore (or whoever else would like to take credit) invented the Internet, our society has been lead-footing it up the steep road to “It’s a Small World.” Along the way, blogging and micro-blogging have gained important roles in not only the online persona (what I called the “cyber-self”) but also in the real world relationships of an individual.
Twitter in its infancy in 2006 was seen as a micro-blog outlet for those who had something brief to tell the rest of the world. Your friends could find out that you had a grilled cheese for lunch, were going to the Celine Dion concert, or had just finished reading The Kite Runner with only the click of a button.
We decided to cover up the human need to know better and be known better with the simplicity of knowing more. As our need to know more and know it now accumulated, we were no longer satisfied with just knowing about each other. We wanted to know about important people too. And celebrities found it charming that we commoners might be fascinated by their smallest musings. So Twitter became a marketing tool.  Tweets were no longer a way to tell the world the mundane mush of our lives that we wouldn’t otherwise verbalize, but breaking news from celebrity sources.
Now Twitter as a marketing tool strongly influences the music biz. If you don’t believe me, just ask SnoopDogg.  Musicians see value in being able to communicate to fans on a more personal level than going through a record label or management company. Unlike political revolution, where Twitter seems to be the key in one instance and not in another, the music industry as a whole has seen profit from the Twittersphere.
The heart of music industry communication is still largely face-to-face. And this is exactly where the “inception” part of “Twitter inception” comes in. In these real life Fido meetings, you’ve got to know your stuff – the latest project your contact has completed, the artists they work with, the sound they like, the last concert they saw, why they might want to keep up a business relationship with you, and more. So where do you find all of this? Twitter. Thus Twitter as a cyber entity becomes part of your conversation in the non-virtual world.
You’ve just been inception-ed (inceived?). By a little, blue, cartoon bird that carries whales when it’s not carrying your conversation.
  P.S. If you made it through even most of this post, pat yourself of the back for beating the odds. Your attention span lasted around 6 minutes. Congrats!

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PLACES: Fido Is (kind of) Like Twitter Inception

Posted on October 2, 2012 by Emma Grager

I spent my Friday morning in a familiar place for an unusual reason: a business meeting.
Yep – for music! We’re really doin’ it, folks! But more on that another day.
My manager and I met with fellow marketing geek Ben Walls (glad to see we’re not alone in that category!) for coffee at Fido. Ah, Fido: A beloved Nashville hangout for record executives and exam-cramming students alike. You see, Fido has the two things that we’re all looking for in life: good coffee and free Wi-Fi.
But if you’re a Fido frequenter, you are well aware that the popularity of this place comes at a cost – if it gets too busy, they’ll turn off the Internet.
That’s right. 
The Internet itself! 
Ok, or maybe just their own Wi-Fi… You can’t really be sure. 
And the whole world disappears into the emptiness of that space where five bars of beautiful network used to be. 
Though this experience is briefly frustrating, it has brought to my attention a strange phenomenon: social networking continues without the Internet. I hear the chatter of aspiring musicians interviewing potential band members, the negotiations of food aficionados with restaurant entrepreneurs, and the excited giggles of newly-deemed bridesmaids with their queen bee; people connecting with one another in language that mimics tweets and status updates. Some I even overhear quoting tweets or showing each other their latest Instagram pictures. In my lifetime, as I was “born digital” as Mary Cross calls it, I have only ever thought of and heard the phrase “social networking” in reference to one of various online person-to-person connections. 
Not so! Social networking lives on in coffee shop chit-chat, post-church brunches, and after class “did-you-do-the-reading?-Me-neither” mingling. Nowadays it takes on a much briefer form than those occasions that I have heard called “networking opportunities.” Sure, that might be what we still name those Fido morning business meetings, but in truth, we are conversing through a series of Twitter-like expressions, the only way to keep one another’s attention.
“Today, the average human attention span lasts about 2 seconds,” Ben informs Margot and me. 
“Well, at least we beat the goldfish!” I remark.
I cannot speak to Ben’s source for this factoid, but this aspect of instant transmission of information goes beyond our cyber-selves. It penetrates our daily lives in even our face-to-face interactions. The cyber and the real are now intertwined.
I realize that Ben’s tidbit of info was shared with us in a verbal tweet: certainly fewer than 140 characters, poignant, and you can almost hear “#didyouknow” at the end of his statement.
So from this tweet-y conversation trend I cannot exclude myself.  If anything, this brief form of information sharing is magnified in the music marketing pool in which I find myself like a four-year-old learning to swim.
And if Fido is home to many of Nashville’s music business meetings, then Fido is home to the Twitter inception of the music world. 
Twitter inception is the strange existence of social networking, as it is online, within social networking, as it is in person. In case you are not familiar with Twitter inception, we’ll do some background investigating.
Ever since Al Gore (or whoever else would like to take credit) invented the Internet, our society has been lead-footing it up the steep road to “It’s a Small World.” Along the way, blogging and micro-blogging have gained important roles in not only the online persona (what I called the “cyber-self”) but also in the real world relationships of an individual.
Twitter in its infancy in 2006 was seen as a micro-blog outlet for those who had something brief to tell the rest of the world. Your friends could find out that you had a grilled cheese for lunch, were going to the Celine Dion concert, or had just finished reading The Kite Runner with only the click of a button.
We decided to cover up the human need to know better and be known better with the simplicity of knowing more. As our need to know more and know it now accumulated, we were no longer satisfied with just knowing about each other. We wanted to know about important people too. And celebrities found it charming that we commoners might be fascinated by their smallest musings. So Twitter became a marketing tool.  Tweets were no longer a way to tell the world the mundane mush of our lives that we wouldn’t otherwise verbalize, but breaking news from celebrity sources.
Now Twitter as a marketing tool strongly influences the music biz. If you don’t believe me, just ask SnoopDogg.  Musicians see value in being able to communicate to fans on a more personal level than going through a record label or management company. Unlike political revolution, where Twitter seems to be the key in one instance and not in another, the music industry as a whole has seen profit from the Twittersphere.
The heart of music industry communication is still largely face-to-face. And this is exactly where the “inception” part of “Twitter inception” comes in. In these real life Fido meetings, you’ve got to know your stuff – the latest project your contact has completed, the artists they work with, the sound they like, the last concert they saw, why they might want to keep up a business relationship with you, and more. So where do you find all of this? Twitter. Thus Twitter as a cyber entity becomes part of your conversation in the non-virtual world.
You’ve just been inception-ed (inceived?). By a little, blue, cartoon bird that carries whales when it’s not carrying your conversation.
  P.S. If you made it through even most of this post, pat yourself of the back for beating the odds. Your attention span lasted around 6 minutes. Congrats!

Posted in nashville, PLACES, social media | Comments Off on PLACES: Fido Is (kind of) Like Twitter Inception

Susan G. Komen’s Fall from Grace

Posted on October 2, 2012 by scienceundone

On January 31st, 2012, Susan G. Komen for the Cure stripped Planned Parenthood of a $680,000 grant to provide breast screening services and mammogram referrals to low-income women. This abrupt move ended a 5-year partnership between America’s darling breast cancer charity and the nation’s leading service provider for women’s healthcare.

In the span of just 24 hours, the internet tore down, devoured, and spit out a non-profit charity organization who had surreptitiously began to deviate from its original mission of helping women and had slipped into incredibly dangerous political territory. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned-–especially if said woman is well-connected to social media.

The move ended with a complete decision reversal, the resignation of 5 top Komen executives, $3 million dollars raised for Planned Parenthood, irreparable betrayal of public trust, and one of the most impressive case studies of social media protest seen to date.

What happened? I’ll explain…

[details to come]

This is not about abortion—–you can scream and yell and argue until your face turns blue, but such a superficial take on the issue fundamentally misses the point. Women are becoming collateral damage in ideological wars over religion and politics. Enough is enough.

Any female with an ounce of empathy can see a bit of herself in the victims of the Komen decision. If you value your status as a healthcare recipient in this country and regard yourself as a member of the moral community, these policy decisions affect you.

Part of my empathetic understanding stems from my experience transitioning from a money-grubbing, filial maggot to a somewhat self-sufficient individual. In the summer of 2011, I was lucky to get hired by a big company with a competitive market share in a niche technology sector. No humble brag here—the job was anything but glamorous and my life suddenly began to suck. My free time was reduced one thousand-fold and rush hour traffic became the new bane of my existence. Such is life. But now I had my own office and big girl responsibilities and paid a handsome sum of money to Uncle Sam…I was finally an adult, damn it. Except the fact that I paid taxes meant that I now had a source of income, and this brand new stream of revenue that magically appeared in my bank account like a shiny pot of gold at the end of some biweekly corporate rainbow prompted my parents to cut me off. While I regarded my first paycheck with such caution and prudence you would think it was a bomb that was about to explode, I have no doubt in my mind that my parents treated themselves to some fanciful dinner, popped a bottle of Dom Pérignon in my honor, and perhaps even ended the night by buying a round of limoncello shots for the entire restaurant. Here’s to you, kid: welcome to the real world.

And in the real world, medical costs can be prohibitively expensive—–especially if you’re uninsured. Although I had coverage, I was still new to the city and had not yet found a general physician or women’s practitioner. On top of that, I found the cost of specialist co-pays burdensome. Where do you think I turned for basic healthcare? That’s right. The ubiquitous, friendly neighborhood clinic. A crazed woman speaking in tongues and violently fist-pumping a string of rosary beads into the air—–to the unanimous approval of her captive invisible audience—–assailed me from the sidewalk, shoving a Bible in my face as I attempted to enter the building. Relax, lady. I’m here to get my f@#%ing iron checked.

You can clutch your pearls atop a snowy white unicorn and fly to an alternative universe where only the “undesirables” require family planning or women’s wellness care. But you’re deluding yourself if you think that Planned Parenthood is somehow not “for women like you,” or that there is not a tremendous societal need for affordable, accessible healthcare. An estimated 1 in 5 women will visit a PP clinic in her lifetime. By stripping funds from an organization that provides an absolutely unparalleled service to the community, you’re waging an assault on women and families everywhere. And you’re damn right I’m going to call your ass out on it.

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The age of twitter, and 47%

Posted on October 2, 2012 by astudentguidetoelection2012

Mitt Romney, May 17, 2012: “There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. There are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe that government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you name it.”

This statement, leaked by iPhone video to YouTube, found on YouTube and tweeted about, posted to a blog, retweeted, retweeted some more, and finally thrown into the world of traditional media, became one of the most talked about election events of the year, maybe even the last two years. The incredible exposure this “secret video” received is largely due to the success of social networking sites in shaping public discourse. Due to the extraordinary, world-changing success that sites like Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube have had in general, really. When the story exploded, coverage came from blogs and twitter first and foremost. The spread of this news was not done initially by newscasters, but by individuals talking and spreading the news on the Internet. But who’s to say traditional media alone couldn’t have created such public upheaval about this controversy? Surely a statement like this would be salient to the daily news without tweeting, without blogging, and without Facebooking.

My answer is that yes, it would still be relevant. It would still have dominated prime time news. But the traditional news media broadcasts wouldn’t have been able to talk about this controversy in the same context (as in the same place the video was found), in as effective and efficient a way, and have allowed for this through the responses of American citizens instead of political media elite. To say that user responses are a positive aspect of twitter is the world’s biggest understatement. User responses are not only beneficial to Twitter’s role in public dialogue, but essential to its function as a media form characterized by the unique ability to spread news quickly and efficiently.

So here are some retweet-worthy comments found on Twitter responding to Romney’s 47 percent statement:

“Mitt Romney: ‘It’s time we stop offering school lunches to kids who are moochers’ #47Percent” – @TheDailyEdge

 

“The irony will be Romney being one of the 47 percent that didn’t pay taxes. #ItCouldHappen” – @JillEBond

 

“We just met, and this is crazy, but did you know that 47% of Americans are dependent and lazy?” – @7im

 

“I dunno how politicians wake up each morning and forget every phone everywhere is a multimedia recording device, but thank god they do” – @dcbigjohn

 

These colorful tweets represent less than 1% of the responses on twitter related to this controversy. In fact, people are still, two weeks later, fervently tweeting about the statement and its implications for themselves, and the country at large. Where would we be without twitter and blogging? We would be talking to our limited number of politically active acquaintances (compared to tweeters or bloggers across the country, and across the world), and watching or reading coverage of the event by mainstream reporters, and probably won’t have access to as many comments, as comedic of comments, or as varied. Even JK Rowling (yes, the author of Harry Potter) made a statement to an interviewer about the 47% comment. How feasible would it have been for people across the Atlantic to respond to America’s political news if it weren’t for blogging and twitter?

But here’s the downfall: Because of this bandwagon effect of spreading, and continuous outrage over Romney’s statement, most people missed the rest of the hour long video. Teaser alert: I’m not about to say that the 47 percent comment was taken out of context, or was wrongly characterized. I’m really not. But in watching the full video, all I could think about was how incredibly refreshing it was to see a candidate being so unbelievably honest about his opinion. Rarely are we able to see candidates talking when they don’t think their statements will be discussed en masse by reporters or television viewers, or taped and posted online, or broadcasted to millions of voters. Whether or not you agree with the content of the video, it’s comforting for once to see a speech without the necessary political rhetoric required for the rest of a candidate’s air-time.

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The Return of TheFanMan

Posted on October 1, 2012 by Blogging Golomb

Hello.

My name is Jesse Golomb, and I’ve been here for a little while.

Not so long, mind you – I wouldn’t ever call myself an expert in this field. I wouldn’t even go as far as to call myself a veteran of it. But I’ve been doing this running a website thing for almost two years now, and I feel like, along the way, I’ve gotten a decently good grasp on how to hit the ‘publish’ button and send someone else’s carefully cultivated words out into cyberspace.

I joke, but as with any good jest, there’s some truth involved.

When I started TheFanManifesto – the self-proclaimed “website for the educated sports fan…” a claim which, I would be the first to admit, is more than a tad pompous – last May, my goal was to find a forum in which all my pent-up energy could be released. I’ve been a diehard sports fan and an aspiring writer since the age of five. Certainly, after a decade and a half listening to the mainstream sports media spew a whole lot of wrong and a lot less right, the time had come to release all that repressed frustration right onto the virtual page, a few times a week, for all of the world – or at least the few friends and family members who gave a shit – to see.

Of course, along the way, the hope was that I’d also write, a lot. And – I wouldn’t be a writer if this wasn’t the case – that a hefty dose of positive feedback and instant gratification would satiate my ever-hungry ego.

And at first, I did write. (A lot – Last summer, I published 3-5 800-2000 word columns a week.) And from the outset, the reaction was flattering: traffic continuously increased. Emails flooded in from people wanting to know more. Friends asked if they could contribute, and others talked about it as I passed them on the way to class or at a party on the weekend. I started a site tie-in twitter feed that quickly exploded to around 1,000 followers (a figure that has, more than anything, gone a long way towards assuaging the doubts of any who wonder: “why the hell do you spend so much time on this thing? Is anyone even paying attention?).

So, yeah things were going peachy. Probably too peachy, actually, and definitely too peachy too quickly, because as with any business experiencing quick success (even if this one wasn’t making much monetary headway), the urge came to expand.

So expand I did: with college looming, and the threat of my free-time dissolving into hours of paper-writing and natty-light-pounding, I did what any good writer/bullshitter (because god knows, those two attributes go hand-in-hand) would do: I convinced other people to do the work for me.

Since I began college last August, more than 60 writers/bloggers/authors have done work under TheFanManifesto masthead. Not a single one of them was named Jesse Golomb, and I have only ever met one of them in person. I haven’t seen that person since I was sixteen.

But with expansion has come contraction. There is no question that my workload from last summer was unsustainable. 6,000 words would have never found a place in a week packed with classes, parties, papers, classes, tests and – most of all – happiness. Finding a team of writers to publish daily content would not only take some weight off my shoulders but also serve to push up my viewership and further TheFanManifesto brand as well as my personal one.

(Say what you want, but "Editor-in-Chief” looks and sounds a lot better than “blogger.” I run my website for the love of the game, to fulfill a stated creed of “anti-sensational sports opinion for all” – but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t do it with at least one plotting eye cast towards the future.)

But, of course, there was penance to be paid for my hubris. On TheFanManifesto plantation, I was The Master. As dozens worked for free under my command, the temptation came to slack off.

And now, as my writing output has slowed to the point of stopping, and as what I’ve built has started to erode not as slowly, the time has come for me to once again grab the reins. I may not have time for 6,000 words a week. But I should have time for a thousand. And if there’s any hope for the site for the educated sports fan to become exactly that, then it’s time to pay for my sins.

Starting this separate personal blog, for this class, will help me to do just that. Other than finding time, one of the biggest challenges in providing content was finding inspiration. As a high schooler, there were really only three things on my mind: a) how puberty and teenage awkwardness was – ahem – manifesting itself; b) all the girls this manifestation was causing me to strike out with; and c), sports.

As I’ve gone few years older and few years more mature, these concerns have been replaced with more serious, adult stuff (At least this is what I like to tell myself). In any event, sports now takes up a considerably smaller part of my mental pie chart.

But now, with a little rigidity, a little inspiration, a little time set aside every week for the purpose of reinvigorating my passion for sports and for writing, the hope is that that slice will once again expand. I’ve loved these two things – sports and writing – for far too long to let them get pushed out by a few extra papers, a few more parties and a few less hours of sleep.

It’s time to emancipate. The burden on my unpaid, sometimes untalented writers has become too great, as has my reliance on a system that perpetuates mediocrity and enables laziness. It’s time to break the chains: the thickest of which now reside on my wrists. The time has come to hit the ‘publish’ button on something I wrote, and then have a whole lot of people compliment me afterwards.

Let freedom ring.

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If the term environmental…

Posted on October 1, 2012 by summysays

If the term environmental justice is new to you, take heart: my soon to be released book (Eco-Tyranny) will expose the whole damned plan. In a nutshell, environmental justice is a government-sponsored ploy to fleece for-profit businesses for imaginary pollution crises they have supposedly caused which have — again supposedly — impacted lower income minority communities. The businesses in the crosshairs are hit with fees, fines, penalties, and lawsuits, with the resulting funds going to pay for welfare handouts.

I didn’t know there were opponents of giving everyone the same access to healthy living environments. Everyone’s a critic.

Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2012/02/obamas_environmental_justice_announcement.html#ixzz284M904pC

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Who actually comments on Lil’ Wayne’s Facebook Posts?

Posted on September 26, 2012 by ericrosenberg7

I hate all of my Facebook friends. I really do. And I’m Facebook friends with my mom. But I love people who comment on celebrity facebook fan pages. When someone like Lil Wayne who has over 40 million fans posts on their page, it gets thousands and thousands and thousands of comments and likes almost instantly. They could post a picture of the inside of their asshole and a million people will like it.

I looked at this recent post from Lil Wayne-

Image

Just a normal picture. No reason to post it other than to laugh at how stupid people are. Here are some of my favorite comments…

Image

What is this guy asking? It could be “Are you real, Lil Wayne?” Are you a figment of my imagination or are you an actual human being? Is any of this real? What is real? Is it possible that we are living in an alternative universe than this one and we are just projections of someone’s dream living in a different universe at a different time and nothing not even our deepest hopes and dreams and fears are real? Is this guy looking to Lil Wayne for the meaning of life?

The second interpretation, and the more likely one, is “Are you really Lil Wayne.” But this one is even more ridiculous than the first. Does he expect a response? “Hey Will! Just read your comment and yes it is really me :) I got go now though.I have 8,398 more comments to respond to. Talk to you soon!” This guy actually took the time to click comment and type in his misspelled, ridiculous question. He will never get that time back. Never.

Image

Google it fucking moron.

Image

Lern english.

Image

Nothing’s funnier than outdated racist slurs.

Here was my favorite.

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See that one like on her comment? That’s me. Out of all the comments this may actually be the most practical. She is letting Lil Wayne know he can cum on her fo show and if Lil Wayne somehow saw it and was interested there’s a small, but real possibility he would maybe just maybe shoot back a response. Also, look at what time she wrote the comment. She woke up, stretched her legs, made sure she wasn’t  stupid enough to forget how to breathe then wrote on Lil Wayne’s wall. She probably fucked up at least two Whoppers  at work while sneaking peeks at her pink Motorola Razor to see if Wayne hollered back. I loved this girl so much I decided to click on her profile.

Image

Yes Marcus Johnson, I can tell too. Our friend Tonya here is twisted as f.  Highlights of her profile include muploads of smoking weed at work, titty tatoos, and the most creative ridiculous not even close spellings of words that I’ve ever seen. I don’t want to ruin it for you, it’s a gold mine. Go discover it for yourself.

This is how I spend most of my time on Facebook now. Reading comments on Applebee’s fan page or event pages for Flag Day is the best way to realize what most people on Facebook are really like. Real red-blooded Americans. No albums from trips to Europe or instagrammed five course meals. Just pure, unadulterated good ol’ stupidity.

Send over any noteworthy comments you find on the Book- whywesuckblog@gmail.com

And finally…

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You’re.

I’m pretty sure you’re wearing a cap in gown in that profile picture.

You’re. You’re. You’re. You’re. You’re.

 

 

Bonus Lil’ Wayne video:

This comes from Wayne’s cross examination from Quincy Jones’ III lawyers. Lil’ is suing Jones for using Wayne’s own music in a documentary Jones made following the rapper around as he recorded his album “Tha Carter III.” Yes, he is paying lawyers and using taxpayer money to spend hours and hours in court because he didn’t want his own music in his own documentary. Suing the producer of your documentary because you didn’t like it is like suing you mirror because you don’t like your face.

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Between God & Green

Posted on September 26, 2012 by summysays

This week, I went to two events on campus that highlighted different aspects of the environmental justice movement. First, on Monday night, Katharine Wilkinson, author of From God to Green, came to speak about the role of Evangelical Christianity in shaping the EJ movement for Christians.

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author Katharine Wilkinson, whose grandpa designed Memorial Gym

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People in the audience: three elderly people, 25 white kids, me. The event was sponsored by SPEAR, the American Studies department at Vanderbilt, and Mayfield 4, who provided the platters of cupcakes.

First I’m reminded of a rhetorical question my mom once posed: Why do we care more about trees than people? (On that same vein, why do we spend $52.87 billion on pets each year in America?) For many, protecting the environment really is about saving trees for the sake of trees: conserving nature and wildlife for future generations in order to contemplate, reflect, discover. But as global environmental degradation continues, we are shifting our priorities to people. In many ways, in order to care for people we must also care for the trees.

I was really excited about the talk because I have noted the validity of “Creation care” throughout Scripture in the past. For example, one of God’s first commands to Adam and Eve was to cultivate the land: “The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it” — Gen 2:15. And there are consequences throughout the Old Testament for the Israelites when they defile the land. (Check out more examples at http://www.earthcareonline.org/bibleverses.html.) Wilkinson walked us through the history of Christian climate concerns.

First she discussed the Evangelical Climate Initiative that ran in The New York Times:

The Evangelical Climate Initiative (ECI) is a group of over 300 senior evangelical leaders in the United States who are convinced it is time for our country to help solve the problem of global warming. We seek to do so in a way that creates jobs, cleans up our environment, and enhances national security by reducing our dependence on foreign oil, thereby creating a safe and a healthy future for our children. Our deep commitment to Jesus Christ and his commands to love our neighbors, care for “the least of these,” and be proper stewards of His creation compels us to act.

And its first claim: Human-Induced Climate Change is Real.

Right on, brethren. Read the rest of the statement here: http://christiansandclimate.org/statement/

We have a moral obligation to fight for the poor and love our neighbors. Social justice gives a voice to the voiceless, whether “the voiceless” is low-income people of color coping with unjust environmental hazards, or nature that cannot defend itself or speak out. I think some Christians are fatalistic about the whole situation (if a fiery Apocalypse is inevitable and will destroy the world anyway, why even try?). But it’s just not right to sit by and let people, especially the 95% of the world that lacks the privileges and resources of the American Evangelical church, to suffer from environmental degradation that we ourselves perpetuate.

Wilkinson then provided some creative examples of Evangelical outreach to help Christians get green.

  • What Would Jesus Drive? http://www.whatwouldjesusdrive.info/intro.php (Answer: a hybrid)
  • “If you love the Creator, take care of Creation” bumper stickers
  • The Green Bible, which highlights passages that point towards creation care and is made from recycled paper, using soy-based ink with a cotton/linen cover

She cited influential Evangelicals like Rick Warren (ehh) and my hero, John Stott, that had conversions to climate change that echoed their conversions to Christ. People felt that God had intervened in their lives at just the right times in order to call Christians to save the world a la Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood.

One interesting dichotomy she discussed is the evolution of our interpretation of God’s command after creation: Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule…over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.” In the past, many Christians treated this verse as the go-ahead to do whatever we wanted to the Earth because we were allowed dominion over our resources. But today we realize that God calls us to diligent stewardship of our resources, to tend and keep the land instead of overworking or destroying it.

It seems so clear to me, so the backlash against this movement from the conservative Evangelicals was intriguing. She pointed out that it was tied to power from the Republican party that churches may want to protect. Leading opponents of evangelical climate justice claim that it’s “the new face of the Pro-Death movement. Push back against the hype!”

Can we reach across the aisles that divide us for the sake of mutual concern for climate change? Apparently we can: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NhmpsUMdTH8

(note top YouTube comment: “Let’s push that couch a bit further out”)

Wilkinson is a self-identified agnostic, and she approached religion from a very scientific, psychological standpoint.  From what I could tell, in her opinion, Christians suppress “evil” desires and try and live godly lives for rewards that we don’t get until the afterlife. Similarly, we need to control our emissions outputs, coal consumption and so forth now, even though the human race won’t experience the horror or benefits of our lifestyle until later. The religious mindset of delayed gratification is perfect for the environmental message. I did not agree with this logic, first because Christianity isn’t only about afterlife rewards, but how to live our current life to the full. Also I think she missed the human component of Christianity, the love that fuels the Evangelical EJ movement. Because God loves the poor, we love the poor. This means protecting those that are hurt disproportionally by environmental degradation.

But overall she did a great job raising key questions. What responsibilities do we have to people outside America? How much do we have to sacrifice our wellbeing for the generations after us? What does it mean to live on a planet that our actions are changing?

Wilkinson closed her PowerPoint presentation with an image of a shiny, pristine green apple hearkening back to the original land preserve, the Garden of Eden. “Seek out opportunities to find those you disagree with,” she urged, “to move collectively from the wilderness to the Promised Land.”

Image Also, today was the annual Farm to Fork dinner on Commons Lawn. Strings of lights hung from the trees and provided the classy atmosphere of Peabody Esplanade against the brilliantly lit Wyatt Center. During the reception, the local farmers, growers, bread artisans and fruit vendors introduced themselves and spoke briefly about their work and relationship to the community. A lively band played bluegrass and country while we dined on yummy local foods: grainy breads, squash, chicken quarters, pork loin, arugula salad, and to top it off, rich pumpkin bread pudding with Jack Daniel’s butter sauce.

ImageWe met a few local farmers and shared a meal. I bought a jar of pepper jelly afterwards, and it’s delicious. There’s a lot of yummy local food in Nashville! I hope we get more soon. So far I only know of one restaurant that watches where its food comes from (Tayst) and its sandwich counterpart (Sloco). We close the night by toasting the green practices of our local farmers over blackberry sage water. Here’s to eating from farm to fork!

Until next time,

Summy

Posted in Between God and Green, From Farm to Fork | Comments Off on Between God & Green

Pig saves Goat. Human is Idiot.

Posted on September 26, 2012 by ericrosenberg7

In this video we have three parties involved. Let’s look at them.

One. A goat that somehow managed to get its leg stuck underneath the rapids of a fake  petting zoo pond. Honestly I’m not too familiar with goats or goat culture but a quick Google search led me to believe they are neither the smartest, nor the most courageous creatures in the Animal kingdom. My Google search also said  goats were supposed to be good swimmers, but who knows how many drowned toddler carcasses or these things that apparently kill animals are at the bottom of that lake. The goat probably shouldn’t have even gotten into that lake, but he is absolved of all blame. He is the victim.

Two. A human. A product of millions of years of evolution that all led to intensely effective critical thinking skills, survival instincts, and seventeen seasons of The Bachelor. We have long limbs capable of walking, running, climbing, and, wait for it, swimming. We even think we have been imparted with a magical sense of right and wrong and a destiny as the protectors of the planet and all that it contains. But this specimen of the species can only muster up a “Goat in the water!” grunt while focusing his camera on the death of one of God’s other glorious creatures. The only good thing this guy ever did was upload this video to YouTube.  Luckily for us, his idiocy sets the stage for…

Three. Our hero. From the very same animal that brought you the McRib and unkosherness, we get this breathtaking inspirational act of selflessness and bravery. He saves the day and just carries on sniffing the ground for stuff. Ain’t no thing. I don’t think a pig has stolen the show like this since Pumba totally upstaged Simba in Lion King 1.5.

Bonus goat and pig videos—


Why We Suck may hate most humans, but we love all cute animals.

Posted in death, goat, human, idiot, pig | Comments Off on Pig saves Goat. Human is Idiot.

2. FOMO

Posted on September 26, 2012 by ericrosenberg7

You decide not to go to that party at the very last second. You convinced yourself that it wouldn’t be more fun than watching another seven episodes of Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives. It wasn’t worth your time to shower, then get dressed, then drive there, then remind yourself to nod when people are talking to you, then decide when the least awkward time to leave is, then figure out what kind of goodbye you have to give each person. Does she deserve a hug? Is she going for a kiss on the cheek? Should I give this guy a handshake or is he going to grab my thumb for some kind of cooler handshake? Do I even dare a high-five?

Sometimes it’s not just worth the trouble.

But then the night’s pictures look like the credits from the Hangover with less Asian male frontal nudity (unless those are the kind of parties you like to go to and you didn’t actually miss anything). You catch bits and pieces of the night’s events and the fear of missing out really starts to kick in.

That gorgeous girl was feeling the full wrath of her self-esteem/daddy issues.

The guy everyone loves told an epic story people will be talking about for years.

Everyone was laughing and smiling and talking about how much you suck and how thankful they were you didn’t show up with your fucking stupid fucking face.

Well that last part may not be completely true. But that’s how someone with FOMO’s mind works. It’s a poison that makes social suicide a slow painful self-inflicted death.

FOMO is very much a 21st century problem. We constantly check Facebook to see what people are doing and who they are with. You don’t even need to be at home watching Guy Fieri eat moose testicle paninis in Shitdick, Montana. You can miss out from anywhere now with smart phones. You could be getting 3D blowjobs from a 2005 Jessica Simpson hologram but you’ll still be all over your phone to make sure no one from elementary school or your grandma’s book club is getting blown by the real 2005 Jessica Simpson. A person with FOMO’s mind is so completely fucked, they could convince themselves they are missing out on a blowjob from 2012 Jessica Simpson.

A FOMO sufferer works on the assumption that their presence won’t change the thing they are missing in the slightest. They think that the experience would be exactly the same and they would just be apart of it. False. If you have FOMO, odds are you would make it worse. Everyone is having fun because the person who texts them “hey” three times a day to no response won’t be nervously laughing at jokes they missed out on the first time. There’s more joy and happiness in the world because the FOMOer is left out. For every person with FOMO there’s another person who’s glad they aren’t there. In fact, your friends are going to keep updating their Twitters and taking “selfies” because if they can give someone  else FOMO then whatever crap they’ve decided to do gets weirdly validated. Don’t give in.

fMRGF

We suck because we value other people’s time more than our own. We are able to see what everyone else is doing and we are afraid that it’s better than what we’re doing. Anything is better than blankly staring into your phone. It’s not hard to miss out when you’ve looked at the same Facebook album 6 times in a row and your TV has been on TLC for nine and a half straight hours. The best way to beat FOMO is to stop caring about what other people are doing and just do something. Anything. Just go. The fact of the matter is someone is doing something better than what you’re doing right now. You are missing something every instant of your life. Being afraid just makes what shitty thing you are doing even shittier.

Enough with the FOMO. You’re missing out on your own life by trying to live a different one.

Posted in blowjob, fear of missing out, fomo, jessica simpson, Why We Suck List | Comments Off on 2. FOMO

1. Circumcisions

Posted on September 26, 2012 by ericrosenberg7

We begin Why We Suck with the first sucky thing that happens to us. Circumcisions.

Don’t stop reading because you have a vagina or your turtleneck still keeps your guy warm. Everyone has been circumcised in one way or another, you’ll see.

My circumcision came a full eight days into my life and in front of all my family and friends. Being born into a Jewish family, this is how I was to be circumcised and how all my ancestors before me had been circumcised. I was one tiny shmeckel in a long line of tiny shmeckels.

Guys like me got a week to adjust to his new surroundings. The dark, moist cave we had been occupying had been replaced with this wide open blue and green place. We can’t do much, but we like the blurry things we see, we’re naked nearly all the time, and there’s pair of breasts constantly in our face. They were our mom’s but whatever. They were nice. Life was good. Life was pure.

Not for long. Our world comes crashing down.

A room full of eyes is focused on our tiny baby penis. A man with a long beard gives us a sip of wine and all of our baby inhibitions are lowered. We trust this man won’t hurt us, so far other people have only carried us around and ensured our anuses were clean. People are good. But our own parents hold down our arms and legs. We struggle to free myself. Seriously Dad? You’ve been afraid to drop me all week and now your Stone Cold Steve Austining me. Mom, what the fuck? Watch out for my soft spot, Jesus Christ.

The hairy Jew lowers his shiny sharp thing directly toward ours.
Not Jesus Christ the hairy Jew. The hairy Jew from before. The one who is literally sawing off a chunk of our penis.

Here we go.
Pain. Fear. Sadness. Everyone claps. Mazel tov! We cry.

Eight days old and we’re supposed to be able to sort through these feelings. Why did they have to make that shorter of all things? Who are all these people and why can’t they leave us alone? Can we just continue on living our life after all of this?

We had to keep living our lives. There’s laughter and music after a circumcision, a celebration of butchered genitalia. People shake the father’s hand and give the mother a kiss on the cheek. The rabbi mingles and happily eats some free food. Everything was back to normal. Nope. Everything now sucked.

We barely understand the beauty of life for before it’s taken from us. Uncircumcised guys and girls may have been lucky enough to avoid their “circumcision” for a month or two. Maybe even a year. But inevitably everyone gets his or her dick sliced off. Figuratively at least. Or even literally ladies. (Don’t be grossed out, be thankful it’s not a picture). But eventually you were dropped, or cut, or victim to, “Are you sure we can have sex with the crib still in here” “Yeah, its only a baby. It doesn’t know what’s going on.”

We know what’s up. Now we do at least. Something has been off ever since the tip of our weiners came off. Sure people complain about whether it’s ethical or try to pass laws or write their Congressman or whatever. But that’s not the point. The point is circumcisions are so fucking normal that people have parties for them. This isn’t just a Jewish or Muslim or Christian thing. It has nothing to do with religion. It doesn’t even matter if you are circumcised or not. The fact that such a thing even exists is enough. Why do we suck? We suck because babies’ foreskins are being thrown in the trash everyday and we don’t even think it’s crazy. It’s crazy.

It’s all crazy. So Why We Suck is circumcising you- we are unwrapping the thin membrane of skin between you and reality.

Welcome.

P.S

There is no good reason to Google Images penis related words.

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Why We Suck

Posted on September 26, 2012 by ericrosenberg7

Life is a funny thing.

We are moving forward quicker than ever. We are creating the most intuitive technologies, curing incurable diseases, and connecting over 7 billion human beings closer and closer to each other every single say. We have the tools to create anything we can perceive. We are the future.

But is this a good thing? Are we really the ones to usher in a better and brighter tomorrow? Can this generation be the one to make it all happen?

No.

And do you know why?

We suck.

We suck bad.

Luckily, it’s not our fault. Like most things in our lives, we don’t have to take any responsibility for this. We can trace the blame all the way back to the beginning.

The only thing anyone ever wanted was to be happy. The Pilgrims sailed across the ocean, became riddled with disease, and spent the winter in houses they literally built themselves out of mud and shit just so they could be wacky religious without anyone making fun of their hats. But they weren’t happy yet, these amazing freedoms weren’t enough. They couldn’t just chill in Plymouth and pray and live their lives through to the end. They had to fuck. They had to bring more people into this world. Fast forward through generations and generations killing Indians, revolting against governments, and waging world wars all in the pursuit of happiness. All the while people kept having sex and telling their children they would have a better life. They would be whatever the wanted to be.

That’s what we’ve been told. Our grandparents and parents worked long and hard to provide us with comfort and security. They put theirs dreams aside so we would have the opportunity to pursue ours. They gave us a life where every basic need is met so we could find it within ourselves to better the world. Anyone can become a movie star or a professional athlete. Or even the President of the United States if we worked hard enough. If we apply ourselves to something, we can achieve it.

Fuck that.

Fuck that like the pilgrims fucking each other.

We preoccupy ourselves with whether “haha” or “lol” would more accurately convey the message of a text. We constantly refresh Instagram to see orange pictures of people we hate fake smiling. We harass people with Youtube comments. Our moms are on Facebook. This person exists. So do these.

This is the future?

Why We Suck will bring you the absurdities of our lives. We will unveil, dissect, and overanalyze every little thing that makes the human race a complete joke. We will show you the world you are actually living in and not the one created by Disney movies and eHarmony commercials. It’s time to stop pretending everything is okay and finally embrace our utter, crippling suckiness. We probably can’t convince everyone to stop fucking, but hopefully we can convince you to think twice about your life and the place your children will grow up in. No longer will we pursue happiness, we will pursue the truth. We will pursue why we suck.

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The Dawn of the MP3 Age, and the Blog that Sparked A Cultural Phenomenon.

Posted on September 26, 2012 by houston

 

In the decade that followed the nineties, the 2000s, the power of mainstream media and major record labels began to decline, and the invention that incited revolution in the music industry was the MP3, a much smaller file format than the typical WAV audio files found on CDs. The MP3, or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III, was the result of half a century of scientific research in auditory masking, psychoacoustics, algorithmic coding, and advanced engineering.

The basic principle of creating the MP3 audio file is data compression, which is more easily understood when thinking about compressing an image. When we compress an image file, the computer analyzes the colors patterns of the pixels and then combines the pixels to reduce the total number of pixels, which might not be noticeable until we either compress it further, or if we use a magnifying lens to zoom in on the image. This method of compression is based on the fundamental limitation of human eyesight, thus this is known as lossy data compression because we are “losing” data that we do not commonly perceive.

The tiny size of this new audio file, combined with the ever-growing power and speed of the Internet, allowed for music to be uploaded and downloaded between personal computers all around the world without limitation and at incredibly fast rates that were impossible before. Many different file sharing websites and software began to be born in the late-nineties as the power of peer-to-peer file sharing became more apparent to Internet engineers and media entrepreneurs.

The most famous of the first peer-to-peer file sharing Internet services of the late-nineties was Napster, which was founded by Shawn Fanning and Sean Parker in June 1999. This service was primarily focused on sharing music in the form of MP3 files across a conveniently user-friendly interface. The result of this ingenious new service was a robust system that, at its peak, had 25 million users and 80 million songs available for all of its users to download. Suddenly, all of the music in the world was free and available at the click of a button (insert music revolution here).

This represented the beginning of a new era, an ideal world for music lovers everywhere, as long as you had a computer and an Internet connection. Most of us grew up hearing that “nothing is free in this world,” and suddenly that was no longer true. We grew up hearing, “When things seem too good to be true, they usually are not true;” and sooner than later, this pithy aphorism did prove to be somewhat true, but not forever.

A year after Napster had become a widespread phenomenon, it hit a major snag: they were caught illegally sharing millions of copyrighted songs. So, when Lars Ulrich, the drummer of the popular heavy metal band Metallica filed a lawsuit against Napster, other artists soon followed and sued Napster for copyright infringements. Napster was able to settle the case with Metallica, but not after being completely shut down by the Ninth Circuit Court after losing another lawsuit fronted by several major record labels for countless illegal violations, including “contributory and vicarious copyright infringement under the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).”[1]

The court ruled that Napster did provide a useful commercial service, but that it needed to find a way to hinder its users from sharing copyrighted material illegally, also known as pirating music. Eventually, after a year of failed attempts to prevent its users from sharing copyrighted content, Napster filed for bankruptcy and was forced to liquidate their assets for a mere $2.4 million dollars. However, Shawn Fanning went on to work with numerous other Internet start-ups, becoming a multi-millionaire in the process; and Sean Parker became the first president of Facebook, claiming a 7% share of stock in the company, making him one of the youngest billionaires in the country.

While these tech-savvy music sharing entrepreneurs eventually had to learn their lesson and commit to Internet services that were not breaking the law, it became apparent that there would always be someone else who was willing to pick up where Napster left off. For every peer-to-peer site the RIAA forced to shut down, a dozen more would be born, and eventually, everyone had to give up the fight and stop pursuing individuals for illegal downloads. The music industry’s only option now is to transform their business models drastically to fit the reality of the new millennium.

 

Written by Houston Golden

 

Do you think that Napster ruined music forever?
Do you think Sean Parker is a douchebag?
Do you think MP3′s sound like crap and only listen to vinyl?
Are you an artist? A musician? A blogger?
Do you think that artists should have a choice of whether or not to give away their music for free?
Do you think Music Will Save The Day is the best way for artists to come to terms with giving away their music?
Do you have hope for humanity?

Join today and start making the world a better place by downloading music that gives back to the world.

 


[1] A&M Records, Inc. v. Napster, Inc., 239 F.3d 1004 (9th Cir. 2001). For a summary and analysis, see Guy Douglas, Copyright and Peer-To-Peer Music File Sharing: The Napster Case and the Argument Against Legislative Reform http://www.murdoch.edu.au/elaw/issues/v11n1/douglas111.html

Posted in blog, blogging, cultural phenomenon, Featured, internet history, MP3, Music Industry, Music Revolution, Napster, RIAA, Sean Parker | Comments Off on The Dawn of the MP3 Age, and the Blog that Sparked A Cultural Phenomenon.