Steven Streight's Open Salon Blog

8 Better Ways to Use the World Trade Center Steel

Sat, 7 Nov 2009 13:11:53 -0500

I find it deeply offensive that the steel ruins of the World Trade Center, attacked on 9-11 by Islamic Jihadists, has been used to build a warmongering battleship, the USS New York.

Here are some suggestions on how the steel could have been better utilized.

(1) Veteran or civilian hospital.

(2) Metal detectors at Army bases to prevent such tragedies as Fort Hood massacre.

(3) US-Mexican border security fences, walls & surveillance cameras.

(4) Homeless shelter.

(5) Security installations at US ports.

(6) Library of Universal Peace & Human Unity.

(7) Temple of Tolerance for All Faiths and Unfaiths.

(8) University of Pacifist Studies & Peaceful Solutions.

The Heart of Violence is Within You

Fri, 6 Nov 2009 15:11:57 -0500

Americans are hypocrites. They act all shocked and sad when they hear of serial killers, school shootings, Jihad terrorist acts, and other violence. Then they return with glee to violent video games and slasher films.

But it's vicarious violence, these games and movies.

Vicarious means: using, in your imagination, others as surrogates. You watch other people or you pretend to be someone else. You put yourself, consciously or unconsciously, in the place of the villain and/or the victim.

As vengeful sadist, you thrill in watching others suffer. As guilt-ridden masochist, you delight in getting the punishment you feel you deserve. You do it through others or via an alter ego.

You may switch from inflicter of pain to recipient of punishment, back and forth, or you may settle on being one or the other. One thing's for sure. If there was a technology that you had to hook up to, as you watched slasher films or played video games, that would make you actually feel the pain you inflict on others, or watch others inflict, you would not engage in vicarious violence.

Since violent video games and slasher films do not have mandatory "pain feedback" apparatus, forcing you to experience the violence you vicariously enjoy, you think you get away with it.

You don't. You attract violence to yourself as you vicariously engage in it. You unleash karmic forces against your safety and life.

You focus your mind on what you enjoy. If you love nature, you probably watch Animal Planet and National Geographic. If you love sleazy sex, you watch porn. If you love bullies and power, you love The Godfather.

You cannot love one thing and spend time with its opposite. Pacifists hate war movies. War mongers hate stories about how peace is stronger than combat.

Tell me what you love to see, and I'll tell you where your heart is secretly stationed. It's not really "secret" to anyone but you. You refuse to admit how dark and sick your soul really is.

I'll use myself, briefly, as an example. I can't bear to watch the beginning of Saving Private Ryan. I refused to watch The Passion by Mel Gibson. I click the remote as I surf channels on the TV, always skipping scenes of murder, violence, war. I simply have zero tolerance for bloodshed and cruelty.

You say, "I play violent video games and watch horror films, but I have never killed anyone." Yet. You forgot to add the word "yet" to your factual statement.

How do you know, for absolute certainty, that nothing could make you snap? Have you ever been so angry, you felt like hurting or killing someone?

You don't commit murder because you haven't been provoked enough. Yet. You are afraid of the law. Still. You have some conscience that prohibits acting out your hate. Now.

Yet. Still. Now. But all this could change.

If you fill your mind with violence, it can become the basis for future actions, the seeds awaiting the right conditions and temperature. You have no assurance that you will never kill or seriously harm someone. You must live in that uncertainty.

When there is a killing spree, media and authorities spread misinformation and unaccountability reigns. They speak of doing studies, conducting research, seeking insight and solutions. It's all deceptive and insincere.

Leaders fear disrespect, distrust, dissent based on their inept handling of what causes and could prevent violence and bloodshed off the battlefield. They rush to justify what has been done and what they are allegedly trying to do.

"Don't rush to judgment" and "it's too early to tell if there were warning signs" and "we have to wonder why anyone would do such a thing, what were the motivations?"

They know why. They won't admit what's wrong in society and leadership. They saw the warning signs. They refused to deal with them. Pass the buck. Cover your ass. Restore order. Deflect criticism.

What causes sociopathic, misanthropic, human-hating violence?

Brutalization. Desensitization. Glorification of cruelty and power. Justification of torture and dehumanization of opponents. Racial and ethnic antagonism.

Children "love" playful dinosaurs, cuddly bears, silly cartoon monsters. The danger posed by real life equivalents is minimized by society and entertainment producers.

As children advance in age, their lovable monsters grow in fiendishness. From bears and apes to zombies and vampires. Some kids love them so much, they grow up to be monsters: bullies, abusive boyfriends, oppressive bosses, arrogant unethical CEOs, rapists, serial killers.

Reject the culture of aggression, revenge, and Hurting As Solution.

Remove yourself from the environment and conditioning of violence. Learn how to calm yourself. Read books by peace loving authors like Gandhi, Tolstoy, Proust, and Martin Luther King Jr.

Imitate peace lovers like Jesus and Buddha.

Be the change you want to see in this world.

Stealth Spammers & Kitty Tweets on Twitter

Sun, 1 Nov 2009 17:11:58 -0500

Stealth Spamming and Kitty Tweets are popular new techniques of con artists. These criminals are phishing for usernames and passwords, offering to sell you automated programs to "Add 10,000 Followers weekly", or promoting Get Rich Quick schemes.

Sometimes they trick you into revealing your password, so they can hijack your account and send out spam to others using your username and Twitter account.

On Twitter, the Stealth Spammers either tweet messages with their silly claims, or go "under the radar" and send you DMs (Direct Messages), private communications, with links. These links lead to a variety of scam sites, which typically shout at you to "Register Now. Enter Your Password. Start Earning Big Money!"

They typically skip such standard features of credible websites as About pages, FAQs, links to reputable sites, and Client Lists.

Twitter has warned users to never click on links in DMs unless you really know the sender to be benevolent. Problem is, most social media con artists use social engineering to trick people into liking them.

Look at Human Capital Group on Twitter. Can you spot the dead giveaways that indicate they're Stealth Spammers?

http://twitter.com/Human_Cap_Grp

Following 4,743

Followers 4,612

Tweets 5

Why would 4,612 people Follow someone who has only tweeted 5 messages?

It's because some Twitter users are using 3rd party applications, convenience programs, that automatically Follow anyone who Follows them. So they don't bother to check out the Twitter profiles of these spammers who Follow them.

The spam is not being delivered via tweets in this case. It's being delivered via DMs with links to malicious or deceptive web pages.

Another common tactic is "kitty tweets": social engineered messages that include inspirational quotes, what they ate for lunch, details about their pets or children, favorite movies, "love your tweets", songs they like, personal aspirations, random thoughts, chit chat, etc.

Their intent is to fool you into thinking they're "nice & normal." Social media gurus have trained them in how to pretend to be average members of an online community. Then the spammers sprinkle in their con artist tweets.

They speak of Attraction Marketing, private sex videos, online pharmacies, affiliate programs, MLM (multi-level marketing, like Mary Kay), lead generation, investment opportunities, leveraging your Twitter Followers (ripping them off), overseas employment, tax-free income, six figure blogging, compensated blog posting, and other scams.

These tweets often take the shape of one message directed to multiple Twitter users:

@randy87 Get 10,000 Twitter Followers each week with TwitSpit! [link]

@OfficePotato Get 10,000 Twitter Followers each week with TwitSpit [link]

@PeteParry Get 10,000 Twitter Followers each week with TwitSpit![link]

@vaspersthegrate Get 10,000 Twitter Followers each week with TwitSpit! [link]

Check the Bios of Twitter users. Suspicious descriptions are generally clues that the person or organization is up to no good.

EXAMPLE:

Bio Lingerie New York is the brand raising arm of the Seven Bar Foundation. We use the power of the luxury lingerie industry to fuel microfinance institutions.

By receiving email notifications of new Followers, you can click on links to their profile pages, and quickly see the tell-tale marks of Stealth Spammers, Kitty Tweeters, and other malicious spammers and scammers.

When you determine that a Twitter user is a spammer, be sure to get them kicked off Twitter. Go to their sidebar, under Actions, click on Report For Spam, then Okay in the dialogue box that opens.

Content is NOT King, but Slave

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 21:10:52 -0400

Contrary to popular myth, Content is NOT "King." Completely dependent on other factors, Content is actually...a Slave.

Many times, not only is Content not King, but Content poses as a Drag Queen -- something prancing around, dancing as corporations pull its strings, pretending to be something it's not.

Content cannot be King. Dethroned, or better, usurped by Connectivity, Presentation, and Interactivity, Content is low man on the totem pole.

Often, people search for pure Content, like movies, music, news and opinions. But even then, if the content is poorly organized, badly displayed, hard to navigate, or non-interactive, it will be ignored.

Many times, when someone is consuming content they enjoy or find valuable, their first impulse is to interact with it. They want to post a comment, a question, a praise or a complaint. Some may want to enrich the content, add their own view, amplify or criticize it.

Content, to be effective and valuable, is entirely reliant upon other factors. Content is extremely important, but is not the ultimate, universally dominant entity.

To call Content a "king" is to revert to old fashioned imperialistic, phallocentric, male-dominated hierarchy. Even worse, "Content is King" is a meaningless mantra that people chant, without being able to explain it.

It almost goes without saying: fancy flashy packaging or presentation with poor content is going to fail. But even the world's best content, all by itself, just sits there, isolated, accomplishing nothing, attracting nobody.

One thing many business owners don't understand, when it comes to websites, is how important Content is. Sometimes they even think the web designer just "makes it up" for them. "I have to provide content for my site?" they say with a disappointed look on their face. "What kind?"

But to dump a bunch of Content into a website is not nearly enough. The hard part, or fun part (depending on how you look at it) is to keep adding fresh, relevant, updated Content. That's what search engines and consumers want.

Some say "all things being equal, good content beats bad or no content". But we could also say "Packaging is King" because nice, attractive packaging will be more compelling than ugly or no packaging.

Calling one element "king" allows people to get away with slighting other elements. A clueless corporate person might say, "I don't know why nobody visits our website. It's loaded with great content!"

Perhaps it's because your highly exalted Content is missing the synergists that make it complete. Things like Presentation, Understandability, Substantiating Links to Reputable Sources, Findability, Relevance, Timeliness, Update Frequency, Context, Usability and Navigation Ease.

If there is a "King" on the web, it's Connectivity. Caring and Sharing. Interactivity. But not Content, especially not the pre-packaged, corporate kind that comes in the form of broadcast homogeneity.

People care more about trivial but personal communication than they do about the "content" of professional hucksters like Big Entertainment, Big Advertising, Big Government, Big Religion, and even Big Sports.

Hit rewind.

Now that we've disrupted the mantra, dislodged the parroted mindset, let's back up a bit. Before we can decide if Content is King, Queen, Court Jester, Serf, or Villain, let's define what people generally mean by "Content".

[QUOTE]

What is content? This word derives from the Latin "contentum," which means "that which is contained," but this derivation is not very descriptive.

There is no precise definition, but generally content is used to denote material prepared by professionals to be used by large numbers of people, material such as books, newspapers, movies, or sports events. That is the sense in which it is used in this work. In general, content is distributed by "mass" or "broadcast" communications systems.

....

In this work I do not classify information services such as weather, directory assistance and airline schedules as content.

Many of the standard phone calls access just such services, and the Internet is leading to increasing usage of them. I also do not classify most of e-commerce as content.

Somebody going to the Godiva Web site may be exposed to creative work in the ads flashed on the screen, but is interested in purchasing a tangible good. These types of interactions will flourish on the Internet, and some will be merging with content, but they are more typical of the standard point-to-point communications.

-- "Content is Not King" by Andrew Odlyzko

[END QUOTE]

While corporations, media, and other organizations try to hype their fabricated, often deceptive or over-priced Professional Content, consumers are sharing their own home-made, so-called Amateur Content.

From music and videos to photos and text, Do It Yourself Content is making Professional Content providers jealous. They want to go back to the good old days when the public was a passive, easily influenced group of spectators and consumers.

Perfect example is the telephone.

When it was first invented, Alexander Graham Bell thought it would deliver Content, not intimate connections between people. "Useless chit-chat" was discouraged and mocked, even as some still poke fun at the "triviality" of blogs and Twitter.

Take the post office as an illustration of Content vs. Connectivity or Professional Content vs. Do It Yourself Content.

The US government believed the main benefit of mail would be delivery of newspapers, a Content-rich medium. While newspapers did outweigh personal letters in pure data, people valued the mail system as a means to communicate with each other. Propaganda and mass entertainment were a distant second.

Those who keep shouting "Content is King!" often conceal a greedy agenda.

They typically mean "User Generated Content is Amateur Crap! Long Live Professional Content!" Or they want unpaid users to fill their social media site with Content, so they can put ads all over it and use the amateur content to lure search engines and paying customers.

They want to turn the internet into a broadcast medium. They see social media as comprised of sitting ducks, low hanging fruit, dumb chumps they can bombard with ads and seduce into buying their junk.

You, as a blogger, Twitter user, or website owner, need good Content, that's for sure. But if that's all you've got, if you don't pay adequate attention to the other factors that make Content valuable and easy to search, use, and share, you're doomed to fail.

Content is Slave...but it's a good, hard-working slave if it's under the right Task Masters!

Blog World and Con Artist Social Media Experts

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 09:10:45 -0400

Blog World is an example of how con artists rip off people who are new to blogging. But why attend a conference organized by spammers and champions of unsafe blogging practices?

Watch this video and see how great Blog World 2009 was!

Blog World 2009 Las Vegas

They charge big bucks to watch idiots quote Technorati statistics on the blogosphere and tell them the obvious. Like "Put web links in there for search engine optimization. Be sure to list your podcast on as many directories as possible. iTunes is the most popular...".

On and on they drone.

Unsafe blogging practices, like Location Based Status Updates, are presented as fun and fulfilling. Stealth Spamming is my term for how these social media conferences are hyped on Twitter.

I watch the attendees, many of them single women, tweet about what airport they're in en route to Las Vegas for Blog World. Then I hear on the news about a young lady who disappears at a Metallica concert, leaving her cell phone and purse behind.

On Twitter, the only people who care what airport you're at are burglars, stalkers, angry ex-husbands, and other predators. But the technocratic social media geeks persuade mommy bloggers and small business owners to follow their silly example.

"You adore me so much, I'm sure you care what I had for lunch and what movie I just saw," they tweet and the lemmings lap it up, feeling an intimate connection to their unseemly gurus.

Too bad these pundits don't share things that will actually benefit their disciples. Perhaps they have no expertise or insights. Could it be that they have only hype, basic blogging tips, and quotes from better authorities?

"Make $10,000 per month with your blog!" the blog conference quacks shout. "Expand your network, get 100,000 new Twitter followers in one week with Twitpisser!" they proclaim.

Dazzled by dumpy displays, new bloggers get their companies to pay high priced registratioin fees so they can pass around a bottle of rotgut wine and spread H1N1 germs.

Money spent on over-priced blog conferences could be better spent buying some books by real experts like Tom Peters, Seth Godin, and Robert Scoble.

Read this funny post on SEO Book, exposing the stupidity of Social Media Marketing quacks "Social Media Guruism Mostly Harmless"

Here's some more "brilliance" from Blog World 2009. Adam Corolla explains how he loses money with podcasting due to bandwidth expenses.