I launched a new podcast today – LOTU
Where I’m going to attempt to explain LOTU, the religion for atheists. Check it out. LOTU podcast #1.
Launching Twittories #3!
It’s been 18 months…. time to try again!
On December 6 2007, I had this crazy idea about collaborating with people on Twitter to write short stories. I called it TWITTORIES (a portmanteau of Twitter and Stories). I invited 140 people to sign up to write 140 characters each of the story. Our first attempt, a story called “The Darkness Inside“, made it to about 99 entries before it ran out of steam. The main issue back then, I think, was that many people who signed up for twittories just didn’t check their twitter messages very often. So when they were alerted that it was their turn to write, they just didn’t show up. And it stalled.
About a year later I tried again. This time the story was called “Action” and it lasted 54 entires.
Well, another 18 months has passed and I’ve decided it’s time to try again. I still think Twitter could be an amazing tool for collaboration and there are obviously a lot more people using Twitter now and they are using it more often.
Go to this wiki page to register your name for the new, as-yet-unnamed, twittory. The first person to sign up gets to pick the name of the twittory and write the first 140 characters.
Cigar Talk – a new TPN podcast
Last week I launched a new TPN podcast callde “Cigar Talk”.
The basic format will be my partner in Perdomo Cigars Australia, Jason Nelson, and I talking to people who appreciate a fine cigar. Episode one features Filip Pilioras from Paladar Fumior Salon in Brisbane, his friend Nick and ChrissyD! Check it out below and go to Cigar Talk to visit the site.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vj2AdcwWhUM&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&hl=en_US&feature=player_embedded&fs=1]
When They Attack Us, They Are Crazy
It’s been fascinating to me to note the difference between the way the media has been treating the two Americans who have lashed out at their government in the last month – John Patrick Bedell, who shot a couple of Pentagons guards, and Joe Stack, who flew a plane into an IRS building in Austin – and they way the media treats civilian deaths at the hands of US and NATO troops in Afghanistan. The media, completely unable to even explore whether or not men like Bedell and Stack might have had genuine grievances, have immediately closed ranks to write both men off as being crazy. There’s no investigative reporting, no genuine inquiry into what would make these US citizens commit acts of suicide to make a point about the actions of the US government. Both men have just been tarred and brushed. The media grabs quotes from family and friends that make it sound like each man was a loony and then they editorialise with descriptions to back that up.
Some examples:
On Bedell:
The Washington Post just puts it in the headline “Pentagon shooter’s spiral from early promise to madness”.
The Boston Globe, in its first paragraph, says Bedell “crisscrossed the country in a frenetic and sometimes doped-up state”.
The Mirror in the UK claims he was a “conspiracy theorist”.
The Associated Press claims Bedell “a history of mental illness”.
CBS News leads with the headline that Bedell was a “nut”.
On Stack:
The Christian Science Monitor refers to Stack’s online writing as a “lengthy, disjointed screed”.
USA Today says his writing “drips with cynicism, paranoia and narcissism.”
Of course, the 535 Afghani civilians who were murdered by US & NATO bombs in 2009, are just “collateral damage” or “civilian casualties”. When one out of every three people killed by US bombs in Afghanistan is a civilian, that’s just unfortunate. Obama is actually increasing the use of drones, not decreasing them. The media makes no psychological analysis about the people who are sending in drones that kill THOUSANDS of innocent civilians, men, woman and children. They don’t ask whether or not those people, the politicians or the soldiers, are paranoid or suffering from a mental illness. The issue isn’t even broached.
The lesson? When “we” kill civilians, it’s justifiable. But when someone, even one of our own, attacks us, then they suffer from a mental illness.
My Trip To Bangkok – Club Perdomo and Cigars
I got back today from a trip to Bangkok for a couple of days. The purpose of the trip was to pay a site visit to Club Perdomo Bangkok, a gentleman’s club built around Perdomo cigars. I’ve recently taken on Perdomo Cigars Australia as a new digital strategy client and, as someone who loves a cigar every now and then and who has come to appreciate the Perdomo brand over the last year, it was a very exciting trip. If you’re interested in such things, you can read about it on the Perdomo blog.
The Peter Ellyard Show
In case you missed the announcement, I recently launched a new TPN podcast: The Peter Ellyard Show. Peter has been a good friend and regular guest on this show for several years. We worked together on his latest book, Designing 2050: Pathways To Sustainable Prosperity On Spaceship Earth. Peter has a massive amount of experience in environmental issues and as a futurist, so I decided he needed his own show. We’ve already got two episodes out, the most recent being an interview with WeForest’s Bill Liao, while he was at COP15. I hope you’ll check out the show.