SocialMedia-GoodBad&Ugly,The!

Twitter is a darling, let’s all agree. It is not anymore just a micro blogging site or just about staying regular in touch or exchanging the latest info. Ofcourse, its all that, but in the fewest words, for most its the new X-factor. I am talking about those people who got a sudden professional hitch (and those who got TV shows, book deals, movie deals etc) just by tweeting. So, all of you who underestimate Social Media, its go-grey time. Its a mini-democracy out there people!

And like in most democracies, there's all the over whelming talk about just everything in the entire wide world. Yeah, its a little bad but a lot better compared to some things that happen to those like Shamu,for whom it was end of career. Atleast from what I hear,they closed down Shamus Tweets as people who previously found Shamu a playful whale boy having fun sea life, suddenly feel Shamu's words and deeds are abusive and not so lively and funny, anymore!

Hmm, bottomline is-- Twitter is to stay, whether you stay or not.Just like the Universe! So, better not to tweet like a bird brain.

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Just Costa Rican Cat Fights? No!

I happened to read something about Costa Rica having their first female president and about "some women not happy in spite of the fact that a woman has become president".

What infuriated Ana Felicia Torres, leader of the New Feminist League is that President Laura Chinchilla(image,right) still has a very social conservative outlook as she seemingly preached "No to Abortion and No to Gay Marriage " to her countrymen and women. According to her(Torres), being in the Presidential Post, she(the Prez) needs to bring in more equality in and outside her office. Being a subscriber to that slogan of Live and let Live myself , I will take sides with Torres here.

I had once talked in detail to a senate candidate myself, and wondered if its a good idea for people in her constituency to elect her, as she had highly strong views about, 'curbing gays once I got elected'! We honestly need more Representatives who can preach Tolerance and a little more Goodness in the real sense of the word.

Costa Rica, like most Latin American countries, enjoys a good dose of equal female participation in politics, like not seen in many countries of the world.

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A Halal Youtube

Youtube has decided to help a lot of parents,like my landlady for one, to be happy and relieved, by introducing new Safety Mode (where no mature content will show up anymore). Like Google Safe Search, the new Youtube Safety Mode is for all those who were uncomfortable with their kids getting to watch inappropriate/uncensored stuff over the internet. Even the auto-fill that flagged up inappropriate content were upsetting many.

In Islamic World, when some time back some grown ups got very offended by popular search engines like Yahoo! and Google, they decided to come up with a new search engine altogether for muslims- imhalal

In there if you try searching for inappropriate content, you get messages like -

Warning! Our filters flag the results for this search with a Haram level of 2 out of 3. This means that the search results could contain Haram content.

Are you sure you want to continue to the search results?


ps- In Arabic --Halal means Good, Haram means bad.

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Obama gets his grade!

It’s been one year that Obama took charge of the US, and hence the world in general, thus giving hope to mankind for a bright future. But looks like not everybody is happy with the man, and the puppy dog charisma will not save him unless he 'changes' something fast!

Most people are of the opinion that he should have concentrated on unemployment issues than about the health care. That reminds me Politics are not the best way to really solve things. They always end up creating Much Ado about Nothing.

Poor man. Not his fault. The best he could have done was at least be real “political” about this whole World leader-thingy and at least make it look like everything is in safe hands and thus,keep the world happy. And just save his face. (A birdie had once told me if you ever jump into politics be as politrickal as you can, or just stay away. and that there’s no in-between!). Haa, but what does he do, when the horrible media of this day and age can be so overbearing. Perhaps, the man should learn a lesson or two from media people and create some subtlest propogandas ever!

Anyways, Obama Politricks got mixed reviews like they say here. And it looks like a B minus. Almost C!

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National Ad Gaffe Day

It was National Girl Child Day today in India and the Government, with all good intentions, tried to promote the ' Say NO to Female Foeticide' Message with a good Awareness Poster. But, a little carelessness turned it all into a Himalayan blunder! And finally, they had to apologize to the Indian Citizens for that.

Evidently, they included a pakistani ex- Airforce chief and "hurt" Indian sentiments. How dare they put foreign man on "our" Poster! And of all the nerve, a Paki!

Last I heard, Women and Child Development people in the country went mad. Not surprising, wonder if anyone thought to remember the girl child amidst all the hullabaloo :P

Sigh who is to blame. "Careless" Adpeople or "touchy" Nation! or both!

More Details here

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Reality Check

Happened to come across this Captioning Contest on flyyoufools comic website, and one of the winning entries based on facebook-ing. Really funny and made me laugh.

But, it also made me wonder- should we really care ?
I am not trying to talk about this comic in particular, but about our thoughts on onlinesocial networking in general. If some one feels happy farming (or whatever) online, and feel a sense of satisfaction quite similar to what a real farmer feels, or atleast thinks he feels, why should it be looked upon as something dangerous for humansociety blah blah? It made me think about how we assume,and think that everybody's feeling has to be - objective! Similar to the thought lines of anti-gay marriage movements which assert that homosexuality lacks sanctity, when gays are having as much fun as straight-married people.

So in every aspect- to each on his own! People should,start to think that way;automatically!

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Enhancing security or creativity?

Will the new automatic profiling(of 14 countries )help tighten security at US airports? So, thinks the American TSA. But is there something like a reliable terrorist profile?

To say that Post 9/11 we have all got into this habit of automatically associating all Muslims with the BinLaden-likes, would be an understatement. We just need to take a look at the list, as out of the 14, 13 are muslim countries.

And,the countries on this new watch-list have petitioned against this,requesting for behavioral profiling and to not encourage racial biasing.

Anyways, those arguing for behavioral profiling and the people at TSA must be in unison on one thing- that our terrorists are going to be far more imaginative.

Like this Martin Rowson cartoon portrays!

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