Mark My Words, You Have to Face It

If it isn’t bad enough that the computer world dominates the news coverage most every day here in the Silicon Valley and its environs, during the last two days the Valley’s designated messenger, the San Jose Mercury News, has made Mark Zuckerberg’s life a never-ending story.

Yesterday

The founder of Facebook was featured on a front-page story on September 23 titled “Unfriended” which was all about the movie “The Social Network” which depicts his meteoric rise to fame and fortune. Or is it fortune and infamy? The story covered two-thirds of the front page and two-thirds of page 15. According to the Merc’s story, the very private Zuckerberg will not be pleased with the depiction of his life and how he had to buy out two former Harvard roommates who claimed that they were the true creators of the social network giant. Allegedly Zuckerberg settled with them for a mere $65 million.

Today

The Merc’s first Facebook story today was on page A6 and its headline touted “Facebook outage inspires tweets — and a few hoots.” This was the second day in a row that the world’s largest social network faltered and may have disturbed more than a few of its 500,000,000 users.

Tomorrow

Then in the business section under “Facebook CEO latest tech tycoon to try philanthropy,” the story says that the unassuming Zuckerberg lad is quietly donating $100 million to the downtrodden Newark, New Jersey school system. Oh yes, he’s doing it on “Oprah.” Could this be a means to counteract the possible negative publicity that he might receive after people see ”The Social Network?” A few inches under that story is another on “Facebook working on a phone deal.”

Not Missing the Mark

If you think that Mark is not getting his just due, then go to Google and type in “Mark Zuckerberg” and you will get 7,880,000 results and when you do the same for “Facebook,” you will find 11,190,000 results. Not bad for a young man who celebrated his twenty-sixth birthday on May 14.  

I have had numerous requests to join social networks from, among others, former students, an ex-wife, cousins, table tennis buddies, and Holocaust survivors. They have asked me to share with them, and the majority of the dozens of requests come from users of Facebook and LinkedIn, with others from Yahoo and Shtyle.

Our Privacy Policy

But Facebook to Shtyle is not my style and I send out a polite e-mail to those who send me such requests. It reads in part, “In the age of the Internet, I enjoy my privacy and refuse to join any of the "social networks" so my thoughts and ideas I share with those people I know, are shared only with those people I care to, one person at a time.”

Of course, there’s a slight contradiction to the above paragraph since I write for two blogs in which I share my thoughts with many. There’s the Huffington Post at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/harvey-gotliffe-phd/ and the Ho-Ho-Kus Cogitator at http://theho-ho-kuscogitator.blogspot.com/

Simple Subtraction

I can honestly say that I have not amassed a fortune doing these blogs. The wealth derived from them is $6.9 billion less than Mark Zuckerberg’s combined wealth of $6.9 billion to the penny, and I have yet to hear from Oprah.

 

Where's Rodney King When We Need Him?

Back on May 1, 1992 after the acquittal of Los Angeles police who beat him and helped foster the riots in that city, Rodney King emotionally pleaded, “Can we all get along?" Listen to King in quote number 22:    http://www.usatoday.com/news/top25-quotes.htm

“Getting along” is probably what most Americans want today with the exception of the extremists and fringe elements who are just after what they want for their country and themselves, without any consideration of others.

Major Disasters

Both major political parties have done a magnificent job in inspiring the extremes as they ruthlessly chide their opponents whenever possible.

In today’s San Jose Mercury News there are two stories on page A4, one on top of the other that personify the divided state of politics today. The first headlines “Obama urges voters to back Democrats,” and includes “The GOP…lambasted the president. ‘Once again, President Obama trotted out the same old worn out reassurances on the economy, but Americans are still waiting for the promised recovery that never arrived.” This is a quote from the foot-in-the-mouth GOP Chairman Michael Steele.

The story below centers on the Republicans soon-to-be-revealed 20-point agenda, and the media help to stir the acerbic pot when they write, “Democrats quickly branded the yet-to-be-finalized agenda a retread that led to the current economic turmoil.” A Democratic Party spokesperson is then quoted, “It took more than 20 months to repackage a plan that’s no different from the one the caused the Great Bush Recession.” At least he called Bush ‘great.’

The Worst Is Yet to Come

It will become more extreme and infuriating for right-minded individuals to listen and not learn anything meaningful as we approach the November 2 midterm election. Further and harsher diatribes await us in political advertising and political coverage by all media, with the latter gleefully and greedily looking forward to the advertising dollars that will come their way during the campaigns.

To keep sane, you need to maintain a positive outlook. Remember that there’s only forty-two days until this cycle of narishkeit — nonsense —will be over, and only 731 days after that, you will again have the opportunity to “throw the bums out.”

Getting High on the High Holidays

September 9, 2010 was Rosh Hashanah, the start of the Jewish New Year, and no synagogue, shul nor temple could provide a comparable setting for our morning services. There by a small, still pond closely surrounded by sturdy red cedar trees and in the distance by protective and magnificently sculptured rock formations, we unfolded our blue camping chairs and placed them into the warming sand as we basked in glorious sunshine. As we opened our prayer book, less than thirty feet in front of us stood the rest of the congregation; a young buck with immature antlers, two does, and a delicate fawn who stood half the size of the others.

They were ever alert as they approached the pond for a sip of water. Then they saw us, observed us, and accepted us as fellow congregants who would do them no harm. Perhaps they somehow knew that only compassion and understanding would be our righteous way to start the new year. On page 103 of our prayer book we arrived at a passage that read; “Could we soar with arms like eagle’s wings, and run with the swiftest grace of gentle deer.”

As if being cued by their director, at that moment the two does ran off through the woods and into the meadow with one chasing the other, and although no eagles soared, three mallards gracefully landed on the pond and drifted to the spot where the deer once sipped. All too soon they departed and our morning service ended. I was at peace with the world and with myself in this majestic edifice of worship within Yosemite.

Win Three Print Issues of The Ho-Ho-Kus Cogitator

The first three people who send us the correct answer to the following question will receive the next three printed issues of The Ho-Ho-Kus Cogitator. Why was J. D. Salinger’s novel The Catcher in the Rye entitled The Catcher in the Rye? You’ll find the answer on page 173 of the 1964 edition published by Bantam Books that cost me 75¢ at the time. 

 

 

 

It All Depends on Where You Stand

Moral Majority Revisited?

On Saturday, August 28th, Glenn Beck led a rally from the front of the Lincoln Memorial to “restore America,” and it was covered live on some television stations and written about on line and in newspapers. Since most local newspapers cannot afford to send reporters to every “newsworthy” event, they rely on getting news either from syndicated sources or from their own not-for-profit cooperative — the Associated Press (AP) — which is owned by its 1,500 U.S. daily newspaper members.

They’ve Got You Covered

Each member newspaper decides whether or not to pick up and use all of an AP story, some of a story, or not use the story at all. Two Northern California newspapers decided to use the AP story on the rally, but their coverage varied widely.

The more conservative Santa Cruz Sentinel’s headline read “Beck, Palin rally to ‘restore America’” and contained two black and white AP photographs; one of the crowd from the base of the Washington Monument and the larger one showed a close-up shot of Beck, arms spread wide as he spoke to the crowd. The San Jose Mercury News showed the one of the crowd but in color.

Newspapers print in columns going up and down so to measure the space devoted to any one story, you take the number of columns used and then multiply this by the inches of copy and photographs in each column resulting in the term “column inches.”

The difference in the amount of space devoted by each paper to the rally was as wide as Beck’s open arms. The Sentinel devoted 91-½ column inches to the story while the Mercury News gave it a seemingly paltry 21-¾ column inches.

The Damn Liberal Media?

If your first inclination is that the liberal Mercury News was deliberately more conservative in its coverage, you would get into an argument with their former editor Rob Elder. Whenever he spoke to any of my journalism classes he stressed how fair and balanced they attempted to be in their coverage of any story. They did so without promulgating “fair and balanced” as Fox News does with their hypocritical self-promoting slogan.

On the emes (truth), the Yiddish language connects Beck and the political scene at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/harvey-gotliffe-phd/glenn-back-gay-avech_b_697514.html

Spam, Scam...Scary, Wary

While vacationing recently on Mackinac Island in Northern Michigan, I received two cell phone calls; one from a good friend and a second from a cousin, wondering if I was okay in London. I have always been okay in London where I have visited ten times and when I called back they each said that they had been concerned after receiving the following e-mail under my name:

“I'm writing this with tears in my eyes, I came down here to London, United Kingdom for a  short vacation unfortunately i was mugged at the park of my way to the hotel where i lodge, all cash, credit card and cell were stolen from me but luckily for me i still have my passports with me.

I've been to the embassy and the Police here are not helping issues at all and my flight  leaves shortly from now but am having problems settling the hotel bills and the hotel  manager won't let me leave until i settle the bills,

I'm freaked out at the moment....”

How Did They Do It?

It seemingly came from me at one of my e-mail addresses and was sent to more than five hundred of my contacts there. Someone had hacked into that account, sent out a mass mailing to all of them as Harvey Gotliffe, wiped all of those contacts’ addresses and everything else I had saved on that account.

Why Did They Do It?

If you answered this scavenger out of kindness toward me they sent this follow up e-mail:

“Am so glad you reply back  , I still need help, I  have nothing left on me right now and I am lucky to have my life and passports with me it would have been worst if they had made away with my passports. Though, I suffer little injury on my left arm. Well all I need now is just  $2,700 you can have it wired to my name via Western Union i'll have to show my passport as ID to pick it up here and i promise to pay you back as soon as I get back home. Here's my info below

Name:      Harvey Gotliffe

State:     London SW1H OQW

Country:   United Kingdom

Money Is the Root of All Evil

The scoundrel figure that if he sent out five hundred free emails and if one person followed through with any money, he is way ahead. Unfortunately one dear, naïve friend who cares deeply for me, saw me in deep trouble and immediately sent out $2,700 to Western Union in London. She was sent another e-mail saying that more money was needed and she paid another $2,300 to him. I would call him a scavenger, crook, scoundrel or goniff, but another recipient friend who did not pay best described him when she replied, “You are a scumbag degenerate asshole.(SDA)”

Where Do You Go From Here

I called up my Internet provider’s service desk and first got Lloyd in the Philippines and when that happens I immediately ask for an “on shore” representative and was transferred to Josh, a Tier One person in the USA. When he couldn’t resolve the problem, he in turn transferred me to Mike, a Tier Two person, who after consulting with two other Tier Two people said there’s nothing they can do to recover anything on that account and advised me to change the password. Then he suggested that I change the password on all of my e-mail accounts once a month, which I did immediately and will do every thirty days.

Shedding a Tear or Two

I still feel badly about my dear friend who cared $5,000 worth for me and would like to start a fund raising drive for her. Anyone who wants to contribute anything, please let me know. I, in turn, will give you some information to help you and your friends and relatives avoid this SDA and others out there preying on the innocent.

First do like I did and send an e-mail report to your Internet provider’s abuse site, then call up the provider and have them help you out. My session with them via the phone took ninety minutes.

Next look at this article from the San Francisco Chronicle on the scam

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/08/25/BU5A1F265U.DTL&tsp=1

Then go to the Western Union web site and learn all about this fraud and others. Unfortunately, WU seems to be an unwitting co-conspirator:

http://www.westernunion.com/WUCOMWEB/staticMid.do?method=load&pagename=fraudIndex&pid=fraud0709

Western Union also offers a telephone number to call to report the fraud at 1-800-448-1492.

Working a Scheme vs. Working

There will always be someone out there trying to get something for nothing or trying to manipulate the system and defraud the innocent and not so innocent. Whether it be Jack Madoff and his Ponzi scheme or the Nigerian in London, be wary because the results can be scary.

Do Them A Favor

Please forward this blog post to family, friends and colleagues you care about to warn them of this and other e-mail scams.

 

The Write Stuff

A Profession That’s Perverse

If you are not writing to publish, please continue to do so. Writing is a perverse profession in that it is one filled with extremely deep, aggravating psychological and emotional valleys, followed by short, euphoric highs.

For the past ten days I have been engrossed in the former as I worked on three different writing projects, rotating between the first two, and now you are reading the third.

Before I leave town for ten days on August 12th, I wanted to get out an issue of the irregularly published print and PDF (Portable Document Format) version of The Ho-Ho-Kus Cogitator. This entails locking myself in my writing room while I pour through a multitude of file folders filled with newspaper clippings, magazine pages, Internet materials and pages of my handwritten observations. Then I have to choose which of the dozens of topics before me seem to fit together, along with a lead story and a concluding profile.

The Student Prints

Since I promised a trilogy on education starting with my own, then as a professor, it was time to write the lead story about the students I have encountered in nearly thirty years of university teaching. Within my garage and office, I have five file drawers —not file folders — with observations, letters from students, faculty meeting notes, and articles relating to students from 1969 to 2008. At one time, I may have had twenty different sets of file folders spread out as I tried to find some logical order and make some sense out of this gargantuan accumulation.

You Have to Persevere

When I finally did, only then did I begin to write. Doing so is difficult at any time, even more so on a sunny summer day when it seems far more spiritually rewarding to sit in the backyard and listen to the soothing, flowing waters of our fountain and lazily read. I began to write and write, then I edit and rewrite, and then I rewrite again and again and again. There will never be a perfectly written effort, so after a week it became time to stop writing and move on to selecting the illustrations and feeding all materials to my designer and syntactical enhancer. Stephen is a genius and not only does the design but can take my writings and diligently tweak a word here or a sentence there to make it flow even better — and to precisely fit in twelve pages.

I reviewed the first PDF copy-only layout, and we spent an hour on the phone working out some of the kinks and eliminating excess verbiage, which means eliminating whole stories.  At this moment I anxiously await the PDF in a more final form that will require another bit of tweaking before I can send it out to you.

A Huffington Post Script

When I felt overwrought and overworked concentrating on the Cogitator, I would turn to the Huffington Post where I have become a contributor and try and decide on a current topic that would first be challenging to write and also be acceptable to my blog editor. The semi-debilitating process is the same as with the newsletter. Go through files. Select topic. Write. Edit. Rewrite. Rewrite. Rewrite. Then I make sure that it is no more than 800 words before sending it in for approval. I submitted the 784-word post entitled “Don’t Blame Palin, Blame Stalin” yesterday and it is up today. You can read my Huffington writings at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/harvey-gotliffe-phd/

Thus Far, Have You Read This Far?

The brief euphoria comes in two stages — first when I see my writing published and then when someone comments on it, which is a rare occurrence. The comments can be positive or negative but at least they indicate that someone has read what you have written. How will I ever learn if you have read this?

 

 

Are Newspapers Killing Themselves?

The many stories on the demise of newspapers are found in newspapers, magazines and online media, and the blame is put on many sources. Is it the free Internet, the lack of timeliness compared to broadcast media’s immediacy, or the citizen journalists with their blogs and their on-the-scene reportorial endeavors with their ubiquitous camera phones? Andrew Stroehlein, communications director of the International Crisis Group, believes that “Citizen journalism is like citizen dentistry.”

No Death Defying Headlines

The bold-faced headlines and sub-headlines in a newspaper are what first catch the reader’s attention, and the killer instinct writing them can be a turn off. In the 12-page front section of today’s San Jose Mercury News there were the following headlines concerning “news” from around the United States; “Park shooting kills 2,” “Off-duty cop killed,”  “Man dies in flash flood,” and “Scout dies in fall.” The international news also offered carnage-like headlines: “Dozens killed as trains collide in eastern India,” “Two miners killed (in China),” “Bomb kills former insurgents,” and “Gunmen massacre 17 at a party in Mexico.”

Death Takes a Holiday

These eight front-section headlines concerned stories describing the deaths of 113 human beings including forty-nine in the train collision and 40 former insurgents. It is therefore comforting to find one section of the newspaper that is a respite away from such large numbers — today’s Obituary Page that only lists seven people who have recently departed. There may have been more who passed on but an obit can be expensive and unaffordable for many. However, they are a source of much-needed money for newspapers in a down economy. When a family member dies, along with purchasing a cemetery plot, a casket or an urn, contracting a funeral parlor for a hearse, and hiring a eulogizer, unless the person was well known or did something special in their lifetime, someone has to pay for an obituary for them and pay by the line. At the Mercury News the cost for each line of copy is $18, and one must dig up an additional $108 to include a photograph of the deceased. A short, 100-word obituary to describe the highlights of a person’s life would take up twenty-two lines and cost $396 plus $108 for the photograph. That’s a total of $504 to run the obituary for one day and during a time of emotional and financial stress, a well-respected former obit writer described those costs as being “criminal.”