You know that thing, where a group of ravens steal a hunk of smoked pork and then proceed to repeatedly drop it on your car in order to break it up into more palatable pieces?

My poor car:

Found on the ground next to my car:

I hate when they do that; don’t you?

To answer some of the questions I’ve received about this:

• I have no idea where the pork came from. In fact, I don’t even know if it’s pork.
• Luckily, no dents.
• Yes, I registered scorn with the ravens: I shook my fists at them and referred to them in very disparaging terms.

What do you make of this? I did a search in TweetDeck for the words “Does anyone”. Scrolling through some results I noticed more than one result that mentioned a sewing machine. Then I realized the tweets were identical. So I did another search for “Does anyone sewing” and came up with dozens of results, all identical. So I went to Twitter.com and ran the search and voilà!

Does anyone know what a decent price for a sewing machine? I’m looking at buying one and don’t want to pay too much.

— Rai Fidelis(@_raifidelis) April 24, 2013

Does anyone know what a decent price for a sewing machine? I’m looking at buying one and don’t want to pay too much.

— Cristie Decambra (@Cristievd7) April 24, 2013

Does anyone know what a decent price for a sewing machine? I’m looking at buying one and don’t want to pay too much.

— Francine Corrêa (@francine_correa) April 24, 2013

Does anyone know what a decent price for a sewing machine? I’m looking at buying one and don’t want to pay too much.

— jessica tinel (@JessicaTinelf) April 24, 2013

Does anyone know what a decent price for a sewing machine? I’m looking at buying one and don’t want to pay too much.

— Poster Walker (@PosterWalker_27) April 23, 2013

Does anyone know what a decent price for a sewing machine? I’m looking at buying one and don’t want to pay too much.

— gabriel tavares (@gabavares) April 23, 2013

Immediately this smells of some sort of spammer strategy, but none of these tweets are posting links: so what’s the frequency, Kenneth? What is the value of spam without some sort of way to generate revenue?

I did some more searching and came across this blog post on the New York Times’s Bits blog, authored by Nicole Perlroth: Fake Twitter Followers Become Multimillion-Dollar Business

In the article, Perlroth describes a very real–and apparently, lucrative–market for fake Twitter accounts.

The researchers said they approached sellers with positive feedback and found that fake followers were typically sold in packages ranging from $1 to $1,000 for 1,000 to one million accounts. For instance, Fiverr sells 1,000 Twitter followers for $5.

The article also reminded me of the claims, during the 2012 US Presidential campaign, that Mitt Romney’s official Twitter account was alleged to have thousands of “fake” accounts following it, inflating his follower count. (Personally, I suspected that these robot accounts were following him because he was one of them. No one can deny the fact that Romney swept the robot vote.)

So is that what I’m seeing, fake accounts? Can I assume that there’s some sort of software script that’s publishing these tweets, and that all of these budding sewing machine pilots (I don’t know what people that sew are called!) are actually created by a single person or company? If so, Perlroth is right: “In many cases, high-quality false Twitter accounts are nearly impossible to discern from the real thing.”

For example, consider Poster Walker up there. Here’s a quick sample of what following Mr. Walker will grant you access to:

My school just experienced a minute power outage. If only it had lasted longer or the whole day, I could’ve gone home

— Poster Walker (@PosterWalker_27) April 16, 2013

keep your moccasins on when we bang so I know it’s real.

— Poster Walker (@PosterWalker_27) April 15, 2013

And I’d be remiss if I didn’t showcase his penchant for punnery:

I used to get a boner in school everyday at 11am like cockwork.

— Poster Walker (@PosterWalker_27) April 24, 2013

Still, Poster the punster is only following 30 people. None of them appear to be companies or public personalities that would have both, the financial means to pay for followers, as well as the desire to build an online presence. So I don’t know. Maybe average Joes are out there purchasing fake followers. (Are Twitter stats the new rubric by which one grades their e-penis?)

If so, let me know: I’d be happy to follow you on Twitter in exchange for a few bucks. Just promise me that you can sling Internet awesomeness like my new friend @PosterWalker_27.

The Alaska Zoo has an adorable polar bear cub, by the name of Kali. The zoo recently posted a video of Kali, purportedly throwing a bit of a fit.

I’m not sure he wasn’t actually practicing his Brazilian heavy metal singing voice.

(Music Credit: Sepultura ‘Roots’ / Vocals: Kali the Polar Bear)

Kali – Photo Credit: Alaska Zoo

It is my intent to review this book without spoiling any of the important plot devices. I dove into this story without a clue as to what I was in for, other than that it was about an Earth that had become overcrowded–and that much can be gleaned from the title. I recommend you do the same: get a hold of this title, whether in print or on Kindle, and consume it.

Go.

Since you’re reading my words–and not yet the author of the story’s–I suppose you want a little bit more. Robert Bloch (best-known for writing Psycho, the basis for the Alfred Hitchcock film of the same name, as well as its later adaptations) created This Crowded Earth as a dystopian novella set beginning four decades in the future, in 1997. By then, planet Earth is devastatingly overpopulated and the attempted regulations and laws have done little to thwart its continuance. Dr. Leffingwell, however, has come up with a solution.

Through the quick 96 pages, and the 68 years the story encompasses, both the story’s unwitting subject, Harry Collins, and the reader are left desperate for the truth and trying to unravel the mystery of who can be trusted, and what’s really going on.

The story is surprisingly prescient. While the proposed solution to the overpopulation situation is purely science fiction, its not too far-fetched that you couldn’t imagine some of the fringe conspiracy theorists of AM talk radio raving it about as fact. (That’s both an acknowledgement of Bloch’s ingenuity, and an indictment of modern, cynical hysteria.)

The tempo is quickening. While it took mankind thousands of years to move from the bow and arrow to the rifle, it took only a few hundred to move from the rifle to the thermonuclear weapon. It took ages before men mastered flight, and then in two generations they developed satellites; in three, they reached the moon and Mars.

- This Crowded Earth by Robert Bloch

Just as it goes in real life, the effects of Collins’s government’s benevolence–the desperation of policy-makers to do more good than harm–is shadowed by the inevitable: collateral damage of a most-disturbing kind. This theme plays off of the result of a worldwide e cold war, in which the threat of mutually-assured destruction has guaranteed peace on Earth.

Bloch’s writing is crisp and witty. The story is short enough to be consumed in the course of a couple of hours, but long enough for the reader to become involved in the story and attached to the characters. It’s also one of those stories that sticks with you, the ones you find yourself thinking about days or more after finishing it. This Crowded Earth is a worthwhile investment for any reader’s repertoire.

This email alert just came to me from UAA (bold formatting mine):

UAA Campus Community:

Respect is an important value at UAA and safety is our highest priority. For those reasons, we are compelled to inform you that an inappropriate incident involving a female cadaver occurred in the Health Sciences Building’s Gross Anatomy Lab sometime between Monday afternoon and Tuesday morning. In addition, an act of vandalism to building furniture occurred Wednesday afternoon in the same building.

Criminal investigations are underway and additional security measures were implemented immediately.

Students and staff should take appropriate precautions, including extra vigilance, avoiding isolated areas of buildings, working and traveling in groups or seeking escorts at night.

If you have any information regarding these incidents, please contact the University Police Department at 786-1120.

Thank you.

 

I guess that’s what one might expect in a “Gross Anatomy Lab”.

If you live in the United States, consider this scenario:

Canada is hell-bent on erasing Mexico from the map. Ottawa organizes and funds a militia and sends them to a suburb of D.C. to set up a state within a state, setting into place the resources and framework needed to begin terrorizing Mexico. What’s more, this Canadian militia has no qualms about terrorizing the U.S. to meet their ends; a number of U.S. leaders are assassinated in car bombs if they seem like they might speak out against Ottawa. The Canadian militia regularly moves into neighborhoods in the U.S. Southwest, hiding among civilians as they launch rockets across the border into Mexico. Mexico responds by striking back at its attackers– once peaceful neighborhoods now collateral damage. Your suffering, the result of unfortunate geography.

If this scenario makes you a bit uncomfortable, then you’re starting to understand– albeit just barely — a small part of what the citizens of Lebanon have been experiencing under the hammer of Hezbollah for the past few decades.

In his most recent book, The Road to Fatima Gate: The Beirut Spring, the Rise of Hezbollah, and the Iranian War Against Israel, Michael J. Totten articulately covers the chaos that has consumed Lebanon for the better part of the past decade. Totten lived in Lebanon’s capital, Beirut, during periods of unrest and was able to add to his writing the flair that only a first-hand account can provide. As is constant in Totten’s work, he digs into the history, as well as the country’s recent past, to build the setting for his readers.

While covering foreign people and events may be Totten’s literary raison d’être, his analysis occasionally circles back on his home country, the United States of America. Totten does well at explaining foreign concepts in a domestic manner and voice.

In 1991, the U.S. signed off on Syria’s occupation of Lebanon in return for Hafez al-Assad’s “help” in ousting Saddam Hussein from Kuwait. The U.S. had enough of Syrian foreign policy, though, by the time the second Iraq war rolled around. The younger al-Assad helped terrorists and insurgents from all over the Arab world transit through Syria into Iraq to fight American soldiers and car bomb civilians. In 2003, a fed-up U.S. Congress retaliated with the Syria Accountability and Lebanese Sovereignty Restoration Act.

Totten collected interviews from a number of key places and people, including time spent inside Hezbollah’s stronghold in Beirut’s southern suburb, known as the “dahiyeh”, and in Northern Israel as Hezbollah katyusha rockets came screaming over the Libyan-Israeli border. His first-hand accounts not only offer credibility to his writing, but they engage the reader in contemplation. I found myself spending more time thinking about Totten’s words than actually reading them; and I mean that with the utmost praise for his work.

I stepped out of our car and braced for an explosion. The Israelis fired artillery shells over our heads every couple of moments toward points unknown on the other side of the horizon. I jumped every time and tried in vain to get used to it.
[...]
Bang, followed by an arcing tear in the atmosphere. Bang, followed by the sound of ripping sky. A mile or so in front of us, a series of glowing surface-to-surface missiles hurtled toward Lebanon at impossible speeds and somehow got faster as they flew farther.

The Road to Fatima Gate offers its readers unique insight into the turmoil in Middle East and will leave you with a greater understanding of an extremely complex situation that is fueled by even more complex set of politics and relationships. Let Totten draw the connections, as he does plainly and articulately, and finish this book with an expanded view of a troubled, yet fascinating, corner of our globe.

At least the Israeli homes on the other side of Fatima Gate were out of rock-throwing range. They were not, however, outside rifle, mortar, and rocket range. Living in a house so close to South Lebanon in 2005 was like living on a seasonal floodplain or atop a tectonic fault. The false peace couldn’t hold. How could it hold? Hezbollah’s hatred of Jews and Israelis was white-hot and total. It was difficult, if not impossible, for Westerners like me to wrap our minds around it.

Also, read my review of Totten’s previous book, Where the West Ends.

So Governor Parnell tweeted:

Extreme D legislators say oil tax bill goes too far. AOGA says it doesn’t go far enough. Lends cred to argument the proposal is fair. #AKLeg

— Gov. Sean Parnell (@AKGovParnell) January 20, 2013

This prompted Alaska State Senator Wielechowski to respond:

@akgovparnell: Extreme D legislators say oil tax bill goes too far. / What do you say you and I debate this issue on statewide TV?

— Bill Wielechowski (@wielechowski) January 20, 2013

And thus, the stage was set.

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer ran a brief story about the exchange. Alaska print and broadcast media weighed in as well. On Thursday, the Anchorage Daily News editorial board recommended the Governor accept the challenge, and conservative talk-show host Mike Porcaro offered his program as a venue for the debate.

Governor Parnell’s response came through his spokesperson, Sharon Leighow:

“A spokeswoman for Parnell, Sharon Leighow, said Parnell would not debate Wielechowski.

“The debate is occurring in the legislative hearings,” she wrote in an email. “As a former legislator, Gov. Parnell understands and appreciates the thorough examination of proposals, by Alaskans and legislators alike, that is carried out during the public process.”

Governor Parnell was a guest on Kenai radio yesterday, on KSRM’s Sound-Off with Duane Bannock (humorously dubbed, “The Tall, Dark, and Handsome Hour”). Bannock asked the Governor, “The Senator from East Anchorage and part-time Homer resident, Senator Bill Wielechowski, wants to debate you. Is that going to happen, yes or no?”

Parnell: “No. Not directly. You know, everyday, he has a unique opportunity, unlike most Alaskans, to debate people speaking on my behalf in the legislative hallways. He has a unique opportunity to put forward new ideas to create new production. Those opportunities are there everyday for him, to be on statewide TV doing it. He really needs to do his job as a senator, and I’m doing my job as Governor.”

His comment about the debate being had in the legislative hallways struck me as a bit bizarre and disconnected. There have been far too many deals struck, and debates had, in the capitol’s hallways that should have happened in televised committee rooms and floor sessions. It is extremely important that Alaskans understand this issue; it has the potential to dramatically affect the operations of our state for many years to come. Vice President Biden might refer to it as a big…ahem… deal.

As far as Wielechowski having the opportunity to have these discussions on statewide TV, committee meetings covered on Gavel to Gavel are hardly the place for the lay Alaskan to learn the debate on oil taxes: the discussions are often technical, lengthy, and well… a bit boring. And still, committee hearings are ran by the legislators asking questions of the administration and others selected to offer testimony; they lack the back-and-forth exchange that a proper debate would allow for.

I’ll admit, part of my desire to see such a debate stems for my love of political theater and the potential exists that this could be one of the great debates of Alaskan history. Some are speculating that the next Governor’s election will be between these two men as well, so what a great preview of what might be in store for 2014.

But greater than my desire to see this event for entertainment purposes is my desire to become educated on the Governor’s oil tax plan. I’m tired of the soundbites and slogans. I don’t know if the Governor’s plan is to giveaway $2-billion to the oil companies or if it’s going to create a booming Alaskan economy the likes of which we haven’t seen since the construction of the Alyeska pipeline. And neither do many other Alaskans.

This is one issue that warrants the extra attention. Governor Parnell should give not Senator Wielechowski, but Alaskans an hour or two to let this issue be heard. If the Governor doesn’t want to do it himself (and I can respect the notion that the Governor shouldn’t get in a habit of debating legislators outside of a political campaign), maybe Lt. Governor Mead Treadwell could have someone else protect the state seal for a couple of hours and carry the Governor’s banner in his stead. If the Governor’s plan is defensible, and it damn well better be if he’s proposing it, then time is nigh to defend it.

When it comes to something so important to Alaskans and our future, Alaskans would be better served by having at least part of this debate on primetime KTUU than they are to have all of it happen within the less-accessible halls of the state capitol.

I’ve been reading a bit of American history lately, the eloquence of Daniel Webster, the wit of Benjamin Franklin, and the slicing reason of Thomas Paine. I wonder, was everything that our great American historical figures said and wrote something you might want to print, frame, and revere? Did the culture of the time require more of its orators and writers than that of ours today? Or maybe they occasionally lapsed into lazy blurbs and stream-of-conscious musings, as if they inked a quill and lawn-darted it at some parchment across the room. We may never know.

But the good news is, today we have the technology to save the words — all of them — of our great political leaders. 150 years from now, when one of my ancestors looks to the pages of American history for some literary inspiration, that sacred historical record will be there for them…

Thanks to “Great Moments in American Tweets”!

For our first installment, I bring you Iowa’s senior US Senator Chuck Grassley, who just might be one of the most active members of Congress on Twitter.

I hope you enjoyed this “Great Moment in American Tweets”, stay tuned for the next edition, coming soon!

I didn’t read in much as 2012 as I would have liked to, but 2012 was a great year for other reasons. I grew stronger than my nicotine addiction, lost some weight, and spent a lot of time in the glorious wilderness. I averaged greater than one book per month, but most of these were read towards the end of the year. My goal for 2013 is to read at least twice as many.

I’ve reviewed some of these on various blogs, as noted below.

• A Universe From Nothing – Lawrence Krauss (My review)
• Space Chronicles: Facing the Ultimate Frontier – Neil deGrasse Tyson (My review)
• How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming – Mike Brown
• Why does E=MC2 – Brian Cox and Jeff Forshaw
• 2312 –  Kim Stanley Robinson
• The Doctors’ Plague: Germs, Childbed Fever, and the Strange Story of Ignac Sammelweis – Sherwin B. Nuland
• Touching the Void – Joe Simpson
• Deep Surival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why – Laurence Gonzales
• Finding Ultra: Rejecting Middle-Age, Becoming One of the World’s Fittest Men, and Discovering Myself – Rich Roll
• Into Thin Air – Jon Krakauer
• The Code of the Woosters – P.G. Wodehouse
• Right Ho, Jeeves – P.G. Wodehouse (Free Kindle version!)
• Letters to a Young Contrarian – Christopher Hitchens
• Letter to a Christian Nation – Sam Harris
• Where the West Ends – Michael J. Totten (My review)

And I’m starting 2013 with:
The Road to Fatima Gate – Michael J. Totten

2013 will be a year of continuing my positive habits of 2012, with a greater focus on reading and writing.

Sitting in PR headquarters, mostly silent, members of the PR team wracked their brains trying to find a way to at least mitigate some of the negative publicity being aimed at the corporation.

Then it came. One member of the team jumped up and exclaimed, “I’ve got it! Let’s spend some money on Facebook and try to get some extra ‘Likes’ over this whole thing!”

And everyone at Shell agreed.

The end.