The Fearless Blogger

from TechCrunch.com

Late night or West Coast tweeters in the US (as well as our international counterparts in other time zones) may have noticed that Twitter’s been down since around 10PM PST tonight.

According to TechCrunch (via www.downloadsquad.com) the site has been reportedly hacked by the  ”Iranian Cyber Army”.

Before you dismiss the attack as a mere inconvenience or smirk at the tweeting minions left without an outlet for their 140 character quips, consider the following points from the TechCruch article:

Twitter does not have the best record with security issues. We have previously covered a number of incidents, and as recently as two months ago their web servers were misconfigured to reveal detailed internal network information. We also previously wrote about their admin interface having a password of ‘password’ on one account, and the well-known Twitter doc incident. It was hoped that with the hiring of a new COO, Dick Costolo, as well as a number of other high-level engineers, including security experts, that Twitter had grown out of the phase of being vulnerable to security incidents on such a large scale.

Of particular note:
(emphasis mine)

It is suggested that if you use the same password on your Twitter account with other accounts, now would be a good time to change your password on those other accounts.

Get the complete story and current status by reading the full article (providing updates,  screenshots and details regarding attack) here: Twitter Hacked, Defaced By “Iranian Cyber Army” (Developing)

Source: Twitter down, reportedly hacked by “Iranian Cyber Army”.

click to view video

On December 7, 2009, Starbucks will be hosting a global “sing-along” of the Beatles classic “All We Need is Love” to raise support for The Global Fund.

Starbucks will be premiering the commercial for their new campaign, called the Starbucks Love Project during the morning talk shows Friday morning.  If you can’t wait (or missed it) you can view the video on Facebook or at the Love Project site (currently no embeddable version is available to share here).  The site also features a link where visitors can upload and share their own “love pictures”.

Following are the details from the Starbucks press release:

WHAT

The countdown is on.

An unprecedented event that will unite individuals, communities, nations and cultures through the universal language of music as a celebration of Starbucks one year anniversary in partnership with (RED)TM.

On December 7th, at 1:30pm GMT (8:30am EST), Starbucks Coffee Company will unite artists from around the world for a simultaneous, live performance of the legendary hit “All You Need Is Love” as a single global concert. Inspired by the vision of the Playing for Change Band, this project spans languages, cultures and time zones through the universal language of music, with musicians contributing in individual ways that are customary and unique to their homeland to create a one of a kind rendition of the song.

A first for Starbucks, the event will use state of the art technology to stream the live feed of this performance on www.StarbucksLoveProject.com. Following the sing-along, everyone with access to the site and a video camera will have the opportunity to submit their own version of “All You Need Is Love” for the world to see and hear.

To invite the world to the event, Starbucks is collaborating with Facebook to create the largest globally-reaching campaign on the Facebook platform to date.

WHY
Delivering on the Starbucks commitment to inspiring and nurturing the human spirit, the project is also about sharing that love with customers who have helped Starbucks contribute to the Global Fund through its partnership with (RED) TM. In just one year in partnership with (RED), Starbucks has generated enough money to buy more than 7 million days of medicine to help those living with HIV in Africa.

WHEN
Monday, December 7th – 5:30 a.m. PT / 8:30 a.m. EST

WHERE
www.StarbucksLoveProject.com

Representation of ADHD Twitter Search via wordle.net

Many people comment on AD/HD in their daily lives on Twitter. Some accept it; some deny it. Some mock it; some praise it.

By embedding a live stream of tweets referencing ADHD into a recent blog post, A Splintered Mind blogger Douglas Cootey uses the thousands of voices on Twitter to give us a glimpse “of what real people think about the subject”.

A picture may be worth a thousand words, one could also say that the words of thousands can paint a powerful picture.

To check out Doug’s post and share your comments, visit A Splintered Mind | Live AD/HD Feed on Twitter.

image credit: Magh

Since I’m Jewish, curious, and a procrastinator I had no choice but to follow the link included in this tweet (Confession: I’m checking Twitter and now blogging instead of cleaning my kitchen.)

In his essay on protecting the printed word, The Electronic Book Burning, Alan Kaufman compares the current shift towards electronic media (and the resulting impact on small bookstores) to a Nazi pogram (and the resulting murders of  99 Jews, imprisonment in concentration camps of 25,000-30,000 Jews and the destruction of 267 synogogues [source]):

the awful scene [that] is reoccuring everywhere: venerable, much beloved bookstores closing and that portion of the populace who cherish books—an ever-shrinking minority—left baffled and bereft; a silent corporate Krystallnacht decimating the world of literacy.

And I thought I’m dramatic!!

Granted, I’ve never written, much less published, a book, so it’s perfectly reasonable that I don’t share such strong views on the value of the medium over the content.

That said, although understanding Kaufman’s background helps add a bit of context to the essay’s metaphor, somewhere in between the comparison of the destiny of inanimate objects to human beings and the correlating comparison of market-trend and consumer-driven business decisions to the calculating, hate-filled “Master Plan” of the Nazi’s, his message gets a bit lost.

image credit: Patrick Correia

Before you think I may be over-reacting, I’ll share some additional passages from the essay:

Like any product, the book must run harder and faster in the marketplace or else fall and die. And the books are falling. Only the fittest now survive. While mid-list authors drop in the snow, blockbuster thrillers and middlebrow memoirs and diet books huff their way forward. Soon, though, they too will drop. The idea is for no one to be left standing. All physical books must go up the chimney stack. Such was the methodology of the SS who forced their prisoners to run naked races round and round the barracks yard in the Polish winter, a race that no one was meant to win.

The book is fast becoming the despised Jew of our culture. Der Jude is now Der Book. Hi-tech propogandists tell us that the book is a tree-murdering, space-devouring, inferior form of technology; that society would simply be better-off altogether if we euthanized it even as we begin to carry around, like good little Aryans, whole libraries in our pockets, downloaded on the Uber-Kindle.

Rather than add my commentary as to whether I agree if books are “despised” or with the author’s view of proponents of electronic media as “hi-tech propagandists”, I’ll share a bit more from the essay:

Not since the advent of Christianity has the world witnessed so sweeping a change in the very fabric of human existence. Behind the hi-tech revolution is an idea of Progress that in many regards resembles the premises of Christianity itself. The superseding of the new way over the old, of the New Testament over the Old Testament, the discrediting of the traditional as inferior or even evil, a sense of powerful excitement about the revolutionary, and of course, most importantly, the promise of heavenly immortality over the temporal limitations of the wasting physical body—the accursed haptic book versus the blessed Holy Ghostly Internet—all these earmark the hi-tech pogrom against the book.

Hmmn.  Let’s continue, shall we?

Heinrich Heine, the early 19th century German Jewish poet, wrote: “”Where they burn books, they will ultimately also burn people.”

OK. Well, the above quote from the  closing paragraph actually resonates with me.

And then it is quickly overshadowed by one last final metaphor:

The advent of electronic media to first position in the modern chain of Being—a place once occupied by God—and later, after the Enlightenment, by humans—is no mere 9/11 upon our cultural assumptions. It is a catastrophe of holocaustal proportions. And its endgame is the disappearance of not just books but of all things human.

Just a thought here.  As a general practice – regardless of the comparison one is attempting to illustrate – the adjective “mere” is not probably not an appropriate adjective to be paired with “9/11″.  The expression “too soon” comes to mind (among other expressions, I won’t get into!).

I appreciate the value of the printed book as an art form and small bookstores as a culture.

All the same, I think the comparison is a stretch.  And frankly a bit offensive  - insensitive at the very least.

That’s just me though.
What do you think?

Read it here:
THE ELECTRONIC BOOK BURNING by Alan Kaufman (Evergreen Review No. 120, October 2009).

If you live in SoCal and are without Halloween plans  (and with a disposable income) look no further – I have the scoop for you (thanks to YouTheDesigner.com)!

The Skinny

Silverlake Conservatory of Music announces its fifth annual “Hullabaloo” fundraiser will be held on Halloween, Saturday, October 31. Ben Harper will perform. The event, dubbed the “Halloweenabaloo,” will take place at LA’s historic Union Station. Doors open at 6 PM for a special “Kids Hour” of music, trick-or-treating and Halloween celebration. At 7 PM, the first of the evening’s musical performances will begin, continuing throughout the evening.

Music, Halloween excitement and performances from SCM co-founders Flea (Red Hot Chili Peppers) and “Tree,” a/k/a SCM Dean Keith Barry along with special musical guests Ben Harper, Linda Perry and others will highlight the Hullabaloo festivities including costumes, masks, observation of “El día de los muertos” traditions plus food and family fun.

The Cause (Silverlake Conservatory of Music)

Reacting to the disappearance of music education in the curriculum of many public schools, Flea and Tree (Keith Barry) founded the non-profit conservatory to provide a place where young people in their community could learn and enjoy music. The school’s website states, “The mission of the Silverlake Conservatory of Music, a non-profit organization, is to facilitate basic music education. Our primary focus is on the youth of the community but all are welcome and encouraged to participate. The Conservatory offers private music lessons at a reasonable cost and grants scholarships to children in need, providing free lessons and instruments. The study of music enriches the life of the student as well as the community and society.” Nine years after opening, the school serves about 600 students (about a quarter who are on scholarship). Students enjoy access to private lessons, instruments, summer camps and group ensembles.

More details, including how to get your hand on some tickets, are posted here (by YouTheDesigner.com)
And if you act quickly, you may still have time to enter to WIN a pair of tickets to the event!*

*Disclosure: I’ve entered the contest and plan on winning it. :-) So enter at your own risk- set your expectations accordingly!