From another blog: The benefits and necessities of Tweeting wisely

Tweet Wisely or Forever Hold Your Peace

By Frances Cole Jones

August 4, 2010

From ‘The Blog of Frances Cole Jones’

http://francescolejones.wordpress.com/2010/08/04/tweet-wisely-or-forever-hold-your-peace/

One measure of the popularity of Twitter is the proliferation of Twitter debacles due to inappropriate tweets—with one Scottish politician committing political death when he referred to his elderly constituents as “coffin dodgers.

And politicians aren’t the only offenders: while many people have a morbid fascination with celebrities, is there anyone who doesn’t have Lindsay-Lohan-tweet-fatigue? I’m about to buy that family a washer/dryer so they can stop airing their dirty laundry in public.

Here’s the thing: like Facebook, Twitter began as a way to make your opinions known, and one of its supposed ‘benefits’ is its immediacy. But how often is our first reaction our best? I say, rarely. Consequently, and forthwith, my #1 rule for Twitter:

▪       Tweets are forever: Don’t tweet anything you wouldn’t want to see on the front page of the New York Times.

After that, the other elements I consider mandatory are:

▪       Be amusing without being mean-spirited.

For example, I have tweeted about T-shirt slogans I found preposterous: “Avoid Responsibility” not being work-attire; and cant.function@xxx.com not being my first choice for the email address I would put on my resume.

▪       Offer actionable information people can use to run their business, or their life, more efficiently.

For myself, this has included items along the lines of “Here’s a great telephone greeting I heard,” and “Wow, this big box store not only gave my dog a cart to ride in- they gave him a pillow to sit on.” In both cases, both readers, and the businesses mentioned, wrote to thank me.

▪       Additionally, and despite the 140 character restrictions, do not fall back on abbreviations, emoticons, and/or any other trappings of the junior high school set.

As you’re not in high school anymore, your tweets shouldn’t sound like you’re stuck in detention.

Used wisely, Twitter is a great way to help others feel connected to you and your business. But just because its immediacy gives it a shotgun-wedding-in-Vegas feel, doesn’t mean the words you commit to it aren’t important– and binding. So tweet wisely, or forever hold your peace.

From Another Blog: When Copywriters Write Terrible Headlines

Saw this when I logged onto WordPress today. Pretty interesting. URL: http://lifeneedsedits.com/2010/06/23/when-copyeditors-write-terrible-headlines/

Happy Vesak!

To all Buddhists friends, hope you’ve had a good and happy Vesak!

In the afternoon we are off to the Buddhist Fellowship to attend a talk by Ajahn Brahm about procrastination. Ajahn’s talk covers two themes: learning to relax, and managing our priorities.

Relaxation, he says, leads to improvements in the quality and productivity of our work; in turn, this gives us a competitive edge in the long run. Relaxation also helps us to live longer! Because it diminishes the tensions within us: we need to learn to loosen ourselves when we encounter stressful situations, only then do we stand a higher chance of overcoming them. Ajahn tells us how he used to relax in-between his exams, rather than mug through his notes. And he passed!

On the topic of managing our priorities, he says that we should only focus on one thing at any one time, because thinking about too many things at once would lead to stress. Therefore, procrastination is good in this sense, he quips, because the completion of items that aren’t too important can be delayed.

How do we rank our priorities? Put yourself in such a situation: you are going to die soon. In a few hours, in less than a day. What would you do first? Ajahn recommends that we do the things we need to do RIGHT NOW, and he means NOW. Forget about fears and worries, to use Nike’s slogan, just do it. Like telling loved ones that you love them, seeking forgiveness for misdeeds and harm inflicted upon them in the past. This means not procrastinating on what needs to be done with great immediacy!

To Ajahn, it doesn’t matter which path you take, it’s HOW you travel along it.

We do not stay for the remainder of the question-and-answer session, the queries deviate far from the topic which does not pique our interest. We leave to visit a couple of temples.

First we go to the Sri Lankaramaya Buddhist Temple (http://www.basicbuddhism.org/index.cfm?GPID=85) at St Michael’s, where Mike and Aiwei’s teacher resides. The temple is nestled in a quiet residential neighbourhood; there’s a lot of greenery in its compound. First we visit the hall, which contains the reclining Buddha. There is a relic on display, although the bhante (teacher) present is unable to identify which part of the Gautama Buddha it comes from. It is really small – much like a piece of diamond on a ring – that a magnifying glass has to be used for closer examination.

Across the road is a two-storey building for congregations: the ground floor consists of a hall for talks and performances – on this occasion, we spot keyboards at the side of a stage. The hall is also filled with people who seem to be expecting a performance to begin. On the second floor is a meditation hall; there is a little exhibition gallery behind the Buddha. It contains figures of not only the Buddha, but other deities such as Guan Yin (the Goddess of Mercy). We also spot a Japanese Good-Luck Cat as well as a Laughing Buddha. It’s interesting as the temple belongs to the Sri Lankan Therevadan tradition, while Guan Yin is better-known from the Mahayana school. How the Laughing Buddha and Good-Luck Cat ended there is a curiosity. Also I wonder how the devotees practising meditation in this hall deal with the noise and merry-making from the ground floor – furthermore music is piped through the speakers in this quiet corner! But in meditation, one disciplines oneself to acknowledge external disturbances and not dwell on them.

We return to the ground floor and chance upon Bhante outdoors. We exchange a few pleasantries, and then we’re off to explore the rest of the temple grounds – of which there isn’t really much left because the main buildings of interest are at the fore, while the rear contains the living quarters for the members of the sangha.

The next temple we go to is the Burmese Buddhist Temple (BTT), whose towering stupa you can see when you enter the expressway from the town centre of Toa Payoh in the direction. The temple is located next to the Sun Yat Sen Villa. We try to visit the Villa, but upon reaching the main building, we find that admission to the rest of the compound is via a fee. Oh well, you need money to keep the building maintained.

The third floor of this temple contains stunning artwork: at the back of the hall is a mural depicting the history behind the temple’s two massive statues. There is a white Buddha statue located on the main hall on the ground floor; this statue dates back to 1916, when it was constructed in Myanmar (then known as Burma). The statue made many journeys and resided in locations about Myanmar before being shipped to Singapore, where it too was placed in several temples, before arriving at its current home (who knows whether the statue will be moved again!) at the BTT. The golden statue on the third floor has a more recent history. Along the walls near the ceiling are murals depicting various characters and situations that the Buddha encountered during his lifetime. All these artwork were hand-painted on the walls, no synthetic printing a la bus advertisements.

On the third floor, at the base of the stupa is a small room with three Buddhas within, this is used for ordination ceremonies. We stand on the roof looking at the stupa, and Mike tells me that in Myanmar, a diamond is placed at the pinnacle of the stupa, and lights are directed at it from ground level, enabling the diamond to glow at night.

On the way out I pick up a couple of books. I especially can’t wait to read Kampol Thongbunnum’s story Bright and Shining Mind in a Disabled Body – he was paralysed from the neck down after a diving accident and he recounts how he lived with his disability.

Bright minds… but dimmed PR?

Singapore’s City Upon a Hill

By Anthony Mullen on April 16, 2010 3:28 PM | 3 Comments | No TrackBacks

http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/teacher_of_the_year/2010/04/singapores_city_upon_a_hill.html#comments

Massachusetts


Someplace near where the pilgrims first landed.

Quite a few critics of the American system of education are kept busy seeking ‘A City Upon a Hill’ on foreign shores. One such country is Singapore. After all, Singaporean students rank 1st in the world in mathematics on the latest TIMSS (U.S. students rank 16th) and Singapore boasts a nation of high performing students and excellent schools. Could Singapore be the City Upon a Hill that Puritan leader John Winthrop described while giving a speech aboard the ship Arbelle en route to the Massachusetts Bat Colony? Maybe. But Winthrop was careful to remind his fellow pilgrims that such a city would be carefully watched by ‘the eyes of all people’ and warned of the accusation of hypocrisy should his weary and seasick flock not practice what was taught in the Good Book.

Singapore will be hosting a major education conference in September and has invited distinguished scholars and teachers from throughout the world to share ideas and presentations. One such distinguished teacher is Susan Elliot, the 2009 Colorado State Teacher of the Year and one of four finalists for the 2009 National Teacher of the Year (I may have pulled the sword from the stone but Susan will always best me as Lancelot did Arthur).

Susan Elliot has spent three decades in education and taught thousands of students. She is bright, articulate, and has a great sense of humor. She teaches social studies and history to mainstream and hearing-impaired students-all in the same classroom. Her unique ability to teach social studies and history to both ‘regular’ and hearing-impaired students in the same classroom is a remarkable display of master teaching. Susan is the perfect educator to help represent America’s teachers and deserves a key to this Asian City Upon a Hill.

Susan was excited about traveling to Singapore and sharing her ideas and experiences about methods that could develop the potential of all students to become independent, self-supporting and contributing members of society. And then came her dismissal.

Once the Singapore education officials discovered that Susan was hearing-impaired, they retracted her invitation. The so-called discovery and subsequent retraction of her invitation was an act of disingenuous statesmanship because the Singapore education officials knew all along that Susan was deaf. The official in charge of inviting and then disinviting Susan attributes the mistake to miscommunication. Wait a minute. Singapore is renowned for its academic prowess; surely the highly educated official could read a simple biography that very clearly noted Susan was hearing-impaired. The Singapore education system may be perched on a higher hill than the American system but something is not quite right.

Susan Elliot sent a few emails to Singaporean education officials, hoping the ‘miscommunication’ was itself a miscommunication and the whole matter an innocent mistake. She had to defend her disability and remind conference officials that America’s teachers and children are a diverse lot.

How did the Singapore officials respond? Susan was wished a successful future but remains persona non grata at the conference.

The Singapore system of education may be the envy of TIMSS groupies, and from a distance the city appears brightly lit in the night sky. But a peek behind the city walls reveals a flawed and ignorant culture of education.

Maybe, just maybe, Americans came in 16th place on the TIMSS because we are willing to carry a much heavier load. A weight gladly held by teachers such as Susan Elliot.

As I glance out at the cold Atlantic Ocean I think about the pilgrims huddled on a small ship, listening to John Winthrop preach about what it takes to create a City Upon a Hill. Singaporean education officials should heed Winthrop’s warning, lest their country be viewed as hypocrites in ‘the eyes of all people.’

Oh, by the way, if any teacher would like to email the education official who disinvited one of America’s top teachers, please send a message to Ms. Lynn Koh.

Her email is: KOH_Lee_Leng@moe.gov.sg

Don’t judge too quickly…

Series of funny commercials for the Ameriquest Mortgage Company

Music is da language

Many people comment that music is the universal language, although sometimes I beg to differ – how many of us have failed to understand certain types of music, and how many of us have applied our personal biasnesses when we listen to a piece?

I’ve digressed. In this post, I’m talking about music as a written language too – a blog whose posts are pretty well-written by some of the best musicians. Music also touches us through the written word!

While reading up on Valery Gergiev, I chanced upon this blog whose posts are contributed by several musicians from the London Symphony Orchestra (LSO) who have a flair for entertainment through story-telling. (Gergiev, by the way, is LSO’s principal conductor). I’ve really enjoyed reading their posts, and have subscribed for updates! Even if you are no musician, the posts are great reads, for all the humour and the wit in the writing. Plus, you gain a better understanding into the lives of touring musicians.

Enough from me, go and read! http://lsoontour.wordpress.com/

Berlin Phil is hip!

WOW!!!

Diana Reeves jams with violist Martin Stegner in a performance of ‘Foggy Day’ by the Berlin Philharmonic, led by Sir Simon Rattle.

Love _ever Die-sected

I have not seen Andrew Lloyd Webber’s latest musical Love Never Dies but this critic’s approach towards his review makes for irresist­ible posting.

Love Never Dies at Adelphi, WC2

By Christopher Hart

The Sunday Times (UK), 14 March 2010

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/stage/theatre/article7056896.ece

The Phantom of the Opera is the biggest entertainment phenomenon in history, having earned more than £3 billion worldwide and been seen by more than 100m people. Now comes the non-awaited, sorry, long-awaited sequel, Love Never Dies, and its legions of passionate “phans” are incensed, seeing this as a cynical add-on to a timeless masterpiece. (They’re only half wrong: Phantom is not a timeless masterpiece.) They’ve been tweeting, blogging and even bombarding us critics with emails.Meanwhile, Andrew Lloyd Webber himself has bemoaned “the whole sad culture of people who seem to only live by the old Phantom of the Opera”. I’m right with him. This does indeed seem a sad way to live. But what of Love Never Dies?

At the end of Phantom, you’ll recall, like the Marschallin in Der Rosenkavalier, but to different music, the freakish composer and brilliant impresario abjures his pursuit of Christine so she can marry her true love, Raoul. Now, a decade later, Christine receives a mysterious invitation to perform at the magical Phantasma funfair on Coney Island, New York, owned by a freakish composer and brilliant impresario called Mr Y.

Who on earth can that be?

So off she sails with Raoul and their son, Gustave, who is 10. Only when she gets there, and Mr Y/the Phantom reveals himself, does she sing: “I should have known that you’d be here!” Yes, you really should, my dear.

Christine isn’t just dim, she’s also a bit of a slapper. On the very night before her wedding to Raoul, “tormented by my choice”, she ran back to the Phantom. They “kissed”, “touched” and, as he puts it, reminiscing with a desperate, savage passion: “I took you!”

Yet Christine really did love the Phantom, and Raoul turned out to be a cad. He drinks, he gambles, he’s mean to little Gustave, he talks about “lower-class scum” and, with an eye on the Broadway audience, he sneers at “filthy American money”. None of this villainy was remotely hinted at in Phantom. It’s one of the many excruciating ways in which the original characters have had to be deformed to fit this childish and cheesy melodrama. (Babybelodrama, possibly.)

The writer principally responsible is Ben Elton — which, of course, means there are no decent jokes here, either. The Phantom was previously a murderous, gauche, doomed romantic. Now he’s a smooth, debonair operator, irresist­ible to Christine. And Gustave isn’t Raoul’s son, he’s the Phantom’s, although mercifully he hasn’t inherited his father’s unfortunate facial configuration, or we could be looking at another sequel.

It’s not only that this is implausible. The original Phantom, after all, featured a deformed genius who lived on a secret candlelit lake under the Paris Opera House, which hardly suggested the stern realism of Emile Zola. The trouble is, you have two completely different stories, ineptly yoked together and still audibly kicking and screaming in the traces. The clod-hopping, tin-eared lyrics are by Glenn Slater. “I just passed Meg’s dressing room, it was as empty as a tomb,” reports a character songfully at one point. I think “as cold as the tomb” might be the simile for which Mr Slater is unsuccessfully searching. Tombs aren’t usually empty, unless they’re Jesus’s; they’re simply stuffed with rotting coffins and old bones. But at least “tomb” rhymes with that pesky “room”. What else could we have had? “I just passed Meg’s dressing room. They said she’d sailed for Khartoum.” Another time, Coney Island becomes Coney Isle, to rhyme with “mile”.

At least, with Lloyd Webber, you’re assured of hummable tunes, some jolly burlesque numbers and a waltz or two. You’re also assured of weepy, sweepy strings and music that rises, tumesces and climaxes with adolescent regularity. Like Phantom, Love Never Dies aspires to be dark and passionate, but delivers merely a kitschy family-gothic. Inevitably, you keep thinking: why can’t it be Joseph, with its rock’n’roll numbers and wobbly camels? And if Love Never Dies, how do you bring the damn thing to an end? Answer: you kill off one of the main characters with a random gunshot. This victim of gun crime manages to belt out an impressive final aria for someone who has just been shot at point-blank range. Imagine Tim Roth in Reservoir Dogs, writhing around on the back seat of the get­away car with that stomach wound and still giving a fair rendition of Like a Virgin.

Ramin Karimloo (the Phantom) and Sierra Boggess (Christine) both deliver valiant performances, and their singing is excellent for its kind. The designer, Bob Crowley, whips up some lovely art-nouveau whorls and curlicues, a moon that rolls across the sky and becomes a Ferris wheel, and the Phantom’s lair, with its creepy mechanical devices.But such parts are no compensation for the whole. Picture Starlight Express crashing into Alton Towers and you pretty well have it. It will earn enormous amounts for Lloyd Webber to spend on his fantastic Victorian art collection, which he may one day leave to a grateful nation. So perhaps it’s all worth it.

Love is a flame that carries on burning!/Love sticks around like old chewing gum!/And Love Never Dies! It’ll carry on earning/For decades and decades to come!

Life without Black People

From an email:

A very humorous and revealing story is told about a group of white people who were fed up with African Americans, so they joined together and wished themselves away. They passed through a deep dark tunnel and emerged in sort of a twilight zone where there is an America without black people.

At first these white people breathed a sigh of relief.

‘At last’, they said, ‘no more crime, drugs, violence and welfare.’

All of the blacks have gone! Then suddenly, reality set in. The ‘NEW AMERICA’ is not America at all – only a barren land.

1. There are very few crops that have flourished because the nation was built on a slave-supported system.

2. There are no cities with tall skyscrapers because Alexander Mils, a black man, invented the elevator, and without it, one finds great difficulty reaching higher floors.

3. There are few if any cars because Richard Spikes, a black man, invented the automatic gearshift, Joseph Gambol, also black, invented the Super Charge System for Internal Combustion Engines, and Garrett A. Morgan, a black man, invented the traffic signals.

4. Furthermore, one could not use the rapid transit system because its procurer was the electric trolley, which was invented by another black man, Albert R.

Robinson

5. Even if there were streets on which cars and a rapid transit system could operate, they were cluttered with paper because an African American, Charles Brooks, invented the street sweeper..

6. There were few if any newspapers, magazines and books because John Love invented the pencil sharpener, William Purveys invented the fountain pen, and Lee Barrage invented the Type Writing Machine and W. A. Love invented the

Advanced Printing Press. They were all, you guessed it, Black.

7. Even if Americans could write their letters, articles and books, they would not have been transported by mail because William Barry invented the Postmarking and Canceling Machine, William Purveys invented the Hand Stamp and Philip Downing invented the Letter Drop.

8. The lawns were brown and wilted because Joseph Smith invented the Lawn Sprinkler and John Burr the Lawn Mower.

9. When they entered their homes, they found them to be poorly ventilated and poorly heated. You see, Frederick Jones invented the Air Conditioner and Alice Parker the Heating Furnace. Their homes were also dim. But of course, Lewis

Lattimer later invented the Electric Lamp, Michael Harvey invented the lantern, and Granville T. Woods invented the Automatic Cut off Switch. Their homes were also filthy because Thomas W. Steward invented the Mop and Lloyd P. Ray the Dust Pan.

10. Their children met them at the door – barefooted, shabby, motley and unkempt.  But what could one expect? Jan E. Matzelinger invented the Shoe Lasting Machine, Walter Sammons invented the Comb, Sarah Boone invented the Ironing Board, and George T. Samon invented the Clothes Dryer.

11. Finally, they were resigned to at least have dinner amidst all of this turmoil. But here again, the food had spoiled because another Black Man, John Standard invented the refrigerator…

Now, isn’t that something? What would this country be like without the contributions of Blacks, as African-Americans?

Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “by the time we leave for work, millions of Americans have depended on the inventions from the minds of Blacks.”

Black history includes more than just slavery, Frederick Douglass, Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and Marcus Garvey & W.E.B. Dubois.

Observed at SITEX 2009…

Korean female pop bands are the newest display materials for LCD and Plasma flat-screen TVs.