The sight of pain and suffering, or the mention of it, brings tears to the eyes of many. It also makes many people to spring up into action, whether it is to find an alternate distraction, or to do something to either contribute to or reduce the elements related to the pain and suffering in question. Seeing pain and suffering on TV is almost the same. While in the media we usually see homelessness in places like Africa as being a segment separated from glamor and fashion from places like Hollywood, the reality is that the “Homeless Capital of United States” is still Los Angeles. You may not hear about that regularly on the news, because hearing about Africa and other far away places may attract more viewers. And more sympathy.

National Estimates of 2007 indicate that as many as 1.6 million people in the United States are homeless, and around 530,000 of them are children. Homelessness has only increased since that time¹. What is it about a place like Haiti that makes us want to help them more than the homeless and starving people within America? Why do we have to see disaster in places like Chile to want to help a far away nation, instead of wanting to help regularly or once a while in things around us, or other parts of the world including the United States? Why do we focus on wanting to help a homeless or a starving person far away, when we have more of such people right in our own neighborhood that we ignore or avoid on a daily basis? Do we feel better and more part of the society by focusing more on what the media is focusing on at some given moment? Is it because feeling superior enough to be able to help others far away seems better than the feeling one feels seeing and encountering the homeless in real life on a daily basis?

The homeless on TV are the only real homeless?

As of February 16th, 2010, the only big word I kept seeing on TV was “Haiti.” A major earthquake in Haiti resulted in devastation that tore apart the lives of thousands of people in that region, the same way the lives of thousands of people around other parts of the world are taken away due to starvation and homelessness on a daily basis. I kept and still keep seeing Michelle Obama on TV talking about Haiti and how “we” can all donate to the “American Red Cross” to help them:

And now, as of March 6th, 2010, the new big word I keep seeing on TV is “Chile.” A major earthquake hit Chile on February 27th, once again sending the lives of thousands of people into disaster, just like the people in Haiti, and just like all of the homeless people in your city, state and country. And now we see Barack Obama talking about the disaster in Chile:

Why are we not seeing Mr. and Mrs. Obama talk about the homeless and starving people in America? Why do we not see Bush & Clinton, sitting next to each other, talk about the homeless in China or the homeless in Washington, instead of the homeless in Haiti? What about the homeless people in Haiti and Chile before these earthquakes? Did those people not deserve any help or attention?

Why are we not seeing the “American“Red Cross, the TV, the Republicans, the Democrats, the Green Party, the Independents, the Confederates, the KGB, the Batman Party, news and others focus on the devastation in the lives of people who are dying in other countries, and in California and other states? Are the Haiti Homeless are better than the American Homeless? Are the Chile Homeless are better than the Mexican Homeless? What about the homeless in Iraq, Russia, China, India, Japan, Nepal, and other places? Why are not all homeless people, if their homelessness came around because of things not under their control, treated equally? Does a homeless person have to go through an earthquake or a flood in order to get help or attention?

The Homeless Victims In Media VS The Homeless Victims Who Are Not Spotlighted In Media

What is it about Haiti and Chile that is getting them more attention than other people who are devastated? In the case of Haiti, it is not the earthquake that should be under sole observation. The observation should also include the displaced and affected people. Does that mean that a person who becomes homeless because of an earthquake deserves more attention than a person who becomes homeless because of growing up in a poor neighborhood or losing their jobs? Do Presidents & their enforcers talk openly about helping some specific people because doing so shows that they are supporting what is popular on the media at that moment? What about you?

What do you think? Please let me and others know in the comments below. If you can talk or think on your own for at least 31 seconds about the homeless people around anywhere in the world without needing a teleprompter, you may be a better speaker than the people you saw in the videos above. You may also then be better suited to answer the questions listed here.

Thank you for reading².

1. The National Coalition for the Homeless works on finding out information about the homeless people in the United States, and to work on finding some solutions to homeless for many as a whole.
2. Homeless Person Begging picture from http://www.sxc.hu/photo/695464

During the late 90’s, airline travel was considered the most exotic form of travel for majority of the human population. It was prestigious to go traveling around the world, or even to a neighboring city, and telling your friends that you traveled by air. “Wow, you sat in the business class? Nice!” is what I used to say when I would hear others talking about getting free upgrades to business class on a vacation.

Today, if you tell people about flying to your vacation last week, they will either say “Nice! How was the vacation?” or “Aaaah, which airport did you take? Was it ok?” It is as if traveling by air now automatically creates a feeling in our heads that if you are not a terrorist, you will be punished through other means for wanting to travel by air. Why has air travel become the worst way of traveling for many?

Take off your shoes, infidel!

Today, air travel has become so intrusive that people worry more about not upsetting the security guards at airports, more than thinking about their destination. It is more comfortable to travel on the train, and it is less intrusive to board a ship than to go through the security checkpoint at majority of the popular airports. In fact, for many, it is an understatement to say that air travel is now, as of this writing, the worst way of traveling anywhere. The only reason many people still fly to their destinations is because there are no alternate routes to their destinations.

If it is not the long security lines at the airports, it may be the attitude of the Transportation Security Administration [TSA] that gets you. TSA is a government organization that was bestowed extreme powers at a time of crisis, and thus, legally, you cannot simply say “I want to speak to your manager! You suck!” You may think that a dictatorial government may have ended during the second world war, but dictatorial segments of control reside and thrive in many countries, including America. The problems you have with the TSA will make you feel helpless, because unlike dealing with a bad private company or product, making a government employee or organization become responsible for something bad is not easy, or for many, possible. The same way you have to smile and beg for mercy when being at the Department of Motor Vehicles [DMV] after realizing that the person working on your driver license request is Norman Bates’ cousin, you have to simply realize that the good thing about dealing with the TSA is that they allow you to fly.

Passed the security hell? Welcome to the tube of hell!

Now, if the security lines at the airports still could not take away your enthusiasm, the airlines will. Bad business decisions and narrow-mindedness in order to bring about quick profits as quickly as possible have resulted in weakly managed airlines to start charging for your luggage, for food, for headphones and for newspapers. You are told every step of the way that the money you spent on buying the airline ticket is not enough. You have to spend more, be inconvenienced more, and you have to pay your way through your flight in order to arrive at your destination with a smile, and a heavier-than-a-feather wallet. Following is a list of the “The Ultimate Guide of Airline Fees” compiled by Smarter Travel:

How do you prefer to travel? Do you think air travel is the most uncomfortable form of travel? Do you think it is more stressful to fly than to take any other form of transportation besides walking?

Thanks for reading! I really appreciate it.

What kind of emotions do you feel when you see the color black? What kind of emotions do you feel when you see other colors? If you feel a particular emotion when staring at a black color, do you also feel the same emotions when looking at a black car, a black person or the black sky at night? Today, I am briefly wondering about the idea of caring about your own skin color and the skin color of other people.

Why do you care about people of a certain skin color?

Why do you tend to care more about people of certain color when they appear on TV? Why do you feel unsafe around people of a certain color? Would you have watched “The X-Files” if both the actors were of a different skin color? Would you have cared as much about the destruction in Haiti if it was a city in Sweden and everyone suffering was solely white?

How can the same human body evoke such different emotions based on the skin color, when the skin color was not under the control of that particular human being? Why is there an influx in black characters appearing on TV now, only after the election of President Obama? Would we have seen the same trend if John McCain had won the presidency instead? Why or why not? Did you support or disapproval of President Obama have anything to do with his color? You may answer that last question with a “no” in public, though you already know if the real answer is “yes” deep within you.

Which skin color affects you the most? Why?

What is it about the skin color that matters so most? Is it the looks, that looking at something very yellow results in you throwing up? Is it the complexion, that standing under sunlight makes the black skin look uglier to yours? Is it the fashion, that someone with purple skin looks stupid in a red dress? Or is it the comparison of colors standing side by side, that makes you feel that the brown looks better with white than with black? We do not have to look at TV or in the popular culture. We have to look at ourselves. Imagine sitting in a coffee shop, drinking coffee at 11pm, an hour before the shop closes. The entire coffee shop has only you as the last customer, and the coffee shop staff is busy cleaning things in the back. Now imagine a new customer walking in. Which skin color of that new customer would make you feel safe? Which skin color would scare you? Which skin color would evoke no reaction within you? Why do you think such reactions exist?

We can blame everything on TV. We can also blame all our life events and actions on TV too.

Thanks for reading. I really appreciate it. Time for me to go heat some food: I like my food to be of all colors, if possible. [except green!]

There is one person in the world that you usually end up allowing to disturb you while you are eating. This same person is the one that can come in to ask, interrupt, take or bring anything, while you eat and talk to others at your food table. This someone is your waiter. Your waiter, in addition to bringing you a lot of food and drooling, can also bring in a lot of weird habits that fall into the category of being rude to you.

The real job of a waiter is to bring you food, and is to make your food experience a good one so that you can enjoy your food. The existence of tips is one of the reasons many waiters simply focus on a set standard of things aimed to satisfy the typical standards of many restaurants like making sure your water glass is always full, that you have clean plates, and that you are not angry at or with your food at any moment. Such focus has resulted in many waiters not knowing that throwing a plate full of food at you, for you to catch, is not the same as putting the food plate in front of you.

Here are 10 rude things that many waiters do on a regular basis. I notice these trends at so many locations that sometimes I feel I should ask such waiters if they could be featured on my site for bad or rude service.

Ten rude things waiters do to you

1. Pour water into your glass by tilting the jug on its side, resulting in water splashes all over you or your table.
2. Not help you with your food questions or order if they are not your assigned waiter, but pick up your credit card or cash for payment when you put down your payment on your table. Next time, tell such waiters “Oh no, it’s ok. You did not help me with my crisis of dying in spices without water. I will let my real waiter take care of this and not trouble you at all.”
3. Take away your plate if your friend or someone else in your party is still eating, or vice versa.
4. Bring you the check very quickly, and repeatedly asking about the payment in different forms just to get you to leave so that a new customer can sit in your place. Like Ponzu in San Francisco telling me and my friends “Anything else before you guys head out?” We were not all guys, and no, we did not want to head out. We wanted to sit there for a while and talk.
5. Touch a lot to try to get more tips. More people know about your psychological tactic, now that Bes has told them about it. Touching strangers for pleasure or for money, by trying to make the stranger feel good unconsciously, is perversion, you pervert.
6. Touch your plate, glass or spoons and forks all over with bare hands.
7. Not pay attention to you when you need help, like when you need a refill of your water glass after you eat something spicy. In my view, unless otherwise noted or told to the customer, a waiter should always keep an eye on the customer in case the customer looks up and around for their waiter. Other waiters should heed to such body language by either helping or by letting the original waiter know about the desperate gazes of the needy, and probably hungry or thirsty, customer. This goes along with point # 2 above.
8. Complain or bring up the topic of not getting enough tip from you. Giving a tip is not the law around the planet, and telling a customer that they did something wrong by not tipping enough, in my view, is plain wrong unless there is an actual situation where the customer directly or indirectly promised a tip and then did not tip enough.
9. Ask questions while food is in our mouth. This is another tactic used by waiters. When your mouth is full, you may say anything to tell the waiter to get lost so you can chomp down your food, including “Yes, it’s good.” That is why you are always asked a bit-pointed questions. You are asked “Is everything ok?” instead of “I see that your mouth is burning. Is the food too hot?” or “I see that my questions are resulting in your mouth opening so strangely that the teriyaki chicken is falling onto the ground. Should I stop asking you questions till your plate is empty or till you tell me to reappear after disappearing?“
10. Giving you too much attention, including asking you about the food or service or your needs and talking to you a lot while you try to focus on eating or while you try to talk to the people you came with.

How does your waiter treat you?

Does your waiter ignore you? Has your waiter given you a shower when refilling your glass of water? Have you been rushed out of a restaurant by an overzealous waiter? Do they give you too much attention? Have you ever said “YES! IT’S GOOD! I’LL TIP YOU REAL GOOD IF YOU GOOOOOO AWAY PLEASE!! ” while being interrupted from munching on some very juicy treat that you would be paying $15 for?

Are you a waiter yourself? Have you seen any of the above trends in other waiters or experienced them yourself? Have you engaged in any of the above trends for different reasons?

Please let me know what you think in the comments below. Thanks!

Here it is again. Another Google service invite for you at The Reasoner. Today I want you to try Google Voice.

The next service Google wishes to use to try and revolutionize your existing home and cell phone calls and text messages. If you are wondering what Google Voice is, you can refer to Google Voice Help to find out more.

I have a couple of Google Voice invites available. If you need a Google Voice invite, please leave a comment below. Your comment requires a valid e-mail address, so I will use that e-mail address to send you a Google Voice invite. It may take some time for everyone to get an invite, depending on how many invite requests I get and how many new Google Voice invites I get from Google in my invites bank.

The invites are completely free. If you wish, feel free to please make a donation, or donate your house, car, or something else. I do not accept squirrels as donations, by the way.

Enjoy! And remember, please call responsibly.

There is one thing you may want to touch more than everything else every day. This “thing” may be something you touch more often than even a regular desktop or laptop keyboard. This thing is the cell phone keypad or keyboard, and you most probably touch it intensively to send text messages.

Today, you and I are going to learn about texting effectively. It is very easy to simply send a single word or an essay via a text message. It may, however, be a bit hard to realize what the proper etiquette of text messaging are. After you understand and realize these 10 important ways to send effective text messages, your text messaging habits can actually change to make text messaging another part of the common sense part of your life.

How you can send effective text messages in 10 ways

Here are ten simple ways to keep in mind when texting anyone. These tips can help you become effective at both sending texts and communicating effectively through text messages.

1. Keep any greetings in the beginning of a text, if your message is short. That way, a person can quickly know what you want to say, while also realizing that you are being polite.
2. If your message is long and ends up getting divided into multiple texts, try to include the actual message in the beginning and the greeting at the end. This way, the actual part of the main message you want to convey will have fewer chances of being cut off and separated.
3. Keep your text within 140 characters for new people and co-workers. With new people and co-workers, you may want to keep your communication length short in the beginning when conveying a message before you realize what their comfort zone is.
4. Always include your name in texts to new people. The same way you may want to let new people, who may basically be strangers in different part of your life and vice versa, realize who you are when you call or e-mail them, you may also want to let them know who you are in text messages. A simple name and any reference to where you met may work, like:
   

   Hey there! Letting you know that I’ll be at Jack in the Box around 4:30, thanks. – Bes [from the "Let's stalk & shun all Teletubbies!" party last night]

5. Find out, if possible, about the text message plan the other person has. That way, you can realize if it would be better for you to send a single text message sporadically, or if you can send multiple text messages at will. It should all depend on the other person, if possible, to ensure, among other things, that you avoid creating a high cell phone bill for the other person.
6. Ask for permission before sending texts. Even if the other person has an unlimited text message plan, they may not want 20 text messages from you in one day, or every 5 minutes. Find out what the other person prefers by asking them if you can text message them at an interval or rate of your choice.
7. Realize that text messages may have the same notifications as phone calls for many people. The same way a phone ring may wake someone up in the middle of the night or bother someone in a restroom or during a meeting, a text message may also make a notification sound or vibration, and bother someone just like a regular phone call ring. Keep this in mind when sending text messages, and realize that whenever you send a text message, the actual way that other person may find out about it may be the exact same as that other person finding out about phone calls.
8. Inquire about the texting trend preferences of the other person. Ask the other person if they are comfortable getting text replies immediately, if they prefer full words or text message abbreviations, if they prefer texts only during certain times, if they prefer e-mails over texts when it comes to asking questions or sharing website addresses, what text message length they are comfortable with, and anything else related to text messages that comes to your mind.
9. Avoid forwarding text message spam. During the Obama/McCain elections, someone from Mississippi forwarded me a text message that said the following:
   

   Doing our own taly of who’s voting4who. Add 1 in front of who u suport.

   Obama 111111111 McCain 11111111

   Pass it on! Its ur responsibility.

   I love the idea of patriotism, bashing, and number tallying via cell phones. It gives me more material to think and write about. It also tells me that the elections of 2008 were rigged. The text message above later on was forwarded to me a second time by a different person, and by then McCain was winning by a landslide. Why is Obama the president now? We should have a recount in light of the two text message evidence my phone currently has.

10. Treat a text message like an actual phone call. The same way you would not usually call someone a second time within 5 minutes after calling them and leaving them a message, you may not want to text someone after you have already called them, or vice versa. Multiple text messages with the same message within a short amount of time, or at all, may also fall into this point.

The above 10 ways actually allow you to realize how your texting habits may avoid annoying other people, and thus how you can communicate more effectively through text messages.

What are your txting rules and preferences?

How often do you text message others? Do you like sending multiple texts or shorter txts? Do you like getting many txt messages from the same person in a single day? How fast do you usually reply to text messages? Do you prefer a phone call over a text message? What kind of a text messaging plan do you have, if you have one?

Please let me know if you have any questions, comments or thoughts about this topic or article in the comments below or by e-mailing me directly. I have to stop here and see who sent me text messages because my phone is flashing.

Thank you for reading. I really appreciate it.

Today I can say with full confidence that in addition to living the hardest and most complexly simple and complex life within myself, I am also living the hardest and most complex life externally. The Swine Flu. What a beautiful name to a mysterious thing. The Mexican Flu. The H4561 flu. Whatever it is called, it is the final sign that anyone alive today, 2009, faces the biggest epidemic risk from a natural disease that we have seen so far in our life in the media, and on a massive scale. No longer do we have to listen to stories that start with “Back in the day, we had people left and right getting sick” in order to start realizing the meaning of everything. It is happening today, here, right now. One day you may be telling friends, family and strangers about the Swine Flu “back in the day.”

This article, including the above part, was written on April 30th, 2009, around 1am. It was lost in the catacombs of The Reasoner trenches that are wanting to see the light of the day until today, when Katie noticed it on my computer and told me to go ahead and post it. So here it is, unedited in its writing.

We have pneumonia. We have aids. We have cancer. We have bird flu. We have Teletubbies flu. We have everything. Today. Right here. Right now. If you want to get infected with a disease and die soon, chances are you can find a way to make it happen within a month. Or maybe 3 months.

Mexico was the keyword in all the newspapers till yesterday. And now, United States is in the start of a growing panic mode because of the small child that died in Texas to be deemed the first death from Swine Flu in the United States. In the Middle East, Israel wants to call the flu “Mexico Flu” instead of “Swine Flu“ because the Holy Land of the Muslims & Jews do not eat pork and it is considered unhealthy for them, but that is being protested by Mexico. Korea also wants to call the flu the “Mexican Virus“, much again to the protest of the Mexican government.

Mexico has issued respirators for everyone. They look cool. I want one too please. Never before has the idea of being confronted with a virus looked so real, and so scary. Is it all a hype? Is this just like any other flu, with the only difference being that this is a new outbreak and thus the news is playing up the hype? Still, I want a cool respirator please. I will wear it everywhere. Why not? San Francisco police is said to be officially going to start having all San Francisco Police Force to wear the Swine Flu Respirators within a week. Today, supposedly, the Zodiac’s identity was revealed in San Francisco. “The Zodiac has come to San Francisco.” What a cool quote. I have a better one: Move aside, Zodiac. The flu has come to San Francisco.

The economy is bad. The feelings with the outside world are bad. Our internal systems of businesses are bad. And now, even the micro organisms hate us. Or maybe they hate each other. I am not sure. No one is sure. How must the parents of that child must be feeling today? We feel and talk about that child more because he is in America. Yes. Hundreds of Mexican deaths can all be described numerically. But this child has to be discussed in detail in order to show how serious we should be towards paying attention to the media. Or is it real? I am not sure. What was the child’s name? What kind of toys did he like? Who are his parents? Are they ok now? Did the child have any brothers or sisters? How is his overall family? Did he suffer? What did he go through? I don’t know. Does anyone care outside of the media paper and page the news was on?

Not everyone in America wakes up thinking “I want America to be the biggest super power on the planet!” Not everyone in America wakes up thinking “Hah! Those Mexicans are always dirty and thus they are getting these diseases.” No. Majority of us, the majority that is now shown on the news, wakes up thinking “Ohhhh, so sleepy, need coffee, and then need to get to work” or “Hmmm ohhhh, so hungry, need to relax and then decide what to do.” We are humans, just like you. I am human, I hope. I feel like a human, but if I am not a human, how can I be sure I am a human to feel like a human? No one knows. Though we say we are.

Many people think Americans have no emotions. Americans include citizens, visitors living here for decades, illegal immigrants living here permanently, and all the animals and Bigfoot too. All of us do have emotions. Some show it in both extreme and non-existent ways like on this site. Others do not show it, like on this site also, while some others show it all the time and with full force, also like on this site. Regardless, we are doing everything we already were before the Swine Flu entered our vocabulary with such devotion. We are still going to the movies, and we are still having ice cream. We are still tweeting, and we are still walking around in the dark looking for new hiking routes. Some of us are still idiots, while some of us are still better. Some of us are still moronically selfish and manipulative individuals, while some of us are crying and wondering daily why we are being manipulated. Still, some of us just wake up, go to work, and come home and sleep. And if you did not realize it, every mention of the term “we” in this paragraph referred to all the human beings in this world.

People I know in Europe & Middle East are being advised to not come to the United States. I agree. Don’t panic, but avoid coming if you can. I do not know what it feels like to lose a son, but I know what it feels like to lose someone young. You decide. I am going to keep on doing everything. I am going to travel, going to go around taking pictures, going to meet people, going outside, and going to live. I am also going to try to get the respirator. Maybe because it may save my life. Or maybe because it looks very nice and I want to feel a respirator once again in life, after 18 years of not wearing one. Maybe the respirators are different than gas masks. In such a case, any respirator now may be my 2nd one. Otherwise, it would be the 3rd mask on my face in my life which may stay on for a while or during an emergency. Who knows.

It is now 2:24am. Not a single smiley in this article so far. Maybe it’s because I’m relaxed and tired at the same time. Let me go ahead and put a smiley –> . The World Health Organization WHO has labeled the Swine Flu a level 5, meaning it is one step short of becoming a worldwide plague in action. Level 5 means it is already on its way to becoming level 6. Let’s have 5 smileys–>

Forget about being associated with a certain culture or a certain country. Focus on humanity, and focus on yourself first. Wake up, and feel alive. And then feel that everything is hyped up or just an obstacle that you will either overcome or co-exist with. Not everything can be defeated. But you can try to keep on living in many weird situations.

Bird Flu. Cookie Flu. Swine Flu. Pig Flu. Mexican Flu. North American Influenza. Whatever the name may be, we keep on living. 10 years from now, articles like the Wikipedia entry on the Swine Flu will make it look like the entire world was crying and weeping on April 30th, 2009. No. 99% of us are not weeping over this flu. Our own President was getting applauds and joking around earlier today. This is just another news. The show must go on. We must go on. The difference between the show and us is, the show is there to get attention. We have to go on in order to keep on living and in order to co-exist with this new beginning.

So maybe this is how people felt in the 70’s when the previous Swine Flu outbreak was. Wikipedia article, once again, shows it as being kind of a big thing that caused millions of people’s lives to change drastically and immediately. Of course, Wikipedia also portrays the same impression about today’s 2009 Swine Flu outbreak, though I don’t notice anyone’s life changing drastically in California because of this. Has your life completely changed? Hmmmm.

The good thing is to see how your life has changed, and how the media says your life has changed. Then we can try to decide whether it is the flu that is the real outbreak, or the media. And we have the necessary power to deploy forces in any part of the world within 24 hours. But we do not have enough injections or medicine necessary to give to the entire population for the next 6 months. Brilliant! Clap with me please!

*If you’re dumb dumb and would like to be called a dumb dumb clap your hands! CLAP CLAP* – Bes

To everyone dying in all parts of the world, and their families, and their neighbors, and their friends, and their enemies, and their fellow human beings, do realize that there are others that realize what life is too. And they are living it also. And they have their own life and ideas too. Many of us have not forgotten you, nor disrespected you, on purpose. We may have our life to think about, the way you have your life to think about. We may just have other sidetracking things going on at the same time, like life itself. Even if it is at 2:42am.

You see them everywhere. They tell you to perform an action. They tell you to associate yourself with a certain brand name in order to get benefits. These things are signs, signs of different kinds telling you to create accounts and memberships on different websites so that you can be able to post comments and view private content. Whether they are images with the words “Sign up!” or written words saying “Create a free account“, the signs to entice you into signing up are everywhere.

What many of such signs and websites forget to tell you is that once you open an account, it may be impossible to ever close and delete your account and any private information from such sites. Today we ponder over the question: Why do many websites and online services not allow you to close and delete your account?

Easy to create your online account. Impossible to delete it?

Like the stereotypical car sales men from the 90’s, many websites of today show and tell you many things to get you to create an account with them. You are even sometimes sent a “Thank you!” e-mail, making sure you feel so special that you tell your neighbors about your adventure of joining a cool website. And then it happens. After hours, days or weeks, you lose interest, or you get harassed like a bunny. You decide to cancel and delete your account. That is when you realize that breaking up from a 20-year old relationship may be easier than canceling and deleting an online account.

Many websites like PeoplePC.com seem to make you call customer support in order to cancel your account. Why do you have to call the billing department to cancel your account when you are allowed to create your account online? There can be many reasons why some websites do not close your accounts. Some websites simply do not have that functionality available on a wide-scale, while other websites want to keep the number of open accounts high in order to attract investors. Still, other websites simply focus on people creating accounts and making purchases through those accounts, and people not wanting to remain on the site anymore are not part of their focus at all. Whatever the reason, in the end, you are usually left with an online account with your name, username, password, e-mail address, home address, phone number and many other pieces of private information sitting on an information bank, probably waiting to be utilized at some future date.

Some online services which do not allow you to completely close and delete your account.

The following websites offer no way to delete your account. They do not offer any information as to how you can delete your account permanently and completely, and e-mailing their tech support does not seem to help either.

• Art .com. I e-mailed Art.com asking them to delete my account, and as a response, I got instructions on how to unsubscribe from their newsletter. Of course, I am still getting the newsletter, and also have an account there that I cannot close.
• Performancing Ads .com. There is absolutely no way to delete your account, and their help pages have no information on the words “delete“, “close” and “deactivate.“
• Oovoo .com. I e-mailed and contacted Oovoo support to delete my account and was told that the only way to do that was to:

  “go to FILE/EDIT MY OOvOO CARD/ Once there please remove any personal information, your picture (by replacing it with something else), and your email address (enter a bogus one). Please also change your display name to “inactive”. Click “Save”, and then just abandon the account. This will close it.” –according to ooVoo staff Dave.

  I realized and found out that the above comment meant that Oovoo does not allow you to completely delete and close your account and personal information. All it offers is to change some of your private information to bogus information and to simply not login. Of course, your own personal ooVoo username can never be changed and remains active forever.



• FedEx .com . FedEx allows you to create an online account to track packages, send packages and create personal and business accounts for shipping and delivery. FedEx, unlike UPS, does not offer a way to delete and close your “My FedEx” account at all, resulting in all your information stored forever on the FedEx website.
• Anthropologie.com. The famous clothing and home apparel store website does not offer any account or personal information deletion feature. All your anthropological purchases are saved forever, just like the field of anthropology would love it.



• eBay group subscriptions. If you are subscribed to any eBay group and then you delete your account, your group subscriptions can remain active. That means eBay will keep emailing you the eBay group announcements, replies, and other notifications. Contacting support will not help at all, as I have experienced so far.
• iStockPhoto .com . The famous royalty stock photo website allows you to create and account and either sell or buy pictures. It does not, however, allow you to realize that you can stop being interested in their service and can delete your online account there. You can find dozens of links telling you to buy subscriptions and pictures. You will find zero links to tell you how you can close your iStockPhoto account.



• Zooomr .com. While there is no information whatsoever as to how a Zooomr account can be completely closed, there is information on Zooomr help groups about people having their Zooomr account disabled without any explanation and Zooomr ignoring such people publicly on the discussion forums. People’s requests to have their Zooomr accounts deleted have been ignored and unanswered for months on the Zoomr groups.
• Alaska Airlines .com. Many online airlines like American, United and SouthWest allow travelers to create and manage online airline accounts related to their miles and memberships. At the same time, however, airlines like Alaska Air and Jet Blue do not allow users to delete their online airline accounts. Once again, easy to book an airline ticket and an online airline account, and very hard to cancel either.



• DeviantART .com. DeviantART does not allow you to delete your account. Just like Oovoo, you can only edit some of your existing information and replace it with bogus information. You can also manually delete all your DeviantART content. Your DeviantART account stays alive forever, however.
• PeoplePC .com. There may be reasons to believe PeoplePC tries to ignore people who want to cancel their PeoplePC account.
• Pizza Hut .com. Your hunger forces you to go online and order 2 large pizzas, 8 bread sticks, 8 spicy chicken wings and 2 large Sprites. However, when it comes to deleting your online PizzaHut.com account login and related information, neither hunger nor starvation can help you. There is no link to delete your PizzaHut.com account, and asking any Pizza Hut staff at any Pizza Hut location makes that staff member want to call the center for disease control because of your strange question.



• Buy.com . Like many other websites, Buy.com makes it extremely easy to sign up for an account. However, there is absolutely no information whatsoever as to how you can delete all your personal information from their site, and how can you can permanently close your account.

Above are some of the thousands of online websites and services which do not allow you to delete your online account with them easily, or at all.

Would you like the ability to delete your online accounts on different websites?

Searching online can help figure out whether others online have instructions to help delete different online accounts. So why do these websites themselves do not allow you to easily close your account? Should not the happiness and convenience of a potential client or even a visitor be kept in mind, even when they are leaving you? Should not the idea of being able to close an account be as easy as opening an account?

Please let me and others know what you think by sharing in the comments below.

Thank you for reading. I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed sharing it with you, and I hope you can get your unwanted online account deleted. As for me, I am off to e-mail the wonderful Orbitz and Priceline people to see if I can beg them to close my accounts.

Every day, you may encounter a myriad of people that work in different fields and areas. Taxi drivers, cop, bus drivers, teachers, news reporters, chefs, cashiers and more. Almost everyone you see working is either a male or a female or something close to that¹. If you observe closely and divide each person you see and their job title according to their sex², you may notice a trend where certain jobs have more males and other jobs have more females.

Today, I want to share with you the 20 professions that I feel are dominated by males. There is nothing wrong with a male-dominated profession, and there is nothing with a female-dominated profession. The interesting observations start when we start to analyze the reasons why such a one-sided domination exists.

20 Professions We Rarely See Females In

Here is a list of 20 professions, jobs and fields that I have noticed very few females in.

1. Pizza delivery.
2. Presidents.
3. Army, Navy and Air Force: Snipers, Generals, Colonels, Marshall and Admiral.
4. Train and tram operators.
5. Taxi drivers.
6. Drug Dealers.
7. Truck and Tow Truck drivers.
8. The main superiors in pornographic movies.
9. Dictators.
10. Religious leaders and priests.
11. Roofers.
12. Technicians from different companies like Comcast, AT&T, PG&E, and more.
13. Door to door sales people and car sales people.
14. Lumberjacks and Tree loggers.
15. Carpenters.
16. Body guards.
17. Millwrights.
18. Steel workers.
19. Mechanics.
20. Movers.

In your view, why do we rarely see females in the above fields?

Is it because of education, where up until the recent past women were brought up and at least indirectly forced to focus more on home than on a career? Could it be because of the taboo and society fears over the insecurities associated with what the society thinks comes with the female territory? Why are many professions dominated only by men? In your view, Why do we rarely see females in the above and many other professions?

Thank you for reading. I really appreciate it. I will stop here and go eat some pizza, delivered by the Pizza Hut delivery guy.

1. Androids are harder to detect.
2. In this article, Sex means and refers to the idea of being a physical male or a physical female.

Halle Berry attempted suicide in 1996

Today I want to bring up the question of how we deal with someone who has attempted suicide¹. To be precise, I want you to think about your behavior over celebrities attempting suicide. Why do you, or others, sympathize with celebrities who try to commit suicide, and why do you, or others, laugh, ridicule and classify as psychotic almost all the non-celebrities who try to commit suicide?

Is a suicide attempt by a celebrity different from other suicide attempts? Do you treat celebrities who attempted suicide the same way you would treat a non-celebrity hospital patient who attempted suicide? Why, and why not?

Why do we frown over suicide in general?

At its core, every suicide attempt usually tries to serve one purpose: to end one’s own life. In our societies, while ending someone else’s life is legal, allowed and even promoted as a preference in many situations², ending our own life is usually frowned upon and considered an abnormal behavior. At the same time, however, it seems that we try to react differently to a famous, rich person trying to commit suicide, compared to the way we would react finding out that our poor neighbor or classmate attempted suicide.

Johnny Cash attempted suicide in 1968

Why is it that a non-celebrity cannot walk around a party, head up high, after an attempted suicide, but we glorify, praise and pay to watch celebrities walk around with heads up high after their attempted suicide? Online, we run into similar issues, regardless of the celebrity or non-celebrity status. Recently, I posted an article called “Thought: I want to commit online suicide.” Because of that, I received numerous phone calls and texts in the offline, real world. Among the many interesting reactions, one business associate asked me “Would this affect your work or our project time line in any manner?” All of that made me realize even more as to how everyone focuses on the negative reaction people should have to suicide, instead of the actual reaction one may feel without considering the society rules and norms into the actual feelings. What is it about the concept of suicide that, when presented, results in almost similar reactions depending on the venues and people it involves?

Could it be that we usually follow the stereotypical society trends when dealing with topics like suicide and celebrities? Could it be that because of our affiliation with wanting to be normal in the society, the stereotypical trait of worshiping celebrities takes priority over the idea of hating the concept of wanting to attempt suicide?

Random List Of Celebrities You May Worship Who Attempted Suicide

It may be easy to overlook the fact that someone not famous may have a character outside of their suicidal interests, the same way we may tend to overlook the fact that a celebrity tried to commit suicide. Similarly, we may simply overlook that someone may have tried to commit suicide and may have nothing going on in their life, but that they may believe certain reasons for such trends in their life to be true for their case.

To help understand how we may allow the celebrity status of a person overshadow the fact that they tried to commit suicide, I present to you the following random list of famous people who have attempted suicide in the past:

• Owen Wilson. Tried by slashing wrists in 2007.
• Princess Diana
• Halle Berry. Tried by gasing herself in 1996.
• Elizabeth Taylor.
• Drew Barrymore. Tried by slashing her wrist at age 14 in 1989.
• Gary Coleman.
• Mike Tyson
• Donna Summer
• Drew Carey. Tried twice, by drug overdose in 1976 and 1978.
• Eminem
• Peter Fonda
• Billy Joel. Tried by drinking furniture polish in 1970.
• Jennifer O’Neil
• Elton John
• Johnny Cash. Tried by drug overdose in 1968.
• Charlie Parker
• Michael Jackson
• Vanilla Ice. Threatened suicide while on a 911 call in 2008.
• Britney Spears
• Jean Wallace. Tried twice by sleeping pills in 1946 and with a knife in 1949.

Because of the fact that the people above have attempted suicide in the past, do you respect them less now? Do you respect them more because of their suicide attempts? Will your attitude towards any of the above people now change in any manner, because of finding out or knowing that they once tried to end their life?

Are you more sympathetic towards suicide attempts made by celebrities compared to suicidal attempts made by non-celebrities?

Princess Diana is said to have wanted suicide while pregnant

What is your view on this matter? Can you think of other celebrities who have attempted suicide? Do you know someone who attempted suicide? Have you thought of committing suicide yourself before and faced any of the stereotypes or trends mentioned above?

What do you think?

Do the trends and actual behavior of sympathizing with celebrities who attempted suicide tell us that it may simply be the society values and stereotypes that cause us to look at the concept of suicide with our eyes closed? If we can overlook the fact that a human being tried to commit suicide because that human being was and is a celebrity, does that mean we can come up with other qualities or labels, or trends and observations, including a change in our own thinking, that can allow us to respect and treat everyone who attempted suicide the way we would want to respect and treat everyone who has not attempted suicide?

Please let me know what you think in the comments below. Thank you for reading. I really appreciate it.

1. Someone who has attempted suicide is a person who has tried to end their life, and because of different reasons, is still alive. Those reasons could include unsuccessful ways of trying to kill one’s self, or being stopped in the middle of a suicide by someone else.
2. Killing someone in an armed robbery, war in Iraq, Civil War, World War I & II, etc

Long time ago, there was a big war. A war that covered most of the world. A war that affected many people. A war that also resulted in many people simply leading on their regular lives while realizing that a war may be going on in the world. And before 2009, there were other big wars too. The last big war of the world, the biggest of them all since then in many proportions, and separate from the war you had with your family or friends this week, has probably been World War II.

World War II, while focusing mainly on the expansion of Germany and German-Allies forces, also took a very strange turn when it focused, as one of its main primary objectives, in the elimination of the Jewish Population. Antisemitism had reached one of the bigger peaks among the German populations and media, and this resulted in majority of the population, and the military, supporting a big action taken on behalf of Hitler: to jail and kidnap all Jewish presence in German-occupied lands, and to eventually kill all Jewish people as part of Hitler’s “final solution.”

Today I would like to talk a bit about 28 things I learnt from the movie “Ingluorious Basterds“, by Quentin Tarantino, and how it compares to history and our senses.

WWII, Nazis, Germans, and Ingluorious Basterds

It is the very concept of the “final solution” by Hitler that prompted one of the then-freshest directors of our time, Quentin Tarantino, to come up with the idea of “Ingluorious Basterds.” You can stop reading this entire article at this exact moment and sentence, because from this point onward, there will be details about the movie mentioned which may give away the plot of the movie to you. To many people, such plot details result in a lot of crying and anger, because many people do not like to know about the details of a movie unless they find out by actually watching the movie on a TV screen. Of course, you can pretend that this article is the actual movie, and thus you can keep on reading if your imagination skills are, amazingly, glorious.

The movie focuses on how the Nazi soldiers are dealt with, and how eventually all the main Nazi officials, including Hitler, are killed in a very interesting attack. The main characters of the movie are a band of Jewish American soldiers headed by Brad Pitt who plays the role of “Aldo“, a French Jewish girl who during her yearly teenage years survives an attack on her life by the Nazis, and the highest ranking German Nazi Security Official who later turns the entire tide of the war.

Today, I would like to share with you what I learnt from the movie, as Quentin Tarantino shows a lot of things in the movie which leave a very different impression than what actually happened, or what actually should have happened, in my view.

28 things learnt from Ingluorious Basterds

Here are 28 things I came to realize, and learn, from the Ingloriously Bastardish Ingluourious Basterds. Please sing along and enjoy, as this is Hollywood entertainment.

1. All Germans are evil.
2. It is ok to laugh at Germans who are being tortured.
3. French people, in addition to being weak, also tend to sell out the location of the hiding Jews in order to protect and save their own French lives.
4. German people are incapable of pure love. The ones that show pure love to the rude and traumatized French Jewish girl are to be shot in the back. And they also shoot back. Ending the entire balance of a very uncomfortable love that should never exist between Germans and French Jews.
5. Unlike what history tells us, it was Hitler that was afraid of the Jews and the Americans, and not the other way round.
6. Brad Pitt looks like the real Hitler.
7. Unlike what history tells us, it was the Germans, and not the Americans nor any other race, that hated the black people and called them “Negros.”
8. The main Jews that fight against the Nazis are half American. Not Half Polish. Not Half German. Not Half French. Half American.



9. Aldo and his men, in the movie, were torturing and scalping the Nazis in 1941. The first extermination camp was built in 1942, according to historical accounts and documents. Thus, according to Tarantino, Aldo and his men were brutally and psychotically killing the Nazis for simply being on the opposite side of the war. Today, we would call such behavior torture and barbaric. Of course, we do not know what had happened to Aldo and his men before, though Aldo’s neck could have been bruised and scarred because of fighting the strong Antisemitism in America itself in 1941 and before.

   Today, 2009, 14% of the Americans have strong Antisemitism views and beliefs, so it must be hard for an American Jewish soldier like Aldo to live a happy and non-traumatized life back then in America, and also for being sent to Germany afterwards. Even the famous Major-General Ulysses S. Grant issued an Anti-Jewish order banning the Jews in 1862, to extract and kick out all Jews from the states of Tennessee, Mississippi and Kentucky, because of his belief that the Jewish people were handling and managing the entire black market in the south. Thus it was the United States in 1862, and not the Germans in 1930’s, that first started expelling and banning all the Jewish people from the communities through legal and authorized military orders. Of course, Aldo probably skipped history class and thus missed that lesson.



10. Hitler died like a dying mannequin in a movie theatre while screaming like a Nazi.
11. You are not a terrorist for being suicidal and for blowing up and killing people in extreme rage. It is the Germans that are being killed, including drivers, waiters and butlers, so it is all right.
12. All Nazi Soldiers are robotic idiots with no heart.
13. It is all right to ask black people to commit suicide with you in order to kill the Germans. The black people will agree to it within 30 seconds.
14. Every Nazi Soldier, and anyone part of the Nazi Army in any form, must have the Nazi sign carved in their forehead with Aldo’s knife. Apparently, The current Pope Benedict XVI who was enlisted in the Hitler Youth, got away untouched.
15. The British can drink liquids other than tea.
16. The calm and the collected British does not listen to the American, and gets killed. Honorably. And in style.
17. The British, with his fluent German language and movie culture skills, gets killed within 12 hours of being in Germany because of a simple counting habit. Aldo, on the other hand, survives for 4+ years in Germany without knowing any German. And no understandable Italian either.
18. The head of the Nazi Security and part of the Waffen-SS and SD, Colonel Hans Landa, the so-called “Jew Hunter“, is the smartest fox of all, and smart enough to overturn the entire war. He is, however, stupid enough to put his life in Aldo’s hands near the end and get a nice Swastika carved into his head.
19. All Germans die a horrible Germanic death, including the German spy that helped the British and the Half American Half Jews.



20. It is ok to batter around psychotically with a bat, mutilate without conscience, and scalp humans with pure rage. As long as the humans are Germans and the batterers, mutilators and scalpers are Half American Half Jews.
21. It is completely normal for the Nazi soldiers to put high ranking officers inside a French Cinema Theatre without checking the projector room, the films, and the back of the projector screen room. It is also completely normal to have no guards outside the movie theatre once the movie starts.
22. Unlike what history tells us, Hitler only had 2 security guards, the same guards who stood outside his cinema box.



23. It is normal for Nazi soldiers of all types and classes to not have any gun that could be used to blast open the doors in case of any fire or laughing girls.
24. It is ok to clap and laugh at all of the above in a movie theatre.
25. The British come into the WWII scene well after the Americans have taken care of many things in German and Germany-occupied European lands.
26. The Head of the German Propaganda wishes to accomplish through biased German movie things that seem to be getting accomplished through Tarantino’s current movie.
27. Bridget causes chaos to the single British hero and many German and American heroes. Helen caused chaos to Sparta and Troy.
28. Coming out of the movie, the people labeling the movie as “Bullshit Propaganda” get called “Anti-Jewish Propagandists” by some people, and the people labeling the movie “Realistic, what movies should be” get called “Jewish Propagandists” by others. Bes takes notes.

So what have you learned, or learnt, from Ingluorious Basterds?

Ingluorious Basterds gets hype and a lot of attention due to several things, 4 of which are:

1. It is made by Quentin Tarantino. Because of Kill Bill and Reservoir Dogs, and the recent Grindhouse: Death Proof, people expect interestingly nice, “Must watch”, kind of movies.
2. This movie has been in planning according to Quentin for almost 10 years.
3. Brad Pitt is in it.
4. The German Nazis get tortured and scalped.

The movie achieves the purpose, whether or not it was the intention, of extreme violence, several very well dramatized nervous moments, and a cast that does indeed play its role well. The storyline is very unique and a different step than majority of the WWII-Jewish-Population movies that have come out in the last 50 years. If one wants to look at something different, and definitely biased, I would recommend this movie. It can be taken lightly and enjoyed tremendously. However, if you feel like you have a weak mind and starts believing any agenda presented in a movie, then unless you are willing to be biased into different areas and thoughts because of every propaganda-type movie, you can watch this movie while realizing that it has a strong biased message and opinion to it.

What I recommend watching

If you are looking for recommendations, I would strongly recommend watching Cross of Iron and Das Boot, to see the real emotions, lives and chaos endured by German soldiers during WWII, without any mention of the Jews, since majority of the Nazi soldiers were on the front line fighting non-Jewish and non-German forces. Those two movies are masterpieces, told solely and directly from the German point of view. Also recommended are The Pianist and Schindler’s List, with The Pianist being one of the best movies, about the Jewish suffering during WWII, in my view, and Schindler’s List focusing solely on a German Businessmen helping the Jews first for business reasons and then for personal morality reasons. In my view, these 4 movies are 4 of the greatest, realistic, I hope as unbiased as possible compared to the myriad of so many biased movies out there, and best WWII movies ever made, with Das Boot being on top, and then The Pianist.

Please let me know what you learnt and learned from Ingluorious Basterds, or this article

Please share your insights, comments, questions, or any thoughts about the above or the movie in general.

Thank you for reading. I really appreciate it. Now I must go and find out if I can eat some “Jewish” specialty dishes at a “German” restaurant owned by an “African American” living in the East Bay Area.

Today and tonight, millions of people across the world will be getting ready for a job interview tomorrow. You yourself may be thinking of your next job, or thinking of your performance at your existing place of work. At the same time, you may probably be wondering as to how a future interviewer, employer, or an existing employer may view your job integrity based on how you act outside of work. In today’s world, where the online activities seems to be slowly getting more attention than life itself in several circles, many people say that it is important for you to realize how your online activities can hurt your existing or future job opportunities. I want to ask you if you think employers and interviewers should pay any attention to your online social profiles which reside outside of your work.

Today I ask a very important question that applies directly to you: Should employers and interviewers look at your MySpace, Facebook, Flickr and other social online profiles in order to judge your work and related performance and integrity?

Does social network profiling result in discrimination and prejudice?

It is interesting to see that more and more companies are starting to think that your behavior outside of the workplace is an important factor to consider when figuring out whether or not you are useful to the company and your job. My question is: What does the non-work online life of anyone have to do with the work life? Employers should only care about something that affects the workplace or the job at hand by following the golden rule: mind your own business.

Can employers and interviewers use the social profiles of job applicants and employees as a way to base biased decisions against the stereotypically-stereotyped people, like homosexuals, females, minorities, politically minded, certain races, and more?

Employers should not care about the online social activities of employees outside of the workplace.

Employers have to learn how not to judge an employee because of a social online account not related to work. Employers also have to come up with better ways to analyze candidates than to use online posts of employees and candidates as one of the main deciding factors. Many times, if not most, using MySpace or social profiles as a way to “weed out” candidates is a cheaper and faster way for interviewers and others to not do the extra work of figuring out who is a good applicant for the job at hand.

According to a CareerBuilder survey in June of 2009, “Forty-five Percent of Employers use social networking sites to research job candidates. Jennifer Van Grove on Mashables says “Though this may seem as a big downer for those of us who are oversharers, the reality is that there’s still opportunity to use your social presence to land that job.”

Background online profiling can be the same as stalking

Snooping around to check an existing or prospect employee’s private or online life, which may have nothing to do with one’s work, is the same as stalking employees or prying into places which should not be used for judging the professional working ability of someone.

This may mean that the act of checking the social profiles may be considered bad in more than just the “unethical” banner, like considering it stalking. One example is an employer cyberstalking his restaurant employee in a private discussion group on MySpace, built solely to vent and share the personal frustrations at work, and then using her private posts as a basis for firing her.

Employers are also known to create fake accounts just to find out more information about private accounts of workers. BBC has a story of a woman recently fired because of being on Facebook through her iPhone while resting in bed, after she had taken a day off from work for being sick. She says that one of her mysterious Facebook friends online was probably one of her co-workers or boss, who mysteriously vanished from her Facebook friends list after she got fired. While there is a lot of focus on the general media advising the general public to either not post many things online or to protect such online postings further, there has been a slow increase in the amount of attention people are giving to the idea of suing employers for discriminating against and stalking the online profiles of potential and existing employees.

The same way following a person to bars, the public park, library, movie theaters and other places is a form of stalking and does not contribute in any significant manner, in many cases, to the value and integrity of an employee, should employers snoop around the online public profiles of job applicants and existing employees, when such profiles are not related in any manner to the employer or a job?

Censorship is the main reason many employers check employee’s social profiles

One of the reasons employers monitor their worker’s profiles is because of censorship: many employers do not want their employees to say anything bad about the company outside of the workplace, as BBC Video reports in the case of 16 year old Kimberley, who got fired by Ivell Marketting & Logistics for saying on facebook “ma job it poingLESS” to her friends. Kimberley’s co-workers had forwarded Kimberley’s Facebook status updates to their boss.

Also, companies seem to be taking extreme action even if someone voices a strong disapproval of the company actions. A very good example of this is Dan Leone and his facebook account. Dan Leone was fired from his job as a game-day employee for voicing his disapproval of the team on his Facebook account. No one sat down with Dan, and he was not offered a chance to express his side of the story and the situation. It should be known that the thousands of Eagles fans voiced the same exact opinion that Dan did. The only difference was that Dan was working for the very organization that he voiced an opinion against.

Another example, as reported by CNN, is of anonymous bloggers being fired by their companies and employers for having blogs and for posting opinions on them. Also, CNN itself has fired senior producer Chef Pazienza for having his own opinionated blog under his own name while working for CNN and not adhering to CNN’s journalism standards. It should be noted that Chef’s blog is personal, and was not in any manner related or competing with the “journalism” offered by CNN.

What logic is used to consider unrelated online activities as being 100% related to work performance?

My question to all the employers and other people suggesting that people should be careful in their online activities because of the impact of such online details over one’s job: Why? Why should one be scared to post stuff online? What about in countries, like in Europe, where smoking a joint or eating hash cookies, is legal? Would posting pictures of someone smoking hash in Europe get them into trouble in Florida?

What logic and reason, including any logical connection, exists between posting a picture of yourself smoking a joint, and with your actual job performance? Why should an outside bias against any action be allowed to affect our image of someone’s working professional life and qualities, when the two have not intersected so far? Should employers and interviewers allow their own personal judgment and any opinion of things like smoking a joint, affect and cloud their judgment over completely unrelated things like a job performance?

Overall, the very question of whether or not employers should look at such profiles, when they are unrelated to the work at hand, should be brought up in order to make sure that the unrelated activities of people do not affect their job prospects because of the employers putting unnecessary emphasis on such online profiles.

Random examples of online social profiling resulting in bias and prejudice

Different things that are used to form biased judgments about someone’s working abilities can include the following.

• A person cannot drink on a job but drinks every night at home and at parties and gets wasted. Is that a disqualifier for an existing job? Will religious or other interviewers who are opposed to drinking count this into their final interview decision, yet still say that the online profile of the applicant does not play a “significant” role in the hiring process?
• A person goes around smoking marijuana in Europe but has a perfect job and professional record around their city of work. Should they be disqualified by someone who is against illegal drugs in America?
• A person has had more than one abortion and posts publicly about it on her blog. Would a pro-life interviewer have any interest in checking our her blog when the job may be about something like computer hardware repairs?
• Would a “hard core republican” have his chances of employment at a “hard core democrat” management corporation ruined because of his pro-republication status messages on twitter?

Such points and interests can give interviewers prejudice, since such points are usually pursued by employers and interviewers for no reason other than to find out anything bad that the employer or the interviewer may not agree personally outside of the workplace. Employers and interviewers usually say that they do not use online social profiles as an important element in deciding whether or not someone should be an employee. My question to employers and interviewers: If online social profiles do not affect your judgment in a hiring process, as you, the employer and the interviewer claim so many times, why do you check out the social profiles of people in order to find out qualities, like what a person does at 11pm, which has nothing to do with what a person may do between the stereotypical hours of 9am and 5pm?

Many employers are spending heavy resources on finding out what kind of MySpace and Facebook pictures job applicants and existing employees have on their MySpace and Facebook profiles, instead of interacting with those people directly to find out what kind of job qualities and skills they have.

Is checking an employee’s or potential job applicant’s online social accounts, if those accounts are not related to work, the same as stalking and cyber-stalking someone? Many entities think that spying on people is an acceptable behavior. An example of this on a massive government level is the case of the city of Bozeman in Montana asking all existing and prospect employees to hand over their usernames and passwords to their Facebook, MySpace, and other social networking accounts. A Millersville University teacher Stacy Snyder was denied a teaching credential because of her online MySpace picture, shown to the right, which shows her drinking beer with a pirate cap on.

A so-called conservative interviewer could disqualify a job applicant who drinks heavily every other night and posts the pictures on MySpace, while a very so-called liberal interviewer could then disqualify a job applicant who preaches about religion a lot through their blog. A Christian employer could deny a job to a Muslim job applicant who talks openly about the war in Iraq on Twitter, while a Muslim employer could deny a job to a Jewish job applicant who talks openly about Palestine and Israel on their Facebook. A gay interviewer could deny a job to someone who is against same-sex marriages through their Facebook groups, while a religious man-to-woman-only-marriages employer could be harsh on a gay job applicant who runs and promotes pro-same-sex-marriage groups on MySpace. A white interviewer could ignore a black job applicant who runs pro-affirmative-action groups on Xanga, while a black employer could deny a promotion to a white or a non-black person who runs anti-Obama groups on LiveJournal. In all these and other cases, a stereotypical person could easily use the non-work related online social profile activity trait of a worker as a way to affect the work-related progress of that worker in a completely unrelated real of someone’s life.

According to the article “Googling your Nanny” on Care.com, in which caretakers were asked if they were comfortable having their non-work related MySpace, Facebook and other online accounts researched by parents who wanted a caretaker, people like Erika W. said “I think it’s a great idea because then parents will know if their babysitter is honest and responsible! I’m a great babysitter, so please come check out my profile!” while people like Dawn said “MySpace and Facebook are about friends and child care is about work. Obviously at your job you’re going to be professional and attentive to the children…The things I do in my personal life have no reflection on the things in my professional life. ”

What Jason Falls thinks about online profiles, employers and employees

Here is a very interesting presentation Jason Falls about your online social accounts, and how they are visible to employers,.

Employers should pay heed to employees directly, and not the online social stereotypes

Employers and interviewers should stop using social profiles and non-work related habits of people as one of the main ways to figure out whether or not an employee is fit for a job. Employers and interviewers should actually be fired for relying too much on online social profiles instead of their own offline abilities to figure out whether or not an employee will do good at work, and whether or not the actual work, educational and other skills of the employee would help the company and employer in question.

Val Calvert says “You wouldn’t air your dirty laundry in the backyard, so why would you air your dirty laundry on MySpace?” My question: how are those two things related? MySpace is a personal profile for many, and if someone wants to post something personal about themselves online, why should an outside employer, who is not part of the personal life and only part of the professional life, decide to use that information to form judgments about the working qualities of an employee or an applicant? Also, Jason Falls considers people who smoke joints in their pictures to not have a job soon. That is a very important thing to consider, because of the stereotypical trend in the business world where employers and interviewers assume that the online life of a person should greatly help in deducing whether or not a job applicant or employer is a good candidate for the future.

Kit Eaton at Fast Company talks about the unjust horrors of not censoring your Facebook page from your future and current employers. Of course, more and more companies have already been firing people because of social media, as mentioned before by Doug Caverly of WebProNews. Mark Glover of The Sacramento Bee says that employers must set up online social networking ground rules for employees to follow.

My question to everyone who wants employees to hide and change their life habits online solely because of upsetting an employer: If something is online and accessible, like the social profiles of job applicants, should employers simply take such information and use it as an element in their analysis of the prospect employee?

The online activities of employees, if not related to actual work, should be ignored by employers.

The act of expressing ourselves online is being used against us by entities which would prefer us to express things they want to express in order to promote their image and business in the personal lives of people, outside of the workplace. That is prejudice and unjust bias, similar to what many entities experience because of their background culture, race, color, religion, political views, gender, sex, and age. To put it simply: the idea of being able to express ourselves, using the online world, is being discriminated against and targeted heavily.

Do you think it is important to put emphasis on the social profile and online activities of a job applicant? Does the “Getting wasted Friday night & barfing all over the car” picture of a job applicant affect their performance at work? Should a company really require you and other employees to exhibit a typical “professional” attitude throughout your life, outside of the workplace? Are employers and interviewers putting too much emphasis on the public image of their employees than the job performance and potential of those employees? Is such a trend, of heavily factoring in the social profiles of job applicants into the interview process, a sign of the non-adapting nature of corporations and workers who want to hire drones that exhibit a workplace attitude 24 hours a day? Are interviewers and employers discriminating and being unethical when searching out and profiling your online social profiles?

Just because you are an employee of a company, it is not a stated fact, nor should it be a requirement, to never have feelings or judgments against the company you work for. Businesses should not ask for blind patriotism, nor should employers enforce a robotic environment where any emotion that the company, as a money making machine does not share, results in the termination of such emotion holders.

Have you ever been asked or told by an interview or an employer about anything related to your social profiles? Have you ever had your social profile researched and viewed by employers, interviewers or co-workers and then brought to your attention?

Please let me know what you think by leaving a comment below. Now I must go and try to take a few pictures of some toys so that I can post them online to share with everyone in the professional and non-professional world.

Thank you for reading. I really appreciate it.

If you disappear from the public view in the offline world, people may notice. Those that want to know where you are, or how you are, may call you or visit your home in person. In the online world, however, unless you have listed your offline contact information, the only way to contact you is through the online world.

What would happen if you died, and the online people had no other information about your existence other than your online accounts? If you died, would anyone online know that you simply stopped breathing, or would people assume that you simply decided to spend more time offline? What will happen to your online accounts after your death?

Noticing your offline disappearance online

Dying in the offline world can instantly mean that you would not be logging into any of your online accounts, unless your computer is already logged in and someone else starts using your computer. If it is your tendency, and habit, to be offline for many days, people online may not notice your absence until it has been a bit longer than usual amount of time, like weeks or months.

What happens when you stop going online? Your online status accounts on Facebook, Twitter, BrightKite and other places will look like they have not been updated in a while. Your e-mail accounts may start bouncing, because some free e-mail accounts deactivate if you have not logged in for 3 months. If you have your own website and an e-mail account related to that website, your website may go offline within 2 months due to non-payment of the monthly hosting fees. That can be a big clue that you are either going offline, or that you are really going offline. A lot of people then may start assuming that either you have changed your domain name, or that you have decided to take a break from the online world. Some people may immediately start wondering if you have also decided to take a break from the offline world.

Do you have a backup plan?

In cases of death, or in cases of not being able to go online anymore, some people may be inclined by the idea of coming up with a backup plan to have their online accounts taken care of. Do you have a backup online plan that deals with the fate of your online accounts in case you die? Would you want someone specific to get access to all your passwords and accounts so that they can continue your posting frenzy? Is there any entity out there that you would want to go online to tell the rest of the world that the amazing you has passed away? Who would take care of your online accounts? Who will voluntary take care of them?

Online services to share your secrets, with your approval, after you die

A service called Death Switch aims to help you with this exact backup plan. After you sign up with them, you will tell Death Switch what kind of an e-mail and what attachments to e-mail if you die or go missing. The service sends you e-mails on a regular basis which you have to check and click links within. If you stop clicking the links in those e-mails, for reasons like death or boredom, the service will eventually send your super secret e-mail, that you dictated when signing up for the service, to the people of your choice. Such an e-mail can contain secrets, long lost thoughts, and even the picture of the real Zodiac. Legacy Locker, Great Good Bye and Vital Lock are other such services that offer either service plans, to meet the needs of ever dying soul that wishes to transmit information from beyond the grave, like Sadako.

One sole use of the services like Death Switch and Legacy Locker could indeed be to share your passwords with someone, because, as Elinor Mills for Cnet reported, not sharing passwords can result in more headache than many people realize after they die. While the analysis of the overall “If I die what will happen to my twitter account?” thought and reviews of services like Legacy Locker are interesting, it is even more interesting to question if we should actually care about the online world in case of our deaths or amazing disappearance.

Are automated notify-after-your-death services necessary in your life?

However, since such services are automated, what if you simply go on a vacation without remembering that you have to click on the verification links? What if you lose all your passwords in a laptop fire? Regardless, any form of a backup plan that involves sending messages to specific people in case of your disappearance, or online inactivity can result in your “Yes, I am gay!!!“, “You SUCK as a boss you $^#*@(@& @)@*@* – I hope you rot in hell & I &*( on your corpse from heaven!!“, and “I married you to be close to your older brother….” e-mails will surely reach the shining and living e-mail inboxes of your parents, your boss and your spouse. And they may indeed make your life more amazingly complex if you were on vacation and forgot about clicking the verification links from the above services.

What Ryanne Lai shows happens to your e-mails after you die

Here is a nice presentation by Ryanne Lai as to what happens to something like your e-mails after you die:

What happens to your online things in case you do not take care of them?

The idea of figuring out what to do with something like a website and an e-mail account has been around for a while. Dylon Boyd from Eroi.com has already asked “What the heck happens to your email accounts when you die?” MSNBC has asked the question “After your death, how will the information be located?”

Now comes a very important question. What happens to your Facebook account after you die? What happens to your MySpace, Twitter and Flickr accounts? What happens to your ICQ and AIM accounts? What happens to your Yahoo Mail and Hotmail e-mail accounts? What do you think will happen to them, and what would you like to happen to them? If you do not have a backup plan, will you be able to let someone know about your online accounts, if you wish, right before your death bed, or the ambulance bed? Even more interesting, what happens to your computer after your death?

Can you be an Online Account Donor?

Like Organ donors, would you be willing to donate your online account to a worthy cause? Would you give your MySpace account to your friend, or the Red Cross if they could use it to promote their services? Would you want anyone else to have your online account once you die? Would you donate your online account, whether it be your e-mail or your Facebook account, to a relative, a company, a friend, a neighbor, or a randomly stranger on the first bus that passes your house after 48 hours of your death, picked randomly by a lottery number? Would you be willing to carry around a government-issued, or a self-printed picture id, with the words “Bes The Online Account Donor – details on my MySpace & Facebook profile!” card¹? Would you like to an an Online Account Donor? You would, of course, have the choice of donating all of parts of your online accounts, like donating your Facebook photos area to someone, and your notes area to someone else. Theoretically, of course.

Should you have a backup plan?

Now comes the real question from my thought. Is there any need for you to let anyone online know that you are dead? Do people want to go on their Twitter accounts and see “Hey, this is Kylie’s friend. He r died! I r za new acount ownar! add meee biatches! xoxo“? Do people want to get up at 2am and check their Facebook friends feed to read “Phil has died“, with a way to give a thumbs up vote to that news entry and a way to remove the dead Phil from your living friends list? Heather Spencer, from the OK Gazette, says that “closing out your Facebook, blog and Twitter accounts must be added to the list” of things the family and friends of a deceased person must address. If any of such family members or friends do decide to close your account, should they let everyone else know that you are dead?

We can compare this briefly to your offline ideas of death, if you have any. Do you have an offline will? Now, regardless of the answer to that question, would you like to have an online will? Do you have any messages to share with others once you die? Should you have any will or directions for anyone to have your passwords transferred to someone after your death? Any messages to be posted on your site? Should you have such plans?

If you die, will anyone online find out about it? If you die, what will happen to your online accounts?

So we are now at the main big question. If you die, what will happen to your online accounts? Is that something you should think about? Is it something that you think may be something important to consider? Or do you think letting online people know about your death is not important? Do you think it is not important to have your online accounts taken care of after your death? If you die, what will happen to your online life? What happens to your emails, Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, Flickr, pictures, writings, any online earnings or files, etc? Would anyone online find out about your death?

One thing is for sure: If you die, your online accounts will surely find out about it through inactivity and the absence of love or abuse. Ohhh, the trauma for your online accounts!

Please let me know what you think, or if you have any questions, comments, or anything else on your mind, you can share them by leaving a comment below. I now have to go and see where the offline world takes me.

Thank you for reading. I really appreciate it.

1. Replaced with your name, of course!