Rahul Dravid to retire from Test cricket? – Video
Posted: March 11, 2012 at 1:49 am
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Rahul Dravid announces retirement from International Cricket – Video
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Rahul Dravid announces retirement from International Cricket - Video
Rahul Dravid announces retirement – Video
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See an Orchestra. Hear the Garritan Personal Orchestra. – Video
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Kony 2012: The Anatomy Of A Viral Success
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Funny thing about the internet: you cant smell anything on it, but certain stories sure can cause a stink.
Two days ago, we told you about the meteoric rise of the latest viral video, Kony 2012, that didnt make the rounds on the internet so much as it grabbed the internet by the eyeballs and forced everybody to look directly at it. In the four days since it was uploaded to YouTube, the video has amassed nearly 58 million views while viral news of it has no doubt permeated your Facebook and Twitter feeds.
The video, in the impossible case it that hasnt yet osmosis-ed itself into your brain from at least one kind of media outlet, was created and released by Invisible Children, an organization thats been trying for years to draw worldwide attention toward Ugandan warlord Joseph Kony and his Lords Resistance Army. The Lords Resistance army is a special breed of awful because, aside from being Konys personal army, its made up of kidnapped children-turned-soldiers responsible for horrors ranging from hacking apart victims bodies to using abducted girls as sex slaves.
At any rate, you can see how theres high emotional appeal that would likely resonate with most people containing even a sliver of sympathy. More, as with all things that finally have A Moment in the media, there is now the inevitable backlash against Kony 2012 criticizing Invisible Childrens approach.
So it goes.
Whats odd about Kony 2012s success, though, isnt that it went viral so quickly but rather why it went viral in the first place. Invisible Children has been trying to raise awareness about Kony since 2004 when the eponymous Invisible Children film was released, the groups first attempt to bring attention to Konys atrocities. Invisible Children have released 11 films in all yet this is the first one to truly achieve a viral, nigh-zeitgeist status. In fact, its taken Invisible Children so long to finally land a hit with their films that Joseph Kony isnt even in Uganda anymore (he reportedly left in 2006).
Some of the success has been attributed to Invisible Childrens goal of enlisting the help of culturemakers. Others have asserted that Kony 2012 succeeded due to clever marketing on social media. Both of these belie Invisible Childrens previous efforts by assuming such endorsements and technologies werent used to propel their videos into the limelight. For one, Lady Gaga endorses a ton of things but not nearly all of them catch on the way Kony 2012 has. She and others have got a magic, but its far from being a true Midas touch.
The most salient difference between Kony 2012s world and the world of Invisible Childrens previous videos, I believe, is something far more simple: timing. The towering success of the anti-SOPA movement, Planned Parenthood supporters organizing to turn back Susan G. Komens decision to de-fund the organization, or even the recent backlast that has sent supporters fleeing from Rush Limbaugh due to his misogynistic remarks about Sandra Fluke all have helped build and fortify the edifice of social medias power. It could be argued that Kony 2012 was a beneficiary of those previous campaigns that, one, established the social media political infrastructure, and two, demonstrated that it works.
As these movements cycle more regularly and enjoy an ever-quickening ascent-descent with the worlds favor, though, do we run the risk of diminishing the potency of the viral campaign-as-political device the more these campaigns happen? Im in no way saying that itll be Invisible Childrens fault were viral campaigns to falter in the future whatever your feelings about the groups methods, good on IC for finally getting the world to pay attention to how horrible Kony is but rather highlighting the fact that these viral campaigns seem to be happening an awful lot lately.
Indeed, you can have too much of a good thing and so I fear that, after eventually growing tired of the endless parade of Next Big Things from the internet, instead of catching wind of political campaigns that really deserve our attention, the public will begin to simply hold their breath until the trend passes along and disappears into the trunks of internet fads.
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Kony 2012: The Anatomy Of A Viral Success
Are we witnessing the future collapse of our island-nation?
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For me, the tragedies that Ondoy and now Sendong have inflicted upon us are not only personal but also political. It is not difficult to grasp the magnitude of what has befallen us because without a doubt, it will happen again. I am inclined to think that ours is indeed a tragedy of political proportions because it brings to focus the shape of things to come. And we know that it is a vicious onethe flash floods will come, the casualties will mount, the people will mourn, the homeless will huddle, the relief goods and services will trickle down, the President will visit, the water will subside, the homeless will rebuild, the settlers will not wise up, the flash floods will come again, and the cycle repeats itself. As things now stand, I cannot imagine an optimistic note. In fact, it leads me to believe that the predicament of our island-nation is a Sisyphean one. Like the myth of Sisyphus, the king who was punished by Zeus to an eternity of rolling a huge rock up a hill, only to watch it roll back down, we are currently consigned to an unending effort of dealing with disaster after disaster, tragedy after tragedy, be they natural or man-made. Can we make sense of our situation? Can we sustain the development of our island-nation without these tragic occurrences? Can we achieve our economic dream by redirecting our scarce capital and development efforts to the seasonal ritual of putting out fires here and there, so to speak? No, we cant, unless we have a cadre of visionary, ethical, no-nonsense, and undistracted leaders who will implement the long-term and drastic solutions to combat the main cause of our tragedythe denudation of our forests. It is a daunting task but a necessary one to undertake because according to Dr. Ben S. Malayang lll, a distinguished Filipino environmentalist, the impact of deforestation is not only compounded by impairments of flooding mitigation events included in the Universal Water Balance Equation i.e., indiscriminate urbanization, unchecked population growth, and poor land use, but also, is exacerbated by the dysfunction of our ecosystemthe biotic and abiotic foundations of our very existence. Is there a historical lesson that we can learn from? Is there a precedent solution that we can emulate? Prof. Jared Diamond, a notable scientist and Pulitzer Prize winner from the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), thinks there is. He is convinced that it is the keystone that will determine whether a society collapses or not. A case in point is his query on how the Mayan people failed and the 17th-century Tokugawa shoguns in Japan succeeded. According to Diamond, having exploited their territory, the Mayans and their civilization collapsed because their ruling caste decisively failed to act as they insulated themselves from the effects of deforestation while indiscriminately extracting riches from the forests and brutally exacting servitude from the commoners. On the other hand, the shoguns of 17th-century Tokugawa, Japan, cognizant of the hazardous effects of deforestation to future generations, uncompromisingly pursued drastic measures, such as imposing heavy regulations on farmers, managing the harvest of trees and pushing new, lighter and more efficient construction techniques. Today, Japan is a First World country that is both densely populated and densely forested. Its forest cover stands at 68.5 percent, representing more than two thirds of its total land area. No wonder it is called the eminent forest country in the world. Politically, the outcomes of those past actions speak volumes of what kind of people the Japanese are. What about us? What is the prospect of First World status for the majority of our people? Is it an achievable dream? Or is it just a pipe dream? Well, I am sorry to burst our bubble. But our prospect of achieving First World status is pathetic. Besides, it is unrealistic to expect having such a standard of living for our people without the tall order of sustainable resources, a cadre of leaders with above-mentioned qualities, and the drastic implementation of land use policies to sustain it. With an estimated forest cover hovering at 16 to 25 percent compared to Bruneis 72 percent, Laos 69.9 percent, Malaysias 62.3 percent, Cambodias 57.2 percent, Indonesias 52.1 percent, East Timors 49.9 percent, Myanmars 48.3 percent, Vietnams 44.5 percent, Thailands 37.1 percent, and excluding the tiny First World city-state of Singapore, our Third World island-nation has the thinnest forest cover in Southeast Asia (according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations). However, with a deforestation rate of 2 percent annually, our forest cover may completely vanish within the first half of this century. Having denuded our forests, we have slowly but surely undermined the very base of long-term sustainable development of our island-nation. According to the World Commission on Environment and Development (also known as The Bruntland Commission), for development to be sustainable, it must "meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs." In the absence of such an uncompromising and single-minded development priority, we are now in a battle for our very survival. Whether we collapse or not as a nation or civilization, it really all depends on having the political will to fight or mitigate the forces that destroy us. What is our possibility of winning? Do we even have a fighting chance? __________________________ The author is a professor of Sociology and director of the Urban Studies Program at California State University, East Bay and an urban and regional planning consultant. Email:efren.padilla@csueastbay.edu
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Are we witnessing the future collapse of our island-nation?
Money Matters Expo A Personal Finance Training E-Course – Video
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Lute Atieh – A different way of online education – Video
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Vagabond Warriors Promo Small – Video
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International Higher Study Programs – Worldwide – Video
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