Did You Know?

Three words spoke to my heart this morning. May they continue to echo there:

Father, forgive them

No, you didn’t know that. But now you do. And that fits in with this:

Are you a twit if you don’t want to Twitter?

Last month, Alex Slater took it a step farther. He dumped his Twitter account and stripped the information on his Facebook page to a minimum. Though he has more than 600 “friends” on Facebook, he checks it much less often.

“Being exposed to details, from someone’s painful breakup to what they had for breakfast – and much more sordid details than that – feels like voyeurism,” says the 31-year-old public relations executive in Washington, D.C. “I’m less concerned with protecting my privacy, and more concerned at the ethics of a ‘human zoo’ where others’ lives, and often serious problems, are treated as entertainment.”

Yes, I have a Twitter account. No, I don’t have a raft-load of Facebook Friends. Yes, I think the above article is worth reading in full. No, I don’t plan to announce on Twitter that I had two cups of coffee and two Tylenol so far this morning.

Oh, and speaking of Facebook:

Fast-growing Facebook’s user base hits 200 million

Facebook also updated its display of site statistics.

According to these, more than half of its users log in to the site at least once a day, and the fastest-growing demographic is people over 35. About 70 percent of Facebook users are outside the United States (MySpace still claims to be the nation’s largest social network).

For those itching to know if they are popular enough: the average user has 120 “friends” on the site.

And speaking of friends, do friends let friends over-text?

Hammer time for cell phone used to run up $5K billA cell phone used by a Wyoming 13-year-old to run up a nearly $5,000 phone bill will text no more thanks to her angry father and his hammer. Dena Christoffersen of Cheyenne sent or received about 20,000 text messages over about a month, and her parents’ phone plan didn’t cover texting.

🙄

Meanwhile, some other “friends” are waking up around the globe:

Huge worm stirring to life

The dreaded Conficker computer worm is stirring. Security experts say the worm’s authors appear to be trying to build a big moneymaker, but not a cyber weapon of mass destruction as many people feared.

As many as 12 million computers have been infected by Conficker. Security firm Trend Micro says some of the machines have been updated over the past few days with fake antivirus software – the first attempt by Conficker’s authors to profit from their massive “botnet.”

So, this post begins by featuring a Friend. (And what a Friend we have in Jesus!)

Now it ends featuring someone else’s friend:

Woman finds cashiers check and returns it

But just as she was about to do her part for a cleaner planet and deliver the paper from the parking lot to a trash can, she noticed it was a real cashier’s check with a real signature.

“I couldn’t believe it. I almost passed out,” Curtis, who works as a loan negotiator, told The Associated Press on Wednesday. “I have never seen a check that big. Not in my possession, anyway.”

She immediately set out to find its rightful recipient….

Good day?!

SEND: Don’t Be Dumb

Please, please!

Don’t Be Dumb!

Cell phone or email or blog or Facebook or MySpace or Twitter or whatever: Beware the Send Button!

“The moment you push ‘send,’
the damage is done.”

The link will take you to the tragic story about Jessica Logan, who took a non-clothes cell photo of herself and sent it to her boyfriend. In a terrible cascade of forwards and resends, hundreds (if not thousands) of people received it. And Jessica was verbally pummeled face-to-face as well as via phone, text, email, Facebook, MySpace, and who knows what other medium.

Things like this make me mad. And sad.

Our technology allows us to do so much dumb (and worse) stuff on a whim. And regret later.

She did something very foolish in taking that photo of herself. She compounded her error by texting that photo to someone else. At that point, a character flaw or a bad attitude or a wrongly-entered recipient or a wrong key pressed or another foolish choice — and the original recipient sent it on.

And the process was repeated. And repeated. And repeated.

Have you learned the lesson now?

Message to Albert and Cynthia Logan: May you find comforting grace in Jesus Christ. As a dad, father-in-law, and grandpa, my heart aches for your daughter…and for you. I’m sorry. 😥

Inspirational Texting

Today, among things for which I’m thankful, is this:

Audio Bible Sent Via Text Message

In the U.S. alone, people send around 530 million text messages every single day.

Faith Comes By Hearing, the world’s foremost Audio Bible ministry, is now using text messaging to deliver God’s Word in audio.

By texting “BIBLE” to 80672, people can have the encouraging Word of God sent directly to their mobile phone. Once subscribed, people will receive a chapter a day of the Audio Drama Bible. In less than a year, people can listen through the entire New Testament.

I haven’t tried it yet, but it seems like a great idea.

Worse Than DUI

Texting while driving “more dangerous than drugs or alcohol”

Texting behind the wheel is more dangerous than driving while under the influence of alcohol or cannabis, researchers said Thursday.

Research carried out on young drivers (aged 17-24) using a simulator found that reaction time slowed by 35% when they were writing or reading text messages while driving. In comparison, reaction time deteriorated by 21% for those under the influence of cannabis, and by 12% at the legal alcohol limit.

I’m no teenager (and only two of our five flesh-and-blood children are still teenagers), but I better remember this the next time texting while driving seems so urgent. 😯

Above all, love God!