One in Thirteen Thousand (Giving Up Twitter For Lent)

Apparently 13,937 people gave up twitter for Lent. According to someone who's used Twitter's API to calculate this. A classic of selection bias if you ask me, but of course being an atheist, I'm the last person you should trust on matters of religion.

I'm one of them. But when does Lent end? I was taught in Sunday School and Church-sponsored primary school that it was 40 days from Ash Wednesday, to commemorate 40 days in the wilderness, but others tell me it lasts until Easter.

Ash Wednesday was on Wednesday, 22 February 2012. Easter this year is on April 8th. There's 46 days between them. This is one of many things that I find Christianity confusing. Perhaps that's why there's a whole field of study (exegesis) telling us why the bible doesn't mean what it appears to mean at first glance.

Anyway, I reckon my 40 days of ignoring the best source of news about the subjects and people I care about is over on Monday 2nd. It's been an interesting experience of determining the difference between savoir and connaitre in terms of habits and giving them up. However, I haven't suddenly started phoning people more or asking to see people in person - as some would think you might.

So what did I miss in my 40 days in the social media wilderness? Anything worthy of note?

Twitter isn't for Buddhists

I'm now about 32 days into a state of (almost) silence and deafness on Twitter. One thing I'm particularly reminded of is the Buddhist concept of "monkey-mind", and how social media entities such as Twitter and StumbleUpon rely upon and potentially exacerbate this state of mind.

For those who haven't flirted with Buddhism on occasion (or more), Monkey-Mind is a metaphor for "the random, uncontrollable movements of the monkey symbolise the waywardness of the native human mind before it achieves a composure which only Buddhist discipline can effect.". It's a bad thing, in other words. It points to the restless, magpie-like tendency of some people to reach for the next shiny thing. Twitter is all about the next shiny thing - be it a bon mot, a celebrity's indiscretion, the glamour of being retweeted by a celebrity or the repeated opportunity to bond with a group of like-minded friends.

Buddhism suggests that perhaps it would be better to be content without a constant stream of shininess. Another monkey metaphor comes in handy here - that of the monkey trap. You stick a treat in a box that a monkey can stick it's hand into but can not pull the treat out of with the treat in it's grasp. The monkey doesn't let go, because it wants the treat and doesn't realise it's trapped until it let's go. Buddhism is all about letting go of that which is temporary and alluring in the material world and focusing on the bliss of the calm soul.

At the moment, I like shiny. And I like shining. I like the passion I get from caring about this temporary and alluring universe that I find myself in. It's nice to be reminded that there are other paths though.

Random idea of the month: Anaesthetic toothpaste

Every so often I come up with a random idea. Most will never go anywhere, apart from on this blog, where I offer it up freely for consideration.

How about pre-school children's toothpaste with very mild local anaesthetic included. The idea being that: when they're teething and hate the idea of anyone poking their teeth, then the act of brush their teeth relieves the teething pain.

I can think of at least one reason not to do this, feel free to add yours in the comments.

There goes the warfarin clinic....

http://www.prescriber.org.uk/2012/03/nice-guidance-dabigatran-in-af/

A tale of two citations

As my twitter-silence continues (nearly) unbroken during lent, another reflection from the things-I-would-tweet-about-if-I-wasnt-doing-this-lent-thing-for-no-good-reason department.

Yesterday I was catching up with some RSS feeds and I happened upon an article about thyroxine that contained an error that was so woeful it made me very very woe-filled.

I won't go into details of why it missed the subtle point of the press release it was recycling, nor how a pharmacy undergraduate would have easily spotted the error. Instead, let me speculate on how it illustrates nicely two approaches to social media.

There was another error, far far less woeful, about a drug called warfarin. In that case the author and I reciprocally follow each other on twitter and so we had a conversation abot the issue. A few other twitterers did the same. The author corrected and improved the article. Result: Improved article, more respected author and placated moaning me.

A key element of social media is building relationships. With relationship comes engagement, respect and trust. The journal publishing about warfarin understands this and benefits considerably.

The journal publishing about thyroxine prefers the other model: social media is a support mechanism to stabilise the print edition. I dont know who wrote the thyroxine article, there's a comment field but I dont know whether those comments will ever be seen. There's a generic twitter feed, used as a quasi-rss feed of articles published and generic email addresses.

Result: incorrect article remains, and I moan about it on blogspot.

I know which model of social media I prefer.