Earlier this week, New York Times reporter David Rohde escaped from a Taliban prison. He had been a Taliban hostage for the last seven months, but the general public had absolutely no clue. In a joint effort by The New York Times and Wikipedia, the story was kept quiet until his daring escape.

In November 2008, Rohde was captured and held hostage by the Taliban, along with a local reporter, Tahir Ludin, and their driver, Asadullah Mangal. But until he managed to escape, most of the general public had absolutely no clue. To prevent Rohde’s value in the eyes of his captors from rising, the New York Times kept more than 35 major news organizations from reporting on the story. They believed that the publicity from reporting his capture would inflate the value of Rohde’s life, increasing the difficulty of negotiating for Rohde’s release.

This is an interesting conclusion to the story..I wonder how this parallels to the Laura Ling and Euna Lee situation, which took the complete opposite turn when it came to coverage, and whose situations grow more dire by the minute.

CurrentTV has kept completely quiet about it, but politicians and the news networks have tried all they can to keep the public up to date–but is it effective?

Does all the attention given to them simply raise the “value” of the journalists who are captured, making it that much harder for them to either escape, or negotiate an escape?

Are the news networks and politicians helping the cause at all by bringing all this attention to their cases and making the public aware?

Based on the situation above, and through common sense, I’m inclined to say no…holding candlelight vigils and posting links of Ling/Lee on Facebook may be nice gestures and all, but uh no amount of online signatures asking for their freedom is going to make the North Korean government go, “well gee golly there’s so many people on the internet who are against what we’re doing, let’s release them!”

http://mashable.com/2009/06/16/facebook-search-2/

Facebook is testing a realtime search engine for users’ news feeds that will challenge Twitter search, the company revealed on its blog today.

Say what you will about Twitter, but the Iranian situation has shown that its real time search feature is unmatched in providing live information just as it’s happening.

Not Google, not CNN, not Ron Burgundy can match it in reporting breaking news first, and first hand–and as the site continues to grow it’ll only continue to get better.  Let’s face it, it’s still very very underutilized as it is.

Imagine then if/when this becomes fully launched on Facebook. Currently we’re getting information overload from just 5-6 million Twitter users, of which it’s been reported that 10% of whom provide 90% of the tweets, so imagine what we can get via 200 million users (and still growing).

Even the almighty Google or Microsoft will have absolutely no ability to compete with them on any level, given FB’s current user base.

If implemented correctly, Facebook’s current valuation of $10 billion will be multiplied by many many times.

My desire to display my handiness is impeccable however, I’ll spend hours messing something up and hurting myself before I dare pay someone to do what amounts to probably 5 minutes of work, which, unlike my clumsiness is something I got from my dad who never believed in paying for anything that can be done for free.

When I swiped the side of my car against a mailbox then, cracking the rear view mirror into a thousand pieces of glass, I was ready for the challenge at hand.

Curious as to what it could potentially cost me, I called a body shop for an estimate, and was quoted “around $200-$300 for the mirror, plus labor costs”.

Yeah, right, I thought. It’s an expensive habit to be inept in this world, as me and my wallet have certainly learned..

So, after exploring some of my options, I ended up at an auto parts shop that was within walking distance of the Tijuana drug trade, where I was able to swipe the mirror I needed for a mere $30.18 after taxes. Step one was complete, and I couldn’t help but feel a major victory over the “man”.

Then came the installation *gulp*

I immediately went on Google to figure this shit out, (Youtube first actually, videos are so much easier to follow) and given the lack of any sort of decent step by step descriptions with full pictures at hand, that, for people like me would be hell, I decided to craft my own guide together here below.

First things first then–remove the two screws at the bottom of the panel. They’re in hex shape so if you don’t have one, an adjustable wrench, or even pliers as in my case, work just as well.

Then we want to remove the piece right on the door handle, it should jiggle and slide right out.

Do the same for the piece right above it that contains the lock/window buttons (it should slide right toward you). Unplugging the buttons is optional, but it might be more convenient to do so.

Also remove the hex screw on the top right.

And voila, with a little effort, the whole side panel should slide right off, giving us access to the bolts attaching the mirror.

The bolts can be tricky since there’s such a small amount of space in there. It’s a 7/16″ hole so grab that particular wrench, and with a little improvising as seen below, you can gain a bit of much needed leverage to unscrew it.

Rinse + repeat 3 times for each bolt.

After the bolts are removed the mirror should fall right off, allowing you to connect the new mirror on, and attach on the bolts again. Whoo I  can see myself again!

Finally attach the wiring to the mirror so you can use the electric controls from the driver’s side.

Do everything again in reverse mode, and once again you have a shiny new mirror at hand.

As an astute one can see, the project started off with plenty of sunshine, but by the time I was done it was pitch black and the wolves were calling outside.

In other words, it should take an average person ~15-20 minutes to complete everything.

Tip of advice: be sure to take your keys out before you forget they’re in there while you’re playing with the autolocks button on the other door, thereby locking yourself out.

A year ago I left a safe haven, a home in which I’d lived in for all of my childhood and briefly after finishing college–still being looked after by my parents, “it’s 8:10am, aren’t you going to wake up for work?”, or, “what time are you going to be back tonight? Okay, just be safe.”

It was a world where I had no responsibilities other than to get to work on time, not screw anything up, and make sure our weekends weren’t too crazy.

It was all routine, it was all seemingly too easy, this “adulthood”–it was almost like high school all over again. Other than cleaning the house and doing the dishes a few times a week (okay even that’s an exaggeration), all the major bills/mortgages were taken care of, every meal was accounted for, and even our fridge was continuously stocked with ice cream and peanut butter. What more could a 23-year-old ask for?

Life was in a word, simple–no, simpler than simple. I was an adult who just finished living hundreds of miles from home completing a degree all on my own, and I had just ventured through a far off continent managing not to be kidnapped, and my responsibilities, and what was expected of me was no greater than it was when I was up late at night bullshitting papers on Beloved and learning derivative rules.

Stay on course, demonstrate some level of ambition, and keep out of trouble, and all would be well in the world.

Then came the day where in a mere 8 hours, I was 480 miles away from my comfort zone, into a new city I’d been to a total of 4 days previously, moving into a house with 3 random roommates that I’d never met before, into a business that I was only beginning to learn about, and *gasp* had to become accountable where each meal would come from every night.

And as someone who can’t tell the difference between a spatula and a cheese grater, that wasn’t easy.

A month following the move I wrote a brief reflection, something I wish I had done more often now–and in it I wrote:

I feel like I’ve gone through weekends that have lasted longer than this past month has, and I have little doubt that I’ll wake up tomorrow, look at the calendar and realize it’s 2010.

And while 2010 is slowly sneaking up on us, the past year has certainly come and gone much too fast. My sentiments from 11 months ago still  remain, the work-hours of the day still fly by, it still rarely ever truly feels like “work”, and dull moments are surprisingly still hard to come by.

Most importantly the 4 of us have yet to have any desire to kill each other, and the threat of running off with all of our company funds some 20 miles south to the border has, um, unlikely crossed any of our minds…yet.

I’ve certainly grown as much as I have over the past year than at any other point in my life, but to say that I’ve changed much would be false. It’s a college style life where flip flops and shorts are the norm, weekends are mostly blurs, and spontaneous Vegas trips are aplenty…but with the slight added responsibility of actually, running a business on the side.

I can still stand to put off growing up to a later date…

Five children reported dead after dad’s suicide
Gunman Kills 3 Police Officers in Pittsburgh
US police hunt for clues after immigrant slays 13
Yahoo Engineer Kills Five Family Members in Murder-Suicide
Three police officers killed in Oakland shootings
2 Mass. sisters, brother who killed them mourned

Freakonomics (I think?) tried to argue that crime rates aren’t affected by economic conditions–but uh I call bullshit on that.

This post was brought to you by Happnews.com

Why is one greatly shunned more than the other as being a vain, shallow thing?

No one “needs” anything more than a $25k car to drive to work in, anything else is mostly excess, and done for the sake of their ego..I’m certainly no exception.

So how is a guy spending $40-50k+ on a “cool” car to improve one’s image (let’s face it, most people aren’t spending extra money on safety features, or performance/horsepower/handling, a majority are doing it for the image) different than say enhancing his jawline or fixing his nose.

Is it because the latter is reserved strictly toward the ultrawealthy, since you can’t really finance a tummy tuck as you can a car? Or because it’s seen as “misrepresenting” yourself by getting your appearance brushed up?

Do ugly, successful people not have a right to look good or improve themselves–just as they have a right to drive around in a chic car to impress some girls?

So now it’s:

V

WHO YA GOT?

(left to right: Bill Gates, former CEO of Microsoft; Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google; Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple)

They were all probably beaten up in school, which probably lead to their secludism in which they made friends with the only thing that didn’t beat them up–computers and did amazing things as a result.

The moral of the story then is, if you want your kid to be a successful billionaire, get them beaten up in school…or just beat them up yourselves.

That’s what I plan on doing.