The Web and the End of Forgetting

One of the reasons I agreed to testify in the 2007 Landis arbitration hearing was because it gave me the opportunity to ever so slightly influence the context surrounding the news of my own positive doping test. To some degree I was able to manage the release of that difficult story.

But a recent New York Times article reminds us of how deadly the web can be to our career prospects. In his article, "The Web Means the End of Forgetting, "  Jeffrey Rosen articulates one of the most depressing contradictions of the Internet Age:

"It’s often said that we live in a permissive era, one with infinite second chances. But the truth is that for a great many people, the permanent memory bank of the Web increasingly means there are no second chances — no opportunities to escape a scarlet letter in your digital past. Now the worst thing you’ve done is often the first thing everyone knows about you."

While I don't recommend that you click-off Pappillon right this instant and start reviewing the results of a Google search on your name, I would suggest that you never - not even for a second - take for granted the banality of your online persona. I'm very lucky in that I have the rare chance to interact with many of you via Pappillon, and more so through Twitter and FaceBook, but I shudder to think how bad the fall-out would be if that part of my life that I truly keep personal was suddenly splashed across the 'net in words and pictures.

Especially pictures...

You younger fans of Pappillon, especially, have got to be wary of what you upload to your MySpace and FaceBook profiles. I know you don't have a care in the world right now other than training and racing and racing and training, and many of you are focused like lasers on the goal of becoming the best athletes you can be, but spare a thought for the negative consequences of social networking.

Learn how FaceBook's privacy settings operate and understand why your shouldn't make your profile searchable by every Dick with a Fios connection. Don't upload party photos, even the ones that you and your friends are totally cool with and don't find anything compromising about. And watch-out who you attack on Twitter, or how loose with your words you get in online forums.

Search methodology - and technology - is going to continue to advance. And with progress comes the danger that someone from the future who is evaluating you for a job or admission to a school or promotion in the military, or a hundred other judgment situations will find some that you wrote, uploaded or said and, taking it totally out of context, will decide that you're too risky a person to ally with going forward...

Help a Friend

A good friend, who is of course a cyclist, took a bad fall several weeks ago and is really hurting as a result. What's especially hard on him is the fact that his mobility and resultant social interaction have declined significantly. Would you cold-hearted bastards send him some email and Google Voice sympathy and well wishes if I set it up?

Let me know via email or, if you must, comments to this post.

Did They Use Elmer's or Krazy Glue?

From the AP:

WAUSAU, Wis. - A married man who planned to meet with one of his handful of lovers at a Wisconsin motel instead found himself bound, blindfolded and assaulted by a group of women out for revenge, according to court documents.

Four women, including his wife, eventually showed up to humiliate the man, who ended up with his penis glued to his stomach in a bizarre plot to punish him for a lover's quadrangle gone bad...

More here.

Throwin' Up Gang Signs

Now I understand why it's so hard to learn proper gang signing.

From the New York Daily News:

"...Incredibly, parents "bless" and initiate their babies into violent gangs like the Crips and Bloods - teaching chubby little fingers to fold into gang signs even before the tots mouth their first words..."

Wow. I know my folks weren't in the bloods but maybe that's the kind of parental influence one needs in order to learn how to throw up gang signs effectively and efficiently? Kinda like learning salsa as a baby in Cuba by virtue of the fact that your parents like to listen to it...
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New blood: Violent gang life is passed down from parent to child

A longtime member of the Lating Kings, here with his 4-year-old, says he wants to be a peacemaker and hopes his son follows suit. Newborn Blood, known as a Blood drop, is draped with beads and flanked by guns. Police later seized the pistols from the parents. The images as chilling as they are heartbreaking: An infant with a semiautomatic handgun next to each tiny shoulder. A child no more than a year old decked out in blood-red gang gear."They call them Blood drops, stains, rims," a former Staten Island Bloods gang member said of the nicknames gang parents give their children. Incredibly, parents "bless" and initiate their babies into violent gangs like the Crips and Bloods - teaching chubby little fingers to fold into gang signs even before the tots mouth their first words. Drive-by shootouts, murder and drug deals have always been a sad part of gang life, but recruitment from one generation to the next has become more prominent in the city where gangs only started showing their might in the mid-1990s. "We're seeing more children who are being exposed to the gang world because their parents are members," said Deanna Rodriguez, Brooklyn district attorney gang bureau chief. "This is part of their identity," Rodriguez said. "As long as they can remember, they've been part of the Bloods, Crips or the Latin Kings. This is what life is and they don't understand the concept of what life is outside that." NYPD statistics bear out the sad truth: There were 713 gang incidents in New York last year, up from 554 in 2006. While city officials estimate there are about 17,000 known gang members here, experts say the actual number is double that - not even including small neighborhood gangs.

The nation's three biggest gang cities are Los Angeles, Chicago and New York, said Arlen Egley of the National Youth Gang Organization. Some of the misguided parents think teaching little ones the gang life is cute. Others have learned the hard way. "My first child - he was only 6 months old when he got blessed into it," said King Ironman, a Bronx member of the Almighty Latin King and Queen Nation gang. Then the boy was killed in a drive-by shootout. "The target was me ... he was only 2 years old," Ironman said. Although he says he hasn't been active for nearly 10 years and now tries to talk young people out of joining gangs, Ironman still "blessed" two more sons into the predominantly Puerto Rican gang. "Families have to do that to be part of the nation," he said. One son was blessed at St. Mary's Episcopal Church in Morningside Heights four years ago during a quasi-religious ceremony. "It's like a christening," he said. "The priest holds the baby and we say our prayer at the same time. We have to have the window open and the baby pointed toward the sun."

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