Download the full-track of Empire State of Mind (Part II) from iTunes here: http://st8.fm/ON2. Proceeds from the download benefit the National Fallen Firefighters Foundation (http://www.firehero.org/).

Credits
Artist: James Davis Jr. & The Children of New York City
Song: Empire State Of Mind (Part II)
Album: Empire State Of Mind (Part II) 9/11 Tribute

It was 6:30am on Tuesday, September the 11th 2001 and I was arriving to school. I was in 7th grade. Like I did every morning, I went to the cafeteria to buy breakfast and then walked to the band room to eat it. The band room had two TVs mounted up on the wall and both of them were playing live CNN coverage of New York. At this point, the first plane had just hit and there was mass confusion and horror. We weren’t if it was an accident or an attack. And then the second plane hit. At this point we were pretty sure that it was not an accident but there was still only shock and confusion. We were 13 and 14 year olds after all – we still had some sense of innocence. A few minutes later an announcement came over the school intercom instructing all teachers to turn off their TVs, not discuss news with students and to await further instructions.

It was not until that evening, when I got home and was able to watch TV, that I able to grasp the full impact of what had happened in New York. But this seemed to only leave me with more questions. Most of all I wanted to know why. What did we do to this evil man living in a cave to cause him to wreak such havoc on us? Today, we finally have answers to a lot of our questions but there are still a lot of unanswered questions. Perhaps things we will never know. Most importantly, who is the bigger enemy: radical Islamists or our own government?

Osama bin Laden was a very evil man but he knew exactly what he was doing when he attacked the United States on 9/11. His target, the World Trade Center, was a symbol of Western Civilization. Al Qaeda was symbolically destroying the West. Their goal: sparking a civilizational war between the Islamic world and the West. Bin Laden may have killed a lot of people in the 9/11 attacks, but killing people was not his most important goal.

Even then, in 2001, things were not looking good in the Arab world. Radical adherence to Islamic ideals was declining as more and more young Arabs were reaching out to the influences of the West. The Dictatorships, Arab Monarchies and Theocratic Regimes dominated by mullahs were losing popular support. When popular support dries up, oppressive regimes crumble. These men, existing on the radical fringes of Islam, were not willing to abdicate their thrones.

Enter Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda. What better way to motivate and enlist young Muslims into the radical fringe then to provoke a war with the West? Although the military-industrial complex wants us to believe that we are helping people in Iraq and Afghanistan, many of the people who live there are eager for the American military to go home. They have lived in a virtual hell since we invaded in 2001, many of them going without basic utilities like electricity and running water for the past 10 years. In this respect, Al Qaeda’s war was very successful; the “War on Terror” has created a lot more terrorists than it has eliminated.

The war that bin Laden provoked has killed many of our troops, proven him right on a lot of his claims about the west, caused social and political unrest in the United States and has taken its financial toll on the economies of the West. But most striking is what it has done to the American psyche: we live in constant fear of terrorists. Our airports are virtual police states. Many of our civil rights have been suspended under the Patriot Act in the name of protecting us. The cost of keeping us safe is bankrupting our country.

On the other hand, the attacks on 9/11 gave us a sense of American pride and togetherness that we haven’t seen since World War II. People put their political affiliations aside and came together simply as Americans. Heroes gave their lives in the World Trade Center to save others. The sense of patriotism was overwhelming: red, white and blue everywhere. Many stores sold out of all of their patriotic merchandise. Even through it felt like the end of the world as we knew it, we had each other. And with each other, what could go wrong?

Osama bin Laden killed a lot of Americans, he successfully provoked a war with the West and the endless war has essentially ruined our economy. Osama bin Laden has changed the world forever – but it cost him his life. Hatred for the West bought the Arab world another 10 years of oppression but as we saw this past Arab Spring, the revolutions have begun. The influence of the West on the Arab World and their use of Twitter has brought about the final undoing of the radical fringe of Islam.

As the war efforts wind down in the Middle East and we put our economy back together, lets set an example for the new democracies springing up in the Arab world. Rather than continuing our culture war and being the poster child of a dysfunctional polarized government, lets once again be the America that puts our differences aside for the common good. Our future depends on it.

Times like this remind me how short and precious life is. Living on the San Andreas fault in Southern California this could just as likely be us.

In the words of the beautiful lazyyogi on Tumblr:

People are dying and homes are burning. Tragedy gives no account of itself ahead of time. How are we to react?

The earthquake and following tsunami in Japan is a travesty. Who knows what other locations will be effected.

We must reach out with love. Any spiritual tradition born of love, be it hinduism buddhism or christianity, advocates offering love to all. Why is this? When you offer boundless love to all, you yourself are included. But when offering love to only yourself and loved ones, such a love is conditional and therefore restrained.

For all of us, touched and untouched by this natural disaster, take time to offer love and compassion. You can do this through prayer, meditation, donating money, volunteering, anything. But just taking a simple moment to acknowledge the pain and suffering and in turn offering compassion can make a difference. More than you might think.

The Newsworthy

According to the article The Facebook Freedom Fighter in Newsweek (Feb 21, 2011) a team of bloggers and social activists led a completely grassroots effort to gain freedom for their countrymen using just Facebook, Twitter and word-of-mouth.

Wael Ghonim, Google’s head of marketing in the Middle East, adopted a dead man’s identity to push for democracy, taking on a secret life that nearly consumed him.

Wael Ghonim began working as a volunteer marketing person for the Facebook page of Nobel Prize winning author Mohamed ElBaradei and was not overly involved in politics. But after a video emerged of police beating a man to death outside of a coffee shop in broad daylight, Ghonim became Egypt’s most important cyberactivist.

He began a new Facebook page entitled “We are all Khaled Said” (the man beaten to death) which attracted a viral following. The outrage over the injustices of the government and the police led to an organized movement to make a difference. Ghonim used Facebook events to rally support of his grassroots activists to publicly protest and demonstrate against the government. Within a few weeks their President announced his resignation making the campaign successful.

The great thing about Facebook pages is that their content cannot be blocked or censored. Once a user “likes” a page, the page’s information and updates are pushed to a user’s newsfeed. The only way the content can be censored is for the entire Facebook site to be blocked.

The Implications

If a grassroots activist can use Facebook and Twitter to overthrow a government, think of the implications for business. The things to be learned from the Egypt story is that the most important aspect – the soul, if you will – is public support. This applies to businesses as much as it does politicians and political movements.

You can spend hundreds of dollars on advertising or you can reach out to your Twitter and Facebook followers to advertise for you. Not only is word-of-mouth advertising much more effective than paid advertising, but it is free.

Some tips from Copy Blogger’s Five Essential Elements of Effective Social Media Marketing are:

1. Observe Conversations

See what your target publics are saying about your business or topics relevant to your business. If it is negative publicity, fix it. If it is positive publicity, encourage it.

If you see negative publicity about a competitor, seize the moment and use it to your advantage. First try to help the disgruntled person solve their problem and then use the opportunity to tell them about YOUR brand and how you do it better.

For example, a few months ago, I casually made a negative comment about some jeans I purchased from Overstock.com on Twitter. Within an hour, someone from their PR department contacted me, refunded my money, let me keep the jeans for free AND also gave me store credit. I’m still not thrilled about the jeans, but they made it up to me so much that I will definitely be shopping there again.

2. Spark Conversation

When trying to generate new business, connect with customers on a personal level and build a relationship with them before trying to solicit their business. There is nothing more annoying then being presented with unsolicited advertisements. When companies do it to me, I block them and report them for spam.

Again, you can use the tools on Twitter and Facebook to find relevant conversations and connect with your market.

For example, I casually mentioned on Twitter how pleased I was with my customer service experience at GoDaddy (they are really REALLY great) and their CTO personally contacted me to thank me and tell me how valuable I am as a customer. I was already a big fan of the company but the personal attention from one of their executives made me that much more enthused about their service.

3. Conversational Content

Target your audience with two-way communication. Rather than being a one-way announcement of news about your company, engage your audience.

Celebrities are great at this, especially Paula Abdul and Kirstie Alley. Follow them on Twitter, @PaulaAbdul and @KirstieAlley respectively.

4. Interactive Content

Interact with your customers. Publicly reply to them. Send them messages. Thank them for being your customer. As a consumer there is nothing cooler then having a celebrity or company reply to you or retweet something you’ve posted. It makes you feel like more than just a number.

I’ve had restaurants retweet my messages about my experiences which not only makes me feel good as a consumer, but it’s free promotion for them. My most memorable experience with this was Rustler’s Rooste in Tempe, AZ where I celebrated my 22nd birthday. Their PR department is absolutely great about interacting with their customers (follow them on Twitter @RustlersRooste).

5. Conversational Copy

Positive PR aside, the ultimate goal of business is to make money. When considering advertising and direct marketing by social media, remember the 80/20 rule. 80% conversation, interaction and positive PR to 20% advertising and promotion. If you overwhelm your publics with ads, they will delete you. Period.

When listing products on your website, include customer testimonials or Twitter posts relating to your product. Again, positive word-of-mouth PR will go a lot further then misleading descriptions and expensive models.

If this article was informative, please share it with a friend.
If you have anything to add or any questions, please comment below.

Social media is defined as "the use of web-based and mobile technologies to turn communication into interactive dialogue". And that is what it does in a nutshell – it makes the connection between customer & business, consumer & advertiser and friend & friend an interactive, live, instantaneously gratifying experience.

There are literally hundreds – perhaps thousands – of different platforms for social media. New ones spring up everyday and, just as quickly, others die a silent and unnoticed death. The big ones are Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin of course, but there are quite a few niche sites as well; for photographers – Flickr & Model Mayhem. For music lovers – Pandora, Last.fm and Pure Volume. And these are just a select few. There are also social bookmarking sites such as Stumble Upon (my personal favorite), Redit, Delicious and Digg. Each of these sites targets different groups of consumers and many include a wide array of tools, widgets and extensions which work with them.

Popular Social Media Tools

Tweetdeck – combines Twitter, Facebook, Facebook Pages, Linkedin, Google Buzz, FourSquare and Myspace. It has a Google Chrome Webapp, a Desktop client and support for iOS, Android and Blackberry mobile devices.

Ping.fm & Seesmic – similar to Tweetdeck but supports many more social networks. Ping.fm is a purely web-based, mass-update service. But Seesmic is the application component similar to Tweetdeck which has a cross-browser Webapp, Desktop client and support for iOS, Android and Blackberry mobile devices as well.

Hootsuite – similar to Tweetdeck, Ping.fm and Seesmic but entirely web-based. It has a lot of analytics built-in and allows multiple users to manage the same account. The only downside is that they charge for all of the features that set them apart from (free) Tweetdeck and (free) Seesmic.

What Does It All Mean

In the 50s there were only three television networks. Most people did not own remote controls. In other words, consumers were unable to avoid advertisements short of physically getting up to turn off their television. Advertisements were also directed at a broad audience of consumers whereas today we target specific niches within the overall population.

In our increasingly “plugged in” world, we have transitioned into what is called permission marketing. In other words, you need the consent of your publics in order to market to them. Social marketing and new media are the key to getting the permission of your target market.

Although social media can and should be used to market your brand, the focus should not be 100% on marketing product. If you overwhelm your audience, they will withdraw their consent for you to market to them (ie: delete you). Most successful social marketers post very few advertisements. Instead they tend to post articles that are interesting and relevant to their brand in order to connect with their publics. That way when they DO post an advertisement, their message is much more profound since they have the trust and loyalty of their consumers.

You Can Do It!

The key to promoting your business online and using social marketing to your benefit is establishing an online following. Use the suggested tools to simplify managing different communication channels. Post interesting articles to attract followers. Start a blog for your business and write your own articles.

Remember, successful marketing isn’t about you. Humans are self-centered. We want to hear about us. Use social media to satisfy that vanity.

As you get older, loss doesn’t get any easier. You would think it does, but it doesn’t. At the same time, you cope with it in a different way. I don’t know if I would call it internalization or rationalization or a combination of both, but rather than raw hurt it’s more like emptiness. Like a piece of me is missing.

On Wednesday February 16, 2011 I lost my friend Adrian Burgueño. Adrian was only 21 years old. He was a student, an activist, a filmmaker. He loved music, biking, his family & friends and life itself. He was a son, a boyfriend and above all a friend. He always smiled. Always.

I met Adrian in 2009 at Southwestern College in Chula Vista when I was taking two Astronomy classes with his girlfriend Rosa. Rosa and I were in a study group together which Adrian attended with her. Even though he had much better things to do with his time, he entertained us and was our “googler” looking up difficult concepts for us online.

After Astronomy we remained friends and I have fond memories of bowling, late night Pictionary and Monopoly games and Adrian’s 21st birthday party.

The following was posted in the Santa Cruz Sentinel on Feb 12, 2011:

UC SANTA CRUZ

Student crashes bicycle, seriously injures his head.

A 21-year-old UC Santa Cruz student was found unconscious about 9 p.m. Thursday near a bike path in a meadow near the bottom of campus, university officials said.

Adrian Burgueno, a College Eight student, apparently crashed his bike while riding on a path downhill, UC Santa Cruz spokesman Jim Burns said. He was found by another cyclist who notified campus police, and it is unclear when or why the crash happened, authorities said.

Burgueno, who had a bike light and was wearing a helmet, had a head injury and was taken by helicopter to Santa Clara Valley Medical Center in San Jose, Burns said. Burgueno remained in the hospital Friday, but his medical condition is unclear, authorities said.

“Obviously we’re concerned,” Burns said

An article was also published on the UC Santa Cruz website by Adrian’s provost:

From: Ravi Rajan, Provost – College Eight

February 17, 2011

College Eight has learned of the recent death of Adrian Burgueno, who passed away on February 11, 2011 as a result of a bicycle accident on campus the previous day.

Adrian was from San Ysidro, CA and came to UCSC in the fall of 2007. He was 21 years old and a senior majoring in Film and Digital Media. Adrian participated in the UC COSMOS program prior to coming to UCSC. He was an avid bicyclist and photographer and had close connections with EOP and the Chicano-Latino Resource Center.

The College extends its deepest condolences to Adrian’s family, friends and his colleagues in the Film and Digital Media department at this time great loss.

We know you join us in expressing our sorrow.

Memorial Fund

A memorial fund as been setup by Adrian’s family to help with burial costs and to help a grieving family during this difficult time.

No donation is too big or small.

For more information or to donate, please contact Karen at +1-619-942-6410

In Memoriam

The following are a combination of pictures that were taken from Adrian’s Facebook page. A few of them were taken by me personally and the rest were contributed by others on his Facebook.

Burial & Services

Funeral & Rosary

FRIDAY Feb. 25th 4pm-9pm

Rosary held at 7pm.

Heath Funeral Home
611 Highland ave
National city CA 91950
619-477-4139

Please park in the designated parking lot. There is also an outdoor patio so feel free to bring food and drinks. Coffee will be served.

Memorial Mass

SATURDAY Feb. 26th 1pm

St. Anthony of Padua Parish

410 W. 18th street National City 91950
619-477-4520

Bilingual mass. If you bring flowers please leave them outside of the church by the door.

UC Santa Cruz

A memorial service will be held on the UC Santa Cruz famous in the near future. Specific information is forth coming.

San Ysidro Bike Rise Memorial

RSVP

When:
6 March 2011 * 13:00-16:00

Where:
Adrian’s House
2303 E. Beyer Blvd
San Ysidro, CA

Contact: Karina Lizet Perez

We all knew him for that big contagious smile of his. Adrian’s life was filled with happiness, adventure and love…even at his young age, he was doing amazing things with his life. An avid cyclist and senior at UCSC majoring in Film and Digital Media–he had just attended the premiere of “El Porvenir”, a Mexican based, web-series he had been working on, alongside director and friend Manuel Alejandro Anell.

Adrian was riding back home, from late night studying, through the UCSC meadows and apparently crashed his bike into a ditch. Unfortunately, his helmet and headlight did not prevent this terrible accident. He was found unconscious Thursday night by another cyclist and was rushed to the hospital by helicopter. He passed away on Saturday, Feb 12th from an aneurysm as a result of the accident.

We’ve lost an incredible friend. My heart is completely broken and I can only ask for all of you to join us in coming together in his honor and celebrate his beautiful life. Our Bike rise invites all who would like to pay tribute, to ride with us through a route which will begin at Adrian’s home and continue through San Ysidro. If you would still like to support but do not own a bicycle, you are welcome to follow us by car or any other mobile means. Please bring helmets to the bike rising. Just like Adrian always put safety first, we must respect that and do the same.

In loving memory,
Adrian Burgueño
(Oct. 11, 1989 – Feb. 12, 2011)

Source: Unknown

A successful business man was growing old and knew it was time to choose a successor to take over the business.

Instead of choosing one of his Directors or his children, he decided to do something different. He called all the young executives in his company together.

He said, “It is time for me to step down and choose the next CEO. I have decided to choose one of you. “The young executives were Shocked, but the boss continued. “I am going to give each one of you a SEED today – one very special SEED. I want you to plant the seed, water it, and come back here one year from today with what you have grown from the seed I have given you. I will then judge the plants that you bring, and the one I choose will be the next CEO.”

One man, named Jim, was there that day and he, like the others, received a seed. He went home and excitedly, told his wife the story. She helped him get a pot, soil and compost and he planted the seed. Everyday, he would water it and watch to see if it had grown. After about three weeks, some of the other executives began to talk about their seeds and the plants that were beginning to grow.

Jim kept checking his seed, but nothing ever grew.

Three weeks, four weeks, five weeks went by, still nothing.

By now, others were talking about their plants, but Jim didn’t have a plant and he felt like a failure.

Six months went by — still nothing in Jim’s pot. He just knew he had killed his seed. Everyone else had trees and tall plants, but he had nothing. Jim didn’t say anything to his colleagues, however, he just kept watering and fertilizing the soil – He so wanted the seed to grow.

A year finally went by and all the young executives of the company brought their plants to the CEO for inspection.

Jim told his wife that he wasn’t going to take an empty pot. But she asked him to be honest about what happened. Jim felt sick to his stomach, it was going to be the most embarrassing moment of his life, but he knew his wife was right. He took his empty pot to the board room. When Jim arrived, he was amazed at the variety of plants grown by the other executives. They were beautiful — in all shapes and sizes. Jim put his empty pot on the floor and many of his colleagues laughed, a few felt sorry for him!

When the CEO arrived, he surveyed the room and greeted his young executives.

Jim just tried to hide in the back. “My, what great plants, trees and flowers you have grown,” said the CEO. “Today one of you will be appointed the next CEO!”

All of a sudden, the CEO spotted Jim at the back of the room with his empty pot. He ordered the Financial Director to bring him to the front. Jim was terrified. He thought, “The CEO knows I’m a failure! Maybe he will have me fired!”

When Jim got to the front, the CEO asked him what had happened to his seed – Jim told him the story.

The CEO asked everyone to sit down except Jim. He looked at Jim, and then announced to the young executives, “Behold your next Chief Executive Officer!

His name is Jim!” Jim couldn’t believe it. Jim couldn’t even grow his seed.

“How could he be the new CEO?” the others said.

Then the CEO said, “One year ago today, I gave everyone in this room a seed. I told you to take the seed, plant it, water it, and bring it back to me today. But I gave you all boiled seeds; they were dead – it was not possible for them to grow.

All of you, except Jim, have brought me trees and plants and flowers. When you found that the seed would not grow, you substituted another seed for the one I gave you. Jim was the only one with the courage and honesty to bring me a pot with my seed in it. Therefore, he is the one who will be the new Chief Executive Officer!”

All these pictures are from the book ‘Microcosmos,’ created by Brandon Brill from London.

This book includes many scanning electron microscope (SEM) images of insects, human body parts and household items.

These are the most amazing images of what is too small to see with the naked eye.

Location: Room 700, Southwestern College, Chula Vista, CA

Dates: 11/23/10-12/09/10

Pieces in the show: