What Do I Know?

Witness Another Revolution

And the revolutions just keep on coming! First Bahrain, where the ruling regime was shamed when international media attention documented their use of force against peaceful protesters. And now Libya, where journalists are beginning to pour into the open borders from newly liberated Egypt and Tunisia. As the first western journalists to appear in the country, they've been greeted as liberators, pelted with candy and given standing ovations. 

Because oppressed people know that when their brutal oppression and dignified fight for freedom is documented, the world will react. Not always successfully—there was little an angry world could do after the Tiananmen Square massacre—yet when third rate dictators are exposed for the petty tyrants they are, oppressed populations are emboldened, knowing that at least their protests will not go unseen, unheard. 

The situation in each country is unique; their revolutions are not cut from the same keffiyah. Col Gaddafi is clearly insane, yet Hosni Mobarak was merely out of touch. Mobarak's methods were more secretive, his hired thugs at least making some attempt to appear home-grown. Gaddafi is not so shy: he openly hires mercenaries from sub-Sahara Africa, offering as much as $12000 for each life they take.

While the revolution in Bahrain seems to be on hold for the moment, the situation in Libya changes by the hour. This map shows the areas held by forces still loyal to Gaddafi. His territory is diminishing day by day, yet he remains holed up in Tripoli. His broadcast on State TV was lampooned by anyone who could bear to tune in for the 75 minutes of disjointed ranting. 

But Libyans followed up the lampooning with action: At one airfield, civilians placed metal containers on the airfield to prevent planes from landing with foreign mercenaries. 

Clearly, the longest running autocrat in the Middle East is nearing the end of his illegitimate rule. The old Libyan flag is now proudly flying almost everywhere except Tripoli, where Gaddafi's made-up flag still flies. (He also renamed the months of the year after his various sons. Delusional despot.)

Military officers are changing sides: Two pilots bailed from their aircraft last night, ditching the jets in the desert, while earlier, two Mirage jets landed in Malta, flown by two defecting officers who refused orders to bomb their own people.

As each revolution reaches a tipping point, those in power see the writing on the wall, so to speak. Libyan ambassadors, perhaps seeing the coverage the rest of the world sees, have denounced the regime. Inside Libya, in areas now free from brutal suppression, people are telling journalists stories that before would have been a ticket to prison, or worse.

As one Libyan professor told journalist Hannah Allam, "Before, the only time we opened our mouths was at the dentist." 

Seeing people risk their lives for the mere right to protest is thrilling, and humbling. And yet still, I hear old geezers on the news here, warning us that Western Democracy isn't fit for the Arab world. No doubt where that old man would have stood when the 13 American colonies revolted against a repressive British monarchy. 

There is no longer a shortage of information coming out of Libya. You can follow the Libyan revolution on Twitter, on Al Jazeera English (which continues to do an excellent job covering the protests in the Middle East) or on AJE's live blog here or the Guardian's here. 

We live in exciting times. Don't miss the coverage.

A Cat Tale, Tweeted

All morning I heard strange cat noises coming from the front yard. I figured it was one of the neighbor's three cats, white fancy cats that roam outside on fine days. (They ended up with three when one kitten went missing and they got a replacement brother for the remaining cat. Then after three weeks, the original cat returned.)

So of course I turn to Twitter to express my concern: 

Weird cat noise going on outside. Someone trying to imitate a cat? Or one of the cats in distress?

Then, with a bit of nostalgia: 

Actually sounds a bit like a squeaky swing set. Makes me wish I had a swing.

My concern deepened after an hour or so:

Cat noise stops when I go outside to investigate; begins again when I come in. IS THERE A CAT IN MY HOUSE?

Then paranoia set in and I blamed the construction crew down the street, with whom I've been having a running argument over parking: 

I think the workers 2 doors down have devised a new way to torture me. STOP THE CAT NOISE, you can have the parking space back.

Finally I applied logic and decided it wasn't a cat after all:

Sparky doesn't bark at the cat noise, which means it probably isn't a cat. Or else he's stupid. WHAT IS IT?

All afternoon, no cat noises, and no cats in sight after our walk, when I usually let Sparky run off lead down the cul-de-sac, provided I see no white cats about. 

Then my husband came home. Hearing his motorbike, I decided Sparky was well-behaved enough to greet him outside, so I quickly hooked up the long leash and headed outside, just in time to see a white cat come streaking out of the garage.

Where he'd been trapped all day. 

Fortunately, the lead got stopped by the motorbike's front wheel, or else Sparky might have had a face full of scratches and a mouthful of fluffy white fur. 

Dog Training the Tiger Mom Way?

Sparky susses out his dog puzzle.

I was never one of those parents who pushed their kids. Tiger Mom? More like a flounder mom, with a strictly hands off approach. I provided all the resources my girls needed to pursue their various interests, then stayed in the kitchen and ignored them when they didn't practice the piano/guitar/lesson du jour. 

With my dog, I was the same way. I taught her the basics, talked to her a lot, and relied on her own judgement to learn the rest. Since she had pretty good judgment, she stayed out of trouble most of the time—although I can't say she stayed out of mud puddles. That was her choice, though, and while I hated the dirt, I loved that she loved it. 

Sparky is proving to be a bit different. He has horrible judgment: he barks at dogs, strangers, noises, pheasants, and cows. He'd likely chase sheep if given the chance, and I'm pretty sure he wants a piece of the cats next door. 

So my non-interventionist parenting skills aren't working with him. He needs guidance, i.e. training, and lots of it. From day one I've tried to shape his behavior, and teach him some coping skills like "leave it" and "stay" and "quiet". I.e., the Tiger Mom equivalent of dog training, which goes against my Flounder Mom nature. 

Fortunately, he's a brilliant dog. He learns very quickly, but there's a difference between teaching him cute tricks and teaching him good behavior. He's a master of cute tricks. In fact, he's learned that when he sits on his haunches next to my desk, I'll stop work and reward his "cute trick". He does this without prompting—cleverly, he's figured out how easy I am to train, too. 

I taught him to "touch" my hand, and other objects, like Blue Bone and Rope Toy. He also can "get" toys, distinguishing between toys with different names or generic toys (i.e., toys we haven't bothered to name). Last night, I made sure he knew the difference between "touch" and "get" (i.e., pick up and bring to me) a specific toy—a skill that will need reinforcing, but was pretty easy to teach him. 

Again, fortunately, he's highly motivated by food. As soon as he figures out what I want him to do, he does it, eagerly and happily, knowing he's getting a nice nibble of something, anything—it doesn't have to be a particularly high value treat for him to "twirl" or "rollover". Unlike Tiger Mom, I don't even have to threaten to take away his Barbie house.

He's even learned how to find treats hidden in his dog puzzle, which I won in a Facebook giveaway from D for Dogs. It keeps him occupied, especially these winter days when weather forces us indoors. (It's better than listening to him practice the piano for hours on end.)

Cute tricks and puzzle solving may be worth their weight in dog treats, but when you come upon a pasture full of lambs, having your dog perform a perfect twirl won't cut it. And while Sparky's recall is great—in the back garden—I know better than to let him run off lead anywhere there are more than a few birds as distraction. 

If I were a Tiger Mom, I'm sure Sparky could learn as much as Chaser, the wonder dog who knows over 1000 objects as well as verbs. That would be easy, if time consuming. In the end, I'd have a dog who could pick up children's toys, help with the laundry, and retrieve the remote control. Handy, but I want a dog who can hike along trails without launching an attack on a passing poodle.

I don't know how to teach a dog good judgment. Maybe it just takes time, and dog years. We've been working with a behaviorist, but I've learned when it comes to behavior training, I'm the one who needs to learn the most. It's not as easy as driving your kids to piano lessons, or teaching your dog to "twirl" while you hold a treat in front of his nose.

Tiger Mom I'm not, but then, my girls turned out okay. I expect Sparky will too. Although I don't know if he'll ever be welcome at Carnegie Hall—unless they need a really good twirler.

Witness the Revolution!

I don't know about you, but I've been busy tonight witnessing a revolution. 

Egypt is a country of 80 million people. They've just experienced a largely peaceful revolution, overthrowing a dictator—who fully deserves the cliché evil dictator—without resorting to bombs, aerial attacks, UN peacekeepers, or any of the "democracy enhancement" techniques we've seen so often. As President Obama just said, they "put lie to the idea that justice is best gained by violence." 

Wow. 

The new democracy is in its infancy, and I expect there will be some stumbles as it feels its way toward freedom. But that's no reason to discount what has been an amazing 18 days. 

Tonight I watched as a jubilant crowd lofted an Army soldier up on someone's shoulders, the crowd swaying toward him, eager to congratulate him. Throughout the weeks of protest, the Army held its fire, vowing repeatedly not to fire upon the people. In the end, the Army insisted that Hosni Mubarak step down, after turning their tank turrets away from the crowds. 

Another soldier told an old man, "Congratulations, sir. God willing we'll have an Egypt that will make you proud."

On top of a tank, a young soldier posed for a photo with a baby who had been thrust into his arms.

A taxi driver ditched his fare—a reporter and his cameraman—and went to dance in the street. 

Egyptians everywhere are proud, and rightly so, of their country tonight. The famous Egyptian humor was evident even in the bitter disappointment on Thursday night, when Mubarak refused to step aside. An apt tweet quickly made the rounds: "Uninstalling dictator..99% complete." And, later: "Uninstalling dictator COMPLETE - installing now: egypt 2.0."

For the last week or so, I've been riveted to the coverage. Not just out of curiosity, or a desire to participate, from a safe distance, in a major media event. But to add my eyes to the millions of us watching the revolution.

I feel very strongly that if the eyes of the world had not been on Egypt these last few days, the revolution could have ended up very differently. Al Jazeera kept their cameras trained on Tahrir Square, even when their reporters were threatened, detained, their offices overrun with state police, their equipment confiscated, and their licence to broadcast was pulled. They sent reporters to other cities, where protests were met with fierce repression from the regime. They interviewed countless experts from the region, not "on" but "from" the region—a distinction that gave their coverage a depth that Western media couldn't match. 

And while the revolution may have started on Facebook—a threat the regime took seriously enough to imprison the founder of the Arabic Facebook page credited with starting the uprising, Google executive Wael Ghonim—it was by no means a Facebook revolution, any more than it was a Twitter revolution. 

This revolution belongs to the people of Egypt, as Ghonim said: "Every Egyptian was the face of this revolution." 

Here are some photos someone posted on Twitter. Witness the revolution, i.e. Egypt 2.0!

Witness the Revolution

Watch.

Reporters are risking their lives to tell you the truth about what's happening in Egypt. The least we can do is watch.

How To Not Sound Stupid When Talking About Blogs

When I started this blog 6 years ago, blogging was still in its infancy. Nowadays anyone and everyone has a blog, and most commercial websites have morphed into blogs.

Static websites, where content remains the same day after day, week after week, are so 90s. If you want people to return to your website, whether to buy what you're selling or to read what you're writing, you have to have updated content. 

That's why blogs have become as common as chickens on Farmville.

The problem is, with so many blogs out there, the term has been corrupted. 

Here's the deal, people: A blog (from the word "weblog") refers to a website, an internet address that contains a collection of blog posts, such as the one you're reading right now. These paragraphs, written on February 7, are not a blog but a post on my blog What Do I Know?.

Sample sentence: "The blog What Do I Know is full of fascinating posts on subjects ranging from frozen shoulder to frog ringtones."

You can find other posts under the "categories" sidebar item or arranged chronologically by date.

Get it? My blog contains many posts, but there's only one blog. (Unless you count my other blog.)

(Note that the word "blog" can also be a verb, meaning to write a blog post or to continually write a series of posts on a blog. Sample sentence: "I spent the year 2010 blogging about my abscessed toenail.")

Now if I ever see another person tweet or blog about a "blog" they read when what they mean is "blog post", they'll be subjected to a six lashes with a wet noodle. Warning: I also maintain a food blog. There's no shortage of wet noodles around here. 

Please pass this blog post along to people you know who might be misusing the term. 

Sample sentence: "The blog What Do I Know is written by a blogger who's much too concerned that something may be wrong on the internet."

Witness the Revolution

 

For the last ten days we've been riveted to our television and computer screens, watching the unfolding revolution in Egypt. This one is personal: my niece lives in Cairo, as I wrote last year after our visit to Cairo and Alexandria.

She's out now, on her way to the US after spending three days here in London, along with several friends who also judged the situation to be deteriorating, even in the safe ex-pat enclaves where they lived. 

But for other foreigners still there, and of course for the Egyptians themselves, the situation is not so good. The local Egyptians are doing a magnificent job patrolling their neighborhoods, providing homemade security. Roadblocks, sometimes constructed of abandoned cars, recycled Christmas trees, and other sturdy materials, protect the streets from looters. A prison outbreak in Maadi was contained by the local makeshift militia as well as army tanks that quickly arrived on the scene. Some of my niece's friends took this video showing the fortifications, as well as the local "vigilantes" on patrol.

In Cairo, the protests are mostly in Tahrir Square, next to the famous Egyptian Museum, final resting place of King Tut's treasures. That's where the cameras are focused, and for the most part, the protests have been peaceful—thanks to the efforts of anti-Mubarak protesters to keep them that way, despite provocations. 

The so-called "pro-Mubarak" protesters are another story. They operate as agents provocateur, paid to cause mayhem and in many cases, carnage. Videos of cars smashing through protesters are popping up on the internet. On Wednesday they rode camels and horses through the square, whipping at protesters who got in their way. Many were caught with weapons and police ID—the state police are well known to be loyal to President Mubarak, who pays them well, perhaps from the $70 billion fortune he's amassed while many Egyptians live in desperate poverty. (In comparison, teachers in state schools make around $150 per month.)

Journalists have poured into the country, as near empty airplanes continue to arrive at Cairo's airport, loaded with evacuees on the way out. And as more and more journalists arrive to tell the story, the regime has resorted to its usual tactic of intimidation and repression to prevent the truth from appearing on Western television screens. 

In times past, this would have worked just fine. With no internet, Facebook, or Twitter, no way to spread the word quickly, the scenes that brave reporters are managing to film—sometimes with hidden mobile cameras—would have quickly been forgotten. The world would have turned its gaze away—to a football game, perhaps—while regime change petered out and died. 

This time, though, is different. At least I hope it's different. When Anderson Cooper, a veteran of many a disaster, gets hit on the head, when cheerful Katie Couric is surrounded by an angry mob, when Brits, Swedes, Danes, and other western journalists are subjected to horrific scenes of interrogation and torture, we should pay special attention. Because what they don't want us to see is much, much worse than what we're able to see on our Facebook walls and Twitter feeds. 

There's not much, frankly, that we can do to support the protesters who fight for their rights in Egypt. But we can watch, and share, and not avert our gaze from what the regime does not want us to see.  

Witness the revolution. They're risking their lives to allow us to.