The Article Writer

There are times I would like to offer practical help to someone, especially to a person who has demonstrated a real need. I cannot think of people more deserving of my help than the injured military men and women who are undergoing treatment at a military or VA medical center as a result of their service in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Well there is one way that all of us can come together to offer assistance: from now through 11:59 p.m. ET on Monday, May 28, 2007, you can donate your airline miles from 10 airlines and those miles will be used for wounded military personnel and their families. What’s more, if you do it during this window of time, the 10 airlines will match your donated miles!

This endeavor is part of Operation Hero Miles a program developed to permit troops stationed in Iraq or Afghanistan to fly home on leave for free. Since then, the program has been expanded to give family members of wounded servicemen and women free plane tickets to visit their loved ones recovering at military hospitals across the country.

If you would like to donate your airline miles, please visit Operation Hero Miles to learn how to help our troops. Time is of the essence — act now and you’ll be able to double the size of your gift instantly.

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

If the Google boys have their way, then you may end up relying upon the search engine giant to plan your day, even your very life.

As it is my custom every morning I like to pull up a few key sites to retrieve my daily news (remember newspapers?). On the Drudge Report, my attention was focused on a photograph of Sergey and Larry, the Google founders and the accompanying headline, “Google Gods: Want More Personal Data On Users.” Naturally, I clicked the link and was brought to an article on the Financial Times, “Google’s goal: to organise your daily life.”

What I read turned my stomach.

Getting To Know You

If Google has their way, your life will get a lot easier. So easy, in fact, that some of your important decision-making will be done for you. According to what is being reported, Google is working on developing a way to help you better organize your life (at least in their eyes). This could involve helping you decide what to do on your days off, even what job to take. How will they accomplish this task? By collecting even more personal information about you. With more personalized information known by Google, then highly-targeted ads can be delivered for your click-through pleasure. We all know that advertising has been Google’s life blood — the more that they know about you, the more precise ads served. Precisely targeted advertising means one thing: Google can garner higher ad rates and add these funds to their ever expanding bottomline.

Yahoo and Autonomy Too

Google isn’t the only one eager to collect highly detailed information about you. Yahoo, through its Project Panama initiative, is already monitoring what visitors do when they use their portal. Autonomy, the UK-based search company, permits transaction hijacking — when you are ready to purchase an item online cheaper alternatives are suggested.

David Bowie, George Orwell Had It Right

All of this reminds me of a David Bowie hit song, 1984 where the British glam rocker took George Orwell’s anti-totalitarian novel and applied it to song. See if the first two stanzas resonate with you:

Someday they won’t let you, now you must agree
The times they are a-telling, and the changing isn’t free
You’ve read it in the tea leaves, and the tracks are on tv
Beware the savage jaw
Of 1984

They’ll split your pretty cranium, and fill it full of air
And tell that you’re eighty, but brother, you won’t care
You’ll be shooting up on anything, tomorrows never there
Beware the savage jaw
Of 1984

It seems as if Orwell and Bowie fully understood what the future held and that future is now.

Notes:
Photo: David Bowie, “1984″ on the album Diamond Dogs, 1974 — RCA Records; all rights reserved.

My longest running website, the Corporate Flight Attendant Community, is now available for sale. I have decided to seek a buyer for the site so that I can concentrate on some other projects.

Yesterday, I listed CFAC on Sitepoint and posted lengthy information about the site and sale elsewhere. You can read the related article to learn about the site and find details surrounding the sale.

By desire is to finalize the sale some time during June 2007. If you are interested in submitting a bid, then please contact me through the email address supplied at the end of the article. Serious inquiries only, please.