# Symbol: What Does it Mean!?!?

Good day my digital friends. I hope that the day has found you well. Every so often on my Facebook news feed, a discussion goes by about this silly little symbol: #. I have been taught to refer to it as the Number Sign or a Pound Sign. More recently with the explosion of Social Media, specifically Twitter, it has come to take on an entirely new meaning...to me. It is also a Hash Tag. Facebook has also recently taken the move to adopt it into their platform as well and if you're an avid Twitter user as I am, you know full well the purpose of using the # symbol; Facebook users do not share the same understanding or love of the # symbol.

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It surprises me how much of a hot topic this actually is for many people in the Facebook world. I understand that there is a certain lack of understanding if you've never used Twitter and thus I can understand some resistance however like anything new, once must give it an opportunity. Use correctly #Hashtags are a very effective social media tool. They allow for like-minded people to find one another through a vast expanse of users. By simply clicking on a hash-tagged word you are brought directly to all information that has been posted with that same hash tag. Imagine, people being able to freely seek out engagement, debate, knowledge and understanding. Facebook users, it's time to get on board simply for the sheer volume of knowledge and information that can be made available there versus Twitter. 

I shall also take a moment to note that I get some of the hatred. People absolutely abuse the use of the hash tag; oftentimes tagging every word in a post or Tweet. This is an improper use of the hash tag and even the Twitterverse shuns such usage; you are not alone in this Facebook. However, mocking it continuously by using hash tags in every one of your words to voice your distaste will only make you out to be a troll or someone who lacks basic social media understanding. Now onto the meat of what I actually wanted to talk a little about after finding the following on Wikipedia on the # symbol:

""Outside of North America, the symbol is called hash and the corresponding telephone key is called the hash key. In American and Canadian English, the symbol is usually called the pound sign (outside the US, this term often describes instead the British currency symbol "£"), and the telephone key is called the pound key.[1]"

So first, one more thing to Facebook users who despise the # symbol without even trying to understand, it is a symbol and symbols can and do have many shapes, forms and especially meanings. Take for example the color Red. It can mean stop, it can mean danger, it can mean hot. Yet it is still the same color; where is you campaign on the atrocity on Red being used so frivolously? 

Ok, so back to the quote. I've read several times over and what strikes me here, what jumps out is that the # symbol is only called the Pound Key/Symbol in North America. Imagine that. Essentially the rest of the planet calls it a Hash Key/Symbol yet it is we here in the Canada and the USA that blast people who call it a has tag, call them idiots and constantly remind people that it's called "pound". How absolutely and typically ethnocentric of us. How very arrogant.

Sure it may sound like a bit of a stretch to you but after reading this it just further reinforces the idea in my head that North Americans need to wake up and get there heads out of the sand. We are not the center of the Universe and we need to stop thinking we are. We do not know any better and while I am merely discussing a silly little symbol, it serves as a very real indication on how we behave on a larger scale towards much more serious issues. If we cannot even accept that what we call this symbol is the minority view in the world and that perhaps maybe WE could change for the rest of the world a little then I've wasted every second I have spent writing this. 

While I am happy to live where I do, I do not take for granted nor do I ignore the privileges that come with it. I am aware of the grand scale of ethnocentrism that we possess and the we attempt to enforce on other nations and peoples across the globe. We enforce our values, our laws, our democracy, our freedom, our opinions...can't we just say fuck it and call it a hash tag already?

While I sound bleak and condemning I assure you that I am not meaning to be negative but when one points out the ugly, no matter how you paint it, it's still ugly. I'm just pointing out some ugly and asking that maybe we clean a little bit of it up and I don't mean the damn hash tag (as I'm sure some of you are fuming by now or getting tired of reading it over and over again) but other, meaningful things that we can change to stop enforcing our own North American views on the rest of the world. 

The last time I checked a picture of the Earth from space there were no borders dividing land masses.

The last time I checked a biology textbook there is only one species of human beings, homo sapien sapiens, and not many, subdivided by color, religion or culture.

We are one people living on one Earth and that's all we have for as long as we're here. Let's spend that time together doing better things than enforcing views, condemning other views or arguing over what a # symbol means. As always, thank you for taking the time out of your day to read and doubly so if you felt compelled to share. Love on another.

Press Release - Southern Unified Organization for the Top Hemisphere (SOUTH)

For Immediate Press Release*

21 September 2013

The Southern Unified Organization for the Top Hemisphere (SOUTH) would like to announce its intention to put forward a motion at the upcoming United Nations World Conference in November of 2013. The United Nations World Conference will be held at the New York United Nations Building located at 1 United Nations Plaza in New York from November the 20th, 2013 through to November 24th, 2013. Representatives from all 192 countries will be present, the majority of which will be representing countries from the Southern Hemisphere.

The motion put forward by SOUTH will be to present a case and put forth a study on revising what has commonly been the layout of the planet on maps and globes. It is a scientific fact that our perception of direction is subjective. We have named the poles North and South, given those terms definitions of direction and created our geographical records to reflect those terms. The reality of the situation is that we, SOUTH, feel that we were not given an opportunity to take part in the finalization of how our geographical representations should look like. It is with this in mind that we present our request to move forward with change.

SOUTH proposes that beginning on January the 1st, 2020 that all georgraphical representations of the planet be done with the Southern Hemisphere at the top of the map while the Northern Hemisphere will be moved to the bottom. We are currently in the process of drafting a resolution to change the global definitions of North and South. It is time that the dictatorial demands of the developed countries of the Northern Hemisphere now take a back seat to the needs and demands of those developed nations in the Southern Hemisphere.

"For too long, everything in the World has revolved around some country or city-state in the Northern Hemisphere. Throughout history it has been the Northern countries that have been the source of war, poverty and environmental destruction," says recently elected Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott. "It is time that we, SOUTH, stand together and be given our opportunity; they've had a few millenia to get it right and have failed miserably."

While we, SOUTH, understand the magnitude of this undertaking we do so with great resolve and determination. The Southern Hemisphere currently contains the majority of all countries on the planet as well as the majority of countries who are members of the United Nations. Most of the world's largest supply of natural resources are also found in the Southern Hemisphere. With such a vast populace and reserve of resources, SOUTH will, over the coming years, become a force of influence and power.

There are currently 83 countries who have joined SOUTH to push this resolution forward. 

No media contact will be made available until one week prior to the conference as we continue to finalize the resolution that will be put forward during the United Nations World Conference.

For more information please contact SOUTH via email at southern.hemisphere@gmail.com. Please find included a tentative reproduction of our proposal for a new World Map.

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*this is a work of fiction by the writer

Social Etiquette on Holding a Door or Elevator

Good afternoon to you all. I hope the day has found you all very well and continues to get even better. It's been about a two weeks since my last post, which is about three months less than the interval between posts prior to that; I consider it a rather small, but positive victory. Last night I realized I need to get a new post going and feeling some writer's block, I crowd-sourced for topics. Unfortunately it was quite late however I did get this one little interesting response. I said I would write about anything and I guess this contributor thought she was being funny but here we go nonetheless.

So what is the social etiquette on the length of time that one should hold open a door or elevator for someone else. It seems like a simple enough topic to discuss, throw out a subjective time from my own personal experiences and voila! We have a blog post...but that'd be far too simple for someone like myself who likes to examine even the simplest of  notions in depth. I've actually come up with a few different variables that can potentially change the length of time you wait holding a door for someone.

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The first thing I examined was the 'who'. Who am I holding this for? Is it a friend? A stranger? A family member? An acquaintance? A celebrity? This is a very important question. It would seem far more likely that we would hold the door for a shorter amount of time for a stranger rather than a family member; or maybe it's the reverse for you. The individual(s) and their personal connection to us can subjectively alter the length of time one might hold a door open for someone. Personally, I am fairly equitable on a day to day basis on who I hold doors for and how long. It's an act of kindness, however small.

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The next thing to cross my mind is distance and speed. How far away is the person? How quickly are they moving? These are two interesting questions because they impact our decision to hold or not to hold a door and how long we might hold it for. As an example, if I am holding an elevator door for someone walking from 15 feet away and they are moving particularly slow, I will hold the door as long as necessary if I have already started to. If however I see that the door will be closed long before someone arrives I may just continue on my way. When it comes to elevators I have a general rule of thumb: if I don't see you coming towards the elevator, I hit the 'close door' button; if I see you coming and it is obvious I will hold the door as long as it takes for you to get in (even if I get annoyed that you're walking at a sloth's pace). 

Something else that will impact the length of time I might hold a door is my own personal disposition. I am a human being. I have emotions and sometimes those emotions are negative. If I am in a particularly negative mood I might not hold a door or elevator for anyone for any reason regardless of anything else. We've all had days like that and it's hard to get out of the negativity. Interestingly enough, someone holding a door or elevator for you can be just the right amount of kindness to eradicate the bad mood.

So I still have yet to address her actual question which was: how long should one actually hold open a door or an elevator for someone else? I look at them as two different questions because I have different 'rules' for each type of hold. When it comes to a door, I will not hold it open or try to hold it open if it looks like it will take longer than 15-20 seconds for the individual to get to the door to walk through. The only exception to this rule is for those with disabilities that impair movement; I will wait for minutes. For an elevator I have kind of already explained how I do that so the actual amount of time I would hold it for varies. Pretty much if you're out of sight, I'm leaving you behind when it comes to an elevator. People occasionally get annoyed because if someone starts coming to catch the elevator after already having waited for someone before them, I will continue to wait.

I would personally suggest, Amanda (the contributor) that you use your own best judgment however I will leave you with this:

People react positively to kindness even in the most foul of moods. Doing something kind for someone for the sake of being kind does not come with a time limit. Social etiquette is a subjective term and no official paper has been written in stone on what is good or what is bad. We have ideas, some personal and some public that influence what we perceive to be good or bad social etiquette but what it really comes down to is this: do you want to hold the door/elevator because society has imposed this idea in your head or do you want to do it out of kindness. Ultimately what you decide will determine how long you hold for.

And with that, we shall bring this post to an end. I am hoping to not wait so long for the next one but as I mentioned, the frequency between this and the last post is a vast improvement for me. I look forward to decreasing the interval between posts. As always, thank you all for reading and double thanks to those who share. Have a wonderful day and love one another.

Writing for Writing's Sake

Good afternoon Cyberspace. It has been far too long since my last blog post update. I haven't exactly been busy or occupied or anything; unless you count working five to six days a week, eight to ten hours a day (which I don't). Regardless it is not work that has kept me from maintaining my blog or any of the other things that have suffered over the last few months. Nope, it's not that I'm too busy; it's not even that I'm uninspired because there have been a whole bunch of issues that I could have easily written posts about at great lengths but chose not to. 

Today I am having a pretty lousy day. I awoke to a phone with no text message notifications from a loved one. I arose to a hard rain pounding down all across the city which negated my ability to get the things I wanted to do done this morning...like get to a store to buy something so that I could eat some breakfast. Above that I also did not sleep very well, haven't been eating all that great and have generally been stressed about finances. I went to the wrong building when I arrived at work and had to walk back through the rain to get to the right one, my brain is groggy and I feel disassociated. BUT! I am determined to start making changes and resuming regular blog posts (this is like my third attempt in the last six months) is part of that. So here I am, terrible day, and I am forcing myself to write something even if it's just griping.

Lately there it has seemed like there has been an ever increasing rise in negative attitudes and opinions everywhere I go. People attacking people over this or that; people vilifying other people because they share differences of opinion; every day good people slinging insults and attacks because they share different political ideologies; people using other people for scapegoats for issues that could in no possibly be attributed to the simple stupid and mistaken actions of a single individual. And I'm nobody's fool; I don't expect campfires and kumbaya but a little human decency and respect isn't really asking for a lot...is it? 

Not sure what else to write about right now. I suppose just getting something out is a way to get the ball rolling on resuming writing. I mean, if I write about nothing and nonsense enough there is bound to be something creative or inspiring to find its way to the surface. Like that old expression: a thousand monkeys typing on a thousand keyboards for a thousand years will eventually hammer out the entire Encyclopedia Britannica (or all of Shakespeare's works depending on the origin). Let us hope that it doesn't take me a thousand years to find something interesting and passionate to type about.

Well, nearing the end of anything sensible to really discuss. I guess I will add something relevant to local and global events just to feel like I've shared something important for you: 

Firstly, let's stay the hell out of Syria. While I am aghast and horrified by the use of chemical weapons against civilians, I also opposed military intervention into a country that has been fighting a civil war for years. I am all for humanitarian support for the people of Syria and maybe we should be set up near borders to assist with that but Syria should be permitted to find its own path just as the United States once did and we did in Canada (though for us there was little violence in comparison). 

Secondly, if Miley Cyrus' twerking was something you felt compelled to talk about longer than her performance at the MVA's then you spent far too much time on it. 

And lastly, frosh weeks at post-secondary education institutions is a complete and utter waste of time and resources. University is for education, not humiliation. Frosh weeks may help people to break out of their "shell" but more often they help people to get drunk and get stupid. The events and activities at many of these events, especially the after hours ones, as despicable and no child in the world would feel comfortable doing these things if their family were there watching. If you wouldn't do it at home, don't do it abroad. Also, don't act so fucking surprised to hear about it either. That really pisses me off. People acting like this stuff has never happened before. It's been happening for years and years and years and we continue to turn blind eyes to it so you don't get to claim ignorance here. One last thing on the subject, the SMU incident was not isolated and similar occurrences will continue to happen unless we address the issue and not sit around looking for who is at fault for it happening. A student union president's resignation; sensitivity training for student leaders; disciplinary action for two students; and a promise from faculty will not a solution create. While there are outside groups applying pressure, it won't do any good if the support dies off once the next big news headline hits. Stay vigilant to the issue and don't think because we've made some cosmetic changes on the surface that anything is different underneath. Rape, rape culture and sexual assault are serious matters; not to mention illegal, and the life-long affects of being a victim are impossible to gauge. But I've gone on too long about this here, and not long enough about it to properly express and share my thoughts on it (another blog post perhaps).

Guess that's it for today. This is my third attempt to re-kindle the writing fire I had not so long ago and I really want to tell you, and myself, that I am committed; that I will follow through; that I will get back to doing that which I enjoy but let's face it, talk is cheap without action. Here's hoping the action I started here today continues as a reaction tomorrow...and then again the next day...

A wonderful day to each and every one of you who may have stumbled across this garbled blog post of vague ideas. One Love.