Here is what has been reported.
According to Florida Today, a woman tweeted at 5:22 p.m. Monday about the fog over Brevard County in Florida. Some time between 5:22 p.m. and 5:38 p.m., her 2-year-old son fell into a swimming pool and was found floating in it.
911 records reportedly show that his mother called the paramedics at 5:38 p.m. Monday. At 6:12 p.m., she reportedly sent an update to her Twitter page, Military_Mom. It read: "Please pray like never before, my 2 yr old fell in the pool." (The tweet has since been removed.)
Her name is Shellie Ross. She is a regular tweeter and has a blog called Blog4Mom. Not long after she tweeted for her 5,300 followers' prayers, her 2-year-old son, Bryson, was pronounced dead.
At 11:08 p.m. Monday, she reportedly tweeted: "Remember my million dollar baby," along with a picture of her dead son.
(Credit:
CC Appfrica/Flickr)
The Huffington Post reported that her tweets caused some people to offer little sympathy.
@jalynsandoval (whose Twitter page has since been removed) reportedly tweeted: "military_mom 's fault for not keeping an eye on her son while he was next to the pool. she was to (sic) busy with twitter i guess. RIP kid."
Shellie Ross, military_mom, reportedly replied to this tweet: "@jalynsandoval you are an ass, I was outside w/him and it took 2 sec for him to slip away, I hope U never feel this pain u ass."
Florida Today reported that Ross' friends describe her as "a fantastic mother who is devoted to her children." Moreover, Brevard County authorities reportedly describe it as an accidental drowning.
A child is dead. A mother sent Twitter updates. And some who don't know her criticized her actions.
This is what has been reported. Can anyone make sense of it? Should anyone make sense of it? Or does the very use of Twitter, given its public nature, make everyone fair game for even passing critics?
The minute you tweet, you sacrifice your privacy for the sake of some greater sense of connection, some greater sense of urgency. A tweet is a report, one that will subsequently be re-reported and re-interpreted.
They may call it social media. But the society it brings together isn't always one of your choosing.
Updated 7.28am PST Saturday, following requests from readers, with details of the dead man and the full picture of the computer.
I wonder how many of you already know where you would like your ashes to live in perpetuity.
In a Cupertino parking lot, perhaps? Or strewn on the steps of a certain academy of sciences?
I only ask because it seems that a geeky man called Alan seems not to have wondered about this. With the result that his eternally powdered life is now being spent inside a SPARCstation computer.
One assumes this is what they call a SPARC of respect.
A Flickr member called Sam 3.14, who appears to be Alan's brother, explained on the site that it was he who decided to place Alan's ashes inside one of the most precious creations under the Sun.
(Credit:
Sam 3:14)
Sam described it thusly on his Flickr page: "I kept the floppy drive cover but for space reasons removed the floppy drive, hard drive, and most of the power supply. I left behind the motherboard and power switch and plugs to keep all openings covered."
Which seems like a wise and brotherly gesture.
Sam continued: "The case worked quite well at his memorial party. His friends and family were able to leave their final good-byes on post-it notes. Anyone who wanted to keep their words private could just slip their note into the case through the floppy slot."
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There are some things that never cross my mind. The recipe for chicken cacciatora, for example. Or the name of George Stephanopoulos' hairdresser.
And, until my wandering eye caught this remarkable story on Yahoo News, I had never thought about what happens when gamers die.
Do their fellow gamers wonder where they've gone? Do they try and contact them? Or do they just assume that they have given up gaming and checked into a halfway house, either on Earth or in the sky?
Here is the example of Robert Bryan's father. Last year, he died. But he's left a technological last will and testament: a black USB flash drive. On it were the names of those who needed to be told, one whom being the administrator of an online group.
"It was kind of creepy because I was telling all these people that my dad was dead," his son said.
You will not be mortified to hear that someone has begun to cater to dead gamers' need for warcraft closure.
David Eagleman is a neuroscientist at Houston's Baylor College of Medicine. The thought of passwords seems to have entered his head when he espied people passing into the yonder above.
So he set up a site, charmingly named Death Switch. Those who commit just $20 a year can have up to 30 e-mails sent on their behalf if, instead of checking into the site on given days, they actually check out of this firmament.
Death Switch has a quite lovely tagline: Bridging Mortality. And the site suggests that one important use is to ensure that "unspeakable secrets" can be passed on after your death. ("Your mother used to be Joshua Fingletree of Sonoma, Calif.")
But perhaps a rather lovelier site name is the positively cuddly Slightly Morbid. A delightful image of the Grim Reaper adorns Slightly Morbid. Yet its tone is quite sober. It invites you simply to "Notify your online friends if something happens to you."
Slightly Morbid is the brainchild of Mike and Pamela Potter, of Colorado Springs. They have a business that makes software for online games and were worried when a volunteer, who assisted some of their customers on an online message board, suddenly disappeared.
He was not dead. He'd merely decided to get away from it all for three months and didn't bother to go online in that time. (Those message boards can be depressing places.)
There's one thing that is slightly amusing, if a little from the dark side, about Slightly Morbid. It offers military personnel a 20 percent discount.
Yes, those who really have to shoot 'em up get a discount in informing friends with whom they virtually shoot 'em up, in the sad event that they've been really shot up.
I'm sorry, I just can't think about this any more. It's like a never-ending episode of "Six Feet Under."
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