Hello. My name is Don. I have been active on Twitter, where I go by the handle @foodiePrints, for 6 weeks now. I think I'm addicted. I smile at my growing follower list, wondering how many are spam accounts that will inevitably be found and deleted. I question the effectiveness of e-mail addresses having text behind the "@" symbol, because people should be able to be contacted without. I have given up on submitting support tickets because I know, unless the account belongs to Ashton Kutcher, Oprah Winfrey or CNN, very little attention will be paid to my lost tweets. Most importantly, I am very tired of seeing white whales carried by orange birds, an interesting metaphor from a social networking service that is still working out the kinks in providing 140 character micro-blogging to its growing user base.

According to Read Write Web, the Twitter developers' newly added status notification may be because the service is batching our rapid fire replies. You know, the text streams that experts recently said are increasingly making us amoral. Even, my former hero, author and renowned sociologist, Manual Castells, stepped into the fray, saying

the study has extraordinary implications for the human perception of events in a digital communication environment...Lasting compassion in relationship to psychological suffering requires a level of persistent, emotional attention.

Apparently, the human brain requires 6 to 8 seconds to fully respond to stories of virtue or social pain. Before we can fully reflect on tweets involving anguish or suffering, another is "already being read." Children could be particularly vulnerable as they are still in the throws of socialization and have not yet established their moralities. Castells, you had better keep an open mind on research you did not perform or I'm going to chase you with the harpoon that @Woensel promised to send me from Holland. It was meant for Moby Dick!

All joking aside, I question the veracity of the research as it seems to apply more to modern media than social media. Firstly, I have never seen my time line refresh on its own. I have to refresh it myself, so tweets don't flash by my eyes as if I were being brain washed in a bad Hollywood movie. Secondly, the research states that the human brain responds to signs of physical pain faster than social pain. Yes, a lot of tweets are about social pain: having a bad day; overcoming issues; visceral reaction to goading in a blog. But, these same tweets spawn multiple responses, compassionate or otherwise. It takes time to write responses. Reading responses also allows users to reflect on the same subject. Either should make up the required time. Thirdly, users often have sufficient time to reflect because Twitter regularly hangs 6-8 seconds during peek periods.

Besides, people on Twitter take breaks to enjoy its benefits. For instance, while allowing researchers the ability to question whether or not it is making us psychotic, Twitter also affords its users new recipes to try. This weekend, I attempted one from @FriedWontons4U, a wonderful Philly foodie, whom I follow both on Twitter and in the blogosphere.

Last Friday, she tweeted at @epicurious an entire recipe in 140 characters for comfort food to those of us who grew up eating Asian cuisine: ginger and green onion steamed chicken:

1)chop chicken w/ bones in pieces 2.mix in shoyu, sake, ginger, sugar, scallion, salt, cornstarch , & shitaki 3.steam #recitweet

Here is my interpretation of the recipe:

Disassemble a broiler fryer chicken into wings, drumsticks, thighs, and breasts.
The back and breastbone make great chicken stock. Freeze if you choose not to make stock right away.


Mix together soy, vodka, brown sugar, balsamic vinegar

Add sesame oil.
Since @FriedWontons4U included no measurements, I approximated 1/4 cup of soy, 1 tbsp of vodka, 4-5 tbsp of brown sugar, 1 tbsp balsamic, and quite a bit of sesame oil. Suffice it to say, I hadn't all of the ingredients required, so I improvised...


Add slivers cut from a 4x4 cm piece of ginger and 3 stalks of green onions


Pour everything onto the chicken and jiggle to coat well.

Steam for 25 or so minutes. I placed the chicken onto a trivet in a very large lidded saucier, containing 6 cm of water that was brought to a boil at medium-high heat and left simmering at medium-low heat.


Remove when the chicken is white in colour and the internal temperature of the dark meat reaches 165°F

This is definitely a weekday recipe, requiring less than an hour of prep and cook time. The chicken was savory, sweet, nutty, and aromatic. Accompany with rice and some veg and you've meal.

Next time, I am going to season the chicken with salt and pepper and sprinkle with 2-3 tbsp of corn starch before adding the sauces or aromatics, reducing the soy to adjust for the added salt. This should allow the chicken to take up even more flavors.



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