I was browsing through the TV dial this Sunday morning and found this remarkable hair on a religious program airing on Channel 16.

I will not speculate on the veracity of the preacher’s hair, but it is a significant accomplishment.

I’ve never seen a product so proud of its artificiality.

From my Tuesday walk, here’s the exciting view from Nazareth St. as Sky 5 lifts off.

I heard a radio news report that a local BBQ chain had undertaken an “aggressive” PR campaign to get out the word that you can’t catch swine flu from eating pork. The media assault, as described by a spokesman for the company, included blogging about it on the company’s Web site, Tweeting about it and they posted something about it on its Facebook fan page.

I don’t know how many people check the restaurant’s blog (granted, there may be a spike in traffic with swine flu in the news). But the restaurant has 144 followers on Twitter and 293 fans on Facebook. Assuming there was no overlap between the Twitter followers and FB fans, that’s a grand total 437 people!

I dispute the reporter’s writing, calling it “aggressive” (I wouldn’t have used that actuality at all. Who cares?). But there’s another reminder here: As of April 2009, there’s a big difference between social media and mass media.

There are trends. There is movement.

But a big gap remains.

McGruff keeps following me around.

I picked this up off the 25-cent shelf at Reader’s Corner in Raleigh this weekend. I want to brush up on some of the stuff I remembered for the exam and promptly discarded as I walked out of class that last day.

This is a “programmed book.” It’s a fill-in-the-blank narrative. The authors assume you have no prior education in economics, and they give you context clues to fill in the blanks and learn the material.

It promises to teach a student in 12 hours what others learn in a seven-week course. The authors also claim that students who used the programmed book knew just as much as the people who took the long way.

Why have I never seen such a thing before? The book is from 1970, so maybe this method has been thoroughly discredited.

Or maybe it threatened to put too many professors out of work?

Hmmmmm.

Seen tonight on WFMY News 2.

I was digging through my archives here at the house and found this rare 1999 clip from the German TV talk show “Gabfest Haus.” It’s only 1:47. You can take it.

There’s a mediocre Twitter feed called Ruler of Tweets.

In the interest of disclosure, I’m indirectly associated with it. The goal was to create a daily Twitter rule to help guide people toward writing better Tweets. Well, as with all things related to media, generating content is easier said than done. As of now, it has stalled with 12 Tweet Rules, the most recent was posted April 1.

Here they are, in no particular order:

1. Attempt to entertain, amuse, amaze or provoke thought. Do not simply answer the question “what are you doing?” Avoid mundane.
2. Increased frequency does not make up for a lack of content. Better to send 1 good tweet per day than 20 mediocre ones.
3. If someone is following 23,065 people and they start following you, don’t feel pressure to reciprocate. They’re junk tweeters.
4. Bad tweet: Eating lunch. Good tweet: Having best ham s’wich ever at Hambone’s on W. 83rd in Pittsburgh. See the difference?
5. If your twitter is linked to your FaceBook status, think hard before you tweet. “Jane Doe is @catbird I agree” seems crazy.
6. Use complete sentences, not gerunds. If you’re too busy to write a full sentence, stop wasting your (and our) time on Twitter.
7. If you accidentally send a private text to Twitter, don’t delete it. Consider it subconscious textual liberation.
8. Before you send even ONE tweet, upload a picture. That generic o_0 is sad. Get your ducks in a row before you start quacking.
9. When you drunk dial, one person thinks you’re an idiot. When you drunk tweet, the whole world knows. No TUIs.
10. Give credit where credit is due. Learn to use RT, HT, OT, @username, etc. Google it if you need to.
11. Commune with the flock. Ask questions to move the conversation. Like “Where’s the best Thai food in Raleigh”?
12. Cultivate your personal “tweet style” before you attempt to use Twitter to “market your brand.” Crawl before you walk.
13. If all you have to tweet is, “Hey, check out my blog,” you’re not a tweeter. You’re a blogger and wasting my time.

Well, it’s a start. We have/had good intentions.