Chen Shuju endures the foot pain to sell the vegetable daily
2010-05-01▲
Chen Shu-ju, even with the recent honor in TIME magazine, woke up early yesterday and greeted her regular customers as usual, nonplussed by all this worldwide attention. She told a reporter: “Oh, all this news about me, it is not important! I've got vegetables to sell.I've got to do my work.”
Taitung vegetable vendor Chen Shu-ju was honored ny "TIME" ..yet yesterday as she has done every day she got up at 2:30 am and prepared to greet the day and her customers in the early morning market where she plies her trade. She doesn't make a lot of money but she is know for donating lots of money to help others. Surely a good woman. Surely a Buddhist soul. As for flying to the USA to receive her award from TIME magazine, she said she has never flown before and does not even have a passport.
How did this Cinderella story happen so fast? and is it true or embellished? First a regional Asian magazine nominated Mrs Chen for an award for her charity work. Then the Taiwanese newspapers picked the story up and put her photo on the front pages. Now TIME magazine has given her its blessings too. But is the story as true as the media is saying? Where does Mrs Chen really get all her money. Inquiring minds want to know.
recently she was been sick with a cold and some inflammation of her legs.... So she is not sure if she will got tot he USA for the TIME party....
Family of Chair Lu Lihan Taitung Arney color Buddha child indicated that Chen Shuju the one breath donated them the other day 1,000,000 Yuan, is more than 40 for year biggest pen donations, but he also repeatedly reminds Chen Shuju to be again good to himself a spot, does not want each meal always to eat the bowl noddles or to eat meal matches the melons pickled insoy, pays attention to oneself health. The Chen Shuju foot because of the honeycomb organization inflammation, until now has not convalesced from last August, every day takes the pain-killer to stop pain first, worries about sells the vegetable, lets her not give up leaves the stall to look examines.
Friday, April 30, 2010
TIME magazine reports on Chen Shu-chu - an earlier news story in Taiwan in 2005 started the ball rolling on this Time award
Joe Ciardiello for TIME
http://life.chinatimes.com/2009Cti/Channel/Life/life-article/0,5047,11051801+112010050100048,00.html
Heroes *bravo!
Mrs. Chen Shu-chu of Taiwan
''take'' by famous Taiwanese movie director Ang Lee
Apr. 29, 2010
Illustration by Joe Ciardiello for TIME
Chen Shu-chu is a seller of vegetables in a stall in Taitung County's central market, in southern Taiwan. .......[NOTICE TIME DID NOT CALL TAIWAN AS PART OF CHINA OR EVEN CALL IT CHINESE TAIPEI. JUST TAIWAN. NICE, TIME!]...... Out of her modest living, Chen, 59, has managed to donate nearly NT$10 million (that's $320,000) to various causes, including $32,000 for a children's fund, $144,000 to help build a library at a school she attended and another $32,000 for the local orphanage, where she also gives financial support to three children. .....[THIS STORY WAS FIRST REPORTED BY TAIWAN MEDIA in 2005 ....]
What's so wonderful about Chen's achievement is not its extraordinariness but that it is so simple and matter of fact in its generosity. "Money serves its purpose only when it is used for those who need it," she told a newspaper. .And rather than bask in her celebrity, Chen seems to dismiss the whole thing with a wave of her hand, perhaps even with a hint of irritation. There isn't much to talk about, because I did not enter any competition," she says. "I haven't really made any huge donations." ......... She's planning ....... to establish a fund to help the poor with education, food and health care. Amazing, but of all she has given away, her greatest gift is her example. .....
This is a wonderful and heartwarming story, first reported in Taiwan in 2005, five years before now. Why did it take so long? Fate? Destiny? And now the DPP and the KMT are fighting over all this. Ouch! But for the first time in histoy, both the Taipei Times and the China Post expat newspapers agree in their editorials on this that the DPP and KMT are both making fools of themselves over this. Sigh.
陳樹菊 忍著腳痛天天賣菜
2010-05-01 中國時報 黃力勉／台東報導
賣完卡重要▲陳樹菊即使獲選為時代雜誌百大影響力人物，昨天仍照常招呼顧客，賣菜找錢，完全不受影響。（黃力勉攝）
「那個什麼雜誌、什麼獎不重要啦！菜緊賣出去卡實在。」台東菜販陳樹菊獲選為《TIME》時代雜誌的全球年度百大「英雄類」影響力人物，昨天她仍一如往常，凌晨兩點半起床批發蔬菜，一早在攤位上招呼顧客，對於是否到美國領獎，她坦言「沒護照、沒出過國，沒想過這個問題。」
陳樹菊三個月才被《富比士》雜誌選為亞洲慈善英雄，隨後又獲得時代雜誌肯定，接連兩個國際雜誌對於她慷慨解囊、助人最樂義舉，認為是全亞洲甚至全世界英雄典範。
陳樹菊獲知時代雜誌將其選為「英雄類」影響力人物後只淡淡地說，獲得什麼獎並不重要，重要是要趕緊將菜賣出去，不然菜爛掉就要虧錢。她未來目標放在要存到一千萬元成立基金會，讓窮人有飯吃、可以到醫院看病。
她說，自己不會外出遊玩，生平只有兩次離開台東，最遠到台北，因為蜂窩性組織炎嚴重，到台北開刀住院一個禮拜，還有一次感冒到花蓮慈濟住院，對於是否到美國領獎，她坦言沒想過這個問題，甚至沒有出國經驗，沒有護照，連行李也不知道從何整理起。
「她愛自己不夠，但是情操實在太偉大！」台東阿尼色佛兒童之家院長呂立漢表示，陳樹菊日前一口氣捐給他們一百萬元，是四十多年來最大筆捐款，但他也一再提醒陳樹菊對自己再好一點，不要每餐總是吃碗麵或吃飯配醬瓜，注意自己健康。陳樹菊的腳因為蜂窩性組織炎，從去年八月至今未痊癒，每天先吃止痛藥止痛，掛心賣菜，讓她捨不得離開攤位去看診。
TR10: Cloud Programming called BLOOM: see: http://bloomsinthenews.blogspot.com
TR10: Cloud Programming
A new language will improve online applications.
By Erica Naone
http://bloomsinthenews.blogspot.com/
E-mail Audio » Listen - Flash Listen - MP3 Subscribe to podcast What is this? Powered by Print Favorite Share » Digg this Add to del.icio.us Add to Reddit Add to Facebook Slashdot It! Stumble It! Add to Mixx Add to Newsvine Add to Connotea Add to CiteUlike Add to Furl Googlize this Add to Rojo Add to MyWeb
This article is part of an annual list of what we believe are the 10 most important emerging technologies. See the full list here.
Joseph Hellerstein wants cloud programmers to reach new heights.
Credit: Toby Burditt
Multimedia
Watch Hellerstein talk about his approach to cloud computing.
Joseph Hellerstein
(University of California, Berkeley) Better software for building cloud applications
OTHERS WORKING ON CLOUD PROGRAMMING
Yahoo Research, Silicon Valley, CA
Microsoft eXtreme Computing Group, Redmond, WA
IBM Research, Yorktown Heights, NY
Cornell Database Group, Ithaca, NY
Cloud computing offers the promise of virtually unlimited processing and storage power, courtesy of vast data centers run by companies like Amazon and Google. But programmers don't know how best to exploit this power.
Today, many developers are converting existing programs to run on clouds, rather than creating new types of applications that could work nowhere else. And they are held back by difficulties in keeping track of data and getting reliable information about what's going on across a cloud. If programmers could solve those problems, they could start to really take advantage of what's possible with a cloud. For example, an online music retailer could monitor popular social-media feeds; if a singer suddenly became a hot topic, advertising and special offers across the retailer's site could be instantly reconfigured to make the most of the spike in interest.
At the University of California, Berkeley, Joseph Hellerstein thinks he can make it much easier to write complex cloud applications by developing software that takes over the job of tracking data and keeping tabs on what's happening. His big idea is to modify database programming languages so that they can be used to quickly build any sort of application in the cloud--social networks, communication tools, games, and more. Such languages have been refined over the years to hide the complexities of shuffling information in and out of large databases. If one could be made cloud-friendly, programmers could just think about the results they want, rather than micromanaging data.
The challenge is that these languages process data in static batches. They can't process data that is constantly changing, such as readings from a network of sensors. The solution, Hellerstein explains, is to build into the language the notion that data can be dynamic, changing as it's being processed. This sense of time enables a program to make provisions for data that might be arriving later--or never.
Story continues below
The result is called Bloom. So far, Hellerstein's group has used the Bloom language and its predecessors to quickly rebuild and add major features to popular cloud tools such as Hadoop, a platform used to manipulate very large amounts of data. By lowering the complexity barrier, these languages should increase the number of developers willing to tackle cloud programming, resulting in a wave of ideas for new types of powerful applications.
Hellerstein's group is getting Bloom ready for a release in late 2010. They and others are also working on demonstrating how the techniques can be used for real-time applications such as online multiplayer games, or to watch for the warning signs of an earthquake or tsunami.
A new language will improve online applications.
By Erica Naone
http://bloomsinthenews.blogspot.com/
E-mail Audio » Listen - Flash Listen - MP3 Subscribe to podcast What is this? Powered by Print Favorite Share » Digg this Add to del.icio.us Add to Reddit Add to Facebook Slashdot It! Stumble It! Add to Mixx Add to Newsvine Add to Connotea Add to CiteUlike Add to Furl Googlize this Add to Rojo Add to MyWeb
This article is part of an annual list of what we believe are the 10 most important emerging technologies. See the full list here.
Joseph Hellerstein wants cloud programmers to reach new heights.
Credit: Toby Burditt
Multimedia
Watch Hellerstein talk about his approach to cloud computing.
Joseph Hellerstein
(University of California, Berkeley) Better software for building cloud applications
OTHERS WORKING ON CLOUD PROGRAMMING
Yahoo Research, Silicon Valley, CA
Microsoft eXtreme Computing Group, Redmond, WA
IBM Research, Yorktown Heights, NY
Cornell Database Group, Ithaca, NY
Cloud computing offers the promise of virtually unlimited processing and storage power, courtesy of vast data centers run by companies like Amazon and Google. But programmers don't know how best to exploit this power.
Today, many developers are converting existing programs to run on clouds, rather than creating new types of applications that could work nowhere else. And they are held back by difficulties in keeping track of data and getting reliable information about what's going on across a cloud. If programmers could solve those problems, they could start to really take advantage of what's possible with a cloud. For example, an online music retailer could monitor popular social-media feeds; if a singer suddenly became a hot topic, advertising and special offers across the retailer's site could be instantly reconfigured to make the most of the spike in interest.
At the University of California, Berkeley, Joseph Hellerstein thinks he can make it much easier to write complex cloud applications by developing software that takes over the job of tracking data and keeping tabs on what's happening. His big idea is to modify database programming languages so that they can be used to quickly build any sort of application in the cloud--social networks, communication tools, games, and more. Such languages have been refined over the years to hide the complexities of shuffling information in and out of large databases. If one could be made cloud-friendly, programmers could just think about the results they want, rather than micromanaging data.
The challenge is that these languages process data in static batches. They can't process data that is constantly changing, such as readings from a network of sensors. The solution, Hellerstein explains, is to build into the language the notion that data can be dynamic, changing as it's being processed. This sense of time enables a program to make provisions for data that might be arriving later--or never.
Story continues below
The result is called Bloom. So far, Hellerstein's group has used the Bloom language and its predecessors to quickly rebuild and add major features to popular cloud tools such as Hadoop, a platform used to manipulate very large amounts of data. By lowering the complexity barrier, these languages should increase the number of developers willing to tackle cloud programming, resulting in a wave of ideas for new types of powerful applications.
Hellerstein's group is getting Bloom ready for a release in late 2010. They and others are also working on demonstrating how the techniques can be used for real-time applications such as online multiplayer games, or to watch for the warning signs of an earthquake or tsunami.
In Maine, women blow their tops over inequality: why can't women expose breasts and nipples in public they way men do, it's not fair!
PHOTO CAPTION: University of Maine at Farmington student Andrea Simoneau shrugs her shoulders as Elaine Graham holds a blanket to prevent Simoneau from showing her breasts during a topless protest Friday, April 30, 2010, in Farmington, Maine. The demonstration called attention to the double-standard that it's acceptable for men, but not women, to go bare chested. When it comes to state law, though, there's no discrimination. It's perfectly legal for women to go topless in public. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)
By Glenn Adams
Associated Press Writer / April 30, 2010
FARMINGTON, Maine—A forecast of sunny skies in April seems like the perfect time to put the top down. But a drive in a convertible isn't what some Maine women had in mind Friday.
COMMENTS (12,214 comments!!!!)
Nearly two dozen of them marched topless through this college town to protest what they call a double standard that allows men to take off their shirts on a hot summer day. Many men joined the women, taking off their shirts and marching side by side. Joining the scrum were gawkers snapping photos.
It's already legal under state law for women to go topless in public in Maine. But the protesters in Farmington want it to become socially acceptable, too.
"It's about gender equality," said Tia Jacques of West Gardiner, joined by husband Charles Jacques, as a mob of people moved through downtown Farmington, causing a traffic backup.
Added Charles: "Whether you choose to do this or not, I want you to be free to do this." He also offered some advice: "Keep making a big deal about it until it's not a big deal."
Friday's event was organized by 22-year-old Andrea Simoneau, a student at the University of Maine at Farmington who was inspired by her participation in a topless march April 3 in Portland. She'd been going topless downtown and near campus for the past couple of weeks to drum up interest in the march.
Thanks to the back-to-back events and ensuing Internet buzz, Maine is fast earning a reputation as a place where women can let down their hair -- and their tops.
Not everyone is happy with the display of skin.
"Men shouldn't be half-naked in public, either," said Heidi Marshall of Weld, who held a sign that said "Tops for All" as the mass of people marched past.
And Al Thurlow of New Vineyard cautioned that the tactic could backfire by causing towns to consider restrictive ordinances. "It's going to open up a can of worms," he said.
Simoneau, for one, had no regrets. She encouraged other women to take up the cause. And she said she wasn't going to let camera-toting men ruin her day, either.
"Unfortunately, there's no way to deal with people taking pictures for prurient interest, but I feel the best way to deal with that is to just ignore it," she said.
READER COMMENTS (21) Sort: Chrono order | Latest first | Most recommended
Report item as: (required) X Obscenity / Vulgarity Hate speech Attack on another user Advertising / Spam Copyright / Plagiarism Other Comment (optional):
johndon wrote:
what a sight that must have been. I've always noticed that the people with the least reason to do so are the first to take off their clothes.
4/30/2010 2:49 PM EDT Recommend Report abuse Permalink
youngpilot wrote:
Need more photos.
4/30/2010 5:40 PM EDT Recommend (14) Report abuse Permalink
beachmama94 wrote:
The transfer rate to UMF just skyrocketed. Perhaps this is the state's secret weapon to curb the exodus out of Maine of its' young people!
4/30/2010 5:42 PM EDT Recommend (6) Report abuse Permalink
arod14 wrote:
What a joke. I guess next these people will make sure they can sign up for the draft too right?
Some of these people just need something to complain about. Since there is no gender equality they have to go after silly stuff like that.
4/30/2010 5:44 PM EDT Recommend (2) Report abuse Permalink
GingerMedford5ft3in100lb wrote:
For those in the know, there were some women that burned their bras and/or went topless in the 60s and 70s. Those were the good old days.
4/30/2010 5:45 PM EDT Recommend (6) Report abuse Permalink
Boston959 wrote:
Hey, any time women want to make it more socially acceptable to be topless in public, I'm a happy guy.
4/30/2010 5:49 PM EDT Recommend (8) Report abuse Permalink
Danielsan wrote:
Breasts are evil. We must protect children from them, especially the young, hungry ones. We must make sure our children know that women must be controlled, and failing to control our women is the root of all evil. Put a veil on that radical.
4/30/2010 5:52 PM EDT Recommend (14) Report abuse Permalink
wbhickok wrote:
The woman in the photo is a student? She looks like a Holstein.
4/30/2010 5:56 PM EDT Recommend Report abuse Permalink
bopo2 wrote:
damn neo-hippies ;)
4/30/2010 5:56 PM EDT Recommend (3) Report abuse Permalink
ReginaFalange wrote:
Get to class hippies!
4/30/2010 6:04 PM EDT Recommend (4) Report abuse Permalink
Seebell wrote:
Oh great - now they'll be another Earthquake somewhere...
4/30/2010 6:09 PM EDT Recommend (15) Report abuse Permalink
Dingi wrote:
' "Men shouldn't be half-naked in public, either," said Heidi Marshall of Weld, who held a sign that said "Tops for All" as the mass of people marched past.'
This is an interesting comment, while it may be true in certain cases/locations (e.g. shirts and shoes may be required regardless of gender in eating establishments, court houses, etc.) it is, and has been for MANY years, considered socially acceptable and normal for men to be shirtless at beaches, swimming pools and water parks, etc., however the social/cultural norm in the US (whether right or wrong) is that women are expected to have at least the areolas covered (though a full shirt is not expected in these locations).
4/30/2010 6:11 PM EDT Recommend (2) Report abuse Permalink
Ihatethemedia wrote:
*groan* Stupid hippie wannabes. Sorry, no, it's not about "gender equality", it's about being provocative and voyeuristic.
Go back to class and get a life, eedjits.
4/30/2010 6:18 PM EDT Recommend (4) Report abuse Permalink
Boston959 wrote:
Another interesting thing to note, the Boston Globe would not hesitate to publish a photo of a bare-chested guy (at a beach, marathon, etc.) but yet it would never run the same photo of a woman.
Massachusetts is liberal and progressive? Yeah right.
4/30/2010 6:19 PM EDT Recommend (4) Report abuse Permalink
mrmiracle99 wrote:
@Seebell - Extra points for that reference.
This lady sounds like she just wants an excuse to walk around topless. What's she protesting if there's no law against women going shirtless in Maine? Making it socially acceptable? Really? Good luck with that.
4/30/2010 6:19 PM EDT Recommend (5) Report abuse Permalink
We removed kaya's comment.
RazzMattazz wrote:
Finally, a feel-good story.
Must be something she wanted to get off her chest, obviously.
Too many boobs hanging around taking pictures, however.
4/30/2010 6:39 PM EDT Recommend (4) Report abuse Permalink
fmanny wrote:
Jesus was crucified nude.
4/30/2010 7:21 PM EDT Recommend Report abuse Permalink
tomisme wrote:
I agree with the women. Yes, American men would find it sexually exiting to view women's nude breasts, but at least give women the option to wear tops or not. If men are allowed to do so, so should they. If people find that offensive, tough!
4/30/2010 7:24 PM EDT Recommend (4) Report abuse Permalink
jdportsmouth wrote:
Parts is Parts
4/30/2010 8:05 PM EDT Recommend Report abuse Permalink
dadadee wrote:
Tops for all. At least in towns/cities/public ways. Beaches, and the like can be excluded.
However, I must ask...if you carry any type of weight in your chest, what is the appeal to going topless? Its uncomfortable at best.
4/30/2010 8:06 PM EDT
Thursday, April 29, 2010
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg Doesn’t Believe In Privacy? Really? Nicky Bilton dishes the dirt?
Eliot Van Buskirk on April 28, 2010 dishes more:
[re Nicky Bilton the digital snot snob at NYTimes bits blog who hates paper and loves screening and who does not return emails either....]
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg appears to have been outed as not caring one whit about your privacy — a jarring admission, considering how much of our personal data Facebook owns, not to mention its plans to become the web’s central repository for our preferences and predilections.
Also interesting is how this came about: Not in a proper article, but in a tweet by Nick Bilton, lead technology blogger for the The New York Times‘ Bits Blog, based on a conversation he says was “off the record” and which he may have confused with “not for attribution.”
“Off record chat w/ Facebook employee,” begins Bilton’s fateful tweet. “Me: How does Zuck feel about privacy? Response: [laughter] He doesn’t believe in it.”
Ouch.
Zuckerberg’s apparent disregard for your privacy is probably not reason enough to delete your Facebook account. But we wouldn’t recommend posting anything there that you wouldn’t want marketers, legal authorities, governments (or your mother) to see, especially as Facebook continues to push more and more of users’ information public and even into the hands of other companies, leaving the onus on users to figure out its Rubik’s Cube-esque privacy controls.
Facebook has been on a relentless request over the past six months to become the center of identity and connections online. The site unilaterally decided last December that much of a user’s profile information, including the names of all their friends and the things they were “fans” of, would be public information — no exceptions or opt-outs allowed.
Zuckerberg defended the change — largely intended to keep up with the publicness of Twitter, saying that people’s notions of privacy were changing. He took no responsibility for being the one to drag many Facebook users into the net’s public sphere.
Then last week at its f8 conference, Facebook announced it was sending user profile information in bulk to companies like Yelp, Pandora and Microsoft. Thus, when users show up at those sites while logged in to Facebook, they see personalized versions of the those services (unless the user opts out of each site, somewhere deep in the bowels of Facebook’s privacy control center). On Tuesday, four Senators asked the company to only push data to third-parties if users agree to it, a so-called “opt-in” that social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter and Google Buzz eschew since it radically cuts down on participation and thus revenues.
Facebook is also pushing a “Like” button, which lets sites put little Facebook buttons on anything from blog entries to T-shirts in web stores.
Clicking that button sends that information to Facebook, which publishes it as part of what it calls the Open Graph, linking your identity to things you choose online. That information, in turn, is shared with whatever sites Facebook chooses to share it with — and to the sites you’ve allowed to access your profile.
It’s an ambitious attempt to rewrite the web as a socially linked network. But many see Facebook’s move as trying to colonize the rest of the web, and keep all this valuable information in its data silos, in order to become a force on the web that rivals Google.
So it’s no laughing matter that the head of Facebook appears not to care about privacy. (We asked Facebook to clarify Zuckerberg’s privacy stance but have yet to hear back.)
For his part, Bilton fired off a number of salvos defending his understanding of the the ground rules which governed the conversation he had. “‘Off record’ means there is no attribution to who it is but conversation can be used in story. ‘On background’ means I can not repeat it,” wrote Bilton. He took over the Times‘ technology blog in the last few months, after a long stint working with its technology-development team.
Unfortunately, he’s wrong about the definitions.
“‘Off the record’ restricts the reporter from using the information the source is about to deliver,” reads NYU’s Journalism Handbook, in one definition of the phrase. “If the reporter can confirm the information with another source who doesn’t insist on speaking off the record (whether that means he agreed to talking on the record, on background, or not for attribution), he can publish it.” “On background” usually means that information can be used, but can’t be attributed to a specific person.
Bilton later responded to our request for clarification, saying, “My source said it was OK to quote them, just not say who they are.” So apparently, this Facebook employee wanted this information to get out, for whatever reason.
Now, the die has been cast: The world knows that a Facebook employee thinks his CEO “doesn’t believe in” privacy, which should scare the bejesus out of anyone with a Facebook account — and that encompasses just about everyone reading this now.
=============== comments
Not only does Facebook not believe in privacy, they’re social network is littered with too many hackers! What a bad combination! My friends are getting e-mail advertisement spams supposedly coming from me. Now I’ve changed my password and told my friends not to open any links or attachments coming from me through Facebook. Facebook is not safe for holding any of your personal information; hackers apparently have ways to get into your account easy.
Posted by: ericmedlock | 04/28/10 | 2:19 pm |
ok, so here’s an idea. Don’t put non-private information into a system you don’t control. Common sense people. Why is this such a shocker… omg, a corporate big wig is going to use information you give him for free to make money… Whoa! Whoda thunk it? (anyone with 10% of a brain, that’s who)
Posted by: smartphonedev | 04/28/10 | 2:44 pm |
I think you meant to say non-public information. It’s a shocker because millions of members have the perception that their information is safe and protected. Just look at all of your friends who use their real full names on Facebook! Your full name, hacking into your account, following up with more data mining, and monitoring and reading your communication threads through out your social network is all one needs to get a good opportunity to acquire your non-public information even if you don’t give it to the corporate big wig.
Posted by: lolbrandon | 04/28/10 | 3:35 pm |
Well, I don’t have a facebook account anymore. I deleted mine before a lot of these privacy concerns really took off, and I deleted it because I didn’t see a need for it. However, in contrast to @ericmedlock’s statement, I think many people EXPECT a company to keep their data secret. I’d like to ask @ericmedlock, if he’s following up in the comments, if he expects his email provider to keep his email secret, or if he expects his bank or credit card company to keep his financials secret. Does he use a service like mint.com, and does he expect mint to keep his data secret, or give it out to every marketing company on the planet. “Meet Eric: His SS# is XXX-XX-XXXX. He makes $XX,XXX annually. He has X credit cards with XXXX dollars balance and an XX.X% APR. Last week he rented Twilight from Netflix and kept it 4 days. His most recent email was to his mom, which said, in part……”
.
Frankly, I expect that information to be kept secret, and I think it’s illegal for these companies to reveal much of that information. I think it should be equally illegal for Facebook to reveal information that the end user hasn’t explicitly said, “Yeah, go ahead, I don’t mind sharing my video rentals with the world.”
.
I don’t normally like seeing governments get involved in private business, but when a company has so much personal data, and so many people expect it to remain personal, I think there should be laws protecting that information.
.
See http://epic.org/privacy/vppa/ , about the Video Privacy Protection Act of 1988 (18 U.S.C. § 2710). It’s suddenly very relevant here.
Posted by: dnynumberone | 04/28/10 | 3:48 pm |
Is this to imply Wired/Conde Nast give a damn about privacy? Here’s a question for ya -
Why is it, when I’m not logged into facebook or wired.com, and have all of my privacy/do not share info settings on facebook on maximum, two of my friends constantly show up in the “Become a Fan on Facebook” area of the page? Every article. Before logging in.
So either Facebook long ago gave you information about me, despite my privacy settings being on maximum. Or wired.com is browsing my cookies, discovering my facebook account, and tracking down my friends?
Either answer is unacceptable. Either answer breaks the privacy settings that I supposedly enabled. And now I will no longer visit facebook AND wired.com.
Posted by: defaultuser1 | 04/28/10 | 4:11 pm |
Well this is no surprise. I will relish the day Facebook falls.
Posted by: PeterBrady | 04/28/10 | 4:20 pm |
I’m still keeping all the photos of my nards on my Facebook page.
Posted by: TheLandShark | 04/28/10 | 4:35 pm |
But the guy said that until facebook had a 1.21 jillions of users and not at the beginning.
To me, seems a lot like entrapment.
Posted by: deckard68 | 04/28/10 | 4:39 pm |
Robert Heinlein famously refused to show his driver’s license when checking in to a hotel, and storming off instead.
So maybe it is a generational thing. All these notions that we live super-secret lives is becoming passe.
Posted by: MrBungNugget | 04/28/10 | 4:42 pm |
i don’t post anything anywhere that i consider to be sensitive information. period. not even on my own web server. people who put their sensitive data into a database owned and operated by someone else gets what they deserve.
Posted by: randomw | 04/28/10 | 4:42 pm |
I was at the F8 conference and Facebook’s vision for a better Internet/world is when everybody can find out everything about everybody. They don’t actually say that Privacy is bad. They are just fighting for a world without Privacy.
Posted by: mayssm | 04/28/10 | 4:43 pm |
Whew, glad I’ve never created a Facebook account.
Posted by: Navi1101 | 04/28/10 | 4:47 pm |
Tweeting parts of a conversation presumably held in confidence? Who doesn’t believe in privacy, now?
Posted by: tbradshaw | 04/28/10 | 4:47 pm |
@dnynumberone
Actually, both of your scenarios are incorrect and the right answer is behind door number 3. That little box is actually rendered by facebook.com and not by wired.com at all. Your information isn’t being shared with anyone, facebook is rendering to you the information relevant to you (without sharing it with wired.com) and wired is handling the rest of the page.
But, that’s how it goes, I guess. All of the controversy surrounding privacy concerns and social networking come from one of two camps: 1) smart people that really understand things and value privacy greatly but hate that other people don’t care about privacy like they do, 2) people that don’t quite understand how all of the pieces of the puzzle fit together and are scared by the horror stories shared by group (1).
Posted by: Navi1101 | 04/28/10 | 4:52 pm |
@Navi1101 (myself): Heheh, maybe I should finish the article before commenting on it. ^^; Move along; nothing to see here…
Posted by: Jakelalens | 04/28/10 | 5:01 pm |
So glad I deleted my account months ago. Don’t know why so many people still use this site? There are others.
Posted by: really_crazy2 | 04/28/10 | 5:05 pm |
If he doesn’t believe in privacy, then where are the photo’s of him walking around nude? And where does he live? Home phone number? Office Number? Nude pictures of girl/boyfriend?
Posted by: anthony_a | 04/28/10 | 5:31 pm |
dnynumberone & tbradshaw
try door number 4. facebook knows your approximate location based on your IP address; do a traceroute to say, google.com, and you will see that you will eventually bounce through a router with a location in it. with this information, facebook (and advertisers) can deliver content (or in this case, people who live within close proximity to you) that you are more likely to click on.
Posted by: ericmedlock | 04/28/10 | 5:37 pm |
@lolbrandon I have no expectation of privacy on the internet. I guess that comes from being a computer professional and knowing how unbelievably easy it is for a bad apple to get access to your data. Is it that I expect a company to treat my data as confidential, sort of, do I anticipate that every single individual in the world that can somehow get access to my data will treat it with the same regard? Never. So, I act defensively and proactively in protecting my own privacy, when it matters, and I do not expect others to do it for me… if for no other reason than at the end of the day they will not be even slightly inconvienced if my data is made public, but I will be, thus its my responsibility… because I care about it and frankly they have no incentive to care about it as much as I do.
Posted by: aardman | 04/28/10 | 5:40 pm |
I’ve always believed that Facebook is an ethically challenged company whose top officers are governed not by what is wrong or right but by what they can or cannot get away with. I consider this company to be in the same category as Philip Morris, Halliburton, & Goldman Sachs.
Posted by: damuddy | 04/28/10 | 5:44 pm |
i’ve been trying to delete my facebook for about 5 months now. Apparently they’re still keeping it in case I “change my mind”. They have all my information waiting for me to return. I went back and tried to delete all of the stuff that I left on my page (photos, notes, messages, etc.). It seemed to have worked, except whenever I type my name into google, my facebook profile still comes up. GOD DAMMIT.
Posted by: jerry36 | 04/28/10 | 5:45 pm |
Zuckerberg is right and that’s why Facebook is the home of thugs as well.
Posted by: HansGrueber | 04/28/10 | 5:52 pm |
Fail Facebook. Please. For the betterment of society, FAIL.
http://geekcomforts.com/2010/03/burn-facebook-burn/
Posted by: dnynumberone | 04/28/10 | 5:54 pm |
@tbradshaw - ok, here’s the problem with your door #3. i’m not logged into facebook when this occurs. i have my privacy settings set to “do not share information with advertisers/third party people.” which i stated before, but it bears repeating here.
because, not being logged onto facebook, and not sharing my public information, how does the wired facebook ad know which people are friends of mine (who are also fans of wired) and to include them in the ad? if it’s purely facebook generated, and receiving no information from wired at all, and i’m not logged onto facebook - how does the ad know who my friends are? i’ve even gone so far as removing all cookies and still my friends show up in the ad. (and it’s not the occasional friend the occasional ad, it’s the same 2 friends every single ad. so it’s not randomness causing it.)
Posted by: svanneck | 04/28/10 | 5:55 pm |
Hey Mark, since you don’t believe in privacy, please let us know how to geolocate you 24 hours a day so we can come and talk to you in person about online privacy.
Posted by: fgoodwin | 04/28/10 | 5:58 pm |
@all: The anonymous “source” could work in the FB mailroom for all we know — why should anyone believe his statement about Zuckerberg is anything more than some clown’s opinion?
@Eliot Van Buskirk: you built an entire article around Bilton’s tweet and you close it with a quibble about definitions? That’s about as lame as a spelling or grammar flame on USENET . . .
Posted by: JeromeWest | 04/28/10 | 6:05 pm |
@Eliot - I’m intrigued by the definitions at the end of the article. If “‘on background’ usually means that information can be used, but can’t be attributed to a specific person”, then what exactly does “not for attribution” mean?
Posted by: warehouseman | 04/28/10 | 6:07 pm |
I don’t have a Facebook or Twitter account for reasons such as this. I read in the business press of employers wanting to be a “Facebook friend” only to snoop on the employees. Perhaps Zuckerberg would not mind the government starting up “Carnivore” again or maybe some moles in his executive offices. It was a program by the FBI and the National Security Agency to gather business intelligence. That kind of technology is too good not to be used. The possibilities are endless. I’m sure Zuckerman can think of a few uses for Carnivore that he won’t have a problem with. But then with his attitude he should be able to accept the government data mining HIM. Be interesting to see what that would reveal. There’s an old Russian joke that’s a takeoff of a cell phone ad. It’s two pictures. The first one shows a customer on a cell phone and it says, “People talk. We listen”. The second shows someone wearing a jacket that says “FSB” (successor to the KGB). If the government gets the goods on a company through wiretaps, I won’t feel sorry for them. One thing I like about Russian websites–anything unflattering is on there to stay forever and some of them go back for years.
There are plenty of laws–there’s almost never any ENFORCEMENT to them unless its easy pickings. Also look up Facebook and Twitter on business publication sites–see what you come up with. I follow the business press as best I can and it saves me a lot of trouble.
Posted by: Elmeng2007 | 04/28/10 | 6:10 pm |
All this stuff about privacy and Facebook is really fascinating, really. Uh, learn how to keep your wife or somebody else’s. Read the new E-book “How to Seduce A Married Woman.” HowtoSeduceAmarriedwoman.com Enjoy! And now back to Facebook and privacy stuff. Zzz
Posted by: Curly | 04/28/10 | 6:50 pm |
If you don’t like the privacy on Facebook then find one you like and join it and quit Facebook.
Posted by: jbrave | 04/28/10 | 7:07 pm |
Doesn’t off the record mean off the record? How can anyone trust your word as a journalist if you agree that something is off the record and then print it? I’m guessing that this means that as a Journalist, you don’t respect privacy either!
Posted by: mayalibre | 04/28/10 | 7:17 pm |
Really, it is worse than this article. Facebook is now aggregating every word we type, in statuses, posts, links, or comments, and re-broadcasting them all publicly on the World Wide Web by feeding them into “community pages” that are visible to everyone. Even if our personal privacy settings are Only Friends, or Friends of Friends, our words are fed to the public if we use any of a number of key words, which we don’t know, and there’s no opt out. Check out the list of these various community pages yourself: http://facebookiswatchingyou.blogspot.com/2010/04/what-you-say-now-on-facebook-can-go-to.html
I spent last night testing several of them, and it’s true. My private posts, intended to be seen only by friends and friends of friends, are instantly fed to the public if I write any of these words, and others, in a status or comment, or if the word is in the link or the link’s subtext. Facebook is completely misrepresenting its concern for our privacy and violating its own privacy policy, which is fraud.
Posted by: Yosho | 04/28/10 | 7:19 pm |
I call on every script kiddie on 4chan, legitimate hacker and security experts to break into Zuckerburg’s personal records and see how much of a fan he is of privacy afterwards.
Posted by: mayalibre | 04/28/10 | 7:21 pm |
The point is not what level of privacy Facebook has, but the fact that they MISREPRESENT their privacy features. We are told that we have control over what gets seen and what doesn’t, but now everything we do on Facebook is visible to the general public and we have no control at all. If I had known from the beginning that the site would be public, it would be one thing. But to LIE to users is wrong. I looked at their privacy policy again today and it still says our information is safe, when it is clearly being broadcast publicly on the world wide web without our consent. MISREPRESENTATION and FRAUD are the issues.
Posted by: technophile | 04/28/10 | 8:03 pm |
How is this a surprise to anyone?
Posted by: rhoadie | 04/28/10 | 9:00 pm |
Internet privacy? Huh? Are you folks serious?
(paused for laugh track…)
After headline coverage of data thefts at government facilities, financial institutions, social networking sites, online retailers, military bases, and celebrity email accounts, the idea that anyone with a brain expects anything they do online to be a secret is absurd.
If you don’t want something known, don’t publish it. If you can’t resist participating in public forums, accept as a reality that anything you type may well be attributed to your real name at some point in the future.
Any determined person with a brain, a few social skills, and the time to invest can locate just about anyone who posts on several different sites, given a few clues as to the location of the poster. The true knee-jerk reactionary with keyboard diarrhea is the easiest, by far. They generally give away quite a bit more information about themselves than they realize.
It’s a good reason to self-edit before posting, and to keep it civil. You never really know who you might flame, or who they might know. For instance, I personally know of one case where a forum member knew one of the admins at a large ISP, and managed to get a guy’s email address from a completely different website. A letter to the admin with a link to the forum caused the Troll to lose his account under the ISP’s prohibition on using the service to “threaten or harass any person or persons by use of the service.”
Posted by: moofi | 04/28/10 | 9:05 pm |
remember kids. just because you opt-out, doesn’t mean your friends can’t still use some of your information. remember to also check off all of the info you don’t want you friends to share with 3rd party websites. except for the general info - you apparently have little control over that.
from fb application privacy settings page:
“If your friend uses an application that you do not use, you can control what types of information the application can access. Please note that applications will always be able to access your publicly available information (Name, Profile Picture, Gender, Current City, Networks, Friend List, and Pages) and information that is visible to Everyone.”
Posted by: Nym | 04/28/10 | 10:28 pm |
They’re also extremely deceptive about privacy choices, and attempt to create new material designed to trick users into making changes to prior decisions.
Posted by: Nym | 04/28/10 | 10:32 pm |
And my prior comment was made while blocking 9 trackers & 13 cross site requests, so the real message is the more links the less trust.
Posted by: albion06 | 04/28/10 | 11:06 pm |
@deckard68: It is a generational thing, the kids (teens, and 20 somethings) don’t care about privacy. They’re in denial about bad people using all that collected information. I grew up during the cold war. The Stazi and what they did to the East German people is still burned into my brain.
The younger generations biggest mistake is to assume that Facebook is an entitlement. What’s in vogue has become necessary to remain in vogue, right? They can simply make the decision to leave vogue behind. Account deletion comes to mind. But, unfortunately they won’t. The loss of popularity won’t allow it. How would they know what their friends are doing? What’s scary is that their willingness to be interconnected 24/7 reminds me of the Borg from Star Trek TNG.
There are even times where I question my own ability to live without a cell phone. The world has changed. Now I can understand how my grandparents felt when my generation took over. A bikini? OMG!
Posted by: flassh81 | 04/28/10 | 11:19 pm |
As far as I know, you can’t DELETE an account. It just gets DEACTIVATED. I have tried sending messages numerous times to permanently remove an account I no longer use and made folks get confused. Dislike it.
Posted by: LorM | 04/28/10 | 11:22 pm |
I heard someone say”Quite frankly, most things we ‘like’ don’t really need to be private.” That is the fallacy here!!! employers look at these and if they see you liking a particular political group, or having particular interests that are not like boring geek white bread or average MOR joe interests, their will be bias, c’mon! I liked FB because I could express myself and what I liked to my friends. Now I cannot and they cannot.
Posted by: Immaginazione | 04/29/10 | 7:03 am |
@lolbrandon if you have read any public/free service terms and conditions you will come across one common thread, which will say something like “all the data/information exchanged via said service is property of that service”. Free email service providers have at some point or the other stated they will use the information they acquire about you to send you targeted marketing.
If a bank/paid email service, etc… were to share any of your information then you would be able to take it further, but then you will have to prove the shared data source is the bank/paid email service provider etc….
Posted by: kenbo0422 | 04/29/10 | 9:28 am |
How about an alternative to Facebook? Surely someone could come up with a plan and implement it that DOESN’T put you out there like Facebook does. A privacy control center that is totally ‘up front’ and your defaults are that you MUST opt in rather than opt out is what is needed (and wanted), and personal pages that include web page advertising styles without the use of spyware cookies, etc, that target your web activities. So, you think it can’t be done? Think again.
Posted by: maustingraphics | 04/29/10 | 10:09 am |
Of-course He doesn’t. He stole the face book platform so in my mind his intentions will always be selfish and that why face book should die… or be acquired by some one who cares about the community they created and not just personal gain… He is a little #%@^&
Posted by: cherot | 04/29/10 | 11:24 am |
I would never post anything on any web site that I didn’t want marketers, legal authorities, the government or especially my mother to see. No matter what policy the site adopts your privacy is only as strong as the least trustworthy of your “friends.”
Posted by: Gnostic | 04/29/10 | 11:30 am |
I am sometimes surprised by the amount of information others have posted about me on the internet. It’s very disturbing and I have no control over their actions. Most are work related. I also avoid social networking sites and limit my commentard activities to those sites that give me some anonymity. I do, also, use search engine proxies whenever I can but my IP and MAC addresses can be hard to mask.
Posted by: MsJoanne | 04/29/10 | 11:37 am |
I have both Facebook and Twitter accounts and see little purpose in either. My Facebook stream includes 10,000 Farmville updates about lost and found animals (as if I could care one whit), and before that ad nauseum information about Mafia Wars, or whatever the game du jour was, and little information about what my friends are doing or thinking or whatever. As for Twitter, pointless. Completely and utterly pointless. Ok, if you have 10 siblings and a ton of friends and need to send a mass message to everyone, I get that. But the daily minutia of who’s taking a poop when is stunningly stupid. Yeah, I know, millions are into it. I still don’t get it. (Although, that said, it sure helped the Iranian uprising keep the word out. But, how often does that happen?)
As to putting personal information out there, one needs to have their head examined. Kids who put too much information out there are going to find they’ve shared way too much information when they go to get a job. Companies are popping up to clean all this inappropriate personal information that people have decided to share. People don’t respect their own privacy…asking a corporation to respect it? Yeah, right.
I know, I sound like some curmudgeon. I’m not. I just value my privacy and my time. And I have enough sense to not share the intimate details of my life with ANYONE online.
Posted by: momomiester | 04/29/10 | 12:07 pm |
He is the example of how an idiot can become fabulously wealthy. Take a nerd, mix in luck and an old idea(geocities with bandwidth) and viola you have a visionary of a new society where everyone plays by the rules and we all sing “We are the world”. The reality is we live in a world of good and evil. There are criminals, pedophiles, stalkers, and crazy ex’s that we don’t want into our lives. In Mark’s world of stupid, people have no secrets and they don’t lock their doors either! Maybe the tool will learn as he gets older and has kids that the world is a dangerous place.
Well I would comment more but I noticed a potato chip that looks like Obama and I have to update my facebook page and tell everyone!. Also, I have to tend my farmville crops cause they look stressed! Oh, and I have to twitter everyone that I had a healthy bowl movement this morning. Gawed just send a giant EMP to take out the whole internet !!!!!!!!!F me!!
Posted by: minardi | 04/29/10 | 12:56 pm |
“considering how much of our personal data Facebook owns”
Who do you have to blame
[re Nicky Bilton the digital snot snob at NYTimes bits blog who hates paper and loves screening and who does not return emails either....]
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg appears to have been outed as not caring one whit about your privacy — a jarring admission, considering how much of our personal data Facebook owns, not to mention its plans to become the web’s central repository for our preferences and predilections.
Also interesting is how this came about: Not in a proper article, but in a tweet by Nick Bilton, lead technology blogger for the The New York Times‘ Bits Blog, based on a conversation he says was “off the record” and which he may have confused with “not for attribution.”
“Off record chat w/ Facebook employee,” begins Bilton’s fateful tweet. “Me: How does Zuck feel about privacy? Response: [laughter] He doesn’t believe in it.”
Ouch.
Zuckerberg’s apparent disregard for your privacy is probably not reason enough to delete your Facebook account. But we wouldn’t recommend posting anything there that you wouldn’t want marketers, legal authorities, governments (or your mother) to see, especially as Facebook continues to push more and more of users’ information public and even into the hands of other companies, leaving the onus on users to figure out its Rubik’s Cube-esque privacy controls.
Facebook has been on a relentless request over the past six months to become the center of identity and connections online. The site unilaterally decided last December that much of a user’s profile information, including the names of all their friends and the things they were “fans” of, would be public information — no exceptions or opt-outs allowed.
Zuckerberg defended the change — largely intended to keep up with the publicness of Twitter, saying that people’s notions of privacy were changing. He took no responsibility for being the one to drag many Facebook users into the net’s public sphere.
Then last week at its f8 conference, Facebook announced it was sending user profile information in bulk to companies like Yelp, Pandora and Microsoft. Thus, when users show up at those sites while logged in to Facebook, they see personalized versions of the those services (unless the user opts out of each site, somewhere deep in the bowels of Facebook’s privacy control center). On Tuesday, four Senators asked the company to only push data to third-parties if users agree to it, a so-called “opt-in” that social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter and Google Buzz eschew since it radically cuts down on participation and thus revenues.
Facebook is also pushing a “Like” button, which lets sites put little Facebook buttons on anything from blog entries to T-shirts in web stores.
Clicking that button sends that information to Facebook, which publishes it as part of what it calls the Open Graph, linking your identity to things you choose online. That information, in turn, is shared with whatever sites Facebook chooses to share it with — and to the sites you’ve allowed to access your profile.
It’s an ambitious attempt to rewrite the web as a socially linked network. But many see Facebook’s move as trying to colonize the rest of the web, and keep all this valuable information in its data silos, in order to become a force on the web that rivals Google.
So it’s no laughing matter that the head of Facebook appears not to care about privacy. (We asked Facebook to clarify Zuckerberg’s privacy stance but have yet to hear back.)
For his part, Bilton fired off a number of salvos defending his understanding of the the ground rules which governed the conversation he had. “‘Off record’ means there is no attribution to who it is but conversation can be used in story. ‘On background’ means I can not repeat it,” wrote Bilton. He took over the Times‘ technology blog in the last few months, after a long stint working with its technology-development team.
Unfortunately, he’s wrong about the definitions.
“‘Off the record’ restricts the reporter from using the information the source is about to deliver,” reads NYU’s Journalism Handbook, in one definition of the phrase. “If the reporter can confirm the information with another source who doesn’t insist on speaking off the record (whether that means he agreed to talking on the record, on background, or not for attribution), he can publish it.” “On background” usually means that information can be used, but can’t be attributed to a specific person.
Bilton later responded to our request for clarification, saying, “My source said it was OK to quote them, just not say who they are.” So apparently, this Facebook employee wanted this information to get out, for whatever reason.
Now, the die has been cast: The world knows that a Facebook employee thinks his CEO “doesn’t believe in” privacy, which should scare the bejesus out of anyone with a Facebook account — and that encompasses just about everyone reading this now.
=============== comments
Not only does Facebook not believe in privacy, they’re social network is littered with too many hackers! What a bad combination! My friends are getting e-mail advertisement spams supposedly coming from me. Now I’ve changed my password and told my friends not to open any links or attachments coming from me through Facebook. Facebook is not safe for holding any of your personal information; hackers apparently have ways to get into your account easy.
Posted by: ericmedlock | 04/28/10 | 2:19 pm |
ok, so here’s an idea. Don’t put non-private information into a system you don’t control. Common sense people. Why is this such a shocker… omg, a corporate big wig is going to use information you give him for free to make money… Whoa! Whoda thunk it? (anyone with 10% of a brain, that’s who)
Posted by: smartphonedev | 04/28/10 | 2:44 pm |
I think you meant to say non-public information. It’s a shocker because millions of members have the perception that their information is safe and protected. Just look at all of your friends who use their real full names on Facebook! Your full name, hacking into your account, following up with more data mining, and monitoring and reading your communication threads through out your social network is all one needs to get a good opportunity to acquire your non-public information even if you don’t give it to the corporate big wig.
Posted by: lolbrandon | 04/28/10 | 3:35 pm |
Well, I don’t have a facebook account anymore. I deleted mine before a lot of these privacy concerns really took off, and I deleted it because I didn’t see a need for it. However, in contrast to @ericmedlock’s statement, I think many people EXPECT a company to keep their data secret. I’d like to ask @ericmedlock, if he’s following up in the comments, if he expects his email provider to keep his email secret, or if he expects his bank or credit card company to keep his financials secret. Does he use a service like mint.com, and does he expect mint to keep his data secret, or give it out to every marketing company on the planet. “Meet Eric: His SS# is XXX-XX-XXXX. He makes $XX,XXX annually. He has X credit cards with XXXX dollars balance and an XX.X% APR. Last week he rented Twilight from Netflix and kept it 4 days. His most recent email was to his mom, which said, in part……”
.
Frankly, I expect that information to be kept secret, and I think it’s illegal for these companies to reveal much of that information. I think it should be equally illegal for Facebook to reveal information that the end user hasn’t explicitly said, “Yeah, go ahead, I don’t mind sharing my video rentals with the world.”
.
I don’t normally like seeing governments get involved in private business, but when a company has so much personal data, and so many people expect it to remain personal, I think there should be laws protecting that information.
.
See http://epic.org/privacy/vppa/ , about the Video Privacy Protection Act of 1988 (18 U.S.C. § 2710). It’s suddenly very relevant here.
Posted by: dnynumberone | 04/28/10 | 3:48 pm |
Is this to imply Wired/Conde Nast give a damn about privacy? Here’s a question for ya -
Why is it, when I’m not logged into facebook or wired.com, and have all of my privacy/do not share info settings on facebook on maximum, two of my friends constantly show up in the “Become a Fan on Facebook” area of the page? Every article. Before logging in.
So either Facebook long ago gave you information about me, despite my privacy settings being on maximum. Or wired.com is browsing my cookies, discovering my facebook account, and tracking down my friends?
Either answer is unacceptable. Either answer breaks the privacy settings that I supposedly enabled. And now I will no longer visit facebook AND wired.com.
Posted by: defaultuser1 | 04/28/10 | 4:11 pm |
Well this is no surprise. I will relish the day Facebook falls.
Posted by: PeterBrady | 04/28/10 | 4:20 pm |
I’m still keeping all the photos of my nards on my Facebook page.
Posted by: TheLandShark | 04/28/10 | 4:35 pm |
But the guy said that until facebook had a 1.21 jillions of users and not at the beginning.
To me, seems a lot like entrapment.
Posted by: deckard68 | 04/28/10 | 4:39 pm |
Robert Heinlein famously refused to show his driver’s license when checking in to a hotel, and storming off instead.
So maybe it is a generational thing. All these notions that we live super-secret lives is becoming passe.
Posted by: MrBungNugget | 04/28/10 | 4:42 pm |
i don’t post anything anywhere that i consider to be sensitive information. period. not even on my own web server. people who put their sensitive data into a database owned and operated by someone else gets what they deserve.
Posted by: randomw | 04/28/10 | 4:42 pm |
I was at the F8 conference and Facebook’s vision for a better Internet/world is when everybody can find out everything about everybody. They don’t actually say that Privacy is bad. They are just fighting for a world without Privacy.
Posted by: mayssm | 04/28/10 | 4:43 pm |
Whew, glad I’ve never created a Facebook account.
Posted by: Navi1101 | 04/28/10 | 4:47 pm |
Tweeting parts of a conversation presumably held in confidence? Who doesn’t believe in privacy, now?
Posted by: tbradshaw | 04/28/10 | 4:47 pm |
@dnynumberone
Actually, both of your scenarios are incorrect and the right answer is behind door number 3. That little box is actually rendered by facebook.com and not by wired.com at all. Your information isn’t being shared with anyone, facebook is rendering to you the information relevant to you (without sharing it with wired.com) and wired is handling the rest of the page.
But, that’s how it goes, I guess. All of the controversy surrounding privacy concerns and social networking come from one of two camps: 1) smart people that really understand things and value privacy greatly but hate that other people don’t care about privacy like they do, 2) people that don’t quite understand how all of the pieces of the puzzle fit together and are scared by the horror stories shared by group (1).
Posted by: Navi1101 | 04/28/10 | 4:52 pm |
@Navi1101 (myself): Heheh, maybe I should finish the article before commenting on it. ^^; Move along; nothing to see here…
Posted by: Jakelalens | 04/28/10 | 5:01 pm |
So glad I deleted my account months ago. Don’t know why so many people still use this site? There are others.
Posted by: really_crazy2 | 04/28/10 | 5:05 pm |
If he doesn’t believe in privacy, then where are the photo’s of him walking around nude? And where does he live? Home phone number? Office Number? Nude pictures of girl/boyfriend?
Posted by: anthony_a | 04/28/10 | 5:31 pm |
dnynumberone & tbradshaw
try door number 4. facebook knows your approximate location based on your IP address; do a traceroute to say, google.com, and you will see that you will eventually bounce through a router with a location in it. with this information, facebook (and advertisers) can deliver content (or in this case, people who live within close proximity to you) that you are more likely to click on.
Posted by: ericmedlock | 04/28/10 | 5:37 pm |
@lolbrandon I have no expectation of privacy on the internet. I guess that comes from being a computer professional and knowing how unbelievably easy it is for a bad apple to get access to your data. Is it that I expect a company to treat my data as confidential, sort of, do I anticipate that every single individual in the world that can somehow get access to my data will treat it with the same regard? Never. So, I act defensively and proactively in protecting my own privacy, when it matters, and I do not expect others to do it for me… if for no other reason than at the end of the day they will not be even slightly inconvienced if my data is made public, but I will be, thus its my responsibility… because I care about it and frankly they have no incentive to care about it as much as I do.
Posted by: aardman | 04/28/10 | 5:40 pm |
I’ve always believed that Facebook is an ethically challenged company whose top officers are governed not by what is wrong or right but by what they can or cannot get away with. I consider this company to be in the same category as Philip Morris, Halliburton, & Goldman Sachs.
Posted by: damuddy | 04/28/10 | 5:44 pm |
i’ve been trying to delete my facebook for about 5 months now. Apparently they’re still keeping it in case I “change my mind”. They have all my information waiting for me to return. I went back and tried to delete all of the stuff that I left on my page (photos, notes, messages, etc.). It seemed to have worked, except whenever I type my name into google, my facebook profile still comes up. GOD DAMMIT.
Posted by: jerry36 | 04/28/10 | 5:45 pm |
Zuckerberg is right and that’s why Facebook is the home of thugs as well.
Posted by: HansGrueber | 04/28/10 | 5:52 pm |
Fail Facebook. Please. For the betterment of society, FAIL.
http://geekcomforts.com/2010/03/burn-facebook-burn/
Posted by: dnynumberone | 04/28/10 | 5:54 pm |
@tbradshaw - ok, here’s the problem with your door #3. i’m not logged into facebook when this occurs. i have my privacy settings set to “do not share information with advertisers/third party people.” which i stated before, but it bears repeating here.
because, not being logged onto facebook, and not sharing my public information, how does the wired facebook ad know which people are friends of mine (who are also fans of wired) and to include them in the ad? if it’s purely facebook generated, and receiving no information from wired at all, and i’m not logged onto facebook - how does the ad know who my friends are? i’ve even gone so far as removing all cookies and still my friends show up in the ad. (and it’s not the occasional friend the occasional ad, it’s the same 2 friends every single ad. so it’s not randomness causing it.)
Posted by: svanneck | 04/28/10 | 5:55 pm |
Hey Mark, since you don’t believe in privacy, please let us know how to geolocate you 24 hours a day so we can come and talk to you in person about online privacy.
Posted by: fgoodwin | 04/28/10 | 5:58 pm |
@all: The anonymous “source” could work in the FB mailroom for all we know — why should anyone believe his statement about Zuckerberg is anything more than some clown’s opinion?
@Eliot Van Buskirk: you built an entire article around Bilton’s tweet and you close it with a quibble about definitions? That’s about as lame as a spelling or grammar flame on USENET . . .
Posted by: JeromeWest | 04/28/10 | 6:05 pm |
@Eliot - I’m intrigued by the definitions at the end of the article. If “‘on background’ usually means that information can be used, but can’t be attributed to a specific person”, then what exactly does “not for attribution” mean?
Posted by: warehouseman | 04/28/10 | 6:07 pm |
I don’t have a Facebook or Twitter account for reasons such as this. I read in the business press of employers wanting to be a “Facebook friend” only to snoop on the employees. Perhaps Zuckerberg would not mind the government starting up “Carnivore” again or maybe some moles in his executive offices. It was a program by the FBI and the National Security Agency to gather business intelligence. That kind of technology is too good not to be used. The possibilities are endless. I’m sure Zuckerman can think of a few uses for Carnivore that he won’t have a problem with. But then with his attitude he should be able to accept the government data mining HIM. Be interesting to see what that would reveal. There’s an old Russian joke that’s a takeoff of a cell phone ad. It’s two pictures. The first one shows a customer on a cell phone and it says, “People talk. We listen”. The second shows someone wearing a jacket that says “FSB” (successor to the KGB). If the government gets the goods on a company through wiretaps, I won’t feel sorry for them. One thing I like about Russian websites–anything unflattering is on there to stay forever and some of them go back for years.
There are plenty of laws–there’s almost never any ENFORCEMENT to them unless its easy pickings. Also look up Facebook and Twitter on business publication sites–see what you come up with. I follow the business press as best I can and it saves me a lot of trouble.
Posted by: Elmeng2007 | 04/28/10 | 6:10 pm |
All this stuff about privacy and Facebook is really fascinating, really. Uh, learn how to keep your wife or somebody else’s. Read the new E-book “How to Seduce A Married Woman.” HowtoSeduceAmarriedwoman.com Enjoy! And now back to Facebook and privacy stuff. Zzz
Posted by: Curly | 04/28/10 | 6:50 pm |
If you don’t like the privacy on Facebook then find one you like and join it and quit Facebook.
Posted by: jbrave | 04/28/10 | 7:07 pm |
Doesn’t off the record mean off the record? How can anyone trust your word as a journalist if you agree that something is off the record and then print it? I’m guessing that this means that as a Journalist, you don’t respect privacy either!
Posted by: mayalibre | 04/28/10 | 7:17 pm |
Really, it is worse than this article. Facebook is now aggregating every word we type, in statuses, posts, links, or comments, and re-broadcasting them all publicly on the World Wide Web by feeding them into “community pages” that are visible to everyone. Even if our personal privacy settings are Only Friends, or Friends of Friends, our words are fed to the public if we use any of a number of key words, which we don’t know, and there’s no opt out. Check out the list of these various community pages yourself: http://facebookiswatchingyou.blogspot.com/2010/04/what-you-say-now-on-facebook-can-go-to.html
I spent last night testing several of them, and it’s true. My private posts, intended to be seen only by friends and friends of friends, are instantly fed to the public if I write any of these words, and others, in a status or comment, or if the word is in the link or the link’s subtext. Facebook is completely misrepresenting its concern for our privacy and violating its own privacy policy, which is fraud.
Posted by: Yosho | 04/28/10 | 7:19 pm |
I call on every script kiddie on 4chan, legitimate hacker and security experts to break into Zuckerburg’s personal records and see how much of a fan he is of privacy afterwards.
Posted by: mayalibre | 04/28/10 | 7:21 pm |
The point is not what level of privacy Facebook has, but the fact that they MISREPRESENT their privacy features. We are told that we have control over what gets seen and what doesn’t, but now everything we do on Facebook is visible to the general public and we have no control at all. If I had known from the beginning that the site would be public, it would be one thing. But to LIE to users is wrong. I looked at their privacy policy again today and it still says our information is safe, when it is clearly being broadcast publicly on the world wide web without our consent. MISREPRESENTATION and FRAUD are the issues.
Posted by: technophile | 04/28/10 | 8:03 pm |
How is this a surprise to anyone?
Posted by: rhoadie | 04/28/10 | 9:00 pm |
Internet privacy? Huh? Are you folks serious?
(paused for laugh track…)
After headline coverage of data thefts at government facilities, financial institutions, social networking sites, online retailers, military bases, and celebrity email accounts, the idea that anyone with a brain expects anything they do online to be a secret is absurd.
If you don’t want something known, don’t publish it. If you can’t resist participating in public forums, accept as a reality that anything you type may well be attributed to your real name at some point in the future.
Any determined person with a brain, a few social skills, and the time to invest can locate just about anyone who posts on several different sites, given a few clues as to the location of the poster. The true knee-jerk reactionary with keyboard diarrhea is the easiest, by far. They generally give away quite a bit more information about themselves than they realize.
It’s a good reason to self-edit before posting, and to keep it civil. You never really know who you might flame, or who they might know. For instance, I personally know of one case where a forum member knew one of the admins at a large ISP, and managed to get a guy’s email address from a completely different website. A letter to the admin with a link to the forum caused the Troll to lose his account under the ISP’s prohibition on using the service to “threaten or harass any person or persons by use of the service.”
Posted by: moofi | 04/28/10 | 9:05 pm |
remember kids. just because you opt-out, doesn’t mean your friends can’t still use some of your information. remember to also check off all of the info you don’t want you friends to share with 3rd party websites. except for the general info - you apparently have little control over that.
from fb application privacy settings page:
“If your friend uses an application that you do not use, you can control what types of information the application can access. Please note that applications will always be able to access your publicly available information (Name, Profile Picture, Gender, Current City, Networks, Friend List, and Pages) and information that is visible to Everyone.”
Posted by: Nym | 04/28/10 | 10:28 pm |
They’re also extremely deceptive about privacy choices, and attempt to create new material designed to trick users into making changes to prior decisions.
Posted by: Nym | 04/28/10 | 10:32 pm |
And my prior comment was made while blocking 9 trackers & 13 cross site requests, so the real message is the more links the less trust.
Posted by: albion06 | 04/28/10 | 11:06 pm |
@deckard68: It is a generational thing, the kids (teens, and 20 somethings) don’t care about privacy. They’re in denial about bad people using all that collected information. I grew up during the cold war. The Stazi and what they did to the East German people is still burned into my brain.
The younger generations biggest mistake is to assume that Facebook is an entitlement. What’s in vogue has become necessary to remain in vogue, right? They can simply make the decision to leave vogue behind. Account deletion comes to mind. But, unfortunately they won’t. The loss of popularity won’t allow it. How would they know what their friends are doing? What’s scary is that their willingness to be interconnected 24/7 reminds me of the Borg from Star Trek TNG.
There are even times where I question my own ability to live without a cell phone. The world has changed. Now I can understand how my grandparents felt when my generation took over. A bikini? OMG!
Posted by: flassh81 | 04/28/10 | 11:19 pm |
As far as I know, you can’t DELETE an account. It just gets DEACTIVATED. I have tried sending messages numerous times to permanently remove an account I no longer use and made folks get confused. Dislike it.
Posted by: LorM | 04/28/10 | 11:22 pm |
I heard someone say”Quite frankly, most things we ‘like’ don’t really need to be private.” That is the fallacy here!!! employers look at these and if they see you liking a particular political group, or having particular interests that are not like boring geek white bread or average MOR joe interests, their will be bias, c’mon! I liked FB because I could express myself and what I liked to my friends. Now I cannot and they cannot.
Posted by: Immaginazione | 04/29/10 | 7:03 am |
@lolbrandon if you have read any public/free service terms and conditions you will come across one common thread, which will say something like “all the data/information exchanged via said service is property of that service”. Free email service providers have at some point or the other stated they will use the information they acquire about you to send you targeted marketing.
If a bank/paid email service, etc… were to share any of your information then you would be able to take it further, but then you will have to prove the shared data source is the bank/paid email service provider etc….
Posted by: kenbo0422 | 04/29/10 | 9:28 am |
How about an alternative to Facebook? Surely someone could come up with a plan and implement it that DOESN’T put you out there like Facebook does. A privacy control center that is totally ‘up front’ and your defaults are that you MUST opt in rather than opt out is what is needed (and wanted), and personal pages that include web page advertising styles without the use of spyware cookies, etc, that target your web activities. So, you think it can’t be done? Think again.
Posted by: maustingraphics | 04/29/10 | 10:09 am |
Of-course He doesn’t. He stole the face book platform so in my mind his intentions will always be selfish and that why face book should die… or be acquired by some one who cares about the community they created and not just personal gain… He is a little #%@^&
Posted by: cherot | 04/29/10 | 11:24 am |
I would never post anything on any web site that I didn’t want marketers, legal authorities, the government or especially my mother to see. No matter what policy the site adopts your privacy is only as strong as the least trustworthy of your “friends.”
Posted by: Gnostic | 04/29/10 | 11:30 am |
I am sometimes surprised by the amount of information others have posted about me on the internet. It’s very disturbing and I have no control over their actions. Most are work related. I also avoid social networking sites and limit my commentard activities to those sites that give me some anonymity. I do, also, use search engine proxies whenever I can but my IP and MAC addresses can be hard to mask.
Posted by: MsJoanne | 04/29/10 | 11:37 am |
I have both Facebook and Twitter accounts and see little purpose in either. My Facebook stream includes 10,000 Farmville updates about lost and found animals (as if I could care one whit), and before that ad nauseum information about Mafia Wars, or whatever the game du jour was, and little information about what my friends are doing or thinking or whatever. As for Twitter, pointless. Completely and utterly pointless. Ok, if you have 10 siblings and a ton of friends and need to send a mass message to everyone, I get that. But the daily minutia of who’s taking a poop when is stunningly stupid. Yeah, I know, millions are into it. I still don’t get it. (Although, that said, it sure helped the Iranian uprising keep the word out. But, how often does that happen?)
As to putting personal information out there, one needs to have their head examined. Kids who put too much information out there are going to find they’ve shared way too much information when they go to get a job. Companies are popping up to clean all this inappropriate personal information that people have decided to share. People don’t respect their own privacy…asking a corporation to respect it? Yeah, right.
I know, I sound like some curmudgeon. I’m not. I just value my privacy and my time. And I have enough sense to not share the intimate details of my life with ANYONE online.
Posted by: momomiester | 04/29/10 | 12:07 pm |
He is the example of how an idiot can become fabulously wealthy. Take a nerd, mix in luck and an old idea(geocities with bandwidth) and viola you have a visionary of a new society where everyone plays by the rules and we all sing “We are the world”. The reality is we live in a world of good and evil. There are criminals, pedophiles, stalkers, and crazy ex’s that we don’t want into our lives. In Mark’s world of stupid, people have no secrets and they don’t lock their doors either! Maybe the tool will learn as he gets older and has kids that the world is a dangerous place.
Well I would comment more but I noticed a potato chip that looks like Obama and I have to update my facebook page and tell everyone!. Also, I have to tend my farmville crops cause they look stressed! Oh, and I have to twitter everyone that I had a healthy bowl movement this morning. Gawed just send a giant EMP to take out the whole internet !!!!!!!!!F me!!
Posted by: minardi | 04/29/10 | 12:56 pm |
“considering how much of our personal data Facebook owns”
Who do you have to blame
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
Obama calls for America to tighten the noose around coal, once and for all, in moving eulogy for fallen miners in West Virginia
[This is an alternative view of reality. Read it slowly.]
Seeking to comfort the families of 29 workers who died in an Appalachia coal mine, President Barack Obama travelled to West Virginia to deliver a eulogy that voiced concern for climate change and global warming, noting that "we must tighten the noose around coal" or the future of the planet will be bleak.
He also said that ''those in the
mining industry must find other work soon because in order to tighten the noose around coal, we must start shutting down all coal plants and coal fields worldwide.'' Tough words for a fragile planet. Not everyone liked what the president had to say, but someone had to say it. He did.
Obama’s speech for the public memorial to those miners tragically lost at the
Upper Big Branch mine near Beckley, W.Va., promised that his government will tighten the noose around coal and that it's game over for the coal industry nationwide and worldwide, "if we care about the future of Planet Earth."
“We cannot bring back the 29 men we lost," Obama said. "They are sort of with some imaginary Lord in Heaven that our ancestors told us about but who in fact does not exist, and may they rest in eternal peace. But they died in vain. They did not have to die. We must stop using coal worldwide or billions will die in the future due to global warming."
“Our task, here on Planet Earth, is to save lives from being lost in another
such tragedy, and to do that we must stop using coal, stop mining coal, stop burning coal. For we are all family. We are
Americans. We are world citizerns. It is time to tighten the noose around coal once and for all.”
The afternoon memorial service included remarks from West
Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin and Vice President Joe Biden. Obama talked
of the wasted sacrifices miners make in their mistaken efforts to build a life
around coal, saying coal was no longer useful for humankind.
“All the hard work. All the hardship. All the time spent underground.
It was all for their families, but what a waste of human life. We do not need coal anymore. We must in fact stop using coal.” Obama said. “These poor hapless souls died un-neccesarily for what, for a car in the
driveway. For a roof overhead. For a chance to give their kids
opportunities they never knew; and enjoy retirement with their wives.
It was all in the hopes of something better. And yet it is all in vain. Coal must go. No more coal. No more coal. No more deaths of coal miners. Period. We must stop this irrational nonsense."
“These miners lived — as they died — in pursuit of the American dream, but in this was it was an unrealtic and unsustainable American dream. Those days are over.”
"Let me tell you the truth, we do not need miners anymore to keep America’s lights on. We need to stop using coal completely."
Obama said it was a moral imperative for the U.S. to tighten the noose around coal and stop all coal mining acticities as soon as possible. Of course, his speech did not go down well with all of his listerners, but those who care about the future of planet Earth heard him and applauded his brave remarks, even as he acknowledged his sadness at the un-necessary deaths of the miners who died recently.
"Don't let this happen again," Obama said. "We must shut down all coal plants and coal fields now."
"How can we fail our future descendants on planet Earth?" Obama told about 2,800 mourners at the
Beckley-Raleigh County Convention Center. "How can a nation continue to burn coal when it knows it is wrong to do so?
How can we let anyone in this country put their lives at risk by
working at an un-necessary job like this?"
He added: "Our task, here on Planet Earth, the third rock from the Sun, is to save lives from being lost
in another such tragedy. To do what we must do, individually and
collectively, to stop all mining acitivites here and worldwide. Because we are all
family and we are all Americans and we are all citizens of Planet Earth."
Obama's eulogy came toward the end of a service that was an emotional
testament to the human toll of unsafe mining conditions. The cause of
the blast that killed the miners is under investigation, but high
levels of methane are suspected. The explosive gas had to be vented
from the mine and neutralized with nitrogen to allow rescue and
recovery teams to enter.
At Sunday's memorial, speakers described the fallen miners as NASCAR
fans, hunters, fishermen, motorcycle enthusiasts - and football fans.
Vice President Joe Biden, who spoke before Obama, said, "They hated
the way [college football] Coach [Rick] Rodriguez left West Virginia
for Michigan."
The service opened with a video tribute to the dead. Gayle Manchin,
wife of West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin, read the name of each
victim, whose picture was displayed for a full minute on a pair of
oversized screens. The audience stood and clapped as each name was
called.
At the base of the stage was a row of 29 Christian cultic crosses for a false messiah that allegedly
represents the son of some supernatural god. Outside the hall,
posters of each man were arranged in a corridor. Attached were small
cards penned by family and friends.
Carl Acord, 52, was shown proudly displaying a fish he had caught.
Others were pictured standing and smiling, relaxing in chairs or on
beds, or posing in their best suits.
A card written for Edward Dean Jones, 50, read, "I am a coal miner's
daughter and granddaughter, and I love all miners for their work."
"Hopefully, once America weans itself off coal, and the noose has been totally tightened around all coal mining and burning activities world, their deaths will be seen to have been a wake up call for all of humanity", Obama concluded.
- 30 -
Seeking to comfort the families of 29 workers who died in an Appalachia coal mine, President Barack Obama travelled to West Virginia to deliver a eulogy that voiced concern for climate change and global warming, noting that "we must tighten the noose around coal" or the future of the planet will be bleak.
He also said that ''those in the
mining industry must find other work soon because in order to tighten the noose around coal, we must start shutting down all coal plants and coal fields worldwide.'' Tough words for a fragile planet. Not everyone liked what the president had to say, but someone had to say it. He did.
Obama’s speech for the public memorial to those miners tragically lost at the
Upper Big Branch mine near Beckley, W.Va., promised that his government will tighten the noose around coal and that it's game over for the coal industry nationwide and worldwide, "if we care about the future of Planet Earth."
“We cannot bring back the 29 men we lost," Obama said. "They are sort of with some imaginary Lord in Heaven that our ancestors told us about but who in fact does not exist, and may they rest in eternal peace. But they died in vain. They did not have to die. We must stop using coal worldwide or billions will die in the future due to global warming."
“Our task, here on Planet Earth, is to save lives from being lost in another
such tragedy, and to do that we must stop using coal, stop mining coal, stop burning coal. For we are all family. We are
Americans. We are world citizerns. It is time to tighten the noose around coal once and for all.”
The afternoon memorial service included remarks from West
Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin and Vice President Joe Biden. Obama talked
of the wasted sacrifices miners make in their mistaken efforts to build a life
around coal, saying coal was no longer useful for humankind.
“All the hard work. All the hardship. All the time spent underground.
It was all for their families, but what a waste of human life. We do not need coal anymore. We must in fact stop using coal.” Obama said. “These poor hapless souls died un-neccesarily for what, for a car in the
driveway. For a roof overhead. For a chance to give their kids
opportunities they never knew; and enjoy retirement with their wives.
It was all in the hopes of something better. And yet it is all in vain. Coal must go. No more coal. No more coal. No more deaths of coal miners. Period. We must stop this irrational nonsense."
“These miners lived — as they died — in pursuit of the American dream, but in this was it was an unrealtic and unsustainable American dream. Those days are over.”
"Let me tell you the truth, we do not need miners anymore to keep America’s lights on. We need to stop using coal completely."
Obama said it was a moral imperative for the U.S. to tighten the noose around coal and stop all coal mining acticities as soon as possible. Of course, his speech did not go down well with all of his listerners, but those who care about the future of planet Earth heard him and applauded his brave remarks, even as he acknowledged his sadness at the un-necessary deaths of the miners who died recently.
"Don't let this happen again," Obama said. "We must shut down all coal plants and coal fields now."
"How can we fail our future descendants on planet Earth?" Obama told about 2,800 mourners at the
Beckley-Raleigh County Convention Center. "How can a nation continue to burn coal when it knows it is wrong to do so?
How can we let anyone in this country put their lives at risk by
working at an un-necessary job like this?"
He added: "Our task, here on Planet Earth, the third rock from the Sun, is to save lives from being lost
in another such tragedy. To do what we must do, individually and
collectively, to stop all mining acitivites here and worldwide. Because we are all
family and we are all Americans and we are all citizens of Planet Earth."
Obama's eulogy came toward the end of a service that was an emotional
testament to the human toll of unsafe mining conditions. The cause of
the blast that killed the miners is under investigation, but high
levels of methane are suspected. The explosive gas had to be vented
from the mine and neutralized with nitrogen to allow rescue and
recovery teams to enter.
At Sunday's memorial, speakers described the fallen miners as NASCAR
fans, hunters, fishermen, motorcycle enthusiasts - and football fans.
Vice President Joe Biden, who spoke before Obama, said, "They hated
the way [college football] Coach [Rick] Rodriguez left West Virginia
for Michigan."
The service opened with a video tribute to the dead. Gayle Manchin,
wife of West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin, read the name of each
victim, whose picture was displayed for a full minute on a pair of
oversized screens. The audience stood and clapped as each name was
called.
At the base of the stage was a row of 29 Christian cultic crosses for a false messiah that allegedly
represents the son of some supernatural god. Outside the hall,
posters of each man were arranged in a corridor. Attached were small
cards penned by family and friends.
Carl Acord, 52, was shown proudly displaying a fish he had caught.
Others were pictured standing and smiling, relaxing in chairs or on
beds, or posing in their best suits.
A card written for Edward Dean Jones, 50, read, "I am a coal miner's
daughter and granddaughter, and I love all miners for their work."
"Hopefully, once America weans itself off coal, and the noose has been totally tightened around all coal mining and burning activities world, their deaths will be seen to have been a wake up call for all of humanity", Obama concluded.
- 30 -
Monday, April 26, 2010
To break or not to break (the Lipitor 10 mg pills), that is the question -- What do you say now Pfizer PR department when the New York Times calls you for your opinion on this? Stonewall, er, pillwall the Times, too? LOL....
1. My cardio doc in midwest USA friend tells me:
''Dear Danny ,
I am now really relieved that I didn't give my patients the wrong
instructions re Lipitor. I did occasionally instruct my patients to
split lipid-lowering pills. You see, when I lower the dosage, I just
don't see why we should waste the pills with higher strength, like,
"Here is a new prescription for pills of half of the dose. Throw away
those higher dose pills." I just don't see how should we waist
expensive pills like that. Let's see what Pfizer tells you."
2. second opinion says: MONEY IS A HUGE CONCERN. Perhaps not for Lipitor because it's
generic now. But if more people were concerned about saving in more
places in years past.......well, you know where that is going. Health
care is hardly even about health care anymore. It's big business gone
bad. John Q. pinches pennies while statin makers, et al haul in the
big bucks or a naturally occuring substance.
It's all about money for the Pharm companies. Why do you think they
are pushing combination products so hard? And pushing for every man,
woman and child to take statin drugs not matter their health history
or risks? Statin are a huge money maker for them and they don't want
one penny of it taken away by someone trying to save a few bucks.
It is sad indeed if this is about money at the cost of truth. ***I
applaud dan bloom for asking good qusetions of Pfzier and encourage
him to investigate fully. Just turn down the volume on the hyperbole
a little.
3. Some pills have special coatings or time-release formulations that
would make splitting them dangerous. Cutting such a tablet would make
its absorption unpredictable.
This is not the case with Lipitor, however. Researchers at Veterans
Affairs and Kaiser Permanente in California determined that splitting
atorvastatin (Lipitor), lovastatin (Mevacor) and simvastatin (Zocor)
was an effective way to lower costs without compromising cholesterol
control. The study was published in the Journal of Managed Care
Pharmacy (November/December 2002).
In any case, you should get clear instructions from your doctor.
4. A book I have from my Doctors surgery states that cholesterol is
made in the liver when we sleep. I have also seen reports stating that
the more a person sleeps, the higher their cholesterol and the lower
their good cholesterol. A study also showed how sleep devravation over
a 5 day period reduced cholesterol levels. So, if we spit a statin
pill, will it have the same desired effect? Everyone I know takes
their statin in the evening, so I assume there is a reason for this
backed up by research?
5. Here's another one that answers specific FAQ's about tablet splitting.
http://www.firstcarolinacare.com/pharmacy/splittingfaq.htm
It would appear Big Pharma is rebelling against profit loss by
advertising against pill splitting. Profit drives everything in
pharmaceuticals. Sorry to disappoint you danbloom.
PLEASE NOTE THAT MANY - IN FACT, MOST - TABLETS SHOULD NEVER BE SPLIT
OR CRUSHED UNLESS YOU ARE SPECIFICALLY DIRECTED TO DO SO.
6 . Have you asked a pharmacist? I trust them because they specialize
in the chemistry of the medications. The doctors just prescribe them
with the knowledge that this pill goes for that disease.
Some pills (and definitely capsules) have a protective coating on them
so they dissolve in the proper part of the digestive system. If they
dissolve too early, you may experience unpleasant side effects. Some
are made to trickle into the system over a long period and they
shouldn't be cut and damaged. My Diltiazem is a pill in a capsule so I
should not remove it.
Try asking your pharmacist to see if your particular form of Lipitor can be cut.
''Dear Danny ,
I am now really relieved that I didn't give my patients the wrong
instructions re Lipitor. I did occasionally instruct my patients to
split lipid-lowering pills. You see, when I lower the dosage, I just
don't see why we should waste the pills with higher strength, like,
"Here is a new prescription for pills of half of the dose. Throw away
those higher dose pills." I just don't see how should we waist
expensive pills like that. Let's see what Pfizer tells you."
2. second opinion says: MONEY IS A HUGE CONCERN. Perhaps not for Lipitor because it's
generic now. But if more people were concerned about saving in more
places in years past.......well, you know where that is going. Health
care is hardly even about health care anymore. It's big business gone
bad. John Q. pinches pennies while statin makers, et al haul in the
big bucks or a naturally occuring substance.
It's all about money for the Pharm companies. Why do you think they
are pushing combination products so hard? And pushing for every man,
woman and child to take statin drugs not matter their health history
or risks? Statin are a huge money maker for them and they don't want
one penny of it taken away by someone trying to save a few bucks.
It is sad indeed if this is about money at the cost of truth. ***I
applaud dan bloom for asking good qusetions of Pfzier and encourage
him to investigate fully. Just turn down the volume on the hyperbole
a little.
3. Some pills have special coatings or time-release formulations that
would make splitting them dangerous. Cutting such a tablet would make
its absorption unpredictable.
This is not the case with Lipitor, however. Researchers at Veterans
Affairs and Kaiser Permanente in California determined that splitting
atorvastatin (Lipitor), lovastatin (Mevacor) and simvastatin (Zocor)
was an effective way to lower costs without compromising cholesterol
control. The study was published in the Journal of Managed Care
Pharmacy (November/December 2002).
In any case, you should get clear instructions from your doctor.
4. A book I have from my Doctors surgery states that cholesterol is
made in the liver when we sleep. I have also seen reports stating that
the more a person sleeps, the higher their cholesterol and the lower
their good cholesterol. A study also showed how sleep devravation over
a 5 day period reduced cholesterol levels. So, if we spit a statin
pill, will it have the same desired effect? Everyone I know takes
their statin in the evening, so I assume there is a reason for this
backed up by research?
5. Here's another one that answers specific FAQ's about tablet splitting.
http://www.firstcarolinacare.com/pharmacy/splittingfaq.htm
It would appear Big Pharma is rebelling against profit loss by
advertising against pill splitting. Profit drives everything in
pharmaceuticals. Sorry to disappoint you danbloom.
PLEASE NOTE THAT MANY - IN FACT, MOST - TABLETS SHOULD NEVER BE SPLIT
OR CRUSHED UNLESS YOU ARE SPECIFICALLY DIRECTED TO DO SO.
6 . Have you asked a pharmacist? I trust them because they specialize
in the chemistry of the medications. The doctors just prescribe them
with the knowledge that this pill goes for that disease.
Some pills (and definitely capsules) have a protective coating on them
so they dissolve in the proper part of the digestive system. If they
dissolve too early, you may experience unpleasant side effects. Some
are made to trickle into the system over a long period and they
shouldn't be cut and damaged. My Diltiazem is a pill in a capsule so I
should not remove it.
Try asking your pharmacist to see if your particular form of Lipitor can be cut.
Sunday, April 25, 2010
Lipitor tablets, to break or not to break them in half, that is the question
You should find this interesting.
"CalOptima initiated mandatory tablet splitting for Lipitor....."
http://www.caloptima.org/index.asp?content=pharmacylipitor
"CalOptima initiated mandatory tablet splitting for Lipitor....."
http://www.caloptima.org/index.asp?content=pharmacylipitor
"To Break or Not to Break (the Lipitor Tabs), THAT is the question!"
And the Pfizer PR department does NOT seem keen to give me the answer. WTF?
cc: NO ANSWER. THEY TREAT CONSUMERS LIKE DIRT!
Ray.Kerins@pfizer.com RAY KERINS
WW Communications Europe wwce@pfizer.com
"Kerins Ray" Ray.Kerins@pfizer.com
"Moorjani Neena" Neena.Moorjani@pfizer.com
Sally.Beatty@pfizer.com SALLY BEATTY
cc: NO ANSWER. THEY TREAT CONSUMERS LIKE DIRT!
Ray.Kerins@pfizer.com RAY KERINS
WW Communications Europe wwce@pfizer.com
"Kerins Ray" Ray.Kerins@pfizer.com
"Moorjani Neena" Neena.Moorjani@pfizer.com
Sally.Beatty@pfizer.com SALLY BEATTY
Friday, April 23, 2010
Pfizer pillwalling pilltaker who just wants to know if it's kosher to break Lipitor pills in half or not, yet Pfizer PR department remains silent as they try to pillwall the patient, who is after all a Pfizer customer. I guess Pfizer does not care about the people they are supposed to be serving....even Bruce Roth the inventor of Lipitor must be turning over in his grave.....it's a sad day when the US medical pharm community starts pillwalling hapless pilltakers.....oi
developing story, NEW YORK TIMES is on this now.
NEW YOK - Pfizer finds itself in a fancy pickle of a funny situation with a heart patient who has lots of patience but still wonders why the PR department at Pfizer does not respnd to his clarion calls for clarification of the pill popping issues here......
A news story in the making, front page NEW YORK TIMES:
by Natlie DeAngelo
New York Times Medical Reporter
NEW YORK -- Danny Bloom had a massive heart attack late last year and now he's having another heart attack -- minor this time! -- over some fuzzy instructions of the heart medicine he's been taking to keep his ticker ticking.
It all comes down to this: Pfizer, maker and seller of Lipitor, says on its website and in full page ads in national magazines that patients should not break their tablets in half to take half dosages, even when told it is okay to do so by their cardiologists.
Bloom, a stent in his stented heart, wants an answer. Pfizer refuses to tell him anything in black or white and merely stonewalls the stonefaced former stoner, now 61.
DEVELOPING.....
NEW YOK - Pfizer finds itself in a fancy pickle of a funny situation with a heart patient who has lots of patience but still wonders why the PR department at Pfizer does not respnd to his clarion calls for clarification of the pill popping issues here......
A news story in the making, front page NEW YORK TIMES:
by Natlie DeAngelo
New York Times Medical Reporter
NEW YORK -- Danny Bloom had a massive heart attack late last year and now he's having another heart attack -- minor this time! -- over some fuzzy instructions of the heart medicine he's been taking to keep his ticker ticking.
It all comes down to this: Pfizer, maker and seller of Lipitor, says on its website and in full page ads in national magazines that patients should not break their tablets in half to take half dosages, even when told it is okay to do so by their cardiologists.
Bloom, a stent in his stented heart, wants an answer. Pfizer refuses to tell him anything in black or white and merely stonewalls the stonefaced former stoner, now 61.
DEVELOPING.....
Pfizer finds itself in a fancy pickle of a funny situation with a heart patient who has lots of patience but still wonders why the PR department at Pfizer does not respnd to his clarion calls for clarification of the pill popping issues here......
A news story in the making, front page NEW YORK TIMES:
by Natlie DeAngelo
New York Times Medical Reporter
NEW YORK -- Danny Bloom had a massive heart attack late last year and now he's having another heart attack -- minor this time! -- over some fuzzy instructions of the heart medicine he's been taking to keep his ticker ticking.
It all comes down to this: Pfizer, maker and seller of Lipitor, says on its website and in full page ads in national magazines that patients should not break their tablets in half to take half dosages, even when told it is okay to do so by their cardiologists.
Bloom, a stent in his stented heart, wants an answer. Pfizer refuses to tell him anything in black or white and merely stonewalls the stonefaced former stoner, now 61.
DEVELOPING.....
by Natlie DeAngelo
New York Times Medical Reporter
NEW YORK -- Danny Bloom had a massive heart attack late last year and now he's having another heart attack -- minor this time! -- over some fuzzy instructions of the heart medicine he's been taking to keep his ticker ticking.
It all comes down to this: Pfizer, maker and seller of Lipitor, says on its website and in full page ads in national magazines that patients should not break their tablets in half to take half dosages, even when told it is okay to do so by their cardiologists.
Bloom, a stent in his stented heart, wants an answer. Pfizer refuses to tell him anything in black or white and merely stonewalls the stonefaced former stoner, now 61.
DEVELOPING.....
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
We are asking the Lipitor medical drug firm to confirm why or why not patients should not BREAK Lipitor tablets before taking when most doctors around the world do not follow this advice or rule, there is a disconnect here between the website, the fullpage ads in ATLANTIC magazine, the PR dept's stonewalling of my email questions and the actual truth of all this. Sally, we await your kind reply. SMILE
Knowing as much as you can about the medicine you take is essential. Below you will find answers to questions about dosing and how to take LIPITOR. Simply click on the question you want to ask to reveal the answer.
Q: How should I take LIPITOR?
A: LIPITOR should be taken by mouth exactly as prescribed by your doctor. Don’t break LIPITOR tablets before taking.
BUT.....my doctor told me it is okay to break the tablet in half now, and take half per day, and he even gave me a pill cutter supplied to him by the drug salesman, so what's going on here. my doc said he never heard of this rule or advice and he has no idea why this would be. So i am asking Lipitor PR department to tell me and so far they are stonewalling me for 5 days and soon the New York Times will turn this into a good medical detective story. I say this as a heart patient taking Lipitor, successfully i might add and very greatful to be alive, but hey, where does truth lie?
"Beatty, Sally"
show details Apr 18 (4 days ago)
All
I am looping in Neena Moorjani for background on this reporter and will suggest that the EU comms team can drop off this email chain unless someone objects
Thanks
http://www.lipitor.com/patients/dosingQuestions.aspx
http://www.lipitor.com
Sunday, April 18, 2010
Danny Bloom's new book VISIONS OF POLAR CITIES is one part fire-and-brimstone warning about what we've done to our planet and how we must accept, as we implement solutions, that going back to an earlier time and a healthier world is out of our reach, and one part a suggestion of one type of solution we should look toward in a scaled-down world, such as polar cities for survivors of global warming 500 years from now. Bloom's writing is deft, sharp, and convincing, and only a true climate denier could find much fault with what he says. Personally I felt the "let's take this very seriously" warning part of the book -- roughly the first half -- came off much better than the solution half (maybe it's simply easier to wake people up to the danger than it is to lead them out of it and speak of polar cities, God forbid). While the early part of the book felt very universal in tone, in the polar cities solution' half Bloom (1949-2032) waxes extremely local (as he predicts we will all have to in this country in this century). His vision of polar cities is a start, I believe, but might present too narrow a focus for some; which is a little bit of a disappointment, because the "wake up and smell the planet being overcooked" rhetoric is top notch, masterful, and insightful. Anyone interested in climate change (and that should be all of us, since we are almost all affected) should read this book.
Danny Bloom's new book VISIONS OF POLAR CITIES is one part fire-and-brimstone warning about what we've done to our planet and how we must accept, as we implement solutions, that going back to an earlier time and a healthier world is in of our reach, and one part a suggestion of one type of solution -- POLAR CITIES -- we should look toward in a scaled-down world, such as polar cities for survivors of global warming 500 years from now.
Bloom's writing is deft, sharp, and convincing, and only a true climate denier like Marc Morano or Rush Limbo could find much fault with what he says.
Personally, I felt the "let's take this very seriously" warning part of the book -- roughly the first half -- came off much better than the solution half (maybe it's simply easier to wake people up to the danger than it is to lead them out of it and speak of polar cities, God forbid).
While the early part of the book felt very universal in tone, in the polar cities solution' half Bloom (1949-2032) waxes extremely visionary(as he predicts polar cites to be real in 2500 AD).
His vision of polar cities is a start, I believe, but might present too narrow a focus for some; which is a little bit of a disappointment, because the "wake up and smell the planet being overcooked" rhetoric is top notch, masterful, and insightful. Anyone interested in climate change (and that should be all of us, since we are almost all affected) should read this book. The time to prepare for polar cities life is NOW.
Bloom's writing is deft, sharp, and convincing, and only a true climate denier like Marc Morano or Rush Limbo could find much fault with what he says.
Personally, I felt the "let's take this very seriously" warning part of the book -- roughly the first half -- came off much better than the solution half (maybe it's simply easier to wake people up to the danger than it is to lead them out of it and speak of polar cities, God forbid).
While the early part of the book felt very universal in tone, in the polar cities solution' half Bloom (1949-2032) waxes extremely visionary(as he predicts polar cites to be real in 2500 AD).
His vision of polar cities is a start, I believe, but might present too narrow a focus for some; which is a little bit of a disappointment, because the "wake up and smell the planet being overcooked" rhetoric is top notch, masterful, and insightful. Anyone interested in climate change (and that should be all of us, since we are almost all affected) should read this book. The time to prepare for polar cities life is NOW.
Jed Lipinski tells all here in interview with Bill McKibben on new book: EAARTH
"Eaarth": Earth is over
A climate pioneer declares our planet Earth -- with its rising humidity and
hot oceans -- dead. Polar cities might be needed in year 2500 for survivors of climate chaos sure to come. Read news below and weep. And then start preparing, spiritually, for what's coming down the road, circa 500 years from now. But today? ENJOY! LIFE IS WONDER FULL!
Jed Lipinski tells all here (via Saloon)
According to Bill McKibben, the respected environmentalist and
author of the pioneering "End of Nature," the planet Earth, as we know
it, is already dead. Over a million square miles of the Arctic ice cap
have melted, the oceans have risen and warmed, and the tropics have
expanded 2 degrees north and south. Global warming has caused such
pervasive and irreversible changes, he argues, that we now live on a
new planet with a new set of environmental and climatic realities —
and, as such, it deserves a new name: Goodbye, Earth. Hello, "Eaarth."
McKibben’s hair-raising new book, "Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough
New Planet," is a scrupulous and impassioned account of the severely
compromised globe on which we now live. He lays out the myriad ways in
which climate change has remade our world, but he also goes much
further, chronicling its current and future human toll. He explains
how droughts in Australia helped precipitate the 2008 food crisis and
put 40 million people at risk of hunger, and how the rapidly melting
glaciers of the Andes and Himalayas may soon threaten the water supply
of billions. Our only hope of survival, McKibben suggests, is a
reversion to small-scale, local ways of life. "We simply can’t live on
the new earth as if it were the old earth," he writes. "We’ve
foreclosed that option."
I spoke with McKibben over the phone about the meaning of
"Eaarth," our grim future, and what oh so smart Tommy Friedman got wrong about
global warming.
What is "Eaarth"?
The meaning behind the title is that we really have created a new
planet. Not entirely new. It looks more or less like the one we were
born into; the same physical laws operate it. But it’s substantially
different. There’s 5 percent more moisture in the atmosphere than
there was 50 years ago, much less ice at the top of the Earth, et
cetera. Calling it "Eaarth," an admittedly weird word, is a way of
calling people’s attention to the fact that the changes that have
already happened are large enough that if you were visiting our planet
in a spaceship, this place would look really different from the
outside than it did just decades ago.
What’s the biggest observable difference?
The most visible change is what’s happening to ice around the world.
But probably the most important is what’s happening to liquid water.
Warm air holds a lot more water vapor than cold, so you get a lot more
evaporation in dry areas, and hence more drought. Even easier to
measure, and more troubling, is the fact that what goes up must come
down, and what’s coming down are these intense precipitation events.
In the book, I describe the rainfalls in my small town in Vermont —
record floods that cut us off from the rest of the world. But that’s
happening around the world almost every day now. The 100-year storm
comes three times a decade in a lot of places. Stuff like that is
sobering, not only because it demonstrates how out of balance things
are, but also because the consequences of a world run amuck are not to
be taken lightly.
What consequences are we talking about?
India, for example, is constructing this massive wall to protect it
from Bangladesh. Not because it represents a military threat, but
because there’s 150 or 160 million people there who are increasingly
squeezed by a rising ocean. As best we can tell, the failure of the
monsoon across Africa is climatically related, and that’s clearly
played a big role in what’s been happening in the wars in Sudan and
Somalia. It’s not that there’s an out-and-out war about climate
change; it’s that all the stresses that already plague the planet get
harder and harder to deal with. If you’re already short of water, say,
now you’re shorter.
Forty-four percent of Americans still don’t believe global warming is
manmade. What’s the best way to convince them?
Most accounts terrifically underplay what’s actually going on already.
But in my life as an organizer, we’ve been very successful without
trying to scare people. Last fall, my organization 350.org organized
5,200 simultaneous demonstrations in 181 countries, what CNN called
"the most widespread day of political action in the planet's history."
And people were organizing around a pretty obscure scientific data
point, a parts-per-million concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere. The
lesson we took is that people are capable of understanding the
science. It’s not harder than understanding that if your cholesterol
gets too high, you’re going to have a heart attack. If the doctor says
your cholesterol is too high, your first instinct isn’t to demand a
rundown of how the lipid system works. You say, "OK, what do we do?"
At Copenhagen, we managed to get 117 nations to sign on to the
350-parts-per-million target, which NASA believes to be the safe
percentage. They were the wrong 117 nations, of course. But in 18
months, with little money, we’ve had some real effects.
Then why was Copenhagen such a failure?
Simple: The countries that are most powerful and most addicted to
fossil fuel aren’t ready to come to terms with it. You can’t really
have an AA meeting while everyone’s still in denial. In each of the
last three years, Exxon Mobil made more than any company in the
history of money. That may give them enough political power to keep
the U.S. in denial for years to come.
Thomas Friedman and others recommend a technologically advanced “green
growth” project — big windmills throughout the Midwest, solar arrays
in the Arizona desert, hybrid cars — to kick our addiction to fossil
fuel. Won’t that work?
We eventually run into limits to further growth on the planet. All the
things Tom Friedman would like to do are good things. They just cost
an immense amount of money and an immense amount of resources. We can
do some of them. We’d be very smart to think less about grand,
continent-spanning schemes, and wise to think more about localized and
somewhat humble versions of these same things. Nuclear power plants,
for example, are off-the-charts expensive, because they’re highly
centralized and dangerous. They’re the engineering example of too big
to fail. By contrast, if the solar panel on my roof fails, I have to
fix it, but it doesn’t destroy the electric grid, or release dangerous
solar particles into the atmosphere.
Larry Summers, Obama’s chief economic advisor, said that "putting
limits on growth because of some natural limit is a profound error."
Is he wrong?
He’s wrong, but for an interesting reason. Economists, and many of us
to some extent, have come to believe that the economy is more real
than the physical world. Think about the incredible regard we have for
the economy. "It’s healing," we say. "It’s going through a rough
patch." We talk about it like it’s our aging mother. Whereas with the
Earth, we say, "Oh well, it’s going through its natural cycles, don’t
worry." Which is slightly crazy, because clearly the economy is a
subset of the natural world, not the other way around. We lavish
intense worry and affection and brainpower on the economy, but not so
much on the environment. Summers is the perfect exemplar of that
attitude: an incredibly smart guy whose context is so narrow it ends
up making him very dumb indeed.
So what’s the best way to proceed?
First we need to reach an agreement capping our carbon emissions, and
then help finance the developing world to skip the fossil fuel step
and develop in different ways. Places like South Africa and Bangladesh
haven’t yet gone through the development cycle that makes them rich,
and they’re being told, "That’s not on offer anymore." At the moment,
solar panels are more expensive than coal and will be for a while.
Still, we’re going to have to provide these countries with a better
alternative, and the resources to follow it, if we want to act in a
way that could be described as moral.
As for the nuts-and-bolts engineering, over the long run, I’d
recommend a combination of conservation; harnessing wind and sun, from
both distant and nearby sources; and lifestyle changes. There's no
good reason the Jersey Turnpike should be crowded with cars, not in a
dense area easily served by better transit. In the transition, we'll
be using a lot of natural gas to make electricity, would be my guess.
In the book you use Vermont, where you live, as an example of an
environmentally forward-thinking state.
Vermont hasn’t gotten everything right. Its energy system isn’t very
good. But it’s been ahead of the rest of the nation in experimenting
with local food, for example, which is the easiest commodity to get
back under control. Vermont is also important because of its political
history (it declared its independence from New York in 1777 and was
its own republic before becoming a state), and its ongoing campaigns
against federal subsidies for big agriculture. Its attitude of self-
determination is a reminder that small-scale activities — things like
town meetings, farmers’ markets, composting — can work quite well.
But lately, in the U.S. as a whole, local and regional action has
reached more than a level of experimentation. The number of farms
across the country is growing for the first time in a century and a
quarter, with 300,000 new farms this decade. The one business that
boomed in the last two years was seeds — Burpee Seeds was up 40
percent or something. There’s an awful lot of land in American suburbs
currently devoted to growing grass, often with lavish infusions of
fertilizer and chemicals. Turn some of that energy and resources
toward growing vegetables, and you’re getting somewhere.
A climate pioneer declares our planet Earth -- with its rising humidity and
hot oceans -- dead. Polar cities might be needed in year 2500 for survivors of climate chaos sure to come. Read news below and weep. And then start preparing, spiritually, for what's coming down the road, circa 500 years from now. But today? ENJOY! LIFE IS WONDER FULL!
Jed Lipinski tells all here (via Saloon)
According to Bill McKibben, the respected environmentalist and
author of the pioneering "End of Nature," the planet Earth, as we know
it, is already dead. Over a million square miles of the Arctic ice cap
have melted, the oceans have risen and warmed, and the tropics have
expanded 2 degrees north and south. Global warming has caused such
pervasive and irreversible changes, he argues, that we now live on a
new planet with a new set of environmental and climatic realities —
and, as such, it deserves a new name: Goodbye, Earth. Hello, "Eaarth."
McKibben’s hair-raising new book, "Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough
New Planet," is a scrupulous and impassioned account of the severely
compromised globe on which we now live. He lays out the myriad ways in
which climate change has remade our world, but he also goes much
further, chronicling its current and future human toll. He explains
how droughts in Australia helped precipitate the 2008 food crisis and
put 40 million people at risk of hunger, and how the rapidly melting
glaciers of the Andes and Himalayas may soon threaten the water supply
of billions. Our only hope of survival, McKibben suggests, is a
reversion to small-scale, local ways of life. "We simply can’t live on
the new earth as if it were the old earth," he writes. "We’ve
foreclosed that option."
I spoke with McKibben over the phone about the meaning of
"Eaarth," our grim future, and what oh so smart Tommy Friedman got wrong about
global warming.
What is "Eaarth"?
The meaning behind the title is that we really have created a new
planet. Not entirely new. It looks more or less like the one we were
born into; the same physical laws operate it. But it’s substantially
different. There’s 5 percent more moisture in the atmosphere than
there was 50 years ago, much less ice at the top of the Earth, et
cetera. Calling it "Eaarth," an admittedly weird word, is a way of
calling people’s attention to the fact that the changes that have
already happened are large enough that if you were visiting our planet
in a spaceship, this place would look really different from the
outside than it did just decades ago.
What’s the biggest observable difference?
The most visible change is what’s happening to ice around the world.
But probably the most important is what’s happening to liquid water.
Warm air holds a lot more water vapor than cold, so you get a lot more
evaporation in dry areas, and hence more drought. Even easier to
measure, and more troubling, is the fact that what goes up must come
down, and what’s coming down are these intense precipitation events.
In the book, I describe the rainfalls in my small town in Vermont —
record floods that cut us off from the rest of the world. But that’s
happening around the world almost every day now. The 100-year storm
comes three times a decade in a lot of places. Stuff like that is
sobering, not only because it demonstrates how out of balance things
are, but also because the consequences of a world run amuck are not to
be taken lightly.
What consequences are we talking about?
India, for example, is constructing this massive wall to protect it
from Bangladesh. Not because it represents a military threat, but
because there’s 150 or 160 million people there who are increasingly
squeezed by a rising ocean. As best we can tell, the failure of the
monsoon across Africa is climatically related, and that’s clearly
played a big role in what’s been happening in the wars in Sudan and
Somalia. It’s not that there’s an out-and-out war about climate
change; it’s that all the stresses that already plague the planet get
harder and harder to deal with. If you’re already short of water, say,
now you’re shorter.
Forty-four percent of Americans still don’t believe global warming is
manmade. What’s the best way to convince them?
Most accounts terrifically underplay what’s actually going on already.
But in my life as an organizer, we’ve been very successful without
trying to scare people. Last fall, my organization 350.org organized
5,200 simultaneous demonstrations in 181 countries, what CNN called
"the most widespread day of political action in the planet's history."
And people were organizing around a pretty obscure scientific data
point, a parts-per-million concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere. The
lesson we took is that people are capable of understanding the
science. It’s not harder than understanding that if your cholesterol
gets too high, you’re going to have a heart attack. If the doctor says
your cholesterol is too high, your first instinct isn’t to demand a
rundown of how the lipid system works. You say, "OK, what do we do?"
At Copenhagen, we managed to get 117 nations to sign on to the
350-parts-per-million target, which NASA believes to be the safe
percentage. They were the wrong 117 nations, of course. But in 18
months, with little money, we’ve had some real effects.
Then why was Copenhagen such a failure?
Simple: The countries that are most powerful and most addicted to
fossil fuel aren’t ready to come to terms with it. You can’t really
have an AA meeting while everyone’s still in denial. In each of the
last three years, Exxon Mobil made more than any company in the
history of money. That may give them enough political power to keep
the U.S. in denial for years to come.
Thomas Friedman and others recommend a technologically advanced “green
growth” project — big windmills throughout the Midwest, solar arrays
in the Arizona desert, hybrid cars — to kick our addiction to fossil
fuel. Won’t that work?
We eventually run into limits to further growth on the planet. All the
things Tom Friedman would like to do are good things. They just cost
an immense amount of money and an immense amount of resources. We can
do some of them. We’d be very smart to think less about grand,
continent-spanning schemes, and wise to think more about localized and
somewhat humble versions of these same things. Nuclear power plants,
for example, are off-the-charts expensive, because they’re highly
centralized and dangerous. They’re the engineering example of too big
to fail. By contrast, if the solar panel on my roof fails, I have to
fix it, but it doesn’t destroy the electric grid, or release dangerous
solar particles into the atmosphere.
Larry Summers, Obama’s chief economic advisor, said that "putting
limits on growth because of some natural limit is a profound error."
Is he wrong?
He’s wrong, but for an interesting reason. Economists, and many of us
to some extent, have come to believe that the economy is more real
than the physical world. Think about the incredible regard we have for
the economy. "It’s healing," we say. "It’s going through a rough
patch." We talk about it like it’s our aging mother. Whereas with the
Earth, we say, "Oh well, it’s going through its natural cycles, don’t
worry." Which is slightly crazy, because clearly the economy is a
subset of the natural world, not the other way around. We lavish
intense worry and affection and brainpower on the economy, but not so
much on the environment. Summers is the perfect exemplar of that
attitude: an incredibly smart guy whose context is so narrow it ends
up making him very dumb indeed.
So what’s the best way to proceed?
First we need to reach an agreement capping our carbon emissions, and
then help finance the developing world to skip the fossil fuel step
and develop in different ways. Places like South Africa and Bangladesh
haven’t yet gone through the development cycle that makes them rich,
and they’re being told, "That’s not on offer anymore." At the moment,
solar panels are more expensive than coal and will be for a while.
Still, we’re going to have to provide these countries with a better
alternative, and the resources to follow it, if we want to act in a
way that could be described as moral.
As for the nuts-and-bolts engineering, over the long run, I’d
recommend a combination of conservation; harnessing wind and sun, from
both distant and nearby sources; and lifestyle changes. There's no
good reason the Jersey Turnpike should be crowded with cars, not in a
dense area easily served by better transit. In the transition, we'll
be using a lot of natural gas to make electricity, would be my guess.
In the book you use Vermont, where you live, as an example of an
environmentally forward-thinking state.
Vermont hasn’t gotten everything right. Its energy system isn’t very
good. But it’s been ahead of the rest of the nation in experimenting
with local food, for example, which is the easiest commodity to get
back under control. Vermont is also important because of its political
history (it declared its independence from New York in 1777 and was
its own republic before becoming a state), and its ongoing campaigns
against federal subsidies for big agriculture. Its attitude of self-
determination is a reminder that small-scale activities — things like
town meetings, farmers’ markets, composting — can work quite well.
But lately, in the U.S. as a whole, local and regional action has
reached more than a level of experimentation. The number of farms
across the country is growing for the first time in a century and a
quarter, with 300,000 new farms this decade. The one business that
boomed in the last two years was seeds — Burpee Seeds was up 40
percent or something. There’s an awful lot of land in American suburbs
currently devoted to growing grass, often with lavish infusions of
fertilizer and chemicals. Turn some of that energy and resources
toward growing vegetables, and you’re getting somewhere.
Sunday, April 4, 2010
Urban Dictionary accepted "eback" as a new word for ebooks. Think paperback, now think ''eback''.
Urban Dictionary accepted "eback" as a new word for ebooks. Think paperback, now think eback.
(n.) -- an e-book composed in or converted to a digital format for display on a computer screen or handheld device; first there were hardbacks and paperbacks, now there are ebacks
"I just ordered Stephen King's latest novel in digital format. For me, an eback is just as a good as a paperback book, even better, because I can store it for use anytime anywhere and read it off a variety of screens."
(n.) -- an e-book composed in or converted to a digital format for display on a computer screen or handheld device; first there were hardbacks and paperbacks, now there are ebacks
"I just ordered Stephen King's latest novel in digital format. For me, an eback is just as a good as a paperback book, even better, because I can store it for use anytime anywhere and read it off a variety of screens."
Wasserstiefel (''Water boots'') - photo by Roman Signer (1938 - 2009)
Artist statement
Signer is a visual artist who works in sculpture,
photography, and video. Signer’s ‘action
sculptures’ involve setting up, carrying out,
and recording ‘experiments’ or events that
bear aesthetic results. His work has been
shown at numerous galleries and museums
in Europe, North America and Asia over the
last 30 years.
“For Water Boots I filled two black boots with
water and put a small amount of explosive in
them. This is what the water looked like when
I fired them electrically. Before starting, I said
to my brother-in-law who was with me:
‘Stand in front of it and take a picture when it
explodes.’ He had neither a tripod nor a
motorised camera. He just stood there, pressed
the release, and came up with a masterpiece.”
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