Tom Collins’ World Wide Web Log

Idle Hands Continue to be Devil’s Workshop

My dear sister Rose stopped downtown for lunch on Thursday, and, as usual, she chose the restaurant, opting for the Occidental, a truly venerable Washington institution that’s been around since the turn of the last century.  In 2006, it moved next to the Willard Hotel, where the Round Robin Bar is located, and regular readers of this Web log know I quaff my share of delectable after-work libations at the Round Robin, for sure.  I am pleased to report that the Occidental has, in fact, not only maintained the high standards which have traditionally accompanied its historic reputation, it has actually surpassed even those since it moved. 
Rose’s situation, on the other hand, has become increasingly problematic.  I supposed I should have known better than to ask how her husband Hank’s job search is going.  Rose stopped eating, the second of her trio of Maryland crab croquettes, sporting a dainty dab of saffron and dill aioli dip, poised halfway to her perfect lips.  She lowered her eyes (and the croquette) to her appetizer plate and murmured, “I think he’s quit looking, Tom.  All he does now is run around working for the TEA Party, ranting about the November elections and raving about Obama and the Democrats.”
“Gee,” I commiserated over a bite of oyster gratin with wilted swiss chard, apple wood bacon lardons, fennel, Pernod cream and a Pecorino panko crust, “that’s a shame.”
Rose’s gaze snapped up from the table at me to see if I was smirking.  I wasn’t - I know better than that, of course.  On the other hand, I’ve never really believed that Hank was good enough for my big sister, and she’s well aware of it.  That’s why she was checking my sincerity level.
She sighed, lifted her appetizer fork once more, and took a bite, savoring the flavor, eyes closed, for a moment; then she had a sip of the 2006 Chass Montrachet Premier Cru, JC Bachelet Les Macherelles, a bottle of which we were sharing.  “This week, he’s been particularly unbearable, going on and on about the NAACP.”
“You mean,” I surmised, “their resolution on Tuesday, which calls upon the TEA Party to repudiate racism?”
“And,” she added, “as Hank would no doubt quickly remind us, condemns ‘extremist elements’ in the TEA Party, which he claims don’t even exist.  Let me tell you, Tom, there’s nothing quite like watching your husband screaming at the television, as loudly as possible, that there are no extremist elements in the TEA Party to convince a person that there probably are plenty of them.”
“I can imagine,” I cautiously offered.  Rose can be quite irritable when she’s mad at Hank.
“He says,” she continued with a slightly testy note, “that an organization with the phrase ‘colored people’ in its name has no business lecturing anybody about racism.”
“That’s… unfortunate…” I began.
“No,” Rose interrupted, “it’s vintage Henry Palikowsi.  When I reminded him that the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People was founded in 1909, when the term ‘colored people’ had entirely different connotations, all he could say was, ‘Well, in that case, how come they haven’t been smart enough during the last one hundred and one years to change it, huh?’  Then he said, ‘What do they mean by “colored people,” anyway?  Look at me, I’ve been out in the sun in July, and I’m pink!  Doesn’t that make me a “colored person,” or is pink not a color?’ And, ‘How come it’s okay for them to say “colored people,” but if I say it, then it’s a big racist insult, right up there with calling them…’ well, then he used the N-word, and went on to say, ‘Can you explain why they say it’s okay for me to call them “people of color?”  How can reversal of word order and the insertion of a preposition turn a horrible ethnic slur into something acceptable for use in polite conversation?  What kind of semantic voodoo is that, anyway?  And if “colored people” is such a big insult, how come they use it themselves in the name of the NAACP?  Is that like it being fine and dandy for them to call each other…’ um… the N-word again, ‘but they have the right to sue us if we call them that?’  I tell you, Tom, it gives me the willies, listening to Hank talk these days.”
“Well,” I observed, “he’s certainly not alone.  Plenty of conservatives have chimed in about that resolution.  A lot of them are claiming the NAACP is a superannuated and obsolete organization that is using the resolution as a publicity stunt.  And I suppose those folks do have a point - if their latest resolution didn’t say what it does about the TEA Party, who would have even noticed the NAACP had proposed it for a vote in the first place?”
“TEA Party protesters on Capitol Hill,” Rose pointed out, “spat at black members of Congress and called them the N-word.  But when I reminded him of that, Hank said, ‘Those people weren’t in the TEA Party.’  So then I said, ‘How do you know who’s in the TEA Party and who isn’t?’  And Hank said, ‘Anybody who says they are with the movement is in the TEA Party,’ and so then I said, ‘Therefore, in that case, if even one of those extremist racists who spat on those black Congressmen says they are in the TEA Party, then the TEA Party is responsible for their actions.’  Tom, when I said that, Hank just hit the ceiling and told me, ‘That’s not how it works!  Look at Lyndon LaRouche!  Are the Democrats responsible for what Lyndon LaRouche or members of his organization do, just because he says he’s a Democrat?’  And so I said, ‘But the Democrats repudiated Lyndon LaRouche for being an extremist, and that’s all the NAACP wants the TEA Party to do,’ and Hank said ‘Right, and so how come the NAACP didn’t call on the Democrats to repudiate Lyndon LaRouche, huh?’  And I said, ‘Because the followers of Lyndon LaRouche aren’t out on Capitol Hill spitting at black members of Congress; what they want to do is spit at members of the Federal Reserve Board.’  And then Hank said, ‘Really?’  And I said, ‘Sure.  You didn’t know that?’  And then Hank said, ‘See?  Even those nut cases agree with the TEA Party!  I win!’  Then he gave me this look, as if that settled everything, and went back into the den to finish PhotoShopping Obama’s head made up like the Joker onto a picture of Hitler.” 
“Rose,” I opined, “if people like your husband don’t find jobs to keep them out of mischief pretty soon, this country is going to be in some serious trouble.”
“Yeah,” she sighed again, this time quite heavily, “I know.”

Now, let’s see what’s in that Quarterly Mailbag.

Informed sources report that Disney sent some goons to break my legs for what I said about Fess Parker, Miley Cyrus and the Jonas Brothers in my April 2 post about Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele.  It seems that the local constabulary noticed them cruising around my neighborhood, though, asking people for a Tom Collins, and told them to get lost.  After she heard about that, Veronica made a few phone calls to the Coast and those, in turn, called off the rabid dogs - or would that be rabid mice?  A lawyer who claims to represent the estate of Davy Crockett also threatened to sue me.  At least he used e-mail, the civilized alternative.  I referred him to my lawyer, who promptly made mincemeat out of him.  That’s right folks - you write something like Tom Collins’ World Wide Web Log, you better have a good lawyer, and guess what, I have two.  As a matter of fact, this being Washington, DC I live in, I’m buddies with more lawyers you can shake a stick at, and a few judges, too.  Aside from that, several folks wrote in with birthday wishes, and absolutely nobody wrote in to defend Michael Steele.  Looking back all of ninety days, I’d say that post was remarkably prescient, as this week Steele managed to enrage lots of Republicans for about the tenth time since then.  This week, he suggested that, for reasons known only to Michael Steele and God Almighty, our military presence in Afghanistan is “Obama’s war.”  But nobody’s sent me any e-mails about Steele in the April 2 post, actually, and I don’t expect any e-mails concerning Steele in reaction to this post, either.  The fact remains, however, that my Web stats for that post were through the roof, so even though John McCain wants Steele to quit, frankly, I hope Steele remains in his position, resolutely putting his foot in his mouth, until, as is obviously inevitable, he inadvertently chokes on his own ankle while he’s at it.
If you look at the responses from all regions of the Internet, then the sentiment concerning my post about Bob McDonnell, the governor of Virginia, the state where I live, declaring April to be ‘Confederate History and Heritage Month,’ it is, as Spiro Agnew would have put it, nolo contendere - my dear brother Rob Roy is absolutely correct, and Virginia, far from being for lovers, is most certainly for expletive deleted unprintable bodily orifices instead.  Looking at the e-mails that just came from IP addresses in the United States, however, it’s pretty a much a toss-up.  While it’s comforting to know that fifty one point six percent of Americans who wrote me agree with the rest of the world, and that is, technically speaking a majority, there’s still that pesky forty-eight point four percent who say I ought to be tarred at feathered, at the very least, for insulting the state that gave us George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Robert E. Lee and Abner Yokum.  My rebuttal is that, just as 3.2 percent beer is still beer, a 3.2 percent majority is still a majority. 
Since my post about political upheaval in the Godforsaken weed patch known as Kyrgyzstan, things there have continued to fester like a ripe carbuncle, and, similarly, e-mails about it have continued to trickle in like pus seeping out of one.  The general sentiments are either that Kurmanbek Bakiyev is a great national hero (nineteen percent), that Kurmanbek Bakiyev is a genocidal manic (sixty-three percent) or please, please Mr. Tom Collins, I beg you, help me get the hell out of Kyrgyzstan.  I have also received between one and three e-mails apiece from residents of (or persons claiming to hail from and/or represent in some manner) Venezuela, Burundi, Equatorial Guinea, Guinea, Haiti, Iran, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Chad, Iraq, Sudan, Myanmar, Afghanistan and Somalia, all of whom contested my assertion that those countries are more corrupt than Kyrgyzstan and complained bitterly that I am a woefully misinformed and grossly unfair person who has no right to compare their homeland/spouse’s homeland/relative’s homeland/client country/place they visited once/whatever to a pathetic dump like Kyrgyzstan.  To them I say - take your umbrage shove it where the sun don’t shine!  I certainly didn’t make those ratings up.  Somebody else did, and posted them on the Internet; and, as we all know, if it’s posted on the Internet, it must be true.  Take this blog, for example.  In addition, to date I have received nine irate messages from Peter Lorre fans.  To them, I say - get a life, already, he’s been dead since 1964.
My post which mentioned a piece of contemporary art consisting of a canvas that had been placed on the floor of a local French restaurant brought several very catty comments from the owners and chefs of other DC area French restaurants that were not selected as venues of the Muse.  The restaurant chosen, I was informed, uses canned hearts of palm in its salads, prepares its sauces and flambés with cheap domestic VS brandy, buys its pastries from a catering service located next door to a junk yard in Landover, and commits a number of other culinary faux pas, not the least of which is soaking the labels off of empty bottles of expensive wine and pasting them back on bottles of vins ordinaires, then palming them off as genuine selections from their wine list to rich, clueless, philistine rubes who couldn’t tell the difference if their lives depended on it, which is to say, about ninety percent of the people who dine at French restaurants in Washington.  I forwarded those to the artist, who responded by thanking me for the background notes and stated that this was exactly the sort of thing he had been hoping to get.  I also received an inquiry from the District Health Department.  It seems they frown on covering kitchen floors with canvas, which was apparently a problem with soul food eateries in Northeast DC back in the seventies.  I wrote back explaining that this case was different, because it was done for Art.  They responded with a request for Art’s full name and address, so they can cite him for city code violations.  The part of the post concerning what my dear brother-in-law Hank has been up to with the TEA Party gave me glimpse of what I might expect to receive from today’s post, which chronicles his continuing misadventures as a disgruntled patriot.  I got a passel of e-mails relating, in excruciating detail, what the real Americans are going to do to me when they take over.  Extremists in the TEA Party?  Perish the thought! 
My post on the G20 Summit held here in Washington drew a great deal of that type of informed and insightful economic comment typical of Glenn Beck and Bill O’Reilly.  For the record, despite my correspondents’ lengthy arguments to contrary, I remain unconvinced that things like illegal Mexican immigrants, NAFTA, black helicopters, the UN or the Bilderberg Group are the real reasons for this country’s current economic woes.  On the other hand, nobody wrote in to contest Greek First Economic Secretary Skatanafas Archimalakas’ explanation that the reason the Euro is in the sewer at the moment is his nation’s protracted e-mail relationship with Bonzo Bungholubongo, King of the Uougabuogaboos, native to the Central African Republic, who presently resides in Lagos, Nigeria.  As a matter of fact, I got several dozen e-mails from people who stated that is the most sensible explanation they have read to date.  I also received over a hundred more from people who, it seems, have also been corresponding with His Majesty King Bungholubongo, asking for my assistance in contacting him concerning their own, now rather severe financial predicaments.
Even I can scarcely believe I posted such an eerily prescient story about the BP oil spill all the way back on May 2.  Plenty of my readers wrote in to comment on that, and many of them also asked who I like in the 2010 World Series and Super Bowl XLV.  Most of them also had more than a few choice words for Bartleby, the BP lobbyist, too.  Well, it’s nice to see a few e-mails suggesting that somebody else besides me deserves to die like Benito Mussolini.
The subsequent post on May 8 about the biggest hiccup in the history of the Dow Jones Industrial Average, and my subsequent consultation with a long-time client from the Securities and Exchange Commission about it, brought howls of dismay from the provinces.  How dare I, they demanded, tolerate such incompetence, sloth and stupidity from someone who works for the United States Government?  To them I say, I’m a consultant, yes, which means I’m in the upper echelons of the business, but, in the final analysis, I’m still a federal contractor.  Tolerating the incompetence, sloth and stupidity of our clients is a significant part of what all federal contractors get paid to do.
My post about the Facebook privacy flap drew a chorus of “amen!” from all quarters, plus a number of creative suggestions about what should happen to Mark Zuckerberg.  Like I said about Mussolini, at least I’m not the only person the increasingly irascible and irate multitudes want to hang from a lamp post.  Not that I actually think they meant it, I’m sure they were just blowing off steam about having been raped (speaking metaphorically, of course) by a greedy, amoral, lying, thieving information technology monster.  Besides, if they want to provide Benito’s final joy ride to a greedy, amoral, lying, thieving information technology monster, they really ought to start with Bill Gates or Larry Ellison, anyway.  Speaking metaphorically, of course.
My May 22 post about a visit from one Jethro Bodine, of the Rand Paul for Senate Campaign, evoked a plethora of epistles offering lectures on the True Nature of Libertarianism and explaining to me how I have it all wrong.  To them I say, no, I don’t - a Libertarian America would look like a dystopian science fiction novel written by Robert A. Heinlein on ketamine.  That’s why Rand Paul is going to be a constitutional conservative from now on instead.
After reading what various Idahoans had to say pertaining to my post in which recounted a conversation with notable Republican insider Vaughn Ward, I have decided that, should I ever develop a yen to vacation in a sparsely populated backwater full of dangerous wild animals and ignorant hicks, I’ll take my chances in Montana instead.  I was anticipating some e-mails from angry Vaughn Ward supporters, but apparently, he either doesn’t have any, they don’t know how to read, or they can’t operate a computer well enough to access this blog.
What I had to say about Waggoner, the Republican Senate staffer, with regard to the nomination of Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court elicited the expected excoriations from those who consider her to be Satan Incarnate in This World.  To them I confidently reply, no, Dick Cheney holds that distinction at the moment, and probably will continue to do so until the Dark One summons him to slather at the loins of Ronald Reagan for all eternity.  (Judging from the news this week, however, that may not be very long.)  A number of folks also wrote in to offer helpful suggestions for avoiding people like Waggoner at cocktail parties.  Thanks for those - I’ll keep them in mind for later use when the Democrats crash and burn in November.  And speaking of Democrats, I was vilified by many lefties for offering Waggoner practical advice on how to revive a Republican hegemony.  My apologies, but despite what I write about the Republicans in this blog, they do, in fact, provide me with quite a bit of business.  And besides, without Republicans, who would the liberals have to blame for all this rampant evil?  Themselves, perhaps?
It seems every time I mention sushi in a post, I get a Niagara of e-mails from people either warning me about the dangers of consuming raw fish or telling me I’m gross for eating something icky like sushi and asking why don’t I eat normal food like pickled pigs feet, head cheese, tongue, deep-fried corn dogs or Big Macs?  The answer is, I do, actually; just not every day, okay?  Not every week or month, either, but sometimes.  Virtually everyone who wrote in about the subject of that post - which was the great Google debacle of June 10, 2010 - agreed with me that the geeks of Mountain View totally stepped in a big, steaming pile of it this time, and that such acts of frank idiocy should be reserved for Microsoft.  Strangely enough, though, in the interim, it seems that as of last week, Apple has now caught whatever Google had back in June.  I don’t know, maybe Google sneezed all over Apple’s lunch or something.  Anyway, now we have the iPhone 4, which seems to have spawned something much more virulent than what Google had - Antenna-Gate, anyone?  Watch this space for more absurd developments, I guess.
A flood of e-mails denouncing the incumbent Afghan government followed my June 20 post, where I told of yet another visit from Khus Dihugami Dadamizo, Special International Policy Emissary of His Excellency President Hamid Karzai for the Embassy of Afghanistan to the United States of America.  Unlike the first post concerning this gentleman, several of the responses to this latest one pointed out that Mr. Dadamizo’s name means naughty things in Pashto.  Gee whiz, now, folks, what can I do about how Afghanis name their children?  I also got plenty of stuff about lithium.  Did you know that an isotope of lithium is used to make hydrogen bombs?  That the soft drink Seven-Up at one time contained lithium?  That lithium will actually catch fire if you put it into water?  Uh, well, actually, I did.  I knew all of those things about lithium long before you wrote in to tell me about them, and anybody who bothers to read the Wikipedia entry on lithium knows them, too.  But thanks anyway, I know your hearts were in the right place.  Most of the folks who wrote in don’t think lithium should be illegal, by the way, and I agree.  Most of them also think the idea of making it illegal is indeed worthy of Paul Wolfowitz, and furthermore, agree with my assessment that nobody would have any problem believing he came up with it.      
Post on 6/26 about texting w/Gen McChrystal had many readers LOL.  2 bad he’s going deaf, i guess.  Very un4-2n8 #:>(

July 17th, 2010

Facebook Privacy Doubleplusungood, Citizen

This morning, Cerise and I slept late and had a scrumptious brunch (or so she told me).  But afterward, I had to head for the den and work.  It wasn’t so bad, really.  Brunch involved some lovely chilled strawberries and whole wheat bread, and before sitting down and pounding away at the world’s problems, I tossed the strawberry tops, some of that bread and pieces of sliced carrot into the back yard.  So, while toiling away, I got to watch the local forest critters enjoy a brunch of their own.  As the afternoon wore on, squirrels, raccoons, rabbits and deer came to visit; all amid a constant traffic of birds - jays, cardinals, catbirds, bluebirds, robins, doves, juncos, orioles, grackles, tufted titmice, ravens, yellow bellied sap suckers and two different species of woodpecker.  Funny thing about those woodpeckers.  In the midst of a reverie about why it turns out they are unexpectedly fond of carrots, my telephone rang.  It was my dear sister Rose’s husband’s brother’s wife, Shannon.

Shannon: Tom?  I’m not interrupting you, am I?
Tom: No, not really.  I’m just getting caught up on some stuff from the office.  What’s up?
Shannon: I have this problem, and I told Rose about it, and she suggested I talk to you.  She says you’re known all over Washington as the smartest person inside the Beltway.
Tom: Which is a lot like being the tallest building in Baltimore.
Shannon: Well, being from Chicago, I guess I know a tall building when I see one.
Tom: No doubt.
Shannon: What I called about is… um, my Facebook account.
Tom: Okay, what about it?
Shannon: I… I’ve been on Facebook for a couple of years, and I put all kinds of things in there - all about my favorite books, music and movies; my address and home phone number, my e-mail address, the clubs I belong to, my hobbies, my job, my education history, my birth date; all my children’s pictures…
Tom: You did?  All of your kids?
Shannon: Uh-huh.  I posted their names and birthdays along with their pictures.
Tom: Really?
Shannon: Yeah, I mean, it was very nice of Hank and Rose to invite us to move in when the bank foreclosed on the house, but you know, what with Hank looking so much like my husband, a lot of their kids look a lot like ours, so posting mine’s names and birthdays next to their pictures helped me keep them straight, you know…
Tom: Sure.  You’d see them every time you logged in to Facebook.
Shannon: Exactly.
Tom: What else have you got posted there?
Shannon: All my interests, activities, my political affiliation, the various causes I donate to… gee, nearly everything about me, I guess.  Facebook has all that information.
Tom: And more.
Shannon: What?
Tom: You are aware, I assume, that Facebook also collects information about you from other sources, such as newspapers, blogs and instant messaging services, in addition to what you tell them.
Shannon: They do?
Tom: Yes, and they gather it regardless of how much or how little you use Facebook.
Shannon: Oh, great.  So Facebook might know stuff about me that I don’t even know about myself.
Tom: Probably.
Shannon: So look, Tom, when I signed up for Facebook, I thought it was private, or at least I could say who got to read about which kids I take to ballet lessons and soccer games on what days of the week, and who would know how old I am, and that I like vampire novels, take tango lessons or… that I’m pregnant again.  I mean, why does the whole world need to know stuff like that, you know, about me, that is?
Tom: You mean, when you signed up, you didn’t read the Facebook Terms of Service Agreement?
Shannon: That thing?  Well, no, I just sort assumed that they were going to be honest and decent about stuff…
Tom: That, unfortunately, depends on your definition of “honest” and “decent.”  Their TOS says, and I quote, “By posting member content, to any part of the Web site, you automatically grant, and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant, to Facebook an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, world-wide license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, perform, display, reformat, translate, excerpt (in whole or in part) and distribute such information and content, and to prepare derivative works of, or incorporate into other works, such information and content, and to grant and authorize sublicenses of the foregoing.”
Shannon: Your photographic memory never ceases to amaze me.
Tom: Thanks, I’m flattered, but actually, I’m reading that from a hard copy I printed off on Tuesday.
Shannon: It was just lying there on your desk?
Tom: Yep.  A lot of people have been calling me about Facebook this week.
Shannon: So I’m not alone?
Tom: Not since Facebook went to the Open Graph paradigm without telling anyone.
Shannon: Is that what they call it, “Open Graph?”  What the hell does that mean?
Tom: It means that unless you explicitly tell Facebook otherwise, they act like they own everything about you and go around selling every scrap of it to the highest bidder.
Shannon: Sounds like they should have called it “User Rape” instead.
Tom: I certainly wouldn’t be surprised if that’s what they call it at Facebook.  Did you know that the Facebook Pulse feature collects statistical information on the habits, political views, cultural preferences and activities of Facebook members at every American college and university, which Facebook subsequently sells to various major corporations?  So, for example, even if, in the unlikely case a college student doesn’t have a Facebook page…
Shannon: A college student without a Facebook page?  Is there such a thing?
Tom: Our nephew Hank Jr. doesn’t have one.
Shannon: He doesn’t?
Tom: Says he’s got privacy issues with Facebook.
Shannon: That Junior, I always did figure he’s smarter than the average bear.
Tom: Me, too.  But I bet you’ve probably posted somewhere on your Facebook account that somebody named Henry Palikowski, Jr. is attending Brown University studying fine arts, haven’t you?
Shannon: Uh… yeah, as a matter of fact, I have.
Tom: And there you go - Facebook sells the fact that he’s attending Brown to marketers.  Later on, that information, which Facebook is, right now, selling to Junior’s prospective employers and lenders, not to mention various corporations with sundry social and political agendas, will be used to make crucial future decisions about him, based on a statistical model of the Brown University graduate compiled by Facebook Pulse.
Shannon: Oh, Christ!  So Junior can’t escape Facebook, even if he never joined!
Tom: Not if he’s pursuing a higher education in the United States, that’s for sure. 
Shannon: Oh, I’m so sorry.  Anyway, I recently found out that when I do stuff and post about it on Facebook, my name and the fact that I did it show up on Facebook advertisements that other people see - I’m talking about total strangers here, Tom.
Tom: That’s certainly consistent with general Facebook policies.  Like the one where entering personal information on Facebook automatically makes it available to users on other Web sites, like Yelp and Pandora.  What’s more, your Facebook friends can share your personal data with anyone, and Facebook doesn’t tell you about it.  You, ah, visit Facebook a lot, then?
Shannon: Well, yes, I suppose so.
Tom: About how often do you update your status?
Shannon: I… ah, oh, I don’t know… once an hour or so.
Tom: I see.  Ever wanted to access Facebook so bad you did it on your mobile phone?
Shannon: Why, sure, of course.  Doesn’t everybody do that?
Tom: Not really.  What apps do you have on your Facebook profile page?
Shannon: Uh, ah, let me see here… I’ve got… FriendHug, Stats About Me, Zombie, Texas HoldEm, Scramble, Scrabble, Farmville, Birthday Calendar, Birthday Cards, Caricature, Cafe World, Marketplace, TopFriends, IQ Test, Daily Horoscope, The Fortune Teller, Give Hearts, My Family, Family Tree, Funny Photos, Profile Song, Farkle, Uno, Drinks, Where I’ve Been, SuperPoke, LifeBox, Collect Roses, Picknic Photo… and… God Wants You to Know.
Tom: Shannon?
Shannon: Yes?
Tom: I think God wants you to know you need to quit Facebook.
Shannon: Well, damn it, Tom, that’s why I’m talking to you!
Tom: You mean, you want to quit Facebook?
Shannon: I don’t know, maybe not quit.  Can’t I just fix Facebook so that only the people I want to see everything about my personal life can see it?
Tom: Theoretically, yes, but in reality, it’s about as easy as beating a computer grand master program at chess.
Shannon: What do you mean?
Tom: First of all, if a person starts a new Facebook account today and just accepts the existing defaults, then their life will be an open Facebook to the world.  True, on May fourteenth, they added some opt-out controls and updated the Facebook privacy policy.  But now, the current updated Facebook privacy policy is longer than the US Constitution.  If you read it carefully, however, you will see that it gives third party Web sites access to Facebook users’ personal data.  A user who wants complete privacy must click through over fifty privacy controls and correctly choose from more than one hundred and fifty options.
Shannon: I know.  I’ve spent hours trying to make it so Facebook will only display my likes and interest data to my Facebook friends.  But I can’t do it.  No matter what I try, I still get e-mails and instant messages from strangers referencing information on Facebook that I thought I’d made private.
Tom: That’s because you joined Facebook before the new privacy policy and privacy interface were deployed.
Shannon: What - you mean Facebook has grandfathered me into their user rape program?
Tom: I suppose you could put it that way.  Have you heard that users can now also configure Facebook to notify them when a computer or mobile device other than those they specify through a registration process accesses their Facebook data?  In addition, you can arrange for Facebook to challenge users of unregistered devices with security questions before granting access to your profile page, you know.
Shannon: Fat lot of good that feature’s going to do me if everybody can still see all my personal information without visiting my profile page!
Tom: I don’t know, maybe Facebook will address that problem sometime soon.  Let’s hope they do, I guess.
Shannon: I don’t get it, Tom!  Why the hell don’t they default everything to the highest privacy settings and then let people opt-in for the other stuff?
Tom: Oh, you mean, such as, “Would you like Facebook to start selling your personal information to third parties and not give you a cent for it?”  Come on, Shannon, what person in their right mind would make a conscious decision to opt-in for all the abuse Facebook has surreptitiously heaped on them all this time?
Shannon: But how can they justify behaving like that?  It stinks out loud in three-dimensional high-definition Technicolor!
Tom: Facebook’s official take on that is, you opted in for all that information sharing when you chose to join Facebook.  Like they say, and I quote, “Everything is opt-in on Facebook. Participating in the service is a choice.”
Shannon: So any information I add, like photos or status updates or my “Likes” - Facebook says those are all opt-in?  They say I elected to have no privacy at all when I signed up for Facebook?
Tom: According to them, everything you put on your Facebook pages is automatically shared with “Everyone” by default; unless you go through that maze of buttons and options and manage to configure Facebook correctly to prevent it.
Shannon: Which nobody can do.
Tom: Okay, yeah, hardly anybody, anyway.
Shannon: Man, this really burns me up!
Tom: Well, you’re definitely not alone.  Matt Cutts at Google and Peter Rojas at Engadget have both deactivated their Facebook accounts and called press conferences to announce doing so.  The phrase “How do I delete my Facebook account?” is in the top twenty Google search phrases at the moment, and getting out of Facebook alive has been the hottest subject on Twitter for the last three days.  Congress is convening hearings on Facebook, the FTC is investigating Facebook, and over in the European Union, the Article 29 Working Party has written Facebook a very, very nasty letter.  Let’ see, I think I have a copy here somewhere, oh, yeah, here it is: “It is unacceptable that the company fundamentally changed the default settings on its social-networking platform to the detriment of a user.  Furthermore, it is particularly outrageous that Facebook made these changes only days after the company and other social networking site providers participated at a hearing during the Article 29 Working Party’s plenary meeting…  Users who accepted Facebook’s new defaults found that much more of their information was available to everyone or to members of very large networks than before.  They found that details of their family, relationships and employer were available to the whole Internet.  Accepting Facebook’s changes would also make their birthdays and religious views available to any Facebook user who is a friend with one of their friends, and their phone numbers, physical addresses and e-mail addresses available to all their friends.”  Then there’s this comment from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, who say that Facebook has created, and I quote, “…new and serious privacy problems… clearly intended to push Facebook users to publicly share even more information than before,” and, “Even worse, the recent changes will actually reduce the amount of control that users have over some of their personal data.”  Plus, there’s the Electronic Privacy Information Center, which was the organization that filed the first complaint about Facebook with the FTC, who say, and again, I quote: “These changes violate user expectations, diminish user privacy, and contradict Facebook’s own representations and constitute unfair and deceptive trade practices.”  Also, there is now a Quit Face Book Day, May thirty-first, 2010, and a new Web site dedicated to it at http://www.quitfacebookday.com which started today, on the morning of May fifteenth.  There’s also a Facebook Protest site, at http://facebookprotest.com  that is organizing a protest for D-Day, June sixth.  So, all in all, I’d say you’ve got plenty of good company here, and, as we all know, misery loves company.  But tell me, Shannon; seriously, aside from just being annoying, what has little old Facebook done to you that’s so bad and awful, anyhow?
Shannon: Okay, it’s like this - I wrote on Facebook about how drunk everybody got at a sister’s wedding reception recently, and posted what I thought was a pretty funny video of one of our brothers making out with one of our cousins on the dance floor.  Now the cousin’s husband has filed for divorce, and our brother, who’s married himself, you see, and a major in the Air Force, is facing a court martial.  All that because other people on  Facebook who I never even heard of told our cousin’s husband and our brother’s commanding officer where to see the two of them…  well, I suppose I should have cut that part at the end, but it’s not like anybody was holding a gun to their heads, making him put his… well, anyway, my cousin only got married two months ago.  If she had invited me to their wedding, like she should have, then I would have known!  And why did my brother have to wear his dress uniform to the wedding in the first place?”
Tom: My take on that is, these days, a person should never do anything they wouldn’t like to see in an Internet video with ten million views.
Shannon: That’s a very good point, I guess, Tom.  Then, there was this post I did about how shocked and disappointed I was when our priest caught one of the ushers stealing from the collection plate at church.
Tom: What happened?
Shannon: Somebody on Facebook who knows the usher told him about what I said, and now he’s suing me for libel.
Tom: You’re kidding!
Shannon: My lawyer says he doesn’t have a case, because libel has to be something that isn’t true, and the guy did really get caught stealing from the collection plate, after all, but my lawyer also says it’s going to be a lot cheaper to settle with him out of court.  And I guess that’s kind of relative, because it’s already cost us nearly five grand to deal with that guy.
Tom: Seeing how things are with you folks out there in Fairfax, that’s pretty inconvenient, what with Hank being out of a job all these months now, leaving only three people bringing home paychecks.
Shannon: Make that two.
Tom: Did your husband lose his job, then?
Shannon: No, I did.  I posted about my boss on Facebook.  I said, “He’s the kind of boob that only wants to hear good news and craps all over anybody who dares tell him the truth.”
Tom: Is that all?
Shannon: Not exactly.  I posted a few quotes of him being a big, silly windbag, too: ”Our financials turnaround is the most impertinent and overweening issue facing us;” and “We’re limited time-wise, so I’m just going to touch on a few of the most salacious points;” and, “For any responsible corporate officer, the question of their integrity is paramour.”
Tom: No sense of humor, I take it?
Shannon: I also posted that he’s such an insufferable jerk, I was looking for another job.
Tom: And so someone told him where to find your Facebook posts, he read them and then fired you?
Shannon: That’s what he said, yeah.
Tom: Oh, that’s right - you work in Virginia, don’t you?
Shannon: The company’s headquartered there, too.  So there’s nothing I can do about it - Virginia’s a right-to-work state and all.
Tom: My sympathies on all counts there, Shannon.  Where do we go from here?
Shannon: I… I guess… I guess I want to quit Facebook.
Tom: Got a pen and paper?
Shannon: I have my new iPad.
Tom: Okay, then, listen up - the first thing you need to realize is that Facebook has made sure your account settings don’t have any option to permanently delete anything.  All you can do within your account settings is deactivate your account.  That means everything is saved for the day when Facebook thinks you will lose all your will power and come crawling back.  So, to find the delete button you have to go into the Help Center and search for “delete account.”  And forget about trying to find it with the usual Facebook search utility, because they’ve hidden it from that.  The Help Center search brings you to the FAQs, and Frequently Asked Question Five is “I want to permanently delete my account.  How do I delete my account?”  They’ve hidden a link inside the answer.  You have to click on that link to get to the page where you can delete your account.  Once you get there, you open the Delete My Account form and click Submit.  That will activate another window, which warns you that you’re about to delete your account.   You will have to correctly respond to a CAPTCHA display to continue.  If you get that far, then they show you another window which tells you that your account is now currently deactivated, but will not actually be deleted for fourteen days.  Then you will get an e-mail telling you the same thing, and if you dare log back in to Facebook before those two weeks are up, you’re back in Facebook again.  Finally, that e-mail has a link in it that will instantly restore your account if you click on it.
Shannon: Jesus, Mary and Joseph.  You’re kidding.
Tom: Nope.
Shannon: What kind of twisted mind comes up with demented things like Facebook privacy policy, anyway?
Tom: Mark Zuckerberg started a prototype of Facebook at college by stealing university photo IDs off the campus computer network and using them to construct an illegal student directory.  He is also currently being sued for ripping off the Facebook concept from two upperclassmen at the university from which he dropped out.
Shannon: Which was?
Tom: Harvard.
Shannon: You mean, this guy Zuckerberg started out by getting a bunch of students at Harvard to give him all their personal information so he could use it?
Tom: Yep.  Later on, he called them “a bunch of dumb [expletive].”
Shannon: “Dumb [expletive]?”
Tom: Right.  And if that’s what he thought of his classmates at Harvard, you can imagine his opinion concerning the rest of us.

May 15th, 2010