While I wholeheartedly agree with your feelings toward social media, Facebook is not culpable here. If this young woman had gone and plastered her silly comment on a billboard, would the billboard be at fault? Jury rules exist for the citizens' protection and should be enforced judiciously. This girl acted stupidly. The medium transmitting that stupidity had nothing to do with the infraction itself.

Sitting just hurts.

I'm young and in good health, so I haven't given much thought to the long term health implications of too much sitting. What I can anecdotally report is that the more time I spend in a chair, the worse I feel. The relationship is almost linear. Not coincidentally, the realization didn't dawn on me until after I graduated from college and began working full time. Before graduation, I spent a lot of time on my feet walking to and from class and to work, since I had the good fortune to have an internship within walking distance of my college campus. This was only eight months ago, but the change in my energy level is very discernible. I can only imagine how pronounced the effect would be when magnified over the course of many years.

But that's just the job. I imagine that for most of the Slashdot audience, sitting at work is often unavoidable, unless you can afford a nice walkstation setup. What about when you're not actually at your desk, though? Usually, you're still sitting, even if you're going somewhere.

The biggest sitting problem (for Americans, at least) outside of work is that our cities, our jobs, and even our recreation is not really intended for pedestrians. I love to walk, but many places and jobs are not pedestrian-friendly. I have so grown to loathe driving that my long term plans include moving to a city where it's easier to get places by walking or riding a bike, possibly for this reason alone. Currently I live in the Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex, which I feel is one of the least walkable areas on the planet (though there are notable neighborhoods that provide exceptions). The metropolitan area has suffered badly from the urban sprawl blight, so if you're lucky enough to live with your romantic partner, chances are, at least one of you is going to have to deal with a commute. The course of my day starts off with a thirty minute drive, followed by sitting on my tush for the subsequent eight hours. Then I drive another forty-five minutes home. Unless I then drive to the nearest gym, which, due to the sprawl here, is likely to be more than six miles away, I'm pretty much stuck indoors again. Side note: a 117 degree heat index does not a happy human make. I have seen Texans drive to their mail box.

The economic forces that drive sprawl really kill the cores of cities and make life miserable for commuters. My partner is burgeoning traffic engineer, and he's taught me some of the things that walkability projects can do to improve life for both residents and businesses in a city. Suburban Nation is an excellent read on the subject. You can also check out Walkscore to see how your neighborhood ranks. It's pretty neat stuff, and I wish more people would care about this issue.

I agree that people need to be more concerned about privacy, but I don't think believe that the situation is without hope. My admittedly anecdotal experience leaves me with the impression that people are slowly becoming aware of the potential consequences of freely sharing information on public social networking sites. The easiest way to raise awareness with individual people, I've found, is to simply point to one of the plentiful news stories detailing a case where some individual was passed over for a job opportunity because of some mostly innocuous posting on Facebook or MySpace.

That strategy may not work with teenagers who have little yet to lose, but it usually makes their elders think twice about what they publish online.

I have attempted to do as you suggest, but I'm afraid I've been unable to locate either feces of meme or a perforated pedophile. Nevertheless, I appreciate your advice.

I prefer aardvarks.

Misleading headline is misleading. These public profiles haven't been leaked. They've simply been aggregated.

Your post makes me think of the calorie companies in Bacigalupi's The Windup Girl. Amongst other things, the book rather chillingly portrays the hypothetical worst-case consequences of granting corporations complete control over the reproductive capacities of the human food supply.

Or maybe you're one of them, and the above comment is just a clever way to direct attention away from yourself. But what if, with this comment, I'm trying to achieve the same thing?

I... I just don't know anymore.

As an incorrigible cocksucking queer sumbitch myself, I would like to take this opportunity to offer to you my sincerest gratitude for your honesty. My partner and I have been denied housing by "polite" people here in Texas who are always be forced to go far out of their way to find some valid excuse to support their obviously bogus decision. Everyone in the room knows the truth, but for some reason, the mores of politeness demand that no one verbally acknowledge it.

Fuck that. It's much better when people just come out and say what they believe. I'm old enough and wise enough now that I truly don't give a shit what people think of me, but they should at least have the courage not to hide their feelings behind a veneer of "politeness." I can respect them for that.

Read the PDF that is linked in the article. At no point does it advocate hiring international students over United States citizens. The document does mention that a company can conceivably save money since the majority of these students are exempt from Medicare and FICA tax requirements. Furthermore, the document is published by the university's international services department. It is their purpose to try to get the best deal for international students.

This article is trolling. Move on.

I'm a gay guy, and the underfed look is not a form of beauty I'd recommend for anybody. Please don't think that the flamboyant assclowns who go around spouting nonsense about the latest fad starvation diet represent all of us.

I suspect that Netflix is the driving force behind this tiered plan: Time Warner wants you to use their on demand service, not Netflix Instant.

Which is why we shouldn't allow one of the nation's largest media conglomerates to operate one of the nation's largest content delivery services.

At the very least, these kids will have learned not to blindly trust authority. Most of my friends had more prosperous childhoods than did I, and it is amazing to me how many of them honestly believe that all policemen are incorruptible, that the justice system is never wrong, and that large corporations always have the peoples' welfare at heart.

That said, these kids have been used as cash cows. Their sentences should be nulled and their records cleared. The state will probably try to avoid it, though, since re-trying them would cost a lot of money. Gotta build those football stadiums, ya know.

So if I don't see very well and at the end of a long day I prefer listening rather than reading, I guess I'm fucked?

The Author's Guild can bite me.

While he's not a deity, I'd say Warren Buffet comes pretty close to what you describe. I say this out of observation of the fact that his investments tend to do much better than the overall market even in hard financial times. For myself, I know precisely jack about the economy.