On the 8 Spot

I’ve always tried to walk my own path, this makes me seem weird to most people. I remember reading a phrase that stuck to me “The Age of Distraction”.  We are living in the age of distraction, what is it? Let’s see, watch revolutioinary road, and remember the scene between leo , kate and michael shannon. It was the Hopeless Emptiness Scene. And I would be lying if I sad that I am probably in that mobious strip trying to find my way out. Mobious strip and revolutionary road, seems quite apt. IN my defense at least I know I am in a mobius strip like road and I must be revolutionary enough to escape. (Damn hate it when I can’t seem to let a couple of words go). I try to fight , I don’t know if I am winning, I hope I do! I hope you do to!

When I think about all the hours I wasted this past year on Facebook, and imagine the good I could have done instead, it depresses me. Instead of scouring my friends’ friends’ photos for other possible friends, I could have been raising money for Darfur relief, helping out at the local animal shelter or delivering food to the homeless. It depresses me even more to know that I would never have done any of those things, even with all those extra hours.<Emphasis Mine>

Why I’m Quitting Facebook | Newsweek Culture | Newsweek.com.

Being on Facebook is like volunteering to receive spam, and the more successful you are at finding friends, the more spam you get! In the end, Facebook is really the emptiest, loneliest place on the whole World Wide Web

Why I’m Quitting Facebook | Newsweek Culture | Newsweek.com.

Damn I haven’t read this part when I liked to the first page, seems we were thinking the sme thing!

Law professor Charles Nesson and John Palfrey, director of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society (which Nesson co-founded), made their position clear. “Recently, the president of the Recording Industry Association of America, Cary Sherman, wrote to Harvard to challenge the university administration to stop acting as a ‘passive conduit’ for students downloading music,” they wrote in 2007. “We agree. Harvard and the 22 universities to which the RIAA has sent ‘pre-litigation notices’ ought to take strong, direct action… and tell the RIAA to take a hike.”

Those notices were an attempt by the RIAA to get schools involved in the litigation process. Universities would, in theory, pass RIAA settlement letters on to students after being provided with an IP address suspected of illicit file-sharing. The schools would be “doing their part,” while the recording industry got its missives delivered without needing to bother with courts and judges and subpoenas.

“Universities should have no part in this extraordinary process,” wrote Nesson and Palfrey. “The RIAA’s charter is to promote the financial interests of its corporate members—even if that means preserving an obsolete business model for its members. The university’s charter is quite different… The university strives to create knowledge, to open the minds of students to that knowledge, and to enable students to take best advantage of their educational opportunities. The university has no legal obligation to deliver the RIAA’s messages. It should do so only if it believes that’s consonant with the university’s mission.”

It wasn’t quite a declaration of war, but it did amount to an Army unit trotting out a massive howitzer, oiling it up, and firing off some test shots. Powerful interests at Harvard Law were displeased enough by the RIAA actions to speak out, but they weren’t yet ready to play an active role.

That is, until Boston University graduate student Joel Tenenbaum got in touch with Nesson in 2008. Nesson took the case, acting as Tenenbaum’s attorney, but he outsourced the work of research, strategy, and brief writing to a set of eager Harvard Law students. The students would quickly mount an ambitious defense, not just of Joel Tenenbaum, but of the claim that the RIAA legal campaign was unconstitutionally excessive and improper. Armed with a law library, Twitter, a Web site, and caffeine, the students have already made sure that the upcoming Tenenbaum trial will eclipse the Minnesota Jammie Thomas case for sheer spectacle.<Emphasis Mine>

And, if things go their way, the world will get the chance to see it all live on the Web.

How Harvard Law threw down the gauntlet to the RIAA – Ars Technica.

I’m starting my own meme. I’ll call this the “I wish I was still living in the past-Not” or “Things were better then-Not” meme!

Today, fewer than half of all high school students have had sex: 47.8 percent as of 2007, according to the National Youth Risk Behavior Survey, down from 54.1 percent in 1991.

A less recent report suggests that teenagers are also waiting longer to have sex than they did in the past. A 2002 report from the Department of Health and Human Services found that 30 percent of 15- to 17-year-old girls had experienced sex, down from 38 percent in 1995. During the same period, the percentage of sexually experienced boys in that age group dropped to 31 percent from 43 percent.

The rates also went down among younger teenagers. In 1995, about 20 percent said they had had sex before age 15, but by 2002 those numbers had dropped to 13 percent of girls and 15 percent of boys.

“There’s no doubt that the public perception is that things are getting worse, and that kids are having sex younger and are much wilder than they ever were,” said Kathleen A. Bogle, an assistant professor of sociology and criminal justice at La Salle University. “But when you look at the data, that’s not the case.”

Well – The Myth of Rampant Teenage Promiscuity – NYTimes.com.

Got the previous picture from mattew yglessias.

I’ve been battling weight problems all my life, I am not making excuses, Whatever I am before , now and what I will become is in my delusion to be because of the choices I make. As matt said I tend to focus myslef in the things that I can control, this is abias I must live with because there is no reason to worry myslef with the things I have no control over. I think what  I have to do is to reevaluate often if the things I previously thought to be beyond my control are now well within it!