1. Do You Have A Facebook Page?

2. How Often Do You Check it? (or do you just leave it on all the time?)

3. Do you accept friend requests from anyone who asks?

4. What are your criteria for accepting friend requests?

5. What is your facebook philosophy?

6. Why are you on facebook?

7. Do you post tons of pictures, and status updates and other stuff about yourself or do you just kind of lurk and watch what everyone else does?

8. Do you have facebook friends that you don't actually know in real life?

9. Has facebook helped you find old friends?

10. Have people found you through facebook that you wish hadn't?

11. Do you understand this article? Can you explain it to me?

the company announced today that it has begun making status messages, photos and videos visible to the public at large by default instead of being visible only to a user's approved friends.

12. Does the above article concern you?

13. What else can you tell me about your facebook experience, habits and philosophy?

Andrew turned me on to a few websites that allow you to download free books.

Does anyone else out there know of any awesome free web resources?

I just noticed an annual subscription to the online Oxford English Dictionary is a hefty $295.

So here's my question, besides domain names, do any of you guys out there subscribe to any online service that you have to pay for? If so, how much are you paying for it and what benefit is it to you?

Just curious.

I know I've posted on this before, but I just don't understand why eBay now disallows sellers leaving negative feedback for buyers. Why did they do that?

Ever since they discontinued that ability, I've had more non-payers than I ever had in the year prior.

I've been selling stuff on eBay for almost a year, and I'm constantly surprised at the rudeness and presumptuousness (and cluelessness) of people. I'm sort of hacked that eBay doesn't allow Sellers to leave negative feedback on Buyers any more, because I've had my share of irate morons I'd love to warn people about.

Just now I got a message from a buyer whose auction closed on Sunday. He wanted to know why he hadn't received his CD yet.

I politely informed him that the post office is not open on Sundays. Or on Labor Day. And that I shipped his CD to him this morning.

I wish I could say this was the lamest message I've gotten.

My mother-in-law is shopping for a car, and she's been approached with this scam on numerous occasions so far:

Hi,
I'm Calvin Smith, you inquired about my 2005 Honda Civic EX Coupe Special Edition (VIN: 1HGEM22985L071701).
I apologize for the delay, I'm in the military and now I am in United Kingdom and that's why I couldn't reply in time. If you are still interested in buying it, I'm asking $5,350. It has a clean title, very well maintained, always garage kept, no rust, excellent condition, runs and sounds 100% perfect with no leaks or noises. All power and optional equipments are working perfect. I have to sell this car as fast as I can because in three weeks I will be in Iraq and I think I'll stay there for a while that's why I'm selling it so cheap. I intend to buy a new car when I'll get back home. If you want to buy the car, I can ship for free within US with one of our military airplanes so you don't have to worry about the distance. If you are interested we can use a third party escrow broker, Moneybookers (http://www.moneybookers.com/app/help.pl?s=escrow), to secure the transaction and to handle this whole process for us. Using a reputable E-Commerce third party escrow company will secure the transaction and you will receive the car before I'll get paid and of course I'm also covered because the funds will be kept safety into the escrow account. This is the best way for me even if I'll have to pay some extra money for their services. I'll cover the broker's fee and like I've explained, the shipping will be free because I can use one of our airplanes here and I don't have to pay anything. Let me know if you are interested. You can see some pics on the following link from my personal page: http://picasaweb.google.com/csmth7/CivicEX
You'll love the car, I can guarantee you that!

The funny thing is she's getting all of these scam messages from people who advertise in The Houston Chronicle. Anyway, here's a link that talks about the scam.

Anybody have connectivity issues with AT&T/Bellsouth internet service?

We switched from Comcast last year b/c of frequent TV and internet outages, but our AT&T internet connection is spotty. It comes in and out throughout the day, usually about 3-5 times a day, sometimes more or less, usually only lasting a few seconds, but sometimes several minutes.

Is this routine? Just part of internet service?

I don't know b/c we were late adopters to high speed, only ditching dial-up for Comcast 2 years ago. But I was so sick of not having connectivity I switched. Now I'm wondering if this is just something everyone has to deal with.

I called to have a technician come out but the barely-speaks-English man with the unlikely name of "Huey" said if it turned out not to be a problem connected to the AT&T service or device, they'd charge $80.
That's a gamble I don't want to take without more info.

Any insight?

The New York Times has an interesting piece on Internet reading vs. traditional book reading.

Books are not Nadia Konyk’s thing. Her mother, hoping to entice her, brings them home from the library, but Nadia rarely shows an interest.

Instead, like so many other teenagers, Nadia, 15, is addicted to the Internet. She regularly spends at least six hours a day in front of the computer here in this suburb southwest of Cleveland.

At least six hours! That's unfathomable! Anyway, the article says that at least the Internet forces kids to read and write while they're wasting time, instead of mindlessly watching TV. I guess that's good. To quote Uncle Rico from Napoleon Dynamite, "You may as well do something while you're doing nothing."

The following was written a little bit before blogs were invented. But I think these words apply quite well to how we should conduct ourselves when discussing things under "comments". Please read the following as applying directly to how we talk to each other online:

We no more give honors to fools than pray for snow in summer or rain during harvest.

You have as little to fear from an undeserved curse as from the dart of a wren or the swoop of a swallow.

A whip for the racehorse, a tiller for the sailboat— and a stick for the back of fools!

Don't respond to the stupidity of a fool; you'll only look foolish yourself.

Answer a fool in simple terms so he doesn't get a swelled head.

You're only asking for trouble when you send a message by a fool.

A proverb quoted by fools is limp as a wet noodle.

Putting a fool in a place of honor is like setting a mud brick on a marble column.

To ask a moron to quote a proverb is like putting a scalpel in the hands of a drunk.

As a dog eats its own vomit, so fools recycle silliness.

See that man who thinks he's so smart? You can expect far more from a fool than from him.

Like Glaze on Cracked Pottery, Dreamers fantasize their self-importance; they think they are smarter than a whole college faculty.

You grab a mad dog by the ears when you butt into a quarrel that's none of your business.

People who shrug off deliberate deceptions, saying, "I didn't mean it, I was only joking," are worse than careless campers who walk away from smoldering campfires.

When you run out of wood, the fire goes out; when the gossip ends, the quarrel dies down.

A quarrelsome person in a dispute is like kerosene thrown on a fire.

Listening to gossip is like eating cheap candy; do you want junk like that in your belly?

Smooth talk from an evil heart is like glaze on cracked pottery.

Your enemy shakes hands and greets you like an old friend, all the while conniving against you. When he speaks warmly to you, don't believe him for a minute; he's just waiting for the chance to rip you off. No matter how cunningly he conceals his malice, eventually his evil will be exposed in public.

Malice backfires; spite boomerangs.

Liars hate their victims; flatterers sabotage trust.

The above was written by Solomon and translated by Eugene Peterson. (Proverbs 26)

Wise advice for bloggers, eh?

E-mail forwards are the bane of my existence. Urban legends, fearmongering about missing children and Democratic politicians who want to eat them, political rabble rousing, mushy stories about little kids in Sunday School or grandfathers and ice cream cones, jingoistic screeds masquerading as patriotism, etc etc etc.
I hatessss them, my preciousss. And I always feel all Gollumy when I ask a relative or friend to:
a) not include me in their send to file for such things
b) at the very least place me in the BCC section of their e-mail's "To" field so all the hundreds of people they know but I don't won't have my e-mail address, or
c) do some quick research and learn that the story they're forwarding is not true.

I can kinda-sorta understand the sentiment that provokes one to pass these things along.
But for the life of me I cannot put myself in the brainpattern of the person who falsifies details or begins the lie. What's the compulsion?

Check this out.
This ginormous mountain lion was struck by a car in Arizona. The good folks at Snopes document several variations of the email forward in which people change the details to say the mountain lion was found in Arkansas, Virginia, etc.

Why? What's the point?
What rational person takes an e-mail and purposefully changes the place names so as to mislead others for something so stupid?
I get white lies, I get fudging details on "big fish" stories, I get lying for profit . . . I don't get the person who changes "in Tempe between 1st and 3rd Avenue" to "in Jacksonville between 4th and 5th Street."

According to The Mechanical Contrivium: Jared Wilson

1. The Aztec Indians of Mexico believed Jared Wilson would protect them from physical harm, and so warriors used him to decorate their battle shields.
2. In his entire life, Jared Wilson will produce only a twelfth of a teaspoon of honey.
3. Reindeer like to eat Jared Wilson!
4. Carnivorous animals will not eat another animal that has been hit by Jared Wilson.
5. The Jared Wilson-fighting market in the Philippines is huge - several thousand Jared Wilson-fights take place there every day.
6. The horns of Jared Wilson are made entirely from hair.
7. The moon is 400 times closer to the Earth than Jared Wilson, and 400 times smaller!
8. The international dialling code for Jared Wilson is 672.
9. Ninety-six percent of all candles sold are purchased by Jared Wilson!
10. Bananas don't grow on trees - they grow on Jared Wilson!

#'s 1 and 5 -- Total awesomeness.

#9 -- Awww, yeah. Ninety-six percent of all Barry White CD's too.

You try it.

I get the shaft from eBay buyers more often than I like. I think it sucks that eBay has removed the capability to leave negative feedback about buyers. How do you warn other sellers to beware non-payers or difficult customers?

Someone got to Gospel-Driven Church today using the Google search phrase antichrist divorced.

Is there actually a belief of some church or tradition out there that talks about the antichrist being a divorcee? Or some Scripture reference I'm forgetting that says divorce is of the antichrist or something?

Of course, I am very delighted to know my blog turned up #1 in the search results, thanks to this post: The Antichrist Gets Divorced

(The surfer might have actually been looking for the very info I was highlighting in that post. It just seemed weird to see it as a search phrase.)

This is going to be the best Jesus book ever. Not only do I get to footnote scholarly discussions of the Gospels' similarity to ancient Graeco-Roman biography, I get to footnote stuff like this.

As seen on xkcd:

As some of you may recall, in June I posted a Thinklings interview with author and chess historian, J.C. Hallman.

Hallman is the author of two books: The Chess Artist and The Devil is a Gentleman.

If you'd like to learn more about Hallman's writings, visit his website -- jchallman.com.

Incidentally, if you go to his site, you can see that he linked back to his Thinklings interview. Here's a piece of that interview:

Both of your published books -- The Chess Artist and The Devil Is a Gentleman -- have a religious theme to them. What's your concept of religion in the world? Did you grow up in a religious environment?

Hallman: I started out Catholic but rejected it very early. Like when I was ten. As to my conception of religion in the world, it's something I articulated more in the second book, in which I explored a variety of religious movements, taking along with me the thinking of William James as a kind of guiding spirit. What I came up with, in terms of the big picture of religion, is that consciousness, human consciousness, comes with a significant attendant cosmological curiosity. That is, when we become conscious as people, we begin to get curious about big questions: why am I here, what is the nature of the universe, and so forth. All this is another way of saying that the side effect of sentience is a god-shaped hole in our psyches. Now that's Sartre (I think), but what James might add to it is that failing to satisfy that curiosity can result in a kind of profound sadness, even the tendency to reject life. So people are hardwired to find some set of answers that satisfies that cosmological curiosity. Fills the god-shaped hole. Very often that set of answers is God, but it can just as well be science's version of creation, the Big Bang (which some string theorists describe as quaint, it's so out of date), or organized Atheism, or Christianity, or Satanism, or chess, or literature, or whatever else satisfies you in terms of your personal quandary about the basic questions and mysteries of life. This is basically what we mean when we turn religion into an adverb and note that someone pursues whatever they pursue "religiously."

Click here to read the entire interview.

When you sign up for a Youtube account, you have to enter the characters depicted in one of those oddly distorted images. There's an out for those who can't perform that task for whatever reason. The link to that secondary option, right below the image, is marked: "Can't Read?"

Tony Morgan asks if podcasting is dead.

Interesting points to consider.

I was a latecomer to the podcast phenomenon (as I am with nearly all new technologies and innovations), and I still am not the podcast fiend some of my friends are.

I subscribe to probably 10 podcasts, but only listen to 1 or 2 a week. They are mainly sermon podcasts.

What is your subscription to listening ratio?

I'm in serious need of some new, pithy sites to add to my web-reading.

Not blogs. I read too many of those.

But are there any good sites out there that are somewhat offbeat, and that have new content daily, that you can recommend?

Currently I'm pretty stuck. I read Thinklings, of course, and the Bloogroll Posts link over at Out of the Bloo (which is a good aggregator of the latest writings by the posters in my Bloogroll). I'll also check out National Review online on occasion. Once Lost starts up, I'm sure I'll be reading forums and stuff.

But until then, I'm a bit bored with my web routines.

Let me know if there's a cool site or two out there that you can recommend.

Also, appropos of nothing, you should definitely check out this video. This is beautiful and simply amazing (thanks to Jen for pointing me to this one).

I wonder if that'll be the title of a book one day. I fear -- unless he's keeping meticulous records -- all of his correspondences will one day be lost.

Seriously.

On the other hand, it's not just him I wonder about (although he's the most likely Thinkling to reach fame through his writing), but I wonder about everyone's missives these days.

When was the last time you actually wrote a letter, sealed an envelope, and dropped it in the mail? If you're like most people I know, you don't do that. You email instead. You blog instead.

I guess it all comes down to whether or not you take the time to archive your digital files, and whether or not those digital files will be easily accessible twenty, thirty, fifty years down the road.

I'd love to peruse some of the emails Jared and I zipped back and forth to each other during our college days. But I didn't save them ...

Did you, Jared?