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It started with a media report in France and in a few days the story had gone around the world. Our private Facebook messages from 2007 and 2008 were being made public on our walls. The story was picked up on U.S. blogs and was rapidly spread through Facebook status updates and on Twitter.
Facebook quickly issued a strong denial, tech journalists drilled deep, and the story was quickly debunked. Yet the message — the cautionary status updates — still spread, translated across Facebook’s global communities. Even when faced with evidence to the contrary, people still insisted the story was true: They didn’t care what Facebook said, they knew they didn’t write that on their Wall, they never would have written that in public.
Our susceptibility to believe reports that Facebook is playing fast and loose with our data comes as no surprise. Facebook has let us down many times before, changing privacy settings without telling us and exposing our information. But in the social-media-powered hysteria, something else was on display. It was almost as if many of us wanted to believe it, as if we wanted to feel let down by Facebook. What the messaging saga showed us was the sheer depths of distrust and unease held by many of Facebook’s heaviest users.
I confess: I love Facebook. It is my social network of choice. I am not a basement dweller, living my life online. I live a normal life with friends and family and Facebook is an enhancement of that. I use Twitter, but for journalism and networking rather than for communicating with friends. The Twitter me is the corporate me, truncated and reined in. On Facebook, I can be more myself. Over the years, Facebook has brought me closer with many people I am happy to be closer to. If I didn’t use Facebook, I wouldn’t have made those connections. The technology did that.
Continue reading HERE.
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Flu Vaccine Finder “HealthMap Vaccine Finder is a free, online service where users can search for locations offering flu vaccines. We work with partners such as clinics, pharmacies, and health departments to provide accurate and up-to-date information about receiving the flu vaccine. Our goal is to make flu vaccination available to everyone by simplifying the process of choosing and finding a vaccine provider.”
The first countries to grant women’s suffrage in national elections were New Zealand (1893), Australia (1902), Finland (1906), and Norway (1913). – Provided by Reference.com
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The Corner Where Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan Meet
Two days before I first visited Ganj, early this September, one such pickup, speeding south through the desert toward the lawless border region of Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran, struck a freshly planted land mine that killed the two smugglers in its cab and sent airborne its human cargo like firewood or fruit. My interpreter and I happened to be walking by the provincial hospital, in downtown Zaranj, shortly after the victims were admitted. At the front gate, a young orderly viciously punched a man trying to enter the premises on his motorcycle. With his feet firmly planted on the ground, the man on the motorcycle revved his engine, spinning the back tire in place and churning up a thick cloud of dust even as the orderly continued to assail his head and face. The man on the motorcycle, it turned out, was a relative of one of the dead smugglers, and in his grief, he appeared almost to welcome the blows.
Zaranj is the capital of Nimruz — by many measures the most isolated province in Afghanistan, at the remotest southwest corner of the country — and the hospital’s resources were predictably limited. Most of the survivors had been advised to get themselves to Herat, some 300 miles north, where doctors would be better equipped to help them. For all the billions of dollars that have been invested over the past decade, parts of Afghanistan remain beyond the reach of Western influence.
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Your Assignment for Today: Chew Gum
WHEN I was growing up, you would be sent down to the principal’s office for chewing gum in school. We were told chewing gum was bad; it caused cavities.
Like chocolate and coffee, gum is now being rehabilitated. It turns out that sugar-free gum can actually prevent cavities in children. Instead of banning it, we should require children to chew it in school to promote their oral health.
The human mouth is host to many bacteria.
MORE.
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Julie Otsuka on Her Family’s Wartime Internment In Topaz, Utah
There is a photograph in the National Archives of my mother, uncle, and grandmother taken by Dorothea Lange on April 29, 1942. The caption reads: “San Bruno, California. Family of Japanese ancestry arrives at assembly center at Tanforan Race Track.” My mother, 10, is turned away from the camera and all you can see is a sliver of her cheek, one ear, and two black braids pinned to the top of her head. In the background is a large concrete structure with a balcony—the grandstands. My grandmother, 42, is wearing a nice wool coat and listening intently to the man beside her, who is pointing out something in the distance—most likely the newly built barracks in the middle of the racetrack, where she and the children would be sleeping that evening. My uncle, who is 8, is carrying his mother’s purse for her beneath his left arm. Hanging from a canvas strap around his neck is a canteen, which is no doubt filled with water. Why? Because he is going to “camp.”
Read more HERE.
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How an Accused Guatemalan War Criminal Won U.S., Canadian Citizenship
The 27-year-old officer described his combat exploits in his application for asylum. He said he had served as an instructor in the elite “Kaibil” commandos and as a “commanding officer” in Guatemala’s bloody civil war.
“It is impossible for me and family to return as we have been sentenced to death due to my participation in the various combats in the conflictive area,” he wrote in his asylum application [2].
Immigration officials rejected his request, but Sosa sought asylum in Canada and became a citizen there. He eventually returned to the United States and became a U.S. citizen as well.
Recently, Sosa’s odyssey took an extraordinary turn. The self-proclaimed refugee stands accused of committing mass murder in uniform. Last month, Canada extradited him to Los Angeles [3] to face trial on charges related to one of the worst war crimes in the recent history of the Americas. He had fled north after prosecutors charged him with lying on immigration forms to conceal his alleged role in the slaughter of more than 250 people in the village of Dos Erres in 1982.
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Remains of Grandstand Recall Hitler’s Plan to Build Giant Stadium
Seventy-five years ago, Adolf Hitler laid the cornerstone in Nuremberg for what was meant to be the world’s biggest stadium. It was never completed, but a gigantic test grandstand was erected on a Bavarian hillside 40 kilometers away, just to test the acoustics and sight lines. Its concrete remains convey Hitler’s crazed megalomania.
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It must have been a glorious day for the tiny village of Achtel, in Hirschbachtal, not far from the southern German city of Nuremberg. Adolf Hitler himself had bestowed the honor of his presence along with his architect Albert Speer and several top Nazi party officials. Photographers couldn’t get enough of what they thought would become a magnificent moment in history. The high-ranking delegation had come to inspect a massive construction site on a local hill — one that had begun taking shape in recent months — and which seemed radically out of place.
Small and disoriented, that is how visitors were supposed to feel in the presence of the edifice being built. Hitler himself referred to it as “words of stone,” which, he added, were to be stronger than anything that could ever be spoken.
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It’s Off to the Gym for Your Pudgy Pet
The battle of the bulge is no longer limited to people. As their owners’ waistlines expand, pets are getting pudgier too, and it can take years off their lives. The pet obesity epidemic has spawned an entire industry aimed at getting animals in shape. Doggie treadmills and puppy pedometers are now available for purchase, and trainers are offering fitness classes like yoga and Pilates for portly pets. One veterinary school in the US has even gone so far as to create the country’s first obesity clinic geared toward pets.
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Originally posted 2012-10-22 10:42:09. Republished by Blog Post Promoter