And I’ve never been able to articulate precisely what it was that made me so uneasy about the concept of Facebook, other than a few (mostly) glib remarks about hating people and not voluntarily interacting with them any more than I already must.

This morning I was flipping through the current issue of Newsweek and I came across an editorial by David Lyons on the subject of Facebook and the privacy concerns surrounding it and he managed to put into words what I could not:

In the past five years Facebook has repeatedly changed its privacy policy, always in one direction, and every time this happens, the same movie plays out: people complain, Facebook stonewalls, then spins, then pretends to be contrite, then finally walks things back—a bit. Nobody seems to notice that, after the walk-back, Facebook is still grabbing more personal info than it was before …
The truth is, Zuckerberg needs your data. His business is built on it. You are not Facebook’s customer. You are its inventory—you are the product Facebook is selling.

The article goes more into much more detail about the nature of the changes, etc. It goes so far as to note that the current rendition of the privacy scuffle will in all likelihood play out without leaving so much as a dent in Facebook’s popularity. (100 millions new users in the last four months is an astounding figure.) I hold out hope that it will one day soon hit a saturation point and become just another fad that nobody wants to admit having once taken part in. (MySpace, anyone?)

Daniel does make a good point when he notes that I share far more information on my LibraryThing account than he does on his Facebook one. I’m comfortable with people knowing I own a lot of books; I’m even comfortable with the inferences that can be drawn from my collection such as the fact that many of the horizontal surfaces in my apartment have books stacked on them — twenty-six volumes deep in spots, if you must know. The difference is that LibraryThing has never made me feel like a commodity, which these days on the web is rare.

I may have written about this before, but going to movie theaters is a sort of cure-all for me, a ritual I engage in to cope with any number of ills. Morning shows on the weekend are typically quite deserted. I’m a fan of weekday late shows for the same reason, well that and the fact that my nights off are Monday and Tuesday.

“Robin Hood” was better than I had expected, but it had me ruminating on the screwy rating system that allows copious and graphic violence in a PG-13 movie. Of course, had there been a sex scene, it would have been rated R (not that it needed a sex scene, it’s just weird that that would been the tipping point). I’m scared to say it, hopefully he doesn’t hit girls, but I agree with the interviewer who angered Russell Crowe so when he said his accent sounded a bit Irish. Cate Blanchett looked very pretty, but maybe a bit lost, perhaps because she was supposed to be simmering with desire for Mr. Crowe. Her character really came alive in the scenes that she did not share with him. A side note, Ridley Scott seems to have some sort of weird blood fetish thing going on, maybe he is trying to capture the vampire crowd (one of the previews was for a “Twilight” movie). Some of the sweeping panoramic shots were breathtaking, the scenery was used to its full advantage. It was pretty much everything as person could want in an action movie (horses!), good, but not great.

Now I can return to my regular viewing schedule of working my way through “Daria: The Complete Animated Series”.

This is just the most recent in a long line of reversals made by President Obama as it is in direct opposition to a response given by him when he was seeking the Democratic nomination, “I reject the Bush Administration’s claim that the President has plenary authority under the Constitution to detain U.S. citizens without charges as unlawful enemy combatants.”

A lot of people will look at this and think something to the effect of, “I’m not a terrorist and I don’t like terrorists so why should I care?” But the fact remains that he is an American citizen and if we let the government deny this man his rights under the Constitution, by logical extension none of us have these rights.

Mine looks less cranky somehow. I am torn on the issue of eating him. If he were crankier looking, it might be easier.

I went to go see “Män som hatar kvinnor (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo)” today. I know they are making an American version of the Stieg Larsson novel of the same name, but I can’t imagine that it will be better than the Swedish version. For one thing, it managed to condense most of the important plot points of a very complex and intricately written novel into two and a half hours without losing coherency, that in and out of itself is an accomplishment. The fact that they found an actress who could play the title character in a way that was true to the novel is nothing short of amazing, and I rather doubt that any American producer would be willing to cast an actress who would be willing to risk portraying such a character. In this film, as in the book, Lisbeth Salander does not come across as a victim even as she is being victimized. She remains very cold on the surface throughout, but Noomi Rapace manages to imbue small movements with an intensity that speaks to underlying thoughts. I say “movements” because her character, again true to the book, says very little and still the film orbits around her. When Noomi Rapace is on screen it is impossible to take ones eyes off of her. I would love to see what she and the director, Niels Arden Oplev, could do with the second book.

In the book that convinced me we should stop using standard signals, the author, Marty Bergen, claimed “most players take to (odd-even discards) as easily as ducks to water”. Up until tonight I had been taking to them like a hydrophobic duck — lots of flailing. Of course, simultaneously switching to upside-down count and attitude wasn’t helping matters.

Last night I asked my teacher about a particular situation and whether or not my signal should be count or attitude or suit-preference. In the course of the discussion he made the remark, “You should give your partner attitude.” My reply, “I always give my partner attitude.” His response, “I mean with your cards.” He knows me so well.