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In the age of social networking, there's no such thing as privacy

Mon, 06 May 2013 08:00:00 -0500

Surprise, surprise: Millenials are more willing than any other generation to share personal information online.

According to a new survey from the University of California's Center for the Digital Future, Millenials, ages 18-34, were more likely to share their location in order to receive coupons from nearby businesses: 56 percent vs. 42 percent of those 35 and over. More than half of the Millenials surveyed also said that they would share private information with a company if they got something in return.

This push for active participation in social media may seem harmless at first, until you look at the bigger picture and cringe at the Orwellian nature of it all.

For example, have you ever bought a product at your favorite store, and then saw an advertisement for a similar product pop up on your Facebook sidebar just moments later? Cue the Big Brother shiver up your spine: that's no coincidence.

Everything that we post to our personal websites can be tracked, and the Internet is always watching. Whether we admit to ourselves or not, and whether we like it or not, we live in a surveillance state that is growing more efficient and eerily omniscient by the day.

Facebook, Google, Apple, Microsoft and Amazon rule the Web; and consequently, have delved deeper into our private lives and personal interactions than ever before. Apple tracks us on or iPhones and iPads. Google tracks us on every page that it has access to, and Facebook does the same, even following non-Facebook users in their pursuit of prime marketing data. One reporter used a tool called Collusion to track who was tracking him, and discovered that 105 companies tracked his Internet use in one 36-hour period.

Sometimes we fight back, like when Instagram proposed giving advertisers free reign over all posted photos and then backed down when users threatened to boycott. Sometimes the Internet giants admit their wrongdoing, like when Google apologized (after being slapped with a $7M fine, of course) for "data-scooping" personal information from zillions of unencrypted databases.

But the truth is, these highly-sophisticated apps and websites thrive on monitering our every move, and we may be powerless to stop them. If the director of the CIA can't maintain his privacy on the Internet, then what hope is there for the rest of us?

Consider the major data breaches of networking sites in 2012 alone:

LinkedIn: 6.5 million passwords stolen
Yahoo: 400,000 passwords stolen
Global Payments: 1.5 million customers' credit card numbers and PINs exposed

Facebook experienced yet another privacy breach in February, two weeks after Twitter made a similar admission. Also, users have been quitting Facebook in record numbers for months now. Perhaps people are finally catching on to the "privacy paradox" and deciding to forgo social media altogether, although the more likely scenario is that this decline is only temporary.

Statistics prove that most of these Facebook users will likely return (because, sadly, nearly 40 percent of Americans would rather have a root canal than give up their social networking profiles for good) so where does that leave us? We can combine forces to change the pervasive nature of the Internet, or we can look inward and start by changing ourselves.

If we really want our private lives to remain private, then we can't give up without a fight.

Leah Pickett writes about popular culture for WBEZ. She still uses Twitter and Facebook, but has given a year without Internet some serious thought.

If you are reading this piece instead of spending time with your child, you are a child abuser

Mon, 25 Mar 2013 09:21:00 -0500

I had a Twitter friend, a pretty normal lady, who had a baby a few years ago, but then I think having the baby must have given her brain disease. Of course I won’t fault a new mother for shifting to discussing baby things more, because it’s unrealistic to expect a mom to totally avoid talking about her child, but she got angry, too, at the other moms who didn’t do things the way she did. Messages I got from her included things like: Mothers who give their children processed foods are child abusers. Mothers who let their children cry too long are child abusers. Mothers who feed their babies formula are child abusers. Don’t even get her started on women who feed their children formula and let them cry too long.

It was hard for me to let this roll off my back (I was formula-fed, so was she saying then that my mother was a child abuser, and, follow-up question, would this woman like to meet me outside?), but I bit my tongue, because what did I know. But if I could ask her one thing, it would have been, "If your child is so fulfilling and you’re such an expert, why are you on Twitter so much? Shouldn’t you be off staring at your child as he sleeps or making him some food or knitting him some reusable diapers or planning his agenda for the day?" This lady was giving herself away. Despite her self-righteousness and know-it-all-ness, she was also bored and lonely and could probably use a pal.

All moms could use a pal, so why do so many of us feed into the mommy wars thing? I avoided reading the New York magazine story about the stay-at-home feminist moms because I had been warned that it would be infuriating. It helps that I really don’t have a choice when it comes to working or not, but sure, every now and then I suspect that the baby thinks of me as just this interloper woman he sees briefly twice a day and then on the weekends but that his main squeeze is Diana, our daycare lady. So I didn’t need to read an article about smug stay at home moms who really do have it all (despite that not being a thing that exists) and pity those who don’t (and probably think that moms who works are child abusers.)

Finally, I read the article this weekend, and what I read was a piece that was reaching. Really what it was was an article about some women who choose to stay at home because they weighed the pros versus cons and felt more in favor of staying at home instead of working, but, because they are normal human beings, weren’t totally sure this is what they want to do for forever. This was surrounded by a lot of quotes and stats from studies about how more women are doing one thing and feminist theory these days says another and women are good at this and dads are good at that. It was an article about some women doing one thing that was being gussied up as a trend.

Like my friend on Twitter, I think the Internet can be a blessing and a curse for new moms. A woman who isn’t 100% sure of her choices can reach out and find like-minded folks online (or the opposite), but sometimes a sense of community turns into backlash. It turns women who don’t want to be ogled or criticized for breastfeeding into women who claim those who don’t feed their children the way they do are selfish. It turns women who feel ambivalent about going back to work into those who say stay at home moms are mindless cows.

Here's what I think: in the end, it really doesn’t matter what you do as long as you aren’t selling your baby to a child pornographer or strapping your baby to you before you leap out of a 13-story building (sadly, these are both real things that have happened this month.) We need to look at the big picture. I mean big. Pull out farther. Farther. Farther. Farther than that, even. There you go.

I feel a little bit sad that I even felt compelled to write a post that’s along the lines of “Can’t we all just get along?” but if women can get a little bit smarter about spotting the attempts in the media to get us to start attacking each other with “reaching” pieces, maybe if we can sense when the Internet stops being a release and starts becoming a trap, maybe that will help us look at the big picture instead of fighting each other over the details.

@Zulkey

Honors due for Internet activist Aaron Swartz

Thu, 14 Mar 2013 05:00:00 -0500

GONE, NOT FORGOTTEN. Chicago native and Internet activist Aaron Swartz, who committed suicide early this year as he faced prosecution for the theft from MIT of millions of online documents, will be honored Friday with the James Madison Freedom of Information Award.
* From January: WBEZ's Robin Amer wrote after Swartz' funeral, "I am drained from crying."

REMEMBER ALL THOSE PROTESTS EARLIER THIS WEEK ABOUT HIGHER FEES IN THE CTA's NEW FARE SYSTEM? The CTA board has approved the plan anyway even though some board members themselves seemed not to understand it. So your existing Chicago Card is headed toward the scrap heap. But you might be able to get one of the new Ventra cards free.
* CTA prices headed up for college students, tourists.
* CTA train line colors added to Google's Chicago maps.
* Mayor Emanuel proposes overhauling parking taxes to lower rates on cheaper spots, raise them on premium spaces.

New WBEZ Meyerson News Quiz tomorrow.
Catch up on last week's and other previous quizzes here.

CLINTON-OBAMA TICKET? Speculation for the 2016 presidential race: Hillary + Michelle.
* Mother Jones: "Turns Out That [President] Obama Doesn't Hate Whitey After All."
* Bipartisan budget bill would make permanent four longstanding gun protections.

ON TWITTER, NEW POPE'S NO OBAMA. No matter how many tweets you read yesterday about the new pope, they weren't enough to break the record 20 million sent the night President Obama won reelection.
* Twitter's next frontier? Music -- with an emphasis on sampling.
* Google Reader, we hardly knew ye. And that was the problem. Or did Twitter kill it?
* Gawker: "If You Wear Google’s New Glasses You Are An A__hole."
* Is The New York Times technophobic?

'WERE YOU STRAPPED INTO YOUR CAR SEAT AND FORCED TO LISTEN TO NPR IN THE '80s AND '90s?' That's the hook NPR's using to promote itself at the South by Southwest conference in Austin, Texas, courting loyalty among a demographic it calls "Generation Listen."
* Meanwhile, WBEZ, which has been encouraging those former "backseat babies" to "Go Make Babies" of their own, is planning a "Member Meet-up: '90s Time Machine Edition."

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Is technology changing our lives too much?

Tue, 12 Mar 2013 05:00:00 -0500

In the last 10 years, the electronic age has us totally interconnected. Social networking of all kinds – Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Flickr, Socialcam, texting, platforms such as iPads, iPhones, smartphones and computers of all kinds.

These tools have forever altered the normal concept of time and space. They have replaced it with an immediacy that has taken on a life of its own. All of us are now no more than a click away from communicating with everyone we have ever met or known in real or virtual time.

Thanks to the wild, wild word of the web, we can be anywhere and everywhere with the stroke of a key or click of a mouse.

In essence, what all of this has done is to radically change the pace and rate of our lives. Not only are we bombarded with more input, information and data than ever before, we are now required or at least strongly expected to respond to it faster than ever before. At one level, the increased pace and rate of change is a good thing. It forces us to be more agile, more responsive, more adaptable to an ever-evolving world. It opens us to more options and possibilities.

On the other hand, the increased rate and speed of input and change is exhausting. Here’s the problem. When life becomes an Olympic endurance event (the Everydayathon), when the stopwatch is always ticking, when are we supposed to have fun?

When will there be a time to be human in the old fashioned way? As Benjamin Kline Hunnicutt, professor of leisure studies, so aptly put it, “Having to go so fast to keep up, we miss stuff-our existence is truncated. Some things simply cannot be done going full speed: love, sex, conversation, food, family friends, nature. In the whirl, we are less capable of appreciation, enjoyment, sustained concentration, sorrow, memory.”

I think, if we can be honest with ourselves, we all do too much or try to do too much. My mother used to accuse me of having “eyes bigger than my stomach.”

She told me that I both literally and figuratively put too many things on my plate.

“Alfredó,” she’d say, “you do too much. Slow down, take smaller bites, or you’re not going to enjoy anything. Piano, piano arrive sano!” (Slowly, slowly, and you’ll get there surely, safely!)

You know what, maybe we should all slow down, take a moment, and reflect on the wisdom of my mother’s words. It couldn’t hurt.

Jon Stewart's replacement knows the anchor desk

Wed, 06 Mar 2013 05:00:00 -0600

'THE DAILY SHOW WITH JON STEWART' ... WITH JOHN OLIVER. Jon Stewart's taking the summer off to direct a movie. His anchor-desk replacement? "Senior British Correspondent" John Oliver.
* Oliver's no stranger to hosting a comedy news show. Exhibit A: His weekly satiric podcast, The Bugle.

'GO ABOUT YOUR DAILY LIVES AS NORMAL.' Chicago's Streets and San chief gives the all-clear after only the 21st time since 1886 Chicago's seen more than 10 inches of snow in a single day.

* Chicago's bike lanes have their own snow-removal teams.
* Flow chart designed to help win any argument over climate change.

'BOY SCOUTS HAVE NO ONE FAMOUS TO PLAY AT THEIR JAMBOREE BECAUSE THEY KICK OUT GAY KIDS.' Dana Liebelson writes in Mother Jones: "This is the first year ... the Boy Scouts have been without any entertainment because of the ban."
* Carly Rae Jepsen's cancellation tweet:

As an artist who believes in equality for all people, I will not be participating in the Boy Scouts of America Jamboree this summer... — Carly Rae Jepsen (@carlyraejepsen) March 5, 2013

* Chicago's mysterious Twitter riddler, Marty Rudolf of Chicago.

THE SEQUESTER'S WORKING FOR SOME OF US. Despite the gloom that's descended on the federal budget, the Dow closed yesterday a record high. Will it be remembered as "the day investors ignored the boy who cried wolf"?
* Reasons the Dow's rally may feel empty.

GOOD NEWS FOR THE SWISS ARMY. Over flight attendants' objections, pocket knives will be allowed on U.S. airlines for the first time since 9/11.
* Blaming sequester, White House cancels tours.
* Obama dials down sequesteria.
* In new bio, Fox News chief calls Obama "lazy," misattributing the word to Obama himself.

RETURN OF THE PRINCESS. Carrie Fisher reveals she'll return as Leia Organa in the new Star Wars movies.
* Harrison Ford set for "Anchorman 2."

FACEBOOK OVERHAUL. A makeover to be announced tomorrow reportedly will include bigger photos -- and bigger ads.
* Study finds only about a third of your friends see typical Facebook post.
* Chicago cops warn of cell phone store robberies.

ANOTHER EXAMPLE OF WHY TEXT SHOULD BE TEXT. It would've prevented embarrassing designs like this one.
* Supermarket magazine cover-up: Guns OK, breasts not so much.
* A new kind of newspaper subscription: Pay for Sunday print Tribune and online membership, get a tablet as part of the deal.

THIS WILL LITERALLY GENERATE COMMENTS BELOW THIS BLOG POST. The informal definition of "literally" -- the one that means not literally -- is creeping into dictionaries.

ANNOUNCEMENTS.
* Soundtrack for creation of this post: Latest issue of The Bugle.
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Congratulations, Mayor... um... Bloomberg

Wed, 27 Feb 2013 05:00:00 -0600

WELCOME TO CHICAGO, NEW YORK'S 6TH BOROUGH. The woman most likely to replace Jesse Jackson Jr., representing Chicago's South Side in Congress, is State Rep. Robin Kelly -- the winner of yesterday's Democratic primary and the choice of New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, whose political fund spent millions to help her win.
* The Nation: Defeated candidate Halvorsen "undone by her association with the NRA."
* Jackson Jr. reportedly writing memoir to "clear up his legacy."
* Democratic congressman goes medieval on Fox News' Sean Hannity.

'BANNING CONCEALED-CARRY ON PUBLIC BUSES AND TRAINS ... BASICALLY MAKES IT IMPOSSIBLE FOR A PERSON WITHOUT A CAR TO EXERCISE THE RIGHT OF SELF DEFENSE WITH A FIREARM.' The Tribune's Eric Zorn: "I get why so many folks don't want more guns on trains (I say more because there surely are already quite a few guns on trains), but ..."
* Illinois House OKs limits on right to carry concealed weapons.

PAPER! HEY, GET YER PAPER! Tribune Co. is exploring the possibility of selling its newspapers -- including the one from which it gets its name.
* North Carolina newspaper editor who received threats after requesting gun-permit information on county residents is quitting.
* Universities of Missouri and Nebraska are teaching journalism students how to operate drones.
* How many recent college grads are really living back with their parents?

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INCOMING. A newly spotted comet may slam into Mars next year.
* "Nation buster" asteroid could clobber this planet in 2036.
* Stephen Colbert: "Can we lubricate the earth in any way?"

WANT MORE TWITTER FOLLOWERS? Georgia Institute of Technology researchers who analyzed the reactions to half a million tweets say one key is to follow the "Rule of Thumper." They conclude: "Expressing negative sentiments in tweets is the second most harmful factor to growing a Twitter audience."
* Is Twitter worth $10 billion?

RED, RED ROBIN. History repeats itself this week: Robin, the Boy Wonder, will die in the pages of Batman comics.
* TV's Robin, Burt Ward: "It’s a terrible choice."
* 8 ways comics characters have come back from the dead.
* "Fantastic Four" set for movie reboot with script polished by author of Pride and Predjudice and Zombies and Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter.
* University of Connecticut Dean of Liberal Arts and Sciences (an expatriate Chicagoan) on "Downton Abbey": "The plot makes it unwatchable."

ANNOUNCEMENTS.
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* Looking for the most recent WBEZ Meyerson News Quiz? Here you go.

Just because you can doesn’t mean you should: the dangers of instant publication in an increasingly cynical world

Mon, 25 Feb 2013 09:37:00 -0600

I had barely seen any of the movies nominated for Oscars last night: Flight, and a handful of the kids’/Snow White type movies (it was a weird year.) However, I watched the Academy Awards because I was looking forward to hanging out with Twitter as I did so. Tweeting the Academy Awards feels like you’re at an Oscar party, only one where you don’t have to put on shoes, where you can fart freely, where you don’t have to drive home afterwards and where Steve Martin is in attendance.

There's also a self-promotional element to live-Tweeting. I taught a class on blogging a few weeks ago and during our segment on social networking, I advised students to try their hand live-blogging big events like the Oscars, because, from a self-promotional point of view, Tweeting an event along with millions of other users could be a good way to pick up some followers. I wasn’t aiming to do this, but I think I got 15 new followers last night (all of whom will probably unfollow me in due time but whatever.)

The most popular Tweets, of course, tend to be the funniest ones and the funniest Tweets, if not to me, then to everybody else, are either the weirdest or the most cutting. It’s easy to put celebs down at the Oscars: they’re inflated with ego, they’re outrageously overpaid, and on Twitter we can work out our self-hatred over being so obsessed with entertainers. On Twitter you can hate-love and love-hate the entertainment industry with people who won't judge you.

When Jennifer Aniston presented a category in a flowy bright red gown, I drafted a Tweet: “Jennifer Aniston’s uterus looks especially empty right now.” But my hands hovered over the keyboard before hitting “Tweet.” Something didn’t feel quite right about this. The “joke” of the Tweet was the constant speculation over whether Aniston is pregnant or not, and/or whether her lack of fruitfulness drove Brad Pitt into Angelina Jolie’s fertile arms. (Also, it could have been a compliment to how svelte she looked? But not really.) It didn’t feel right, though. Maybe Aniston has struggled mightily with fertility or maybe she just doesn’t want kids, a position I utterly respect and understand. Moreover though, I felt like this was not a joke that would go over well and that I didn’t want to have to defend. It just wasn't that funny. I deleted and moved on to something else.

At least two entities are smelling pretty bad this morning after the Oscars: host Seth MacFarlane and The Onion, MacFarlane for various jokes and The Onion for writing a Tweet that sounded like it was calling nine-year-old Quvenzhane Wallis the c-word.

I don’t think either MacFarlane or whomever was writing the Onion Tweet worked with malice, but instead with the mistaken impression that edgier is better. MacFarlane actually had a couple of good jokes in his broadcast (the Sound of Music one was cute) and I can see that the Onion Tweet had the seeds of a good satirical joke about female competition and celebrity gossip in it. But both pushed the envelope in a cheap direction. MacFarlane’s jokes came pre-packaged with “You won’t be able to handle this!” comebacks (like his Lincoln assassination joke, which he followed up with an obviously-rehearsed “too soon?” retort) and The Onion crossed two major lines: using one of the worst words and using it on someone too young to either defend herself or to have to know what that word means. The jokes were insulting but almost as bad, just not very funny.

All these jokes could have been retold or remade in some way so as not to go the jerk route. But in the world of reTweets and comments and likes and everything, subtlety and sensitivity doesn’t always pay off in terms of eyeballs and buzz. Both MacFarlane and the Onion have been praised when they’ve used tastelessness in clever and pointed ways. But that doesn’t work 100 percent of the time.

I have a story I’ve told a million times about a celebrity who reached out to me and let me know he didn’t care for a joke I made at his expense in a publication. I was mortified, not so much because I had hurt his feelings, but because it was a cheap, lousy joke that I didn’t want to stand behind. If it had been Chris Brown emailing me to complain that he doesn’t like being depicted as a petulant, violent s.o.b., I wouldn’t have felt bad. But in this case, it wasn’t a hill I wanted to die on. I should have listened to my gut.

Same thing goes with MacFarlane and the Onion Tweeter. Some jokes are worth taking the hit for if they’re more clever than angry, more absurd than obscene. But sometimes you just have to think of people’s feelings, and/or, in a more self-centered vein, the damage control you’ll have to do. Will it be worth it? If not, revise, rewrite, re-Tweet. It’s possible to make be edgy, rude and clever without being a complete c-word about it.

If it's Friday, it must be time for you to answer some news quiz questions

Fri, 08 Feb 2013 05:00:00 -0600

Welcome back, our friends, to the quiz that comes in tens. It's ... that ... time.

(And stick around for more news below the quiz. That stuff could come up in next week's quiz.)

And now, we return to our regular programming.

RED-LIGHT DISTRICT. The chairman of the company behind Chicago's red-light camera program is quitting following a Chicago Tribune investigation that forced a company investigation and the discovery of improper ties to a former city transportation official -- including thousands of dollars in free trips to the Super Bowl and other sports events.
* Soldier Field's seating capacity won't be the NFL's smallest next year.

BUSH-HACKER. Someone who identifies himself as "Guccifier" gained access to the personal email of President George W. Bush's sister and the accounts of others close to the president. The Houston Chronicle has more.
* The last days of hacker Aaron Swartz.
* Facebook broke the Internet for some people last night.

A KID, A DOG AND A PUDDLE. Roger Ebert turns his Pulitzer-winning critic's eye on a one-minute YouTube video that's gone viral.
* Meet a guy making good money on Twitter.
* Is this truly a new "golden age" for TV? Especially if you're the head of the household?

ANNOUNCEMENTS.
* There are no announcements today of sufficient importance.
* But do subscribe to this blog by email, won't you?

'Football's death spiral'

Mon, 04 Feb 2013 05:00:00 -0600

'FOOTBALL'S DEATH SPIRAL.' Writing in Salon, Andrew O'Hehir says "the writing is on the wall for this bloated, behemoth sport."
* Obama: "We want to make sure that after people play the game they're going to be okay."

WHAT TIME DID THE SUPER BOWL START? You can ridicule, as The Atlantic does expertly here, all the websites that tried to win your clicks by answering that simple question. But, as NYU journalism prof Jay Rosen says, "Anyone who doesn’t want to know what the numbers say shouldn’t be trusted with editorial decisions."
* Second graders proofread NFL players' tweets.

WELL, HE CAN NAME THREE OF THESE. Texas Gov. Rick Perry, an Eagle Scout and former presidential candidate, offers reasons the Boy Scouts of America shouldn't admit gays, including what he describes as the organization's everyday advocacy of "tolerance and diversity," its "historic position of keeping the Scouts strongly supportive of ... values," and the importance of not letting "popular culture impact 100 years of their standards."
* Obama on "Scouting Sunday": Scouts should accept gays and lesbians.
* Chicago-area minister: Scouting, "which seeks the support of churches like ours… stands against the very kind of welcome that we extend to those folks."

'THAT'S RIDICULOUS, AND YOU KNOW IT, SIR.' Fox News host Chris Wallace didn't provide a friendly forum for National Rifle Association chief Wayne LaPierre.
* Nobel winner Paul Krugman calls NRA "an insane organization."
* Acclaimed retired Navy SEAL sniper shot and killed by fellow ex-soldier.

'A BIZARRE POLITICAL TWIST.' Calling the Illinois race to replace Jesse Jackson Jr. in the House a "proxy battle in the war for sane gun policy," the national liberal website Daily Kos is backing candidate Robin Kelly.
* Candidate Kelly challenging others to release their NRA questionnnaires.
* Photos show Obama, other U.S. presidents firing guns.
* Amazon.com listing for toy drone airplane draws dozens of satiric reviews, like this one: "My son ... spent countless, blissful hours simulating massacres of weddings, funerals, and other family gatherings of brown skinned foreigners!"

ON TWITTER? CHANGE YOUR PASSWORD. That's one of the simplest precautions to take after revelation of a security break.
* Android "malware" app has "most extensive feature set" security firm's seen -- including power to infect a computer, take control of its microphone, record you without your permission, and send the recordings to the attacker.
* Typing "File:///" will crash apps under Apple's latest Macintosh operating system.

NATION SHAKEN. The man who invented the Etch A Sketch is dead.

ANNOUNCEMENTS.
* Song that helped get this edition out the door: Pete Yorn, "Alive."

Chicago's gun paradox

Thu, 31 Jan 2013 05:00:00 -0600

CHICAGO'S GUN PARADOX. Despite bans on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines and no gun ranges, the city has a huge gun problem. A New York Times report has put Chicago at the center of the national discussion on gun safety.
* Times map: Where all those Chicago guns come from.
* Strange days: Fox News' Bill O'Reilly applauds Times report.
* Emanuel calls Chicago girl's shooter a "punk."
* Commentary: Obama should attend victim's funeral.
* Republican Kirk and Democrat Gillibrand team up for bipartisan federal gun-trafficking bill.
* Gun owner in The New Republic: "The gun-owning community can demonstrate precisely the sort of reasonable public-mindedness of which some believe it to be incapable."

WE'RE NO. 5! WE'RE NO. 5! A new report says Illinois cell phone customers pay the nation's fifth highest rates for extra taxes and fees. Indiana's No. 22. Which state's customers face the lowest extra charges? Read the full Tax Foundation report.
* Illinois also fifth for number of new wind turbine installations.

TWEET FIGHT.
* Matt K. Lewis in The Week: "Twitter sucks you into small, petty battles."
* Rebecca Greenfield in The Atlantic: "Matt Lewis is following a spam bot."
* Facebook founder Zuckerberg: Facebook and Google aren't on speaking terms.

ONE GOAL ... is all it took to end the Blackhawks' record winning streak.

ANNOUNCEMENTS.
* News quiz tomorrow. How'd you do on last week's?
* Could this be the cure for blogging with cold feet?