For me, anyway. Facebook never really worked for me anyway; but on top of that, there are lots of serious privacy concerns — see, for example: Facebook gives your info to advertisers, gets caught in the act, promises to stop; EFF’s Bill of Privacy Rights for Social Network Users; MoveOn’s “Did you see what Facebook is trying to do?“; Openbook; Facebook and “radical transparency” (a rant); and the many links at Quit Facebook Day.
Which brings us to today. I decided to quit, and figured I might as well do it on Quit Facebook Day.
I support the move to create an open-source, de-centralized, not-for-whoring-to-corporations alternative to Facebook; maybe Diaspora will be that; we’ll see.
My son Oz (in 4th grade) brought home some homework covering the study of matter in his 4th grade science lesson. Here’s a couple of lines from the narrative page “explaining” atoms and matter:
And on the next page, they quizzed him, to make sure he’d accepted the anti-materialist dogma. 
When I asked Oz what was wrong with that, he thought for a minute, and then said “They’re in your brain!”
I’ve raised him well.
I’ve put up new springs and weights to hold up the virtual facade of profron.net. Things might be funky here and there while I get everything tweaked and balanced.
Posted in whatever | Ron January 14, 2010 | Comments Off
Another of the polls from Leiter: The 10 “Most Important” Philosophers of the Early Modern Period. Not bad, although I gotta put Descartes over Hume, myself:
- Immanuel Kant (Condorcet winner: wins contests with all other choices)
- David Hume loses to Immanuel Kant by 421–232
- Rene Descartes loses to Immanuel Kant by 443–201, loses to David Hume by 335–314
- John Locke loses to Immanuel Kant by 576–85, loses to Rene Descartes by 508–136
- Gottfried Leibniz loses to Immanuel Kant by 586–76, loses to John Locke by 351–272
- Thomas Hobbes loses to Immanuel Kant by 596–64, loses to Gottfried Leibniz by 371–247
- Baruch Spinoza loses to Immanuel Kant by 589–70, loses to Thomas Hobbes by 321–292
- George Berkeley loses to Immanuel Kant by 625–31, loses to Baruch Spinoza by 377–230
- Adam Smith loses to Immanuel Kant by 612–32, loses to George Berkeley by 337–247
- Francis Bacon loses to Immanuel Kant by 603–39, loses to Adam Smith by 302–252
Just kidding. Really.
Just in case you get thrown back into the past by a time machine:
xkcd reaches into our collective unconscious:
From the web comic xkcd: Correlation
