I got mine! From the beginning of Facebook, people have used their real names to share and connect with the people they know. This authenticity helps to create a trusted environment because you know the identity of the people and things on Facebook. The one place, though, where your identity wasn’t reflected was in the Web address for your profile or the Facebook Pages you administer. The URL was just...

Can we live without Google? asks James Harkin in The Times. A reader taunts Harkin: “Can we live without GOD? YES. Can we live without GOOGLE? Silly Question. Of course, We can, if we want.” Harkins reminds us that eight out of ten people prefer Google, a search engine that is now worth roughly £100 billion. “In the space of a single decade, internet search has changed the way we look at...

I had never heard the term before the WaPo’s Jose Antonio Vargas credited it with swinging the Virginia Democratic primary for governor in favor of Creigh Deeds: Starting at 3 p.m EST Monday, hours before polls opened across Virginia, Deeds’s campaign bought what’s called a “Google blast.” Or, more appropriately, a Google attack. If you live in Northern Virginia (or, like many...

With less than 24 hours to go until the digital transition takes place it seems that some people are still not ready for the big change. According to a report today on MSNBC (which follows similar reports on the other networks) as many as four million Americans are not ready for the digital switch and of those as many as one million remain somehow unaware that any sort of change is taking place. I must admit...

The BBC Headline, Twitter hype punctured by study: Just 10% of Twitter users generate more than 90% of the content, a Harvard study of 300,000 users found. Estimates suggest it now has more than 10 million users and is growing faster than any other social network. However, the Harvard team found that more than half of all people using Twitter updated their page less than once every 74 days. And most people...

A recent study seems to support the idea that sexuality is, to a large degree, hardwired into people at birth. The study showed that the brains of gay men are similar in structure to those of straight women while the brains of gay women are similar in structure to those of straight men. The study will no doubt prompt debate from those who feel sexuality is entirely learned.

My last post of 6/2/09 deserves a follow-up as some of the reader comments were thought-proving and others wandered into other directions. I appreciate both because some of my posts have been criticized for covering too much territory. I originally thought about breaking this up into smaller posts but I do not want to litter TMV with so much on this one topic. Instead I have put it all here in an effort to...

The Roman Catholic Church’s ban on married heterosexual priests has been, is, and will be self-destructive. It is also without any meritorious religious basis. Most of the original 12 Jewish disciples of the Rabbi Jesus were married men. Married Priests were common for over a thousand years in the Church. This celibacy requirement is only about a couple hundred years old. A number of past Popes were married...

Well the US is officially an automaker. What I hope is that GM is able to convert from a stodgy old “this is the way we have always done it” company to an innovative leader in cutting-edge technology. When one receives a new lease on life, one usually makes the rather easy decision to live it to its fullest. The realization that death is always mere moments away has the effect of freeing us from the burdens...

With the US public forced to own 60 per cent of the crippled auto giant General Motor’s share, the question about GM’s future is a legitimate one? Michael Moore, Oscar and Emmy-winning director, initiates a useful debate in Huffington Post. He wants the GM factories to stop making gas guzzling cars. Instead, GM should now produce energy-efficient and environment-friendly mass transportation systems. I...

In the latest evidence that the Obama administration may soon end up with more czars than in the entire history of pre-communist revolution Russia, President Barack Obama announced that he’ll be appointing a cyber czar to his administration and for the first time for any American administration will seriously put the potential issue of cyber security needed to combat cyber terrorism on the nation’s...

The U.S. electorate strongly suggested it last November 2008. Perhaps Republicans need to be reminded again. They’re overworked from completely messing up the economy for the past 8 years. They’re overtaxed as they can’t handle the multitude of new programs and policies from a Democratic Administration and Congress. They’re completely exhausted, as in being intellectually, ethically and organizationally...

No pressure: “The National Ignition Facility (NIF) in California aims to demonstrate the feasibility of nuclear fusion, the reaction at the heart of the Sun and a potentially abundant, clean energy source for the planet. But whilst many eyes at the facility will be locked on the goal of satisfying humanity’s energy demands, many scientists hope to answer other fundamental questions for mankind. … “At...

As Americans struggle metaphorically with where the country is heading comes news of an imminent loss of our literal sense of direction. A GAO report on the $2 billion Air Force modernization of global position satellites warns that the system is at risk of failing as early as next year: “If the Air Force does not meet its schedule goals for development of GPS IIIA satellites, there will be an increased...

While Americans squabble about politics here on earth, way above them the space shuttle Atlantis’ astronauts are engaging in a risky space walk to repair the Hubble Space Telescope — a high-tech repair with high stakes risks: John Grunsfeld and Drew Feustel are on a six-and-a-half hour spacewalk to replace Hubble’s interplanetary camera with a new one that will allow it to look deeper into...

May 13, 2009, Wed., 8:30 PM: NEWS ITEM FROM PHOENIX/TEMPE, ARIZONA: President Obama Gives Stirring Graduation Address at ASU and Jokes about Honorary Degrees after most of the country in the first 3 time zones had already gone to bed. President Obama gave his first commencement address as U.S. President at Arizona State University in Tempe, AZ at an outdoor early evening event in sweltering Sun Devil Stadium...

It is important for every American to understand demographics on the eve of our next constitutionally-mandated decennial census. How many of us live here and there, and where we live, decide the political, economic and social decisions of every politician, business leader, and many individuals and families. They determine the make-up of Congress and the national and state elections for at least a decade. MOst...

By SHAUN MULLEN GUEST VOICE As a child of the 1960s, my view of Booker T. Washington was shaped by the contemporary belief that while the famous founder of Tuskegee Institute was a civil-rights trailblazer in some respects, he was an Uncle Tom for having acquiesced in the rampant racial discrimination that was now being challenged by the likes of Martin Luther King Jr. But he did find an amazing number of things...

UPDATE: It’s been pointed out that I made it through all of the links below without saying what I thought… An oversight. I marveled in every minute of its escapist glee; I left believing J. J. Abrams has arrived at genius and each of his new young stars is destined to be a screen idol (or stuck locked in sequel hell). At once retro and exuberantly now, it made me feel young again; I felt as I did...

Let me begin by saying that I do recognize that the current swine flu outbreak is serious and it is important for us to be cautious in dealing with it. It is also quite appropriate for the media to give significant coverage to the topic and for all of us to be prepared. The government should be working to stockpile proper supplies of serum to prevent it from getting out of control. However, I do think that there...

Is there a more tragic — yet hope-inducing — story than Connie Culp’s? In September 2004, the attractive woman’s husband shot her squarely in the face in a murder-suicide. He died. She didn’t. But her suffering continued, in more ways than one. The shot blew away the center of her face. But now — a sign we are truly in a new century where things will be different —...

On Sunday morning, the White House sent out its swine flu truth squad to hit all the major Sunday talk shows, including Meet the Press, This Week and Fox News Sunday. The truth squad was clearly desperate to avoid any questions about Joe Biden and his apocalyptic warning this week that no one should travel in trains or planes, lest they catch the swine flu. On Meet the Press, David Gregory asked one question...

I don’t know about you, but I felt a little shiver along my spine when I heard on Wednesday that the World Health Organization had raised its H1N1 swine flu threat level to five, on a scale of one-to-six. I didn’t know what that meant, exactly. But news reports linking this threat level with the 1968 Hong Kong flu and the word “pandemic” were shaking my belief that the U.S. media were...

Now that it appears that the swine flu has officially reached “crisis” proportions that requires a White House response, I started looking for background information on the virus. This Washington Post article has a good timeline. In short, the first known victim died April 12th, Mexico identified something unusual was going on by April 16th and it was sent to Canada on Monday, with characterization...

In this age of super specialization, journalists also find themselves being labelled as ’science’, ‘environment’, ‘development’, ‘politics’, ‘film’, ‘health’, ‘defence’ journalists, etc. In the ’science’ category one person that became a legend was Sir John Maddox. Sir John, who is said to have reinvented science...