Michael Sater

It's sad becuase it's (too often) true.

(I've included the entire article from NYTimes.com, below)

"Pop quiz: Which is longer, the United States Constitution or Facebook’s Privacy Policy?

If you guessed the latter, you’re right. Facebook’s Privacy Policy is 5,830 words long; the United States Constitution, without any of its amendments, is a concise 4,543 words.

Facebook, one of the most popular social networks in the world, has more than 400 million registered people on its Web site. Half of these users log in to the service every day, the company says, and users spend 500 billion minutes on the site each month.

But in recent months, Facebook has revised its privacy policy to require users to opt out if they wish to keep information private, making most of that information public by default. Some personal data is now being shared with third-party Web sites.

As a result, the company has come under a blitz from privacy groups, government officials and its own users, who complain that the new policy is bewildering and the new opt-out settings too time-consuming to figure out and use.

“There are always trade-offs between providing comprehensive and precise granular controls and offering simple tools that may be broad and blunt,” said Elliot Schrage, vice president for public policy at Facebook. “We have tried to offer the most comprehensive and detailed controls and comprehensive and detailed information about them.”

The new opt-out settings certainly are complex. Facebook users who hope to make their personal information private should be prepared to spend a lot of time pressing a lot of buttons. To opt out of full disclosure of most information, it is necessary to click through more than 50 privacy buttons, which then require choosing among a total of more than 170 options.

Users must decide if they want only friends, friends of friends, everyone on Facebook, or a customized list of people to see things like their birthdays or their most recent photos. To keep information as private as possible, users must select “only friends” or “only me” from the pull-down options for all the choices in the privacy settings, and must uncheck boxes that say information will be shared across the Web.

Facebook’s “Help Center” is available to assist users, but the word count for the privacy-related FAQ adds up to more than 45,000 words.

Even if a user changes all the settings on the privacy section of the site, certain pieces of information will still be shared across the site unless a user takes further action. For example, under the Account Settings option, in the Facebook Ads tab, two options are automatically turned on to share some information with advertising networks and friends. Anyone who wants to keep this information private must uncheck the boxes in that tab.

And still, some information will no longer remain private because Facebook has also added a feature, called community pages, which automatically links personal data, like hometown or university, to topic pages for that town or university. The only way to disappear from those topic pages is to delete personal data from Facebook. "

Not absolutes but interesting observations.

"Here's an infographic detailing the main points of the current oil spill crisis, caused by a BP oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico that exploded and sank, killing 11 workers aboard.

As you'll see, the graphs illustrate all the main points of the story, including the rate of the spill and the number of ships being deployed to fight it.

But the most alarming stat is at the bottom of this graphic, which comes courtesy of GDS Digital. If the oil well causing the spill isn't plugged in 50 days, it will overtake Exxon Valdez as the largest oil spill in U.S. history. What the graphic doesn't mention is that the oil rig causing the spill originally sank on April 23rd--meaning that we're already 10 days in, while capping the well might take up to 90 days. Not to mention what happens if the well-head goes completely belly up--in that case, the spillage rate will increase many fold. "

http://su.pr/2iV8mZ

"Reducing your carbon footprint can often seem like an impossible task for any one person. What can you possibly do to fight such an amorphous, all-encompassing problem? Plenty, actually, as this infographic by GOOD magazine, MCAD Designworks, and Brighter Planet shows.

It shows, in detail, the yearly carbon emissions that result from electricity and natural gas, organized by region across the U.S. And it also shows that city dwellers, on average, produce 21,400 pounds of carbon per year, while those in rural areas produce 27,200--a whopping 27% difference. But you can actually save upwards of 6,000 pounds--or more--simply by taking six basic steps: by washing your clothes with cold water, using low-flow shower heads, and air-drying your dishes in the dishwasher, among other things. Who knew the impact could be so large? "

Why does a salad cost more than a Big Mac? This infographic show us one part of the reason – that a huge proportion of our food subsidies go to meat. I thought that farming lobby received huge subsidies but their subsidies pale in comparison to the meat and dairy lobby. Only 0.37 percent go to fruits and vegetables. That makes meat and dairy artificially cheap, so we end up consuming more of it than we should.

Similarly, Americans are blasting companies that put corn syrup in food. However, the reason beverage companies don't use sugar is because corn syrup is cheaper than sugar... thanks to the corn subsidies.

Though I have a great deal of experience with sustainability, until I saw this video, I was unaware that not only are coffee cups not recyclable and 58 billion get tossed every year in North America.

This reminds me of McDonald's conversion from styrofoam clamshell containers to paper and I wonder, if Starbucks serves all of its coffee in re-usable or recyclable coffee cups... will Dunkin' Donuts and others follow?

A graphical exploration of the data that surrounds us.