Yesterday I relayed a message from the local humane society, which contained an email address and a phone number; and the first response I got was “Is she on Facebook?”

Phooey.

Apparently it’s no longer possible to delete my Facebook account. If I deactivate it,

Your 12 friends will no longer be able to keep in touch with you.

Bruce will miss you
Vanessa will miss you
Mae will miss you
Steve will miss you
Laurel will miss you

Laurel and Vanessa are dead, and Mae left Facebook long ago, which is why I didn’t bother defriending them when I did most everyone else. Bruce and Steve know how to reach me otherwise.

What do you know, yet another social website.

A recent essay on Big Think says:

Birth control isn’t about my health unless by health you mean, my capacity to get it on, to have a happy, joyous sex life that involves an actual male partner. The point of birth control is to have sex that’s recreational and non-procreative. It’s to permit women to exercise their desires without the sword of Damocles of unwanted pregnancy hanging gloomily over their heads.

It seems to me that pro-sex rhetoric would have more traction if it gave some weight to the role of sex as an expression of love, which reinforces the bond of couples. Even independent of procreation, that’s a social purpose that the most pleasure-hating communitarian could at least grudgingly endorse.

[an old schoolmate who lives in Ghana] suggests you add Volkswagen Ghana as a friend on Facebook.

Robin Hanson on Lord of the Flies: schools as a decivilizing force

I got a spam entitled Very Discrete Packaging and Billing. One would hope so!

Dissatisfied with my hairstyle, I decided some months ago to shave my scalp in the spring, take pictures over a year, and then decide what length I like best. So on the equinox I initiated the plan, and promptly caught cold. Ten days later (still congested) I notice that my hairline is asymmetric: it has receded more on the left (where I usually parted it until 1998) than on the right. Hm.

Another Facebook “friend” request from a foaf I’ve never heard of. This one appears to be a scientist, in a field of which I approve, and we have six “friends” in common – or five, not counting one of his peers whom I accepted as a “friend” because of his reputation though we’ve had no direct contact.

Though it’s not obvious what I could possibly lose by it, I’m a bit suspicious of any stranger who’d seek to be linked with a nobody like me.