Summary: "Maybe. Maybe not."

What was the point of this article?

I don't think the issue is specifically that of Google being invasive. The problem is that the collection and collation of browsing data can, over a length of time, reveal surprising amounts of information about ourselves. As the AOL search data leak of 2006 showed, even simply a collection of search queries can be traced back to a specific individual and can reveal a lot about that person (e.g., see this NY Times article: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/09/technology/09ao...). When you go from search-data to more general browsing habits, things only get worse.

But: what software giveth, software can take away. With a small amount of effort, one can configure one's browser to deter or derail data collection without your permission. For example:

-- I've configured my Firefox privacy settings to delete all cookies each time I exit the browser. This prevents trackers from correlating data about me across different browsing sessions.

-- I use the Ghostery addon to Firefox (www.ghostery.com) to alert me to tracking software. The default installation of this software just shows you the tracking software present on each web page you visit, but it can also be configured to disallow tracking except for vendors that I specifically allow.

-- If you want to confuse tracking software even more, you can use the Trackmenot addon to Firefox (http://cs.nyu.edu/trackmenot). This runs in the background and every so often issues random search queries, the idea being to make it hard to distinguish your real search queries from the chaff that it generates.

(I also use the Adblock and Flashblock addons to Firefox to hide banner ads and flash content that I don't want to see. This makes for a delightfully quiet and pleasant browsing experience. :-)

The research cited in this article suggests that adolescent boys derive their self-images *exclusively* from the images they see in popular media. I suppose that might be true of *some* boys, but the suggestion that this is a near-universal Truth seems to me to be bogus.

I have a son who is seventeen. For years now I've watched him and his friends in all sorts of activities and situations: slouched around relaxing, hunched over their video games, slogging their way across mountainous terrain -- the most notable of the latter being a 4-day backpacking trip down into the Grand Canyon and a 11-day 80-mile backpack in the mountains of New Mexico. These kids can be stoic (able to hike on for hours on blistered feet), autonomous (managed most of the trip mostly by themselves with only minimal involvement from the adults who were along), tough (80 miles is a lot of walking). They can also be socially intelligent, articulate, able to sit still and focus -- traits that Rosin asserts are somehow non-masculine. What I see, in short, is a bunch of normal kids for whom media images are just one of many different inputs they process --- and, apparently, not a terribly important one at that. Their conversations around campfires are about the day-to-day details of their own lives -- the marching bands, the cross-country meets, the tent that leaked in the rain the night before, their teachers in high school, who's dating whom. I've known this cohort of kids for at least six years now, and I see little of the media influence this article reports so breathlessly.

It's possible that my experience is wildly anomalous, but somehow I find that hard to believe. My guess is that "Men are screwed" makes better headlines and gets more research funding that "Kids are just... kids."

I misread the headline as "A promise and a thong ups voter turnout" and so my initial reaction was, "Well, duh!" On second thoughts, though, maybe it's just as well my Congresscritters don't expose too much of themselves. :-)

And Stravinsky and Bartok make you irritable as all heck.

--Unrepentant Baroque fan :-)

The bedroom arrangement preferences described could just as easily be explained by a desire to maximize convenience and usable space.

The article is based on the assumption that furniture-arrangement preferences have a genetic component, but I saw nothing in the paper to test this. Now if they'd found people preferring a safer-but-less-convenient sleeping arrangement --- for example, in the attic, which is more cramped but much more easily defended --- *that* would be persuasive!

This is silliness masquerading as science. If jumping to conclusions were an olympic event, this one would take gold.

The image conjured up by the phrase "... I towed the (liberal arts) party line ..." --- of an educator laboriously hauling a heavy rope --- is both amusing and baffling. Perhaps what was meant was that he toed the line?

(Yes, nitpicky, I know. But I expect even my teenage son to understand that just because something passes a spell-checker doesn't mean that it's free of typos --- surely I can expect as much from a professor? Noblesse oblige and all that...)

I wonder whether they ruled out ovulational effects? (See "Ovulating Strippers make Bigger Tips", Scientific American, Oct. 2007: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=....

Of course! Why debate the message when you can attack the messenger?

Hmm. I better go dig out that old rotary phone from the box in the garage.