US Senate Voice Concerns Over Facebook Privacy

Last Tuesday four US senators conveyed their concerns to Facebook over current changes to the social network that they say compromise the confidentiality of its more than 400 million users.

In a letter to Mark Zuckerberg Facebook’s co-founder and chief executives, US senators stated that they were concerned that personal information of Facebook users is being made available to third party websites.

Furthermore, Facebook should make sharing personal information an "opt-in" procedure in which a user specifically gives permission for data to be shared.

"Even though we are gratified that Facebook let users to opt-out of sharing private data, many users are unconscious of this option and, besides, find it complicated and confusing to navigate," the senators added.

"Beforehand, Facebook lets third-party advertisers to stock up profile data for 24 hours," they said. "We are concerned that current changes allow that data to be stored indefinitely.

"We believe that Facebook should reverse this policy, or at a lowest require users to decide on in to allowing third parties to store data for more than 24 hours."

Facebook's vice president of global communications, marketing and public policy, Elliot Schrage, send a letter to Senator Schumer that stated online privacy is "something Facebook takes very seriously."

"Facebook is planed to give people the tools to manage their information online and our highest priority is to keep and build the confidence of the more than 400 million people who use our service," Schrage said.

The main function of these new products and features are to enhance personalization and uphold social activity across the Internet while continuing to give users unparalleled control over what information they share, when they want to share it, and with whom," Elliot Schrage added.

Holy Man Arrested Over Sex Scandal

Hindu holy man with thousand of followers all over India and abroad have been arrested by the police after video footage come out last month allegedly showing him frolicking with two women.

Late on Wednesday, Nithyananda Swami, whose devotees include politicians and movie stars, was arrested in the resort town of Shimla in northern India.

Swami, the head of Dhyanapeetam, or "knowledge center," was strained to resign last month after the video that was purportedly shot in his center outside the southern city of Bangalore.

The leaked video aired by news channels caused the angered of the hundreds of his devotees and ransacked his center and tore down his posters, forcing him to go into hiding.

The 32-year-old holy man, who denied any links to the women and said the tapes were doctored, is being look into for rape, cheating and criminal conspiracy, police said.

The last few months have been terrible for India's self-styled holy men with police arresting a swami for running a brothel which involves air stewardesses and college students, while charging another with kidnapping a minor.

Self-claimed holy man Nithyananda Swami has spiritual centers in United States and the Europe and he also runs free medical centers and supplies food to the poor.

Christina Hendricks Named Americas Best Looking Woman

Christina Hendricks has been hailed as America's best-looking woman in an Esquire cover article, however, there's more than meets the eye with this one.

To begin with, even if the article appears in a men's magazine, the fiery "Mad Men" star won the best-looking title via a poll of over 10,000 women. Hendricks snitch 30 percent of the votes that were cast, beating out even Megan Fox, who got 14 percent of the votes, and Victoria's Secret model Adriana Lima, who got 17 percent. Megan Fox was last year's title-holder in Esquire's annual issue dedicated to the fairer sex.

Dubiously and more interestingly the photo that appears on the cover of the magazine looks a little unusual from the hot redhead who has garnered almost as much attention for her looks as she has for her performance on the AMC television show.

The accompanying photo that spread out looks a bit more like the Hendricks we know and love. She looks sizzling and hot in a desert shoot, basic-cable's favorite secretary poses next to an abandoned trailer, crawls across the sand, and bites into a juicy slice of watermelon.

Hendricks' stretch comes with a personal letter speak to to all men. As well to discussing her disgust of Facebook and love of Scotch, Hendricks lays out pointers for behaving around women: "There are better words than gorgeous, radiant, for an instance. It's an underused word even a special word. 'You are radiant, charming, smoldering,
invigorating, attractive, and fetching."

The full-bosomed beauty undoubtedly doesn't shy away from discussing her signature figure either: "We also remember everything you say about our bodies, be it good or bad. It doesn't matter if it's just a compliment nor could be just a comment. Those things you say are store away in the steel box, and we remember these things precisely. We bear in mind what you were wearing and the street corner you were standing on when you said it."

One can't help but marvel where Hendricks was standing when the women of America paid her and her body the highest accolade of all.

The Science Of Romance

Head off this idea that being fall in love is as much a biological happening as it is a behavioral happening, can we also explain "falling out of love" as in biological concepts as well? For some falling in love is a biological/chemical process within the brain and involves having just the right sum of receptors for adequate transduction by this biological/chemical process. Do we then use this same representation to talk about people falling out of love?

One professor says that falling out of love is a result of the parties involved becoming fed up with the relationship, that the parties involved found each other and trapped with each other because each one found something unique and novel about the other person and after some time, the novelty goes away, tediousness arises, and falling out of love becomes predictable.

Even though this explanation makes much sense to me, I still wondered what the changeable degrees of brain activity over this course of time would tell us about a biological reasoning for falling out of love.

Also I found out that it is extremely interesting to talk about the different sections of the brain that were both activated and deactivated when one sees his/her loved one. Most fascinatingly to me, both the amygdala and the pre-frontal cortex region are deactivated. The amygdala is the sub-cortical region of the brain that controlling our sense of fear and possibly sadness as well.

This does make sense; when I glimpse someone that I am in love with, I never approach him with fear. On the other hand, the pre-frontal cortex controls a lot of our planning, decision-making, and basic overall rational thinking. Unfortunately this was deactivated!

Speaking with this, have there been many court cases in the past, or current, that have used this biological model as a means for a defendant beseeching not guilty by reason of madness in a murder trial? I wonder.