My cousin's father is functionally illiterate (this is not an exaggeration, he's severely dyslexic and has never read an actual book) and her mother has drifted in and out of rehab for most of K's life. She's in a lower working class demo, in a pretty poor area. There are no books in her house that don't belong to her, and never have been.

She succeeds academically in spite of it all. But the life stuff? It's making my heart hurt. And I hope it gets better when she goes to college and experiences life with different humans who don't value anti-intellectualism.

Erin, I'm not saying that what they are posting is appropriate or that I want to see it (and because I'm mean and intolerant of stupid teacher, no one ever wants to show me pictures of their dog, or their latest ultrasound or the baby they had last summer). It's just that I think fears of what college officers might think about what's online are grossly overrated.

I kind of expected it because it seems like the people of Georgia really want to kill Troy Davis.

The state of Georgia and the people of Georgia are not the same thing.

Also, the Supreme Court looked at the case at least four times, which is almost unheard of. His attorneys have lost appeals at the U.S. district level several times. It may have been a miscarriage of justice, but the case was reviewed by every level of the justice system.

If you were a relative of the slain police officer and believed that Troy Davis was guilty, how would you feel if the county attorney had not fought for the conviction?

Did college have a chilling effect on that? It did for me.

I dunno. I think college was the time I really embraced the "look at me! I'm claiming my sexuality by sleeping around" BS. That's because the all-girl catholic high school had different social rules around intelligent women (thank god) but I had to revisit the same shit as others, just later.

I mean, I never hid the fact that I was intelligent or that I did well in school. I never dumbed down my vocab. I just felt like I could be smart and bookish and still be "fun" and that I was proving something important by being both.

Now I look back and laugh cringe at the entire thing!

re Facebook and who might be looking at posts, xkcd did a comic on that

[link]

Not quite relevant to posting stupid excesses, but I thought it was worth mentioning.

I don't know. From what I see the teens in my life share...I just don't know. It is mutable. And these kids have different expectations of what privacy and exposure is. You probably know better than my tiny sample, but I am also not a teacher in my exposure.

It doesn't bother me as much. Were I an employer, I'd be all "ok that was when they were 16." But, especially in the academic fields, I don't know this is the case. And really, how do you filter that out? Even if you are social media savvy? It still leaves an impression.

It sounds like you have the stats to back that up, and I'm not disagreeing.

I'm just saying that kids and teens need to be more aware and educated in general on the longevity of the things they or their friends post or write about them on-line.

Especially in middle and high school, when one day, someone is your best friend and on Monday s/he's dogging you to the whole school.

Skippy skimming to say thanks for the birthday wishes! 'Twas a lovely day.

I don't know that most employers care enough to really search. There's not enough data on who DOESN'T get jobs based on their social networking info. I say that because I spent a few days trying to research it to give info to my students.

The employment-related data instead, is around people who have LOST a job based on what they posted. For example University of Colorado's diversity director was fired for a blog post about how women are dumber than men.

But it's almost impossible to find any tangible info about people who have lost opportunities based on Facebook.

Well, here's the thing: I see tons of postings from people declaring him innocent. Aside from eyewitness testimony, the shell casings were from a gun he used to shoot another person earlier in the night, and he was convicted of that shooting. He may have killed the officer. There is, I think, enough reasonable doubt, and not enough evidence to put him to death.

If you were a relative of the slain police officer and believed that Troy Davis was guilty, how would you feel if the county attorney had not fought for the conviction?

As the aunt of the little boy who was groped in a Market Basket bathroom, I'd like to gut the dude who did it. Fortunately, I'm not in charge of these things. What I believe justice is when it's one of my own isn't necessarily sane or rational. I don't think my country should execute people. Not even the worst people. It's just not fucking civilized. And I like civilization.

What the family believes could be wrong. What the family believes isn't what attorney should be fighting for. It should be justice, right?