alias Bruce.

If you use Facebook, the case of the guy who hate-posted about his estranged wife

shouldn't apply to you. But it should interest you.

It shouldn't apply to you because the behavior of the Facebook user, Mark Byron, was astonishingly stupid as well as belligerently venomous. According to the Huffington Post, Byron – who is in the midst of a nasty divorce in which his wife filed for a protective order – posted a comment to his "friends" on his FB page saying, in part, "If you are an evil, vindictive woman who wants to ruin your husband's life and take your son's father away from him completely — all you need to do is say you're scared of your husband or domestic partner and they'll take him away." You don't need to know anything about the actual facts of this marital war to know that the post was an unbelievably dumb move on Byron's part. Posting that statement to be read by an untold number of online "friends" on a notoriously-hackable site is nothing at all like telling real friends over drinks that your wife is an evil, dishonest person. Facebook, even when posts are supposedly visible only to your "friends," is a dangerously public place devoid of any real privacy. Anyone with more than two brain cells should know better than to do what Byron did. He paid for this by being required by a judge to post daily Facebook apologies to his wife in order to avoid jail time and fines. (Unseemly details here.)

But, in spite of the idiocy, Byron's case should interest you because it raises real questions about what "privacy" and "free speech" mean on Facebook – and, implicitly, on Twitter and whatever other electronic shout-out realms are soon to come. The judge, in response to a complaint by Byron's wife, ruled that Byron's FB post and resultant sympathetically angry posts by his "friends" were sufficiently abusive to cause his wife to feel intimidated and threatened. There is no way for you or me to know if this is true. Her attorney says it is. Some civil rights attorneys say it looks as if it's not. The larger issue, though, is that at this point nobody knows how to legally judge what the Constitution allows a FB user to post to his or her "friends." I think a good place to start is with existing standards for libel and threats of violence. But the reality is that, in the legal Wild West of online speech, judges are going to rule on what you post based on what they personally think, or on what they guess the government is going to think, or on what police or prosecutors prod them to do. That's not very comforting.

The lesson: treat every entry you make on Facebook, Twitter, and all other forums as if it is a transmission to every electronically-connected person on the planet. It may very well be.

Thanks to Laurie.

The best show on the radio, bar none.

The weekly program This American Life, from Chicago Public Radio and Public Radio International, consistently delivers important public-interest investigative stories, poignant personal drama, and imaginative and occasionally outrageous humor. Its success has spawned a slew of copycat "story"-formatted radio shows. But accept no substitutes. None even come close to the impact of the original.

One reason for this is that TAL has real journalistic conviction: when its reporters and producers tackle an investigative story, they are not afraid to take a stand on the meaning of what their uncovered evidence reveals. (Contrast this with the cardboard "he said-she said" barrier behind which most major-media reporters hide on explosive stories.)

Another reason is that even when TAL does "softer" human-interest stories it does them so damned humanly and creatively. Where else would you hear, for instance, the high school kids in a tiny town tell the story of what happens when a huge tornado strikes their burg smack in the middle of prom night?

But here is my best current argument for why you need to listen to This American Life: its July 24 "When Patents Attack!" episode, which tells the fascinating and horrifying story of how a school of sharks known as "patent trolls" has turned the U.S. patent system into a force that scares off innovators instead of protecting and encouraging them. Trust me: there is nothing nerdy about this story. And its implications will blow you away.

Listen to that episode, free, here.

If you don't like the idea of Google tracking your searches to concoct a skewed view of the world for you,

consider DuckDuckGo. It's a search engine that, unlike Google and most others, does not track you and does not share your personal information. So when you seek information online, it gives you a range of hits not concocted to mirror your perceived opinions and habits. Also unlike Google, DuckDuckGo doesn't hide how it works: its variety of preference settings is awesome. For instance, it lets you choose to not view ads. I've personally opted to make the ads visible because I'm willing to do that for a search engine that treats me with respect as an Internet user. But it's nice to have the choice.

I've ditched Google to try DuckDuckGo and, so far, I'm liking it. (Just so you know, I have no stake at all in DuckDuckGo; I'm an independent user just like you. I just dislike the idea of being guided to certain information and points of view based on some algorithm's idea of who I am. And I mistrust any machinery that hides itself from me.)

I heard about DuckDuckGo through Eli Pariser of MoveOn.org, whose new book The Filter Bubble discusses how Internet filters create a false "world" for you as a search engine user, and whose TED Talk on the topic might spur you to re-think your online habits.

Why do people answer the phone

when they are not willing or able to talk? You call them. They see your name. They pick up and say, "Hey." You get a sentence or two out and then they interrupt and say, "I'm in line at the supermarket. Can I call you back a little later?" So why'd they answer at all? Me, I'd much rather get their honest voicemail and leave them a message than get a sentence-and-a-half cutoff. Sure, there are times when they might think your call is urgent and they want to see what you want. But I think for the most part it's a case of people simply feeling a compulsion to answer the phone no matter what.

Anybody I know who is reading this: If you can't talk, let it roll to voicemail. OK?

The rape charge made and then dropped against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange

is, in addition to being troubling and bizarre, a vivid illustration of why it is a bad idea for one person to so dominate the identity of an underground activist organization.

As you have probably heard, Swedish authorities issued an arrest warrant yesterday charging Assange with rape, and then withdrew the charge and the warrant today. Sweden says Assange is still under investigation for molestation, which in that country is not restricted to children and is not punishable with jail time. Few additional details have yet come to light.

On a human level, this case will have to play itself out as facts emerge. What is already clear on a political level, though, is that this is exactly the kind of scenario that WikiLeaks supporters have feared as they have continually publicly warned against the organization's becoming too wrapped up in Assange's persona. Any subversive group doing work as important as WikiLeaks's should know better.

Having Assange hog the cameras creates a classic weakness in WikiLeaks's flank: as falls Assange, so falls WikiLeaks. If Assange is discredited or otherwise rendered nonfunctional -- and you know there are powerful interests working at this from a variety of angles, some of which you'd probably rather not think about -- WikiLeaks is crippled or killed.

With much of corporate journalism now complicit in shielding government and industry from the release of explosive truths that deeply affect the public interest, an organization such as WikiLeaks becomes, in effect, a surrogate for self-disabled media.

We need the work of WikiLeaks far more than we need a public spotlight for Julian Assange. He and his fellow team members ought to realize this. Alternative M.O.s for WikiLeaks have already been suggested by supportive commentators: have team members take turns being in the spotlight; go faceless and issue statements via websites and video; use a spokesperson who is not involved in the actual investigative and technological work and is thus more expendable.

This is a war for the power and influence of investigative journalism. With stakes this high, the fickleness of celebrity cannot be allowed to make or break the outcome.

My YouTube Video.

I have a video on YouTube of me speaking to an audience about today's bigotry and what we need to do about it. Take a look. I'm planning other videos, too, some of which might not be what you expect. This is fun! I'll keep you posted.