darwinian pencil

DARWINIAN PENCIL

see that he said

yes

thats my darwinian pencil he said

what

if my students disrupt my class
dont do their assignments
skip classes
skip tests
use their cellphones during my lectures

well he said
i pull this thing out
my darwanian pencil
it has an eraser
it can erase
it can change one letter to another one real easy

so he said
i call it my darwinian pencil

i thought about this a lot recently
what he is always saying

thats what i need
is a darwinian pencil for facebook

i first signed up for facebook when i had to retire
to make contact with former patients
with friends
with family members
and
to use it as a vehicle to introduce my blog

i have thoroughly enjoyed watching former patients
grow up
graduate from high school
graduate from college
get married
have kids

i also have enjoyed seeing the same for relatives
that live some distance away from us
we actually feel closer to them since we follow
them on facebook

so its important to me and us for this reason

then
its an important source of readers for my blog
eg
a recent blog i wrote received over 2000 readers
from my facebook and my blogs facebook page

so its an important source of readership
for most bloggers
me included

everything seemed  fine and dandy
until this last political season
things seem to have just gotten worse
since the election

now when i go on facebook i really dont want
to see all that political stuff and news stuff
from either side

i will admit i have unfollowed more folks who
think like i do than those who think opposite of me

it just gets old

i also hate mean hateful racists antireligious posting

recently
eg
it was nice to see a relative who just had a set of twins
you could see the happiness oozing from the postings
from the family
ok especially from the grandparents
there were some great pictures of proud dad
holding the twins after he fell asleep
i thought
man there is going to be a lot of times like this
for you

that why i like facebook
i almost feel like i was there

then
the next thing you see is this ranting that just
goes to the extremes
both left and right

now
when i read facebook stuff
like when i watch or read the news
i dont just want to read or watch things that agree with me
i want to read or watch the other side to see what they are saying
i just dont want either side to be mean spirited about it

eg
i like to watch fareed zakaria do commentary and interviews on cnn on sunday
but
i also like to watch chris wallace on fox news do his commentaries
and interviews
i get a more balanced view of the world that way

so i have been thinking about all this a lot lately
even finding out how to unfollow folks and pages but
maybe not blocking them completely
i understand all that
but you have to do it individually though

so this morning as i was reading my email feed from
kim komando
there it was
how to filter some of the stuff out
including some of the ads etc

heres the link to the article she wrote

i highly suggest that all of us facebook folks read this

so i went and put a filter on my google chrome for things political
putting in filter words
hoping it doesnt overfilter things
maybe it will do a good enough job

it will make reading facebook more pleasurable
now this one only works for google chrome as your bowser

so i went back to my facebook
man
it was a pleasure to read facebook again
there was none of  that junk on my facebook feed
like it was early this morning

you can also turn it off or on easily since its on you toolbar

then
those annoying ads
she suggests clicking in the upside down ^
facebook will at least learn not to show you certain ads

then
there is one called
social fixer
it works on more browsers than the other one
this social fixer one ill try next after using the other filter for a week

this social fixer
fixes more than just political stuff
it does ads and other things that may annoy you that get posted


then
for those who have been hacked recently on facebook
there is a section in her article
on what to do if you get hacked
on how to improve your facebook security
eg
i just added notifications if someone logs in besides me
next ill make my passwords more secure etc

i plan on using these filters and changes for a week
to see if it works ok
my guess is that i probably wont have to unfollow someone
anymore
in fact i will probably go back in to start following those
that i applied the unfollow to

my new computer generating darwinian pencil to
the rescue

i really do feel much better after writing this
and
after applying all these filters

the organicgreen doctor