I love Facebook. I just hate people who use Facebook.

The social network phenomenon is doing damage control in response to user complaints about sometimes cryptic changes to the site’s privacy policy that allow third parties access to users’ personal information, including friends, current city or hometown and music preferences.

A Facebook user complaining about a lack of privacy is like a priest joining the church and complaining about the celibacy. Of course, Facebook is selling people’s personal information. That is how they make money. Facebook monetizes your personal information and sells it to business partners like Pandora and Microsoft to create highly targeted ad campaigns.

Those who complain about privacy on Facebook show they’re almost as technologically savvy as the Amish. How did you think Facebook financed your hours of stalking friends from high school? (There is a reason why people don’t stay in touch with their high school classmates — they don’t like them. If I wanted to know what my basketball teammates where doing these days, I would go to McDonald’s.) Users complaining about this alleged breach of privacy do not care about privacy. They are some of the same self-centered hypocrites who willingly divulge — and sometimes over-divulge — every waking second of their pathetic lives.

The exodus of users fleeing Facebook and the hype surrounding the changing privacy controls is out of control. Congress was able to pass the Patriot Act, which granted the government unprecedented access to your library records, bank accounts and other sensitive information, with little opposition. But when a social networking site fosters the kind of interconnectivity that will define the next era of the web, users overreact more than a teenage girl at the premiere of a new “Twilight” movie.

Facebook is expanding so fast they have been forced to navigate uncharted ethical waters as they try to remain profitable — a problem that has doomed so many other companies on the web. In a world built on the assumption that information has to be transferred at no cost, Facebook is challenging that paradigm, and doing it quite successfully. More online businesses, especially newspapers, should follow its lead.

Spending upward of four, five or even six hours a day on these sites, many people — whose fingertips must be bleeding from the imbecilic exchanges they have online — display why Facebook has become so successful: It is more addictive than crack. According to Time Magazine, more than one in four people who browse the Internet have a Facebook account, and more importantly, they have visited the site in the last month, explaining why it is a gold mine for advertisers.

A mere six years after Facebook’s creation, the site is on the verge of eclipsing the 500 million user mark. If Microsoft made computers user friendly and if Google made the world’s information easy to access, then Facebook and Twitter are making that wealth of information user friendly. The technology that propels social networking is phenomenal, redefining how people consume information and communicate in the process. Unfortunately, these tools have been hijacked by egomaniacs who indulge in the kind of self-love reserved for celebrities on the brink of relapsing.

No matter what your personal settings on Facebook happen to be, there is no privacy on Facebook. Anyone who is a friend of one of your friends can probably view your personal information. If you don’t want someone to know something about you, don’t post it on a website capable of disseminating that information to the entire Facebook community.

Ultimately, you have total control of your online pseudo-self and how much information you choose to disclose. Facebook executives care about your status updates about as much as I do — not at all.

And if you don’t like this column, don’t write anything on my Facebook page. I’m too busy ignoring you.

Many in Congress have scrutinized Mexican President Felipe Calderon for blasting American policy on gun laws and immigration after his trip to the United States last week. Though both issues deserve a great amount of discussion and debate, the president of a borderline failing state had little authority to criticize. He may even have aided Arizona in garnering support for the legislation he intended to rebuke. In addition, he shed new insight on the federal government and the inability of Washington lawmakers to take action on illegal immigration.

In Calderon’s address to Congress, he discussed immigration as a problem facing both nations and claimed, “I am not a president who likes to see Mexicans leave for opportunities abroad.” Despite his honesty in respect to a failed immigration system, he denounced the new Arizona legislation as a law that “not only ignores a reality that cannot be erased by decree but also introduces a terrible idea using racial profiling as a basis for law enforcement.” Calderon shares a lack of resolutions with many in Congress, failing to make any strident effort to reform illegal immigration law. However, if legislators wished to make a bipartisan agreement to enforce the borders, it could easily be done. Democrats and Republicans may be reluctant to lose a voting block of 45 million Latinos living in America, according to the Census Bureau.

Although Calderon claimed the Arizona law breaches constitutional authority, the revised bill states, “a lawful stop, detention or arrest must be in the enforcement of any other law or ordinance of a county, city or town of this state.” Calderon’s legislative ignorance is exacerbated by the hypocrisy of his own country’s policy. In Mexico, illegal immigration is a felony, punishable by two years in jail. In addition the government can deport anyone not “physically or mentally healthy” or lacking the “necessary funds for their sustenance,” according to the Washington Times.

Not only was Calderon’s congressional address hypocritical, it bordered on outright insanity. Claiming to be “doing the best (his government) can do in order to reduce migration,” solutions were totally unmentioned. If immigration is the problem Calderon claims, perhaps we should adopt his own Mexican policies. Or if the federal government was truly serious, it might consider bringing home some American troops to carry out border patrol. With soldiers stationed in 140 nations and 1,000 bases around the world, political leaders cannot claim we face a shortage of resources.

In response to an issue the federal government refuses to solve, the state of Arizona took action in the only way possible through the legislative process. Despite cries of racism and racial profiling, our representatives need to make tough decisions they were elected to make. But as a government known more for its talk than its walk, public optimism is not on its side. The state of Washington may need to consider similar legislation if little continues to be accomplished.

As for Calderon, his perspective is either knowingly dishonest or blissfully ignorant, but as he mentioned himself, cooperation is important between our neighboring nations. We should continue to negotiate, trade and travel with Mexico, but we ought to respect the sovereignty of each other’s law.

Despite a somewhat tumultuous experience helping to host the 2008 Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minneapolis has submitted a bid to host the 2012 Democratic National Convention.

The city’s marketing group, Meet Minneapolis, submitted the bid May 21, the last day cities could apply, Meet Minneapolis spokeswoman Kristen Montag said.

There is no specific timeline for announcing finalists, but Montag said they’re expecting to hear a decision sometime this summer.

Hosting the convention would be beneficial to Minneapolis both economically and in terms of national exposure, Ward 6 City Councilmember Robert Lilligren said.

“There are real, measurable and tangible benefits to the local business community with hosting an event like this,” he said.

In 2008, the RNC generated more than $170 million for St. Paul, according to a study by Dave Brennan, co-director of the Institute for Retailing Excellence at the University of St. Thomas.

The Minneapolis City Council voted May 14 to support the bid, a requirement for any city submitting an application.

Ward 2 Councilmember Cam Gordon was the only council member to vote against hosting the convention.

“I have not seen any evidence that the positive impacts of hosting these conventions outweigh the negative impacts and stresses that accompany them,” Gordon said in a statement.

During the RNC in 2008, the city surrendered control of the police force to the convention’s organizers, which led to poorly-handled crackdowns on peaceful protests and “other suspensions of civil liberties,” Gordon said.

The 2008 RNC has been marked by the protests and police action that surrounded the convention. An estimated 10,000 protesters descended on the city during the convention, leading to arrests and lawsuits, some of which remain ongoing.

St. Paul’s experience with the RNC will help Minneapolis if it is chosen to host the Democratic convention, Lilligren said “The equipment is already here and the training has already been covered for the RNC,” he said. “It’s fairly new and fairly fresh, which is a benefit.”

The convention is planned to start Sept. 3, 2012, during Labor Day weekend, which is traditionally a slow weekend for business in Minneapolis, Lilligren said. The city is still reaping the benefits of the RNC, he added.

“The convention center staff can point to a number of events that are booked now that are a direct result of hosting the RNC here,” Lilligren said.

The bid included roughly 30 documents, including approvals from the sheriff, city council, police department and other city stakeholders, he said.

Minneapolis submitted a bid for the DNC in 2008, but when St. Paul was selected as the main site of the Republican convention, plans for Minneapolis to host the DNC faded.

The bid for the Democratic Convention includes only Minneapolis, while the bid for the 2008 Republican convention combined Minneapolis and St. Paul.

Other cities bidding for the event include Charlotte, N.C., St. Louis, Mo., Philadelphia, Pa., and Phoenix, Ariz.

The Republican Party announced earlier this month that it had selected Tampa, Fla., for the site of the 2012 RNC, which will be held in August.

If Minneapolis is chosen as a finalist, the city would develop more detailed plans for security and specific locations for convention events, Ward 8 Councilmember Elizabeth Glidden said.

Right now, city officials are waiting to hear if it will be chosen, she said.

“I think that we are very good contender for the DNC,” Glidden said. “I think that we have all the pieces that would make a great convention, including the fact that we know how to handle very large crowds.”

American history is a series of inspiring reminders of how far we’ve come in our national quest to form a more perfect Union. The American present is a reminder of how far we still have to go. In yet another sad failure to repudiate the now 30-year trend of executive overreach and disrespect for civil rights, President Barack Obama decided to maintain a policy that allows the Central Intelligence Agency and Joint Special Operations Command to assassinate U.S. citizens abroad without arrest or trial if suspected of terrorism. This policy is a practical problem and an unjustified betrayal of the core fundamental tenants of our nation. Since the president is apparently unable to recognize the pitfalls of allowing anonymous individuals the right to play judge, jury and executioner, Congress should pass the bill proposed by Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, to ban such extra-judicial killings, lest this become another in a line of fear-motivated civil rights encroachments that we have come to regret.

We’ve been down this road before, and the results have not been pretty. During both the ’20s and ’50s, state legislatures, Congress and the Justice Department relentlessly assaulted the free-speech rights of political liberals nationwide in the “Red Scares.” During World War II, the U.S. Army herded more than 60,000 loyal Japanese-American citizens into concentration camps.

The common thread in both of these periods is that ordinary Americans went along with such encroachments out of fear of a shadowy foreign enemy, and used national security to justify sacrificing our precious liberties. As with most ill-conceived policies born of public panic, however, we have come to regret these actions deeply and have realized that trading our civil liberties didn’t make any of us safer and caused needless suffering for many of our loyal countrymen. The current policies of extraordinary rendition and extra-judicial assassination are eerily similar in tenor to these past policies, and even less related to public safety.

Making matters worse, the U.S. government and U.S. military seem to be terrible at both resisting the political pressure to value expediency over sound judgment and differentiating real threats from boogeymen. In the aforementioned cases, the White House knew that Japanese-Americans posed no actual threat to security (and indeed, not a single act or attempted act of sabotage was ever discovered during the war) but interned them anyway. Most of the people blacklisted during the Red Scares were harmless intellectuals. Recent evidence further supports this principle, as when the Supreme Court ruled in the 2008 case Boumediene v. Bush that Guantanamo detainees must be granted habeas corpus rights. Thirty-three of the 39 detainees were later released due to insufficient evidence that they were actually terrorists. If the government cannot determine who is really a terrorist, how on earth can we trust them to kill U.S. citizens based on similar suspicions and innuendo?

The distinction the government is attempting to draw here is even more dubious. Somehow, we are supposed to believe that terrorists represent a special existential threat to our security, thus justifying such extreme measures. Terrorism, however, is an ineffective tool used only by those who are unable to access more powerful methods of warfare. To pretend that these fringe lunatics are a legitimate threat to us is only to do ourselves a disservice. Murderers and serial killers at home are much more immediately dangerous and threaten more Americans in real ways, yet our justice system manages to handle these fiends while protecting their civil rights. American citizens-turned Al Qaeda operatives are no more scarier than Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer and Gary Ridgway, and their rights were not breached.

It is sorely tempting in this fearful time to give in and trade freedom for safety. Such trades are fools’ gold, however. The threats we face from terrorists in this period are real, but they are likely a temporary problem specific to this period in history. If we give our government the ability to kill any U.S. citizen without trial or burden of proof, we create a much bigger, much more permanent threat here at home. Giving up our freedoms for the sake of expediency never makes us safer. It is our highest ideals — and our commitment justice, fairness and rule of law — that make us a great nation. Making hard choices, fighting our collective fear, standing up for our rights — that is what it means to be the leader of the free world. It’s time we owned up to that responsibility.

Modern attempts to confront global poverty overlook many of the basic economic tenets of 18th century philosopher and economist Adam Smith, according to Dartmouth economics professor Douglas Irwin. To alleviate poverty, the world’s poorest countries need good governance, standards of justice and a system of economic incentives, he said.

Irwin, the Robert E. Maxwell Professor of Arts and Sciences, used Smith’s book “The Wealth of Nations” as a reference point to confront the question of global poverty in a lecture on Tuesday afternoon in Rockefeller Center, “Why Are Some Countries Poor? Adam Smith and Beyond.”

“[Global poverty] is a major issue in the world today because the inequalities have never been greater than they are right now,” Irwin said.

The key to increasing wealth may be more straightforward than many people realize, Irwin added.

“Little else is requisite to carry a state to the highest degree of opulence from the lowest barbarism but peace, easy taxes and a tolerable administration of justice: all the rest being brought about by the natural course of things,” Irwin said, quoting Smith.

Such a formula for economic success might seem simple, but Irwin described it as a “really stringent set of criteria” that is difficult for many countries to meet.

“It sounds easy, so countries think ‘If we just do that then we will be a rich country,’ but if we look around the world we see how difficult it is to meet these three requirements,” Irwin said.

The key for poor nations, according to Irwin, is to focus on achieving productivity, which he defined as “achieving more output per unit of input.”

Productivity is “the basis for a country being rich,” Irwin said, because it is connected to various other important economic factors such as trade and specialization.

“Exchange and trade is a prerequisite for specialization, and it is specialization that ultimately leads to productivity,” he said.

One of the biggest problems many poor nations face is “policy uncertainty,” Irwin said.

“Policy uncertainty is when you don’t know what the rules are and you are forced to go to a government bureaucrat and make a deal,” he said.

When businesses and entrepreneurs in poor countries are forced to deal with bureaucrats instead of following a prescribed set of rules, it hampers their ability to operate freely and progress naturally, Irwin said.

“If we don’t know what the rules are, it’s hard to make an investment, and the lack of rules often prevents and discourages investment,” Irwin said.

While the rule of law is a necessary foundation for economic development, the rule of law alone is not sufficient to build a wealthy nation, Irwin said. Rules must exist that allow people to benefit from their investments and labor, creating incentives that naturally lead them to better their condition, Irwin said.

“When they are secure of enjoying the fruits of their industry, they naturally exert it to better their condition, and to acquire not only the necessities, but the conveniences and elegancies,” Irwin said, quoting Smith.

As an example of the importance of policy incentives, Irwin cited several nations that suffered economically during the 20th century, despite having industrial economies.

“The inference that economists drew is that you want to get out of agriculture and move into industry, but that was the wrong inference,” Irwin said. “The inference they should have made is that if you can raise productivity in agriculture, then you will need to spend less resources on it and then you can naturally move into other industries.”

Countries should encourage investment in agriculture, not tax and suppress it, Irwin added.

Irwin cited diverse examples of beneficial agricultural reform ranging from the Plymouth Colony in 1620 — where Governor William Bradford switched from a collective farming arrangement to one in which each individual family had its own plot — to communist China in 1979, which similarly rejected collectivized agriculture in favor of individual plots.

Under these new agricultural policies, China rose from one of poorest countries in the world — with over 50 percent of its population living in poverty in 1979 — to a poverty rate of less than 10 percent today, Irwin said.

“By changing their policies and giving incentives to people, they were able to increase growth rates and reduce poverty dramatically,” Irwin said.

The most important factor for poor nations to consider when seeking economic success is to “get the government right” and “get the incentives in agriculture right,” he said.

“Governance is a hugely important issue, but I don’t know why some countries tend to get good leaders while others get bad ones,” Irwin said. “That’s something for the government department to figure out.”

The group’s research is still in its early stages, according to Saint-Hilaire, and the group has not been able to fully explore and analyze the data.

“It is in the nature of astronomy to use new or unusual events and to try to extract as much information out of them as possible,” he said in an e-mail. “This process can be very time-consuming (and) that’s why it is still early to gauge the scientific impact of this event.”

While the group does not yet know exactly what they will use their research for, the implications of their data are promising, Saint-Hilaire said. He added that possible uses for the data include improving theories on radio emission and particle acceleration mechanisms of the solar corona.

“A better understanding of what goes on in our nearest star can lead us to a better understanding of what goes on in other stars, or how our sun affects us here on Earth,” he said in an e-mail.

Using data gathered from the Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory – a 2006 NASA mission that launched two spacecraft into Earth-like orbits to image and triangulate interplanetary disturbances – the group tracked the comet for 20 hours and used this data to predict the trajectory of the comet and pinpoint its location.

“I think the comet tracking work is very cool,” said Stuart Bale, a UC Berkeley professor of physics and the director of the Space Sciences Laboratory who has been involved with the mission for his own research. “It’s exciting to see that the path of the comet can be calculated using the STEREO images.”