Charles Rodriguez, 31, is a Colombian man who police believe is a member of the crime gang the Latin Kings. In October 2011, along with another man, he allegedly beat a jeweler who had been returning from a sales trip.

"Rodriguez's arrogance was astonishing. After committing an appalling attack on a jewellery trader, he fled the country to his native Colombia where he knew he could not be extradited," Detective Sergeant Roger Smethurst said in a statement. "However, his lack of remorse was evident by the fact he brazenly posted sightseeing pictures from Brazil - at a time when he was on the run - on his Facebook page."

In 2012 he reentered the U.K. with a false passport. He even posted photos of himself Christmas shopping and sightseeing around London. Rodriguez was stopped by London police for driving suspiciously. Though he faked his name, fingerprinting revealed his identity.
"Rodriguez must have thought he was above the law and untouchable because even when he finally returned to the UK, knowing he was still wanted, he still posted pictures of himself Christmas shopping in London on his Facebook page," Smethurst said.

• Vanessa Hojda made a spectacularly bad email mistake by attaching the wrong file and (instead of her resume) sending a crazy-looking picture of Nicolas Cage with her job application. She didn't get the job that she was applying for, but her 15 minutes of internet fame probably won't hurt her career too much, either. [url]
• CareerBuilder has published a list of some other outrageous resume mistakes. They also list examples of resumes with a "creative approach" where the candidate was hired. Warning: there may be a fine line between creativity and stupiditry for some... [url]
• This cover letter from an aspiring Wall St trader is a bit too colorful for most financial institutions. "Please explain your rationale for the rainbow" will likely be a long-remembered response for some Wall St firms. [url]

• Tony Robbins, the motivational speaker, tried to convince a bunch of folks that "there is absolutely nothing you can't overcome" with an exercise of walking over hot coals. For 21 people, though, it was second or third degree burns that needed to be overcome. [url]
• Stubbs the cat has been the mayor of the Alaskan town of Talkeetna for 15 years. Stubbs doesn't raise taxes and has high approval ratings -- and he was named "Stubbs" because he has no tail. Mayor Stubbs also takes advantage of his political power: he will only drink water out of a wine glass laced with catnip. Ah, stupiditry strikes again, and we fell for this hoax. [url]
• Catherine Venusto faces six felony charges for altering her kids' grades with the unauthorized use of a computer. This mother could be looking at up to 42 years in prison or a $90,000 fine, which should definitely teach her kids a lesson about cheating. [url]

And I'm not sure where a Sun-Times columnist gets off complaining that the Internet is dumbing down America while the paper is running a "Which Team's Fans Are Hotter?" contest.

I'm a Facebook fan. It's very powerful, and I've hardly begun to exploit all of its capabilities.... I feel smarter after spending time on Facebook; I feel dumber after reading the local newspapers....

I'm not trying to pick on Lazare - well, actually I am - but he's emblematic of a newspaper creature that is just beyond me. See, he didn't want to know what he was talking about. He just didn't want to know....

But newspapers went off the rails at just the moment the Internet flourished as an even better place to do journalism and communicate with people. It should have been a glorious melding of the minds for a better, more creative and fun and civically inspired tomorrow, but all newspaper people could see was the threat, not the opportunity.

There are some valid concerns nested in there, but the tone is attention-seeking and hyperbolic. More importantly, Carr seems to be jumping to the wrong conclusions, as appears to be typical. In the article, Carr writes:

[S]cholars examined computer logs documenting the behavior of visitors to two popular research sites, one operated by the British Library and one by a U.K. educational consortium, that provide access to journal articles, e-books, and other sources of written information. They found that people using the sites exhibited "a form of skimming activity," hopping from one source to another and rarely returning to any source they'd already visited. They typically read no more than two pages of an article or book before they would "bounce" out to another site. Sometimes they'd save a long article, but there's no evidence that they ever went back and actually read it.

I'm sorry, but how is this "chilling" (as Radar Online claims)? Carr doesn't explain why skimming is problematic, aside from worrying that we're becoming "mere decoders of information," like computers. Did paper cause people to become mere transmitters of information? We aren't deprived of our ability to reflect or think deeply by using Google's search engine or by skimming through blog posts.

I don't understand why this is even considered a problem. I skim a ton of stuff online and often make quick judgments as to whether or not its worth my time. There's a lot of crap in the long tail. But there are also a lot of worthwhile things. Skimming is human filtering, it's a necessary and useful part of processing the vast amount of information available online. I'm not going to read everything I find on the web. Most articles I will scan quickly, but there are many other things that I read in detail and at length.

What's wrong with skimming?

And then there's Matt's attack on Twitter:

Speaking of Twitter, am I the only one who views it as further evidence of a soundbite culture that struggles even to think beyond 140-character blips?

Come on! It's a medium! What about the famous quote? "I've written you a long letter because I haven't had time to write a short one." (paraphrased - usually attributed to Mark Twain, but it appears it may be Blaise Pascal). It's harder to be concise. Regardless, Twitter is a medium, it's micro-blogging. Just because you make use of a different medium doesn't mean that it controls your thinking or prevents you from using other mediums. Did telegrams make people stupid? I use the Internet to update my Facebook status and to write 2500 word emails to stay in touch with close friends.

Twitter doesn't make people stupid.

Nor does Google or Wikipedia or anything else. People are just stupid irrespective of technology. Myself included. I don't do stupid things because of technology, I do stupid things because sometimes I do stupid things. We may see stupidity manifested in different ways on different mediums, but I have a hard time believing that the medium is to blame.