This is boring.

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Schools all over have been experimenting with social media lately – some of them getting into it and some of them encouraging their students to stay out of it. Now Harrisburg University of Science and Tech are blocking all social media from the school’s network including Facebook, Twitter, Myspace and AIM for a week. They’re not the first school to try a move like this, but my question is, is it right?

I think we’re all willing to admit that we’re maybe a little over-connected, maybe a little obsessed with our social media and it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world not to check our Twitter feeds every two minutes. I’m not striking out against the school not supporting social media – it’s their network and if they don’t want students using it that way, it’s their prerogative to block those sites. My problem is that this is an experiment. That’s right, a guy at Harrisburg saw his teen daughter juggling a lot of social media and decided to see what would happen if he took it away. Except, instead of conducting this little experiment in his home, he chose to use his position at the college to pull a social media blackout for a week. And then proceeded to tell virtually no one about it. My qualms about the experiment’s ethics aside (hello, consent?) the bigger question is, is this something the school should really be policing?

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Oddly, these two news stories are more Orwellian than Orwell.First we have this little ditty. It’s an article about how the Russian government dropped cement from sky-high heights through the roof of an unsuspecting citizen.

What’s odd about this (besides the obvious falling-cement thing) is that this happened because, in preparation for Russia Day (?!), the government was “seeding the clouds:” inserting liquid nitrogen, cement powder, and silver iodide into the clouds so that it won’t rain. And what’s more, they’ve been doing it for the past 20 years.

That’s right, friends. On Russia Day, all skies must be clear, by order of the government. Do the citizens know this? Or do they think that it’s a miracle that it never rains on national holidays?

On to the next creepy government story.

In Romania, citizens so despised the living candidates that they reelected a dead mayor. For realz.

Yeah, they knew he was dead. So what? As one profound villager says, “I know he died, but I don’t want a change.”

Gosh, if we knew it was that easy, we could have all just voted for JFK every year.

Oddly, neither of these two tales is from the good ol’ USA. Is our government slacking off in its world-renowned Big Brother ways? Is the news just tired of reporting it? Or have we, finally and just in time for the new election, just become complacent?

[Image courtesy of http://capefeare.com/]