Outer Space and Cyberspace (they're both very cold)

The temperature of outer space is a balmy 3 Kelvin.  For those of you who are unfamiliar with the Kelvin scale, that's quite alright.  Knowledge of it ranks on the Geek-O-Meter somewhere between owning a Periodic Table tee-shirt and knowing what comic book holds the first appearance of Spider Man (Editor's Note: the actual wearing of said tee-shirt ranks much farther down the Geek-O-Meter than the mere possession of it).

For those of you who are entrenched on the far left side of the Geek-O-Meter, the Kelvin scale is a way of measuring temperature from a starting point called absolute zero, which is so cold that all molecular activity stops.  Just to illustrate, if space were a coctail party, you were a hydrogen atom, and you were to bring up the Kelvin scale in conversation with that smokin' hot helium atom over there, then absolute zero is the amount of action you would get for bringing up said topic.  Of course, that's just fine with you, because the rumor mill has it that the helium hussy is actually an unreactive, colorless sort who's a little light-headed.  (If you actually understood that reference, your Geek-O-Meter has just shot right past larping at an anime convention).

Coincidentally, absolute zero is also the amount of interest my wife has in this blog.  Despite knowledge of this fact, I would never post anything derogatory about her for two reasons: 1) I have nothing disparaging to say about her, and 2) if I did, the rules of both the Interwebs and Murphy's Law would somehow bring knowledge of that fact around to her.

The reason I bring this up is because a co-worker of mine is obsessed with Facebook.  She uses it to keep all her family and friends abreast with her goings-on.  Recently, she used Facebook as a forum to cry about her situation in life and complain about how responsible she is but doesn't receive any acknowledgment from her family for it, and how her sister is so irresponsible her whilst not caring one iota about it.

This just illustrates how the Internet can cast this false sense of anonymity.  She thought that by merely speaking in general terms, her family wouldn't know what she was talking about.  When her sister started to recognise the situation and inquired about it in response, my co-worker panicked and asked me what she should do.  My response to her, of course, was the cardinal rule of sensibility on the Internet:  If you don't want someone to know or see something, then the last place for you to put it is on the Internet.

My co-worker made up some excuse and probably pinned the blame on me (perhaps I fail to appreciate how much work she is able to accomplish with Facebook running in a background window), because she told me the situation blew over.  Good thing, too, because you really don't want your family relationship to drop in the 3 Kelvin range.  Especially when you spend real time with them.  Even more so when they can post embarrassing pictures on your Facebook wall.