From the Newswires: Furious and Furiouser

Posted by Pamela S. on Friday, June 29th, 2012

There is always plenty to be angry about in the news, but like everything, your reaction depends on how much it affects you. Some people care deeply about the political landscape and others are more concerned about the latest Facebook app. Most of us lie somewhere in the middle , and if you ask me, that is usually a safe place to be.

It’s not that I don’t care what is going on in the world, but sometimes I would rather just listen to my neighbor tell me bad jokes he heard at the police station. Is there such a thing as news overload? You can become depressed watching too much news, but did you know that having over 354 Facebook friends can make you depressed? According to a study by Dilney Goncalves, Ph.D., a marketing professor at IE Business School in Madrid, that is the magic number. He claims that we judge our success based on how we measure up against our peers. I guess if your 354 friends have issues, you can feel superior.

Attorney General Eric Holder may need his friends now. For the first time in American history, the head of a Justice Department has been held in contempt by congress. The House of Representatives approved the criminal contempt measure 255-67. The civil measure passed in a 258-95 vote. This all came about because Holder refused to hand over documents in an investigation of an ATF gun trafficking operation known as “The Fast and the Furious”.

The day before the vote, Fortune.com published an article by Katherine Eban entitled “The Truth About the Fast & Furious Scandal” that disputes most of the media reports about the operation.

Also from the newswires, Judge Lewis A. Kaplan of the U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York approved a $40 million settlement in Lehman Brothers Mortgage-based Securities Litigation, No. 08-CV-6762. The class action lawsuit led to four years of litigation against individuals previously associated with Lehman Brothers Holding, Inc. Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy in September 2008. It was the largest bankruptcy filed in U.S. history.

Now back to Facebook. The social media site pulled an app called “Find Friends Nearby” because of complaints. The application lets you know if your friends are in your vicinity. Since many of our Facebook “friends” aren’t real friends, people are worried about invasion of privacy and stalking.

What is they say? Keep your friends close and your enemies closer. Facebook appears to be making more enemies than friends these days.

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