73 Competency (Behaviorial) Questions [run Away!]

73 Competency-Based Interview Qs

Answer Behavioral Questions in Your Job Interview

August 22, 2008 — sk
http://interviewandquestions.wordpress.com/2008/08/22/answer-behavioral-questions-in-your-job-interview/

 Many employers are now doing “behavioral interviews”. Rather than focusing on your resume and reviewing your accomplishments as you have written them on paper, the “behavioral” interviewer will ask you open-ended questions that will cause you to describe real circumstances and your responses to them.

General answers about behavior are not what the employer is looking for. You must describe in detail a particular event, project, or experience and you dealt with the situation, and what the outcome was. The premise behind behavioral interviewing is that the most accurate predictor of future performance is past performance in similar situations.

What is Behavioral interviewing:

•  Behavioral interviewing is a technique used by employers in which the questions asked assist the employer in making predictions about a potential employee’s future success based on actual past behaviors, instead of based on responses to hypothetical questions.
• In behavior-based interviews, you are asked to give specific examples of when you demonstrated particular behaviors or skills.
• General answers about behavior are not what the employer is looking for. You must describe in detail a particular event, project, or experience and you dealt with the situation, and what the outcome was.

Although it will be more difficult to prepare concrete answers in advance to these interviews (as opposed to traditional ones), you can and should take some time to review your understanding of yourself, your past successes and concrete examples of your accomplishments. Work on honesty, sincerity and candidness. When you start to tell a behavioral story, the interviewer may try to sort out the details by understanding your behaviors.

The interviewer will probe for more depth, detail or understanding with questions like: “What were you thinking at that point?” or “Tell me more about what you discussed with that person.”

If you’ve told a story that’s anything but totally honest, your response will not hold up through these probes.

If you have a spouse or friend that can pose as an interviewer for you, it can be helpful for you to practice answering open-ended questions, such as the following. Have your friend probe further:

1. Describe a situation in which you were able to use persuasion to successfully convince someone to see things your way.
2. Describe a time when you were faced with a stressful situation that demonstrated your coping skills.
3. Give me a specific example of a time when you used good judgment and logic in solving a problem.
4. Give me an example of a time when you set a goal and were able to meet or achieve it.
5. Tell me about a time when you had to use your presentation skills to influence someone’s opinion.
6. Give me a specific example of a time when you had to conform to a policy with which you did not agree.
7. Please discuss an important written document you were required to complete.
8. Tell me about a time when you had to go above and beyond the call of duty in order to get a job done.
9. Tell me about a time when you had too many things to do and you were required to prioritize your tasks.
10. Give me an example of a time when you had to make a split second decision.
11. What is your typical way of dealing with conflict? Give me an example.
12. Tell me about a time you were able to successfully deal with another person even when that individual may not have personally liked you (or vice versa).
13. Tell me about a difficult decision you’ve made in the last year.
14. Give me an example of a time when something you tried to accomplish and failed.
15. Give me an example of when you showed initiative and took the lead.
16. Tell me about a recent situation in which you had to deal with a very upset customer or co-worker.
17. Give me an example of a time when you motivated others.
18. Tell me about a time when you delegated a project effectively.
19. Give me an example of a time when you used your fact-finding skills to solve a problem.
20. Tell me about a time when you missed an obvious solution to a problem.
21. Describe a time when you anticipated potential problems and developed preventive measures.
22. Tell me about a time when you were forced to make an unpopular decision.
23. Please tell me about a time you had to fire a friend.
24. Describe a time when you set your sights too high (or too low).
25. Tell me about a time that you demonstrated initiative?
26. Describe a situation when have you motivated yourself to complete an assignment or task that you did not want to do?
27. Think about a difficult boss, professor or other person. What made him or her difficult? How did you successfully interact with this person?
28. Think about a complex project or assignment that you have been assigned. What approach did you take to complete it?
29. Tell me about the riskiest decision that you have made. What were your considerations in making that particular decision.
30. Can you tell me about an occasion where you needed to work with a group to get a job done? What were the challenges and difficulties and how did you face these?
31. Describe a situation when you or a group that you were a part of were in danger of missing a deadline. What did you do?
32. Tell me about a time when you worked with a person who did things very differently from you. How did you get the job done? Would you work with that person again if given the choice?
33. Describe your three greatest accomplishments to date.
34. Tell me about a situation when you had to learn something new in a short time. How did you proceed?
35. Can you tell me about a complex problem that you solved? Describe the process you utilized.
36. Give me an example of a time when you had to make a split second decision.
37. Give me an example of a bad decision that you made and what you learned from that mistake?
38. Tell me about a time when something you tried to accomplish and failed. What did you learn from that failure?
39. Tell me about a time when you missed an obvious solution to a problem. What did you learn from that mistake?
40. Tell me about a challenge that you successfully met.
41. Describe a situation when you had to go above and beyond the call of duty in order to get a job done.
42. Please tell me about one or two unpopular decisions you have made. What were the positive and negative outcomes of those decisions?
43. What leadership positions have you held? Describe your leadership style. What aspects of your leadership style have you changed or deleted once you learned that these aspects were not successful?
44. Give me a specific example of a time when you used good judgment and logic in solving a problem.
45. Summarize a situation where you successfully persuaded others to do something or to see your point of view. Tell me about a time when you had to use your presentation skills to influence someone’s opinion.
46. Give an example of when your persistence had the biggest payoff.
47. How have you most constructively dealt with disappointment and turned it into a learning experience? Please give me a concrete example in your life.
48. Tell me of a time when you had to conform to a policy with which you did not agree.
49. Describe a situation in which you effectively developed a solution to a problem by combining different perspectives or approaches.
50. Describe a time when you were faced with problems or stresses at work that tested your coping skills. What did you do?
51. Give an example of a time when you had to be relatively quick in coming to a decision.
52. Give me an example of an important goal you had to set and tell me about your progress in reaching that goal.
53. Describe the most creative work-related project you have completed.
54. Give me an example of a problem you faced on the job, and tell me how you solved it.
55. Tell me about a situation in the past year in which you had to deal with a very upset customer or co-worker.
56. Give me an example of when you had to show good leadership.

Behavioral Interview questions to test analysis skills:

57. Give me a specific example of a time when you used good judgment and logic in solving a problem.
58. Give me an example of a time when you used your fact-finding skills to solve a problem.
59. Describe a time when you anticipated potential problems and developed preventive measures.
60. What steps do you usually follow to study a problem before making a decision?

Behavioral Interview questions to test leadership skills:

61. Give an example of your ability to build motivation in your co-workers, classmates or a volunteer committee
62. What is the toughest group that you’ve had to get cooperation from? Describe how you handled it. What was the outcome?

Behavioral Interview questions to test communication skills:

63. Describe the most significant written document, report or presentation that you had to complete.
64. Tell me about a time when you had to use your presentation skills to influence someone’s opinion.

Technical or professional skills:

65. As a customer service representative, tell me about a time when you have to deal with angry customers.
66. As an accountant, give me an example of a time when you came across questionable accounting practices. How did you handle the situation?

Teamwork:

67. Describe a situation where your colleagues disagreed with your ideas. What did you do?
68. Tell me about a time when a colleague was not doing his share of work. What did you do?
69. Describe a situation in which you found your supervisor’s idea was not correct, what action did you take?

Planning and Organization:

70. Give an example of what you’ve done when your project plan was interrupted by unforeseen circumstances.
71. Describe a time when you had many projects due at the same time. What steps did you take to get them all done?

Motivation:

72. Give examples of your experiences in a job that were satisfying. Give examples of your experiences that were dissatisfying.
73. Describe a situation when you were able to have a positive influence on the actions of others.

A Bad Bank Rescue ( Mallaby of CFR @WaPo)

A Bad Bank Rescue (Honest Sense from CFR's Mallaby)

By Sebastian Mallaby  (FYI - his BIO  and writings at CFR:  http://www.cfr.org/bios/4452/  )

Sunday, September 21, 2008; Page B07      http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/20/AR2008092001059.html

With truly extraordinary speed, opinion has swung behind the radical idea that the government should commit hundreds of billions in taxpayer money to purchasing dud loans from banks that aren't actually insolvent. As recently as a week ago, no public official had even mentioned this option. Now the Treasury, the Fed and congressional leaders are promising its enactment within days. The scheme has gone from invisibility to inevitability in the blink of an eye. This is extremely dangerous.

The plan is being marketed under false pretenses. Supporters have invoked the shining success of the Resolution Trust Corporation as justification and precedent. But the RTC, which was created in 1989 to clean up the wreckage of the savings-and-loan crisis, bears little resemblance to what is being contemplated now. The RTC collected and eventually sold off loans made by thrifts that had gone bust. The administration proposes to buy up bad loans before the lenders go bust. This difference raises several questions.

The first is whether the bailout is necessary. In 1989, there was no choice. The federal government insured the thrifts, so when they failed, the feds were left holding their loans; the RTC's job was simply to get rid of them. But in buying bad loans before banks fail, the Bush administration would be signing up for a financial war of choice. It would spend billions of dollars on the theory that preemption will avert the mass destruction of banks. There are cheaper ways to stabilize the system.

In the 1980s, the government did not need a strategy to decide which bad loans to take over; it dealt with anything that fell into its lap as a result of a thrift bankruptcy. But under the current proposal, the government would go out and shop for bad loans. These come in all shapes and sizes, so the government would have to judge what type of loans it wants. They are illiquid, so it's hard to know how to value them. Bad loans are weighing down the financial system precisely because private-sector experts can't determine their worth. The government would have no better handle on the problem.

In practice this means the government would make subjective choices about which bad loans to buy, and it would pay more than fair value. Billions in taxpayer money would be transferred to the shareholders and creditors of banks, and the banks from which the government bought most loans would be subsidized more than their rivals. If the government bought the most from the sickest institutions, it would be slowing the healthy process in which strong players buy up the weak, delaying an eventual recovery. The haggling over which banks got to unload the most would drag on for months. So the hope that this "systematic" plan can be a near-term substitute for ad hoc AIG-style bailouts is illusory.

Within hours of the Treasury announcement Friday, economists had proposed preferable alternatives. Their core insight is that it is better to boost the banking system by increasing its capital than by reducing its loans. Given a fatter capital cushion, banks would have time to dispose of the bad loans in an orderly fashion. Taxpayers would be spared the experience of wandering into a bad-loan bazaar and being ripped off by every merchant.

Raghuram Rajan and Luigi Zingales of the University of Chicago suggest ways to force the banks to raise capital without tapping the taxpayers. First, the government should tell banks to cancel all dividend payments. Banks don't do that on their own because it would signal weakness; if everyone knows the dividend has been canceled because of a government rule, the signaling issue would be removed. Second, the government should tell all healthy banks to issue new equity. Again, banks resist doing this because they don't want to signal weakness and they don't want to dilute existing shareholders. A government order could cut through these obstacles.

Meanwhile, Charles Calomiris of Columbia University and Douglas Elmendorf of the Brookings Institution have offered versions of another idea. The government should help not by buying banks' bad loans but by buying equity stakes in the banks themselves. Whereas it's horribly complicated to value bad loans, banks have share prices you can look up in seconds, so government could inject capital into banks quickly and at a fair level. The share prices of banks that recovered would rise, compensating taxpayers for losses on their stakes in the banks that eventually went under.

Congress and the administration may not like the sound of these ideas. Taking bad loans off the shoulders of the banks seems like a merciful rescue; ordering banks to raise capital or buying equity stakes in them sounds like big-government meddling. But we are in the midst of a crisis, and it shouldn't matter how things sound. The Treasury plan outlined on Friday involves vast risks to taxpayers, huge complexity and no guarantee of success. There are better ways forward.  smallaby@cfr.org

mothers tribute priceless art collection

made me feel:  grateful, blessed, fortunate...  [what's often taken for granted]

This is for the mothers who have sat up all night with sick toddlers in
their arms, wiping up barf laced with Oscar Mayer wieners and cherry
Kool-Aid saying, "It's okay honey, Mommy's here."

Who have sat in rocking chairs for hours on end soothing crying babies
who can't be comforted. This is for all the mothers who show up at work
with spit-up in their hair, milk stains on their blouses or diapers in
their purse.

For all the mothers who run carpools and make cookies and sew Halloween costumes, and all the mothers who DON'T.

This is for the mothers who gave birth to babies they'll never see, and the mothers who took those babies and gave them homes.

This is for the mothers whose priceless art collection are hanging on
their refrigerator doors...and for all the mothers who froze their buns
on metal bleachers at football or soccer games instead of watching from
the warmth of their cars, so that when their kids asked, "Did you see
me, Mom?" they could say, "Of course, I wouldn't have missed it for the
world," and mean it.
This is for all the mothers who yelled at their kids in the grocery
store when they stomped their feet and screamed for ice cream before
dinner--and for all the mothers who counted to ten instead, but realize
how child abuse happens.

This is for all the mothers who sat down with their children and
explained all about making babies--and for all the (grand) mothers who
wanted to, but just couldn't find the words.

This is for all the mothers who go hungry, so their children can eat.
For all the mothers who read "Goodnight, Moon" twice a night for a
year--and then read it again "Just one more time."

This is for all the mothers who taught their children to tie their
shoelaces before they started school, and for all the mothers who opted
for Velcro instead.

This is for all the mothers who teach their sons to cook and their
daughters to sink a jump shot. This is for every mother whose head
turns automatically when a little voice calls "Mom?" in a crowd, even
though they know their own offspring are at home -- or even away at
college.

This is for all the mothers who sent their kids to school with stomach
aches, assuring them they'd be just FINE once they got there, only to
get calls from the school nurse an hour later asking them to please
pick them up. Right away.

This is for mothers whose children have gone astray, who can't find the
words to reach them. For all the mothers who bite their lips until they
bleed when their 14 year olds dye their hair green.

For all the mothers of the victims of recent school shootings, and the
mothers of those who did the shooting. For the mothers of the
survivors, and the mothers who sat in front of their TVs in horror,
hugging their child who just came home from school, safely.

This is for all the mothers who taught their children to be peaceful, and now pray they come home safely from a war.

What makes a good Mother anyway? Is it patience? Compassion? Broad
hips? The ability to nurse a baby, cook dinner, and sew a button on a
shirt, all at the same time? Or is it in her heart?

Is it the ache you feel when you watch your son or daughter disappear
down the street, walking to school alone for the very first time? The
jolt that takes you from sleep to dread, from bed to crib at 2 A.M. to
put your hand on the back of a sleeping baby?

The panic, years later, that comes again at 2 A.M. when you just want
to hear their key in the door and know they are safe again in your
home?

Or the need to flee from wherever you are and hug your child when you
hear news of a fire, a car accident, a child dying? The emotions of
motherhood are universal and so our thoughts are for young mothers
stumbling through diaper changes and sleep deprivation...and mature
mothers learning to let go.

For working mothers and stay-at-home mothers, single mothers and
married mothers. Mothers with money, mothers without. This is for you
all -- for all of us.

Hang in there.  In the end we can only do the best we can.  Tell them every day that we love them. And pray for them.

Please pass along to all the Moms in your life.

 

"Home is what catches you when you fall - and we all fall."

Bonus Wisdom Thoughts 2B GREAT 2008

I truly wish you the best of health, happiness, and serenity (peace of mind)
and to keep it GREAT in 2008!

some wisdom thoughts:
1. To have a purpose is the greatest gift of life.
2. If you start something---finish it.
3. Before you act, think about what effect your actions will have on others.
4. More important than seeing the future is knowing the present.
5. It is often the small actions of our daily lives that, over time, have the greatest influence on the world.
6. Those who spend their time worrying about what people think of them wouldn't worry if they knew how rarely other people think of them.
7. The easiest person to decieve is yourself.
8. To your own self be true.
9. If you don't accept defeat you cannot be defeated.
10. If you fall seven times stand up eight.
11. It is a great gift to know when to remain silent.
12. Who are we if the thoughts we think are someone else's.
13. A closed mind is infinitely more difficult to open than a closed door.
14. A crowd is the loneliest place to be.
15. It would be impossible to alter our life without first altering our thinking.
16. It is wiser to concentrate on the effort, not the outcome.
17. Anyone is entitled to have their opinion of you, but do not take it to heart. It is your own opinion of yourself that matters.
18. Life is not a matter of chance, its a matter of choice.
19. If you have one aim in life, let it be to fulfill your potential.
20. It is far wiser to know than to be known.

oops, four more (two-twelves) from my favorites bin:
The mind makes a good servant but a poor master.
You cannot change someone else, but you can influence them.
If you fail to PLAN then you plan to FAIL.

Thank God for Waking up today with a Heartbeat!

Have a Great Day /    from J. Kenneth Cowtowne  ( Moo! )

Facebook, Farts & Bowing to Censors Here & There & Everywhere

Hello - AFAIR its kosher to post this here - the sly tech/cultural/business buffet -
from my favorite ( sorry /.  ) daily read, Silicon Valley's GMSV from McKlatchy - the only news
service brave enough to report so much honest news that they .... [go learn yourself]

	http://www.siliconvalley.com/gmsvnewsletter Good Morning Silicon Valley Article Launched: 01/03/2008  By JOHN MURRELL .../...   YouTube doesn't operate under a Chinese license, but the government has shown it has only to pull a lever or two to cut off access to selected outside connections (see "Remember, bowing is just another word for bending over"). And that remains the bigger point. However rich their visions and noble their intentions, companies making commitments in China simply cannot be sure that the rules won't change overnight, and change in a way that forces a new set of compromises. [story shifted to bottom]
	Q  U  O  T  E  D "It's a bit like breaking wind in the elevator. Everyone suffers." -- Peter Martin of the University of Utah's Traffic Lab, author of a new study showing how drivers distracted by cell phone conversations (hands-free or not) clog up the road.
	Face plant -- data portability and Scoble's slapstick scrape: There's an important issue at the core of today's brouhaha between high-profile blogger Robert Scoble and Facebook, but the advocates of data portability may want to wait for a better case to use in pressing their point. Scoble, who proudly amassed the social site's maximum 5,000 "friends," was interested in seeing how much overlap there was between that mob and the people on his Plaxo contact management list. Facebook, like other social sites, has a vested interest in keeping you in the fold and so does not make it easy for a user to extract contact information. So Plaxo invited Scoble to alpha-test an upcoming feature for its Pulse social sharing service -- a robot script that can grab specified data fields from your Facebook friends' profiles and export them. Next thing you know, Scoble gets a form letter telling he's been tossed off Facebook for violating the terms of service and all traces of his presence have been excised from the site. As the folks at DataPortability.com will be happy to explain, there is a crying need for some open and standardized format to allow social Web users to manage and move their data around. But before we get to that, it's necessary to sort out exactly what data is whose. The data you enter yourself? That sounds like yours. The data that your "friends" enter about themselves? Well, they've shared it with you, but is it yours to export? And since you've entered into an agreement with Facebook to voluntarily add information to Facebook's database, does the company have some kind of claim as well, (not to mention some obligation to prevent one of your "friends" from exporting your contact information without letting you know)? Unfortunately, the present case is too muddled to offer any clarity. Plaxo's approach went beyond using the Facebook-supplied application interfaces in order to grab e-mail addresses, presented as an image in Facebook profiles to prevent massive harvesting for spam purposes. Plaxo employed some graphical scraping and optical character recognition to get around that, and Facebook can't have that sort of third-party programming gumming up its system. As Michael Arrington reports, the Plaxo folks knew they were playing with fire and went ahead anyway. As for Scoble, he violated terms of service he may not agree with but which have some legitimate purpose. He got caught and he got booted, and now, after promising to be good, he's back in. Such is life on the edge.. Comment on this post And if you could snap a few updates for Google Earth on the way, that'd be great: Ever since word emerged that the Google guys had cut a $2.6 million deal with NASA to base their private air force at conveniently located and uncrowded Moffett Field (see "And wait till we pay the state to add the gLane to 101"), cynics have wondered just what the public gets out of the bargain. There was some vague talk about research cooperation and putting scientific instruments aboard the four aircraft -- a Boeing 767, a Boeing 757 and a pair of Gulfstreams -- but it still looked to some like Google had just bought its way into a sweet parking spot. This afternoon, however, one of those Gulfstreams will take a handful of NASA scientists and their instruments on a 10-hour trip to the Arctic and back to observe what is expected to be a particularly bright Quadrantid meteor shower. Sergey and Larry are said to be especially interested in the data on burnout rates. Comment on this post Off topic: The winners in the Benoit Mandelbrot Fractal Art Contest for 2007 and the Materials Research Society's Science as Art competition (exploding nanowires!). Comment on this post
	Good Morning Silicon Valley Article Launched: 01/03/2008 02:44:15 PM PST China squeezes the tubes a little tighter By JOHN MURRELL Some big tech companies have a lot at stake in trying to extend into China and help integrate that country into the rest of the digital world, and they can argue eloquently that the benefits of their involvement outweigh the accommodations they must make to operate in a totalitarian state. Trouble is, China keeps making those justifications harder and harder. In a development sure to be of interest to Google's YouTube, the Chinese government announced today that as of Jan. 31, it will restrict the broadcast of online videos to sites owned or controlled by the state. Such sites wishing to display or allow uploads of video content can apply for a permit and must monitor the content for material that reveals national secrets, hurts the reputation of China, disrupts social stability or promotes pornography. According to the rules, "Those who provide Internet video services should insist on serving the people, serve socialism ... and abide by the moral code of socialism." Those in the line of fire are trying to figure out the implications. According to the Wall Street Journal, most of China's popular video sites are privately run, and while some, like Tudou.com, are optimistically viewing the regulations as a needed clarification, Duncan Clark, chairman of advisory firm BDA (China) Ltd., said, "This directive, if implemented, would be bad news for the streaming sites. ... It's clearly a question of control of information, with political content being the No. 1 concern." The situation is even less clear for companies like YouTube, whose servers are outside of China (as opposed to those of Google's Chinese search engine, which complies with government censorship). YouTube doesn't operate under a Chinese license, but the government has shown it has only to pull a lever or two to cut off access to selected outside connections (see "Remember, bowing is just another word for bending over"). And that remains the bigger point. However rich their visions and noble their intentions, companies making commitments in China simply cannot be sure that the rules won't change overnight, and change in a way that forces a new set of compromises. Comment on this post http://www.siliconvalley.com/gmsvnewsletter  [no default date indexed there yet, ooops]
	Hey, this blends with yesterday's manifesto. Fair Use Unnoticed: nobody comes here anyway and I've provided full attribution, plus I love their output and have raved about it to many friends, colleagues and even "enemies"!  Ciao, Comrades,  from Kenneth Cowtowne

SocNet Paradigm v01

SocNet v01
Hey -- Social Networking (and bulloney like Secondlife.com, myspace.com) have overtaken many people's "real" lives.  An effective paradigm for each site is my objective shared here.

LinkedIn.com is not for fluffy remarks or aliases.  Corporate folk focus on what your background is and the potential application of talents and contacts towards a mission.  Initially I assimilated a network with ~zero effort via 'LION' Open-Networking.  An obligation of that membership cost me loads of time clicking-through the duty of  approval of that evangelizing, self-designated, and savvy In-Crowd.   Not being a recruiter, nor adding my employment history and the potential thousands  of fancy alumni/colleagues, I have yet to experience the true value of this tool.   Yes I currently cultivate only contacts that I've met in person or with backgrounds which surpass thresholds of quality which I can evaluate best within my own genres.

I'd recommend to everyone MeetUp.com, it is entirely social, and positive or goofy comments are pervasive.  During my 3.5 years there I barely added any groups, until SEP07.  Joining the best clubs in Orange County, as per my affinities, was vital for  insight to the social topography, because I am evaluating jobs in Los Angeles.  Sometimes I'll add "a friend" because of a pithy quote or their fascinating membership list.  So my list's constituents serve as a clue/shortcut to the realm of the best clubs in disparate locales.  In weaker moments I'll add a friend because they have a striking passion, a remarkable load of 'shouts' or their shown image is traditionally attractive, perhaps not even to my own preferences.
One's friend-list is public data at all these sites, but MeetUp uniquely identifies  those contacts as "Mutual" when it is bilateral.  There seems to be no particular stigma  for self-nominated friends, although some members do shun that practice.  Meetup also has a unique "Pledges" feature which I contend should be public data  about one's commitment to the joined clubs/groups.

Going.com has divergent clientèle and usefulness in its five megalopolis cities.   My limited expertise here was gleaned in AUG07, and bacchanalia seemed  to dominate the Chicago flavor due to shrewd party and nightclub PR agents.  Going -BOS seems weighted more healthily towards cultural opportunities,  although oenophiles (few vinters & even fewer fans-of Yoko) are still abundant.  I've promoted the goals of this site to friends, and felt well-acquainted with the NYC, Chicago and Boston membership.  The surface credentials of the BOS members are significantly more business appropriate  than in the other cities, yet YMMV.  Adding anyone interesting as a friend  seems kosher, but the utility of such is moot at all of the sites. It seems that I do get  broadcasts of items from my friends/contacts.  After some R&D a clarification will be  appended to this dubious documentation.

MySpace.com has bizarre overlapping constituencies and potential.  Quite Left-heavy with California folks, teens, ribald humor, musician- and venue-promotion.  Clicking-through on beautiful pictures can overwhelm the Firefox browser and quickly demolish my vestigial 1GB RAM at ~300 tabs - even with javascript always off for userplane, etc.   My sole agenda at myspace or at a lovable social blogging site like mindsay.com is for
political "education" of the comatose and heinously undiscerning.   Of course, talking to brickheads is almost pointless, like melting a glacier, their eyes glaze over  and it is exactly like you've met one of the pod people from "Invasion of the Body Snatchers."   I cultivate relationships with the wisest folks from all dimensions yet pursue (virtual?) friendship with those with the least damaging prejudices and/or open to  antidotes for our cultural toxicity - the second hand smoke that's killing the entire planet.

Ciao for now from your comrade, Cowtowne

PS: perhaps someday this ephemeral coverage will include
some fascinating specialty sites like Tribe.com, Facebook, Orkut, and the amazing
Del.icio.us and Care2.com ;
indeed, some potential commentary on eHarmony, AmericanSingles,
SinglesNet, Match, LoveHappens, YahooPersonals "and more!"