A few months ago, someone on my Facebook friends list announced to a gazillion people that he was about to have a medical "adventure" that most would want to keep utterly private. (I'll keep the particulars under wraps, but even television doctors frequently snicker about it.)

The announcement itself would have been bad enough, but then he chronicled the procedure in all of its gory clinical glory. He probably thought this was funny … but I thought it was just way too much information. I can name a couple of people who are having trouble looking him in the eye—myself included.

Wow.

It seems Facebook has become such an integral part of many people's lives that they automatically gravitate to it whenever they want to share anything. And I mean anything—even beyond silly personal stuff and into highly confidential information that could put lives and entire countries at risk.

Last month, an Israeli soldier revealed on Facebook the time and place of a scheduled raid on the West Bank. He even announced the name of his unit. He was "unfriended" by the Israeli army shortly after (read: kicked out and court-martialed) and sentenced to 10 days in prison.

His confidential update occurred even after Israel had launched a full-scale campaign highlighting the dangers of sharing military information online.

It all makes me wonder if social networking has made us lose our secrets and our minds.

It's time to begin Plugged In's official live blog of the Oscars. Our red-carpet invites must have gotten lost in the mail this year, so we'll be watching it on television, just like you are, and writing about whatever seems news- or noteworthy to us. Please feel free to add your comments as we go along, and we'll try to address them on the fly. All times are U.S. Mountain Standard. Refresh your browser window to see our latest comments.

6:19 p.m.

Paul Asay (Plugged In Associate Editor): So I've torn open the bag of Doritos you brought, Steve, cracked my first Mountain Dew and am all ready for the Oscars--and Plugged In's first foray into the world of on-the-fly blogging. And what a night it will be, don't you think?

Steven Isaac (Plugged In Editor): Hmmm. I see here that by averaging the durations of the last 25 Oscar telecasts, subtracting 3 hours and then dividing by 2, we'll be done here in exactly 7.42 hours. Are we going to take nap breaks or just keep chugging soda all night?

Paul: Soda, Steve, soda.

Steven: Fine. But I'm not doing the Dew with you. I'm an old-school, straight-up Coca-Cola man myself.

Paul: OK, since nobody's paying us anything for all these product placements, why don't we get started with the most important question of the night: What'll take home Best Picture?

Steven: Blue is the new gold this year. No question in my mind that it'll be Avatar all the way. The whole point of this year's Oscar changes (10 nominees for Best Picture among them) is to make regular folks start thinking the Oscars are relevant to them again. And a whole lotta regular folks have seen Avatar. And most of them have loved it. Plus, the Academy voters do not want to antagonize the Na'vi. They've seen what happened to those surly earthlings.

Paul: True. Thing is, though, I don't think it's that great of a movie. I mean, wasn't it just sort of Dances With Wolves under a different moon? I'm thinking The Hurt Locker's going to take it. Gritty, taut, compelling ...

Steven: And quite a bit more foul than Avatar, if I remember your review correctly. (Not that that ever stopped Oscar from loving a film before.)

Paul: No it didn't.

Steven: Looks like they're done with their red-carpet dress-examinations and interviews. The theme music's coming up. We're under way, everybody.

6:33 p.m.

Paul: Wow. Those are quite the outfits. Getting off to an interesting start, I'd say, with Neil Patrick Harris.

Steven: And why wouldn't he get things rolling with a dope reference?

Paul: Oh, and they just talked about Woody Harrelson being high. Hmmm.

Steven: Off-color jokes and recognitions for big stars are always the order of the day each year as the Oscars get started. So much so that Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin's gag about a threesome probably went virtually unnoticed in most homes watching right now. But on a positive note, they made fun of the fact that movies are so often made based on video games!

6:48 p.m.

Paul: Oh, that Christoph Waltz leaves with the first Oscar (for Best Supporting Actor). No surprise there, but I hear he was incredible. You saw the film, Steve?

Steven: Incredible performance in the middle of an incredible film ... in quite a few ways, artistically but also as it comes to some pretty extreme violence, too.

Paul: I was kinda rooting for Christopher Plummer ... overdue from The Sound of Music. But I think Quentin Tarantino should get some sort of an award just for his chin. It's pretty impressive.

6:58 p.m.

Paul: Best Animated Film. Up wins. That makes me happy. I'm feeling so ... up! As if my house was being pulled into the sky by balloons! In a great year for animated films, this was still the best of the bunch. 'Course, Fantastic Mr. Fox was pretty impressive, too.

7:10 p.m.

Steven: We talked a bit earlier about some of the negative content included in this year's Oscar open, and didn't really have any time to talk "shop." So I want to register the fact now that that was one of the lamest opens I've seen in years and years. Martin and Baldwin can be really funny when they want to be and when they have good writers (the subject that's just coming up right now on the screen). But this just didn't cut it.

Paul: But on the up side, these awards are cruising right along. We might be outta here in 15 minutes or so, don't you think? And I think Tina Fey's hair looks nifty.

Steven: The Hurt Locker wins its first of the evening for Original Screenplay.

Paul: Hurt Locker, 1, Avatar, 0.

Steven: And about Tina's hair. It looks very, very much like my wife's hair looked in 2001. So I'm not so sure it's as cutting edge as Tina might think it is.

Paul: I'm just jealous when I see anyone who still has hair.

7:19 p.m.

Paul: The John Hughes salute is pretty nostalgic. I think I saw every single one of his films when I was a kid. That was before I became a Plugged In movie critic and therefore far more discerning, of course.

Steven: The burner from The Breakfast Club was everything I never was in high school. I was shy, nice and cared about everybody. That guy did none of those things ... on the surface. But on the inside he was more like me than I knew back then. Must be a lesson in that somewhere--and I hope its not that I was a closet burner.

7:28 p.m.

Paul: Just noticed the ratings box on the screen. It's TV-14 with a string of letters after it. Kind of interesting that, for an awards show that's technically for the "whole family," the rating is fairly exclusionary. Would they be covering just in case something unforseen happens? Or does it address some of the plunging necklines? Hmmm.

Steven: Or did they know going in that they were going to push a few boundaries?

Steven: Best Animated Short goes to a film that looks like it tweaks commercialism in society. Isn't it about time for an ABC commercial break?

7:39 p.m.

Paul: Love Ben Stiller as one of the Na'vi. Shouldn't he be taller, though?

Steven: This is the funniest thing all night. Clean, clever, self-aware. Can't say as I'm a huge Ben Stiller fan when it comes to his movies, but this is great.

7:52 p.m.

Steven: Geoffrey Fletcher won for Adapted Screenplay for Precious. My immediate response to his halting acceptance speech: You're not drawing a blank, like you think you are. You're the realest guy that's been on stage yet.

7:59 p.m.

Paul: The big categories haven't seen a surprise yet. Mo'Nique has nabbed Best Supporting Actress for her role in Precious. And, I must say, it's richly deserved. She played an absolute monster, but she still managed to give the character just a bit of heartbreaking humanity. It was a brutal role in a worthwhile but brutal film.

8:20 p.m.

Paul: Kristen Stewart and Taylor Lautner are up, talking about how horror "doesn't get the respect it deserves." A good montage, but I got to say, the scariest thing I've seen tonight was George Clooney's glare.

Steven: Why is it that we like to be scared by movies? We can disagree with the usefulness or morality of horror films all we want (and we do!) but it's indisputable that people adore jump scenes and creepy blades for fingers on mad men (from Freddy to Edward Scissorhands). Sin nature? Or just thrill-ride silliness? It's something Christians have been grappling with for as long as movies have been trying to scare us--and long before that.

Paul: Yeah, pretty interesting. It's something we do a fair amount of talking about at Plugged In. Man, after seeing the complete montage, I think I know what that TV-14 rating was for ... nothing like seeing aliens jump out of people's rib cages and centipedes crawling into people's mouths to make an Oscar ceremony complete.

Steven: And now they're on to the next thing: an award for sound effects. There's something that makes a huge difference in horror movies. Because if you've ever watched a scary movie with the sound off, you know that it's usually more funny than scary. We all really respond to sound.

8:27 p.m.

Paul: Another award for The Hurt Locker. Wow. I think that makes it Hurt Locker 3, Avatar 1. Steve, are you still sure Avatar's going to win Best Picture?

Steven: Well, sure, why shouldn't I be? Didn't the Na'vi get to vote for their own film? And an alien vote counts twice. They're just letting all the little guys win a few before gobbling up the big one.

8:35 p.m.

Paul: Jeto wonders whether we think the Paranormal Activity spoof clip was funny. It was! But not as funny as Ben Stiller's Na'vi impersonation.

Steven: Cinematography award goes to Avatar. So, Paul, that's one more for the blue team.

8:39 p.m.

Paul: James Taylor's playing for the annual "In Memoriam" segment. This is one of my favorite parts of the ceremony, as morbid as that probably sounds. Natasha Richardson, Karl Malden ... I feel the sudden need to get a tissue.

Steven: Um, I didn't know "In My Life" was supposed to be a sad, funeral-type song. My wife and I had this sung at our wedding!

8:50 p.m.

Steven: My daughter's in ballet. She'd love the dance montage if I dared let her watch a TV-14 evening of Hollywood hype! (She's 9.) Maybe it'll be on YouTube tomorrow.

Paul: Tomorrow? It's probably posted right now!

Steven: This is much better than the Vegas-style stuff at the beginning of the show. Nicely choreographed. Very expressive in a cool, old-school way.

Paul: I never knew you were such a dance nerd, Steve.

Steven: A dancing daughter has a way of changing a man.

8:55 p.m.

Paul: Avatar's pulled even with The Hurt Locker with its win in Best Visual Effects. Maybe you were right after all, Steve.

Steven: A half-billion-dollar production budget should buy you at least a Best Visual Effects award.

9:04 p.m.

Paul: Well, it looks like lots of you are pretty pleased with Up's win for Best Original Score. I completely agree. I just hear the first notes of that song and I just start thinking of Paradise Falls, talking dogs and balloons. And I can't help but smile.

Steven: The Cove has won Best Documentary Feature.

Paul: What a coincidence! Steve and I are wearing Snuggies here at Plugged In headquarters, too!

9:12 p.m.

Paul: You know, I don't think I've heard an acceptance speech yet that made me roll my eyes. Is this unusual, or am I just getting more tolerant in my old age?

Steven: The night is young yet--at least by Oscar standards.

As my personal stories from living in China attest (oh, man, do they), we in the West are usually appalled by such lack of confidentiality. But Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg claims this North American social norm has changed drastically.

At a recent awards assembly in San Francisco, Zuckerberg said, "When I got started in my dorm room at Harvard, the question a lot of people asked was, 'Why would I want to put any information on the Internet at all? Why would I want to have a website?' Then in the last 5 or 6 years, blogging has taken off in a huge way, and just all these different services that have people sharing all this information."

He went on to say that he believes privacy is no longer a social norm. (Out of the mouths of overconfident 25-year-olds ….)

Considering the fact Facebook has more than 350 million users, many of whom post intimate details of their lives daily, Zuckerberg may have a point. But he also can't deny the fact that countless users complained bitterly when Facebook recently changed its privacy settings.

I wonder if the concept of privacy is different among Millennials and other generations. Or are people of all ages sharing information via an emotionally detached Internet that they would never share in face-to-face conversation—and then get upset when they feel they lose control of it?

I also wonder what privacy will look like in 10 more years. Hopefully I'll never be told what type of underwear most people are wearing.

Just for fun, let's try a little pop quiz to test your memory. Do any of you remember the movie How Green Was My Valley? It was the best picture winner for 1941. I guess I can't blame you if your first reaction was, "Huh?"

It was a good film, but I'll bet you might easily remember (or have at least heard of) The Maltese Falcon or Sergeant York or maybe a little pic called Citizen Kane—all of which came out that same year. (Not to mention Frank Capra's Meet John Doe. That one wasn't even given a nod.)

OK, that was a gazillion years ago. But there are quite a few film favorites that have been skipped over for films that were, shall we say, less than long-lived classics. Here's another example, just for grins. In 1963, the year that Alfred Hitchcock made The Birds, Liz Taylor was Cleopatra and Peter Sellers was pratfalling through The Pink Panther, what film won the big prize? A pic called Tom Jones. You remember that one, right? (And I'm not talking about the big-voiced Welsh singer.)

And I've always been amazed at the list of incredibly talented actors who were snubbed or, in some cases, never even nominated for an award. Some of my favorites who never took home an Oscar include Harold Lloyd, Ida Lupino, Steve McQueen, Agnes Moorehead, Fred Astaire, Debbie Reynolds, Richard Burton, Glenn Close, Kirk Douglas and Orson Welles.

So which "also rans" would you have chosen? And what was left off the list this year?

Sure,

But it was still enough to push the Martin Scorsese thriller to the top of the movie heap again, besting newcomers Cop Out ($18.6 million) and The Crazies ($16.5 million).

All three films are rated R, and all seem largely geared toward moviegoing men. Cop Out whittles that demographic into a narrower swathe—old-as-dirt moviegoing men like me who can still hum the theme music from Beverly Hills Cop if asked. (Axel F, anyone?)

If that's the case, they missed the mark—at least with me. The Kevin Smith-helmed Cop Out is an extended homage to the buddy-cop movies of the 1980s, only with fewer mullets and more swearing. It's a strange thing to pay homage to, frankly. I grew up in the 1980s, and I never felt any particular nostalgia for the genre. And even if I did, I'd want a better homage than this.

Major film studios apparently assume that children hibernate this time of year: Why else would they release movies—albeit three very different movies— that essentially target the same demographic? If families were prone to brave the cold, harsh winter and go see something, you'd think studios would make more money if they gave them something to see. Don't you think?

Last week it was "a." And as I lamented my sore throat and killed time—why is it that doctors never have to wait on us?—I read the Denver Post's funny pages. (I also did three crossword puzzles because it was a lonnng wait.)

Anyway, it turns out that some comics aren't really comical lately. Sometimes they just hit very close to home. There were several that didn't make me laugh so much as say, "Ouch," and not because my throat was on fire.

One comic strip showed a family at the dinner table. A daughter was listening to an iPod. Another was texting on an iPhone. The father was gazing into an iTouch, and the mother was said to be "iRate."

A second cartoon showed a teen who decided to quit spending so much time on Facebook—so he asked his Facebook friends for suggestions on how to cut back (!).

A third strip showed a hoard of strangers flocking to a man's door and saying, "Hi … We're your Facebook friends."

If you're an armchair sociologist, it should probably alarm you that three nationally syndicated comic strips had a similar theme on this random day, especially since that theme was technology's damaging effect on relationships.

Besides these cartoonists, am I the only one who sees reason to be concerned about devices and sites, or am just I a Luddite who needs to get over it?

How has technology affected your family and friendships?

(This isn't a fun way to start a Tuesday. I'll make it up to you later.)

Let's start with the surprising: A recent Kaiser Family Foundation study found that, on average, kids spend seven and a half hours a day plugged into some sort of electronic media (!!).

Now the bad news: Perhaps partly as a result of their online lifestyles, youth are increasingly being subjected to cyberbullying.

A 2009 Cyberbullying Research Center survey found that, among 2,000 middle schoolers polled, 42.9% had been victim of some form of cyberbullying in the last 30 days—usually through Facebook or texting. Add in high schoolers, and the center estimates  that one third of Internet-using tweens and teens have been cyberbullied in the last year, with 22% of kids claiming they've perpetrated online harassment in the last month.

Most upsetting, though, is the fact cyberbullying is increasingly linked to suicide—most recently that of 15-year-old Phoebe Prince, who hanged herself in January, allegedly after being bullied at school and on Facebook.

While physical torment ends when the perpetrator leaves, cyberbullying can be done long distance, and relentlessly, from multiple platforms. It's also easy, private and requires no physical strength—just a phone or a computer and some nasty comments from one or more bullies.

But since cyberbullying usually occurs off campuses, many schools don't discipline students for it unless it causes on-campus trouble. And some even claim preventing cyberbullying is a violation of free speech.

So what should be done?

Maybe the secret is to prevent the hurt before it even begins. Parents can supervise and monitor their children's Internet usage and teach them how to be savvy and safe online. They can also talk to kids about the dangers and emotional pain caused by cyberbullying.

But maybe the most important thing parents can do is help children understand from an early age that their self-worth and identity do not come from what others say about them—good, bad or indifferent. Ultimately these things come from Christ—not what Johnny No-Name (and probably No-Clue) hisses or types.

Maybe I'm oversimplifying it, though. So if you or someone you know has been cyberbullied, what have you done about it? And what do you think should be done to prevent and/or remedy this rising problem?

I like the Olympics. I like almost everything about them. I like the snowboard cross. I like bobsledding. I like it when figure skaters hit the perfect quad and when short-track speed skaters careen into walls. I even like the biathalon, for goodness' sake. Every night for the last week, my family has postponed its normal evening habits (you know, baking cookies and singing 'round the piano) so we can all spend hours watching Apolo Ohno and Torah Bright and features about polar bears and Bob Costas' purple ties.

But if I had to make a couple of suggestions to NBC, it'd consist of this:

Let's see more curling, less invasive camerawork.

While I think NBC's done a pretty good job covering the Olympics, the producers do have a habit of pushing their cameramen in places that, frankly, make me feel kinda voyeuristic. Hey, I love the performances. I like interviews. But when it comes to what are typically private moments, can't we give these athletes a little space?

Wednesday night's coverage offered up two pretty good examples.

One involved American Shaun White, aka "The Flying Tomato," aka the gold-medal winner in the men's halfpipe competition. Before his final run, the cameraman caught him talking with his coach, and the coach let loose with a couple of strong, not-appropriate-for-prime-time words. Announcers immediately apologized for the language, and it's unlikely any fines will be levied. Still, you'd think the folks at NBC would've suspected that, when they eavesdrop on coach-to-athlete banter, they might catch wind of the occasional curse and would've taken a preventative step or two: a seven-second delay, perhaps (I know, we like to watch our sports live, but NBC tape-delays almost everything anyway), or better yet, move back the microphones. 'Cause frankly, what White and his coaches talk about doesn't add much to the Olympic experience for me.

The camera didn't catch Lindsey Vonn, American gold-medal winner in the women's downhill, cursing when she embraced her husband after her winning run. But viewers were subjected to the longest, most tearful hug in history. Some folks thought it sweetly emotional. I thought it was invasive. I mean, it was neat to see how tearfully happy Vonn was after the race, and how excited she was to share the moment with her hubby ... but a little of this goes a long way. The camera eyed Vonn and her husband embrace for what seemed to be 10 minutes. Both of them, very aware the camera was keying on them, spoke in shallow, made-for-television platitudes ... after the first hug and rush of emotion, the scene felt (to me) uncomfortable and awkward. I could almost feel them psychically pushing the cameraman away, hoping against hope he'd focus on someone else for just a bit.

Of course, the cameraman didn't. Tears make for good TV, you know.

I know, I know ... it's the age in which we live. Half the competitors we see will probably get their own reality shows before the year's out, where they'll invite us all into their homes, their bathrooms and maybe even their laundry baskets. So perhaps I should just acknowledge that all this is where we are. We don't hold our sports stars or celebrities at a comfortable remove anymore. We're reluctant to give anyone a little space.

Still, for me, a little space would make the Olympics even more enjoyable. Would it be for you? And, while you're here, tell me what else you like, or dislike, about the games.