Never mind the government, it’s Facebook that really creeps me out. As previously mentioned, I found Facebook to be just too goddamn intrusive and annoying, so I ditched my page quite a while ago. I definitely prefer G+. Sadly, there are things like contests that I can’t enter due to a lack of Facebookery, and when I wanted to register for SnagFilms in order to set up playlists and whatnot, I found I had to do it via Facebook.
So, what the hell, why fight the machine? I registered a new FB account using an e-mail address that I don’t really use, and no additional information other than my name. No location, no photos, no likes or dislikes – nothing. Immediately upon registering, I was presented with seven “friend” suggestions. My wife, a guy I used to work with who I haven’t seen in years (good guy, too; nice to see he was able to retire), another guy I went to grad school with (wasn’t really friends or anything, but I knew him), and the “CyberCorps Association,” of which I happen to be an alum.
This creeps me the f*ck out, and I really don’t like it. You wonder how the government can monitor everything about our lives? Easy – they use Facebook (and no doubt have a back door into Amazon and Google, too).
Not that they actually need back doors. I went to a CyberCorps Symposium once (yeah – that’s the kinda guy I am), and one of the speakers detailed how, for $35, he was able to get a report that showed everything he’d purchased on Amazon in the past – which (especially with books and movies) is an pretty good window into a person’s brain.
For $20, he got a list of Social Security numbers that included people like the Secretary of State and the director of the NSA (I wonder if this guy gets the full body scan when he flies?).
So, anyhow, I just plodded through Facebook’s goddamn privacy settings, and tried to anonymize myself as much as possible. They deliberately make it difficult, of course. I guess one doesn’t have the right to complain what with it being free and non-compulsory, but I really wish the US would follow Europe’s lead, and make privacy an “opt-in” thing, rather than an “opt-out.” As in, they can do whatever the hell they want whether you know about it or not, until you find out and tell them to stop (at which point, maybe they will, maybe they won’t).
And, while I’m at it, why the hell should you have to pay for your credit report (beyond the one “free” one you get a year), and have to pay to monitor changes and then get on your knees and beg them to fix shit that’s wrong? I mean, it’s about YOU, and you should be able to get one every day if you want to. And the onus should be on these credit reporting agencies to notify you of any changes and to verify information with you first.
I haven’t had a problem, but the potential for something shitty to happen is always there. In fact, I have a “former” address listed on mine at which I’ve never lived. It happens to be the address of a friend of mine, with whom I purchased a two-family home over 20 years ago (one of my many wonderful ideas). It’s an address he moved to with his wife well after we were out of the landlord business.
You think I can get anybody to change it? Nuck fo. Fortunately he isn’t a criminal or a deadbeat or anything (that I know of).
As computer processing power and storage increases (and the NSA algorithms are improved and refined), things will only get worse – no matter how much we try and comfort ourselves with the notion that half a loaf is better than none. Oh, we have a full loaf. It’s just that half of it’s poisoned – and maybe we’d actually be better off with none.
Obama should know better? He does know better – and is getting exactly what he wants (on healthcare, Wall Street, spying on US citizens, you name it). I’m not saying he’s a traitor, exactly, but shit. I mean, he couldn’t even get a dog from a goddamn rescue. He didn’t have to say he was gonna get one from a rescue or a shelter, but he did. And then he didn’t do it. WTF?
Never trust a man who lies about dogs.
Oh well, today’s Home Woot is a Dyson bladeless fan. Cool, but NFW would I spend hundreds of dollars on a fan. Unless I could get a lot of them, and do this:
You may recognize Coco from his appearances on Treme. He worked with me in a rekkid store when I first came to SF.
Coco Robicheaux, New Orleans hoodoo bluesman, has died
Local blues guitarist and vocalist Coco Robicheaux, onstage at the Blues Tent during the 2010 New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival presented by Shell.
Rusty Costanza / The Times-Picayune
🙁 :gate: :blues:
O.K., Now Ron Paul
By GAIL COLLINS
Published: November 25, 2011
Ron Paul, the libertarian congressman from Texas, now seems to have an outside chance of winning the Iowa caucus vote. Not the presidential nomination. It seems highly unlikely that the Republicans are going to give the nod to a guy who disapproves of the Patriot Act and marriage licenses.
But, still, he’s definitely having a moment.
And, therefore, I feel obliged to add him to our survey of presidential candidate book reports.
Just say a prayer Rick Santorum doesn’t take off next.
Paul has written a ton of stuff, most of it on his economic theories. His big best seller is “End the Fed,†and, if you are interested in abolishing the Federal Reserve, I would really suggest reading it. However, the Fed is not going to be ended. People are not going to be given the power to mint their own money, as Paul also suggests. But, really, if this is what floats your boat, read away.
“Liberty Defined: 50 Essential Issues That Affect Our Freedom†has more variety. It’s full of essays, mostly about things Paul disapproves of, from abortion to Zionism.
It’s quite a list. Paul says he believes that the federal government (“the wealth-extracting leviathan stateâ€) shouldn’t be doing anything that’s not specifically enumerated in the Constitution, which once caused him to vote against giving a Congressional medal to Mother Teresa.
He doesn’t really believe in global warming, but, even if he did, he doesn’t think government is smart enough to be able to do anything about it.
He also doesn’t believe in, well, let’s see: gun control, the death penalty, the C.I.A., the Civil Rights Act, prosecuting flag-burners, hate crime legislation, foreign aid, the military draft under any circumstances, campaign finance reform, the war on drugs, the war on terror and the war on porn. Also the war in Iraq and the war in Afghanistan. Taxes are theft. While his fellow Republican candidates fume about gay marriage, Paul thinks the government should get out of the business of issuing marriage licenses entirely. (“In a free society, something that we do not truly enjoy, all voluntary and consensual agreements would be recognized.â€)
Paul is the only person running for president in either party who seems determined to be consistent, come hell or high water. The only time I ever saw him dodge a question was when somebody asked him if he preferred letting people die in a ditch to government-financed health care. But, even then, you could tell that he really did prefer the ditch.
Paul can get kind of swoony when he’s talking about the rock stars of the Austrian school of economics, but he’s not much for personal autobiography. He has a few stories about his childhood in “End the Fed,†but they mainly involve the way his stamp and coin collections helped him to understand the concept of currency inflation.
When six of the Republican presidential candidates got together recently for a Family Forum in Iowa in order to woo the social right, they were invited to tell personal stories of their own moments of despair and doubt.
Herman Cain broke down while discussing a bout with cancer. Rick Perry said that Jesus had filled a hole in his soul. Santorum told a moving story about his seriously ill baby daughter, which he then somehow connected to the evils of Obamacare. Paul seemed at a loss, but then he finally offered that when he was in high school he really wanted to be a track star but it didn’t work out.
Basically, Paul seems to want to revert to the 18th century, when every bank could set its own monetary policy and every community ran its own schools — presuming, of course, the community wanted to pay for them.
“The founders of this country were well educated, mostly by being home-schooled or taught in schools associated with a church,†he reasons. Those of us who were not born in the gentry could presumably go back to sowing and reaping hay.
Naturally, a man with such a wide range of pet peeves is going to make waves in his own party.
“Chicken-hawks are individuals who dodged the draft when their numbers came up but who later became champions of senseless and undeclared wars when they were influencing foreign policy,†Paul writes in his chapter on conscription. “Former Vice President Cheney is the best example of this disgraceful behavior.â€
Really, you can’t totally dislike the guy.
Tom Wicker, Times Journalist, Dies at 85
By ROBERT D. McFADDEN
Published: November 25, 2011
Tom Wicker, one of postwar America’s most distinguished journalists, who wrote 20 books, covered the assassination of President John F. Kennedy for The New York Times and became the paper’s Washington bureau chief and an iconoclastic political columnist for 25 years, died on Friday at his home near Rochester, Vt. He was 85.
‘Barry Heptones’ dies in hospital
Saturday, November 26, 2011
BARRINGTON Llewellyn, founding member of the group Heptones is dead. He was 63.
According to Earl Morgan — founder of the trio — Llewellyn began complaining of not feeling well and was rushed to the University Hospital in St Andrew on Tuesday. He passed away at 3:15 a.m. the day after. No cause was given for his death.
Maybe the greatest Reggae song of all time.
🙁 :gate: :bong: :blues:
I remember Coco from Treme. He reminded me of the guy from Deadwood. Sad to hear he’s passed. Every day, so many people dying. Guess I’m at the point where I should be glad it’s not me.
Am I uniquely unreasonable?
Or reasonably unique?
Tom Wicker looks kinda like Charles Whitman.
Bread, PJ?
Yep. It’s only half a loaf, but it’s better than nothing.
Hmmm.
a rye sense of humour
Well, pj, it may be only you and me that are old enough to get that comparison. I’ll throw up some Kinky historical reference for the younguns.
Now you’ve made me wonder how VPI did today. I hates me some Gobblers.
:turkey:
Vern — I got chills reading your post — I remember that episode clearly and as far as I can remember Harry Chapin captured the emotional/spiritual energy and scariness of that event. I didn’t understand the PTSD aspects of what must have been involved at the time — boy, I miss Harry Chapin — He understood :crap: !
😮