That Would Be Me (dot net)

Another Day, Another CPAP

June 14, 2013 – 7:20 pm

Okay, it’s not another CPAP, actually, it’s another night with the CPAP. Again, last night, I woke up often for some of the same reasons I mentioned yesterday: the mask had slipped and was now blowing air into my eyes, cheeks or chin; the pressure had increased and startled me; etc. A new one was happened, too; I opened my mouth at one point, when the air pressure was particularly high, and air came out of it in a rush. It was a very odd feeling, and it woke me up. I instantly closed my mouth and it all settled back to seeming normalcy. It was really odd, because it didn’t feel like the air pressure was forcing me to open my mouth, but when I did, it escaped rather dramatically.

Again, this morning, when I got up, I was tired. I’d been awakened often. But, again, when I sat down to work, I had energy, focus and drive. Here’s what I think is happening:

Yes, I’m still being awakened several times during the night, but not because I’d stopped breathing. (And not 39 times an hour.)

And while I was sleeping, my brain was actually getting oxygen, which hadn’t been happening much at night for a very long time. This oxygen allowed it to process the day’s events and experiences, it allowed it to do what it is supposed to do during the night. And when I woke up, because it had done its job the night before, it let me do mine during the day. It is beginning to amaze me that I have gotten anything done in the last few months and years.

I also wonder what my muscles, my heart, my lungs, etc., are thinking about all the oxygen they’re getting during the night. Are they all luxuriating in it, as if it were a warm, lavender and eucalyptus mineral bath followed by a full-body massage given by someone who knows what they’re doing? Were they shaking their imaginary heads, saying, “Finally, he’s taking care of OUR needs, the oaf”? Are they throwing off their crutches and screaming, “It’s a miracle!” with tears streaming down the aforementioned figmentary faces?

Probably, they’re just mending nicely, thank you very much, and biding their time until I am able to run like a chaeta, climb like a goat and rut like a… thing that ruts well.

Okay, I’m getting ahead of myself. But I like getting things done.

By Geoff | Posted in Essay, My Life | Comments (0)

CPAP Day Two

June 13, 2013 – 11:32 pm

Last night I approached bedtime with a combination of anticipation and apprehension. I have invested a lot of hope in the new sleep device and had that neurotic notion that it might be an all or nothing evening; either I’d wake up a completely new man or it would have failed.

Of course, I realize this kind of extreme thinking is unproductive, but there you have it.

So I put my Darth Vader mask on shortly after midnight, made sure the settings were correct and lay down. The first think I noticed is that it isn’t as silent as I’d thought. There must have been ambient sound at the clinic that masked the noise, but it sounded a little like a flywheel spinning up to speed with every breath in. It wasn’t loud at all, but I did notice it.

It was odd that it kept in sync with my breathing, though. I even tried to fool it by changing my rhythm quickly. Once or twice, I caught it off guard and there was an odd pressure in the mask as it tried to force air in while I was on an out breath. Then I grew up a bit and let the poor thing do it’s job.

I usually start my sleep on my back, but turn over to one side fairly quickly. Every time I turned over, I woke a little, aware that the mask had moved and the air was flowing into my eyes or cheeks. I’d adjust it and go back to sleep. I suspect it won’t take long to get used to that and have it more automatic. (When I had Cat, she used to sleep on my side, and we had a sort of silent communication when I needed to turn. She’d get off me, I’d wake enough to know where she was, I’d turn and settle back in and she’d get back on her perch. If I can do it with a cat, I can do it with a mask.)

Because we’re in the “testing” phase, the machine ramped up as the night went on, slowly providing more and more air pressure. When it got really high, I’d wake up because it was a bit too much.

When I got up in the morning, I wasn’t as rested and refreshed as I’d hoped. That really disappointed and worried me. A bit because of the “all or nothing” attitude, but I really was hoping for my first full night of sleep. I got up, did my morning routine, made coffee, took my pills.

Then I sat down to work.

It has been the most productive day I’ve had in months. I got a ton done, had very little resistance to starting the next new task and was generally “raring to go”. It may be a placebo effect, but at this point, I don’t much care.

I suppose it will take me a few nights to get used to the thing, but I can already see that I can get used to having my day go more easily.

Let’s see what tomorrow brings, shall we?

By Geoff | Posted in My Life | Comments (0)

So I Have OSA

June 12, 2013 – 3:36 pm

This may come as a surprise to many who know me, because I usually seem so up and jolly, ready to make a joke and generally full of life, but for the last several years I have literally been tired all the time. I wake up tired, I am tired while I work, while I eat and read and when I go to bed. I even sometimes take naps, which helps a little, but not much. I happened to mention that to my doctor the last time I was there and she scheduled me for a sleep study.

I did the sleep study last weekend and was called a couple of days later with the news that I would be getting a CPAP machine. (That means Continuous Positive Airway Pressure, for any of you who need to know such things.) Several of my friends have told me that the machines are very noisy, the masks are really ugly and uncomfortable and I would look and sound like Darth Vader every night for the rest of my life, that I could, perhaps, kiss any further romantic life goodbye. Well, I haven’t had one of those for a while, so it wasn’t a huge concern, but, still, I’d like to hope.

One person, however, told me she had a friend whose life wonderfully transformed practically overnight after starting to use his.

This afternoon, I went in to pick up my machine. I was told that, during my study, my breathing stopped 39 times an hour, that even when I was breathing, it was often so shallow that there was no “gas exchange” (no oxygen to my blood) and that my blood oxygen level was at 70% instead of the normal 99%. I was officially diagnosed with Obstructive Sleep Apnea, or OSA. I was informed by the woman who helped me that this wasn’t the worst she’d seen, but was, and I quote, “certainly life threatening”. Oh, my.

As I was waiting to go in to get my mask and learn how to use it, I read an information sheet. Sleep apnea doesn’t only cause fatigue and snoring, it also causes or contributes to headaches, irritability, memory loss, heart disease (including heart attacks), obesity, depression and stroke. Oh, my, indeed.

I was finally led into the room where I was given “the talk” about how to use and maintain my new best friend. For the first week, mine will be set to adjust the amount of air pressure it gives me as I sleep until the device (and the doctor, once I bring it back in next week) can figure out my optimum settings. After that, they’ll have me back in in two weeks to make sure it’s all working properly. Then every few months.

The mask itself isn’t nearly Darth Vader. Mine is a nose unit, rather than nose and mouth, and is fairly small and clear. She put it on me and turned the machine on. At first, it was a very odd sensation, like someone was pressing down on my face, but as I breathed in and out, it just felt like, well, breathing in and out. It wasn’t uncomfortable to wear at all (although I was sitting up in a chair, not lying down with my head on a pillow.) And the machine was surprisingly quiet. As in silent. Perhaps there’s a possibility of a romantic life after all.

On that note, I asked if I had to wear it every night. She said, and again I quote, “Only if you want to live.” She then eased up a little and said if I missed one day out of every few months, it shouldn’t be a problem. She also told me that, if I did wear it regularly, I would very quickly find I had a lot more energy than I’ve been used to for a long time, and that I might even notice after a while that I was losing weight.

Well, tonight the adventure begins. I look forward to a full, restful night of sleep, perhaps my first in many years. I will continue to write about the journey.

By Geoff | Posted in Essay, My Life, Sleep Apnea | Comments (2)

The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T: A Review

June 8, 2013 – 3:15 pm

When I was young, my mother used to talk about a movie she had once seen that was made my Dr. Seuss (yes, THAT Dr. Seuss) called The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T. She told me it was about a kid who was scared of his piano teacher and who had this long nightmare about him. She made it sound like it was a really scary, very surreal movie. I was really intrigued, but for some reason I had never sought it out.

Until last night.

I am flabbergasted and amazed at just how much I disliked it. A couple of the performance were fine. Peter Lind Hayes as the plumber and father figure to the boy was good in a very theatrical way. He had a great voice and was an admirable dancer. (Oh, did I mention it was a musical? I hadn’t known that until it got going.) He mostly danced with Dr. T, though, not the kid’s mother, and the relationship between him and the kid was just a little creepy. I guess they didn’t think of those things in the 50s.

Hans Conried as the evil Dr. Terwilliker chewed up the scenery most wonderfully. The kid also had a great signing voice, but was only a so-so actor.

The sets and costumes were based on Dr. Seuss drawings, but weren’t really very good. In fact, there was only one moment of typical Dr. Seuss charm; some fuzzy handed folks playing a marimba. That is a moment in a lavish musical number filled with guys playing strange instruments based on Dr. Seuss’s whimsical drawings. Somehow, making those wonderful creations into real, three dimensional things transformed the whimsical to simply clunky.

And it wasn’t scary in the least, unless you’re frightened by shirtless, sweaty, hairy, slightly overweight bad guys.

In fact, there were a lot of shirtless, sweaty men in the movie. Some of them with odd brown body makeup, some with badly applied green body makeup. Many of them were dancers, and a lot of the dancing was very well done, but the overall affect was just creepy.

For some reason I had gotten the impression that the 5,000 fingers referred to in the title were supposed to be those of Dr. T himself, part of the surreal nightmare, as he played a huge piano. I’m not sure if my mother had said that, or I had just assumed it. Well, they weren’t. They were the fingers of 500 boys, Dr. T’s students, who all played a huge piano. Think about it. 500 boys, a strange piano teacher, tons of shirtless, sweaty minions, a fairly masculine plumber with an odd relationship with a young boy and only one woman (the young boy’s mother.) It just gets creepier and creepier. And not in a “oooh, what a wonderful, creepy movie that was. It gave me goose bumps” way. It was creepy in a “I wonder how many of the people involved in this movie were pedophiles” way.

I did some reading after watching it. This movie has been compared to Wizard of Oz and the original Willie Wonka. It has even been called the “bridge movie” between the two. Shideshow Bob’s last name in The Simpsons was supposedly taken from it, although they changed it from Terwilliker to Terwilliger. Musicians, including several rap groups, have used the lyrics (all written by Dr. Seuss himself) and music from it. It has a cult status and a fairly high rating on IMDB.

Given all that, I still think most of it was just awful. Much of the audience at the premiere left after the first fifteen minutes or so and I don’t much blame them. Even Dr. Seuss disowned it, it seems, and didn’t include any reference to it in his biography. As I watched it, I kept thinking, “This should really be a lot better than it is!” But it wasn’t and it’s a bit sad it wasn’t. Dr. Seuss didn’t make any more movies.

I now mostly wonder why my mother talked about it so much.

By Geoff | Posted in Essay, Movies, Opinion | Comments (0)

It Is Better to Appear Green

May 28, 2013 – 5:09 pm

I went to the movies last night, at the Landmark Theatres, the fancy movie house with the wonderful seats, great screens and amazing sound systems in all their theatres. I decided popcorn was in order and got the big size. It was too much, so I took the left over home with me. I just looked at the bag it came in. Under their logo it proudly announces:

Landmark Theatres
Chooses
Eco Select
Bags

Up to 50% of the energy used
to produce the natural fiber in
this bag is sourced from hydro
power and renewable bio-fuels.

I want to congratulate them for their carefully worded statement. Now let’s deconstruct it.

“Up to 50%… “ That’s easy. Anything below 50% would qualify, including 0%. Any discussion after that is kind of moot, but let’s continue for the sake of argument.

“… of the energy used…” We’ll get to that.

“… to produce the natural fiber in this bag… “ There’s absolutely no indication how much of the fiber in the bag is actually natural fiber, but let’s assume most or all of it is. There is, however, a plastic coating on the inside, which probably isn’t made of natural fiber. But, again, that’s moot because they aren’t claiming anything about the actual material the bag is made from (it could all be asbestos, as far as the statement is concerned), only about the energy used to produced it. Well, actually, only the energy used to product the fiber. Or, rather, the energy used to produce the natural fiber. No word on where the energy used produce the plastic coating or any of the other possible fibers it contains came from, nor where the energy to run the machines that cut the paper and construct the actual bag came from.

(Not even mentioning the glue to hold it all together.)

“… sourced from hydro-power… “ this means it was power from a dam. As opposed to, say, nuclear, which is probably a good thing, or wind, or solar, which may or may not be. Did that dam stop any salmon runs? Back up water on any unique habitat? Who knows. But it does sound good. Hydro sounds very green.

“… and renewable bio-fuels.” Wood is a renewable bio-fuel. Yes, I know, they probably didn’t use a wood burning generator. But what ever they used, it burned, and I doubt it burned clean.

However, with the carefully worded statement, and the nice “organic” look of the paper bag, the Landmark people, their counter servers and their patrons can all feel very good about saving the earth along with their evening’s entertainment.

I know I do.

By Geoff | Posted in Essay, My Life, Observation, Opinion | Comments (7)

I Love to Ride My Bicycle, I Love to Ride My Bike

May 14, 2013 – 2:57 pm

I can remember when I first learned to ride a bike. I was at some friends of my mother’s, up the hill from where we lived in very rural New Jersey. They had a bike and I decided I wanted to try riding it. My older brother held it up for me while I got on, then ran along, holding me steady as I peddled. At some point, it suddenly dawned on me that he had let go and was way far behind me. I was actually riding the thing!

Of course, stopping then became an issue. If I remember correctly, I accomplished an inelegant but effective stop by dragging my feet along the dirt driveway. After a bit, I got the hang of starting without help and stopping without ruining my shoes and my lifetime love affair with bicycles was launched.

No, I’ve never ridden one of these. Not sure it’s even possible.

I did some pretty crazy things on my bike. In my twenties and thirties, I used to ride all over Los Angeles on the bike. For a while, I lived in Silverlake (about as far east as you can get before you hit downtown) and worked in Beverly Hills (go west about halfway to the ocean.) I worked at night and rode my bike most nights down Sunset Boulevard, the busiest street in LA. Hey, I was young, a bit foolish and had a warped sense of my own mortality. I did have a couple of close calls, but it was mostly just wonderful.

For a while, I lived in Hollywood and rode my bike to my job in the Valley, up over the Cahuenga Pass. For those of you who have never driven over the Cahuenga Pass, it is a Real Hill. Volkswagens often choke and cough attempting it on the freeway. And the surface streets had more extreme hills. I was such a stud!

Then I think of a friend of my brother’s. We had moved from New Jersey to Spokane Washington. This fellow rode his bike across the country and stopped at our place on his way to Portland, Oregon. Think about that. That’s across the country. You get to go over Iowa, which is pretty flat, but then you have to encounter the Rockies and the Cascades, there’s pretty much no way around that. What the hell, I’m still a stud. The Cahuenga Pass is awesome.

In the last few years, I started riding less and less. Not sure why, I guess I was feeling older or too busy or something. I rode to the grocery store, a little over half a mile each way, but that was about it. When I bought my new car, even my trips to the grocery store took a slide, since I loved my car so much.

A few weeks ago, a friend was visiting from Denver and we went in to Venice. I got winded walking about two blocks, and there weren’t even any hills! I knew something had to give and determined to start at least riding to the store again. It’s only been a couple of weeks and already I can make it there and back without stopping to catch my breath. I think it’s time to attempt a ride to the ocean! (Okay, so that’s only three miles and there are no hills, but I don’t want to push too fast.)

What’s ironic about all this is my victory over half a mile when some friends are doing the AIDS ride from San Francisco to Los Angeles in a month or so. That’s almost 500 miles! And they may not have to cross the Rockies, but some of those hills still make the Cahuenga Pass look like a speed bump.

I can only say, more power to them. I will never be that much of a stud. I will support them with a pledge, of course, so I can say I participated, but my legs are shaking just thinking about it. Perhaps, if I ride to the ocean once or twice a week, I can look like I could ride from SF to LA. That’s enough studliness for me at this age, let’s be reasonable.

By Geoff | Posted in Essay, My Life | Comments (0)

Tax Day and Terror

April 16, 2013 – 2:44 pm

It is April 15th, tax day, here in the United States, and I have once again waited until the last moment to get my stuff all pulled together. While working on my taxes, I pulled open a browser to get some information from one of my bank accounts and saw a headline about the bombings in Boston.

I have several friends who are runners, many of whom run marathons at any opportunity, so the first thing I did after the initial shock wore off was to make sure they were all okay. (Facebook is wonderful for that, actually, and today I am very grateful to have it.) None of them were in Boston, so I felt a huge sense of relief. I also felt a bit of guilt. How do you reconcile that particular feeling of relief with the knowledge of the pain that so many are going through, the loss of limbs and lives, in this act of war?

We humans are filtering devices, we need to be, or we would go mad on a daily basis. We have learned to distance ourselves from any information that does not affect us or those close to us directly. It is necessary for our survival. The pain we feel for those distant from us is a dim pain. And the more distant it is from us, the dimmer it is.

There is also an argument about how much we should allow ourselves to be informed about tragedy in the world. Some say we need to be informed so we can do what is necessary to alleviate pain, make change on the planet. Some say opening ourselves to that kind of negative energy only creates negativity within ourselves, negating our ability to do anything positive for ourselves or anyone else.

I don’t have an answer. Sometimes I am overwhelmed by the terror we perpetrate upon each other and I despair. Sometimes I remember that this life is the classroom, that everything that happens, ultimately, whether we call it good or bad, simply shapes the further development of the universe, and does so in ways we can’t comprehend, with consequences beyond our short lives and I feel at peace. Mostly, I am somewhere between the two.

The thing that is distinct with this tragedy, however, is how it is being covered, generally, in the press and in social media. Yes, there are the crazy bigots and conspiracy theorists who are convinced that, because of this, all other-skinned races should be killed or imprisoned, or that it was the work of Obama or his minions, or that it is proof of some weirdness or other, but what I mostly see are reports of people running toward the explosions to assist those who were hurt, people giving of themselves, their homes, their food, etc. I suspect this happens with many, if not most, such disasters, but that we are being told it points towards a shift in our own public consciousness, and for that shift I am grateful.

By Geoff | Posted in Essay, Opinion | Tagged My Life, Observation | Comments (0)

DOMA and Me – The Defense of Marriage Act?

March 27, 2013 – 12:19 pm

I haven’t posted anything on this blog for a very long time, but have been thinking a lot about what’s most in the news (and on my Facebook wall) these last several days (The Supreme Court hearings on Prop 8 and the Defense of Marriage Act) and this is the only place I can think of to express my thoughts on it all.

Way back when, before it was such a political hot potato, I thought the whole notion of gay marriage was kind of a silly issue. And I mean that on both sides of the political spectrum. Most of the gay activists at that time were using it in strident arguments mostly to rile up anyone who they could rile up, and most of the opposition to it were using arguments that were fundamentally (pun intended) flawed and/or just plain silly. I thought the activists should be spending their time, energy and anger fighting for the right for gay people (any people, actually) to not be fired, beat up, kicked out of their houses, etc., etc., because they were gay.

I continued to think it was a silly cause until they started talking about a constitutional amendment banning it. It stopped being silly the more seriously that movement progressed. To codify, in the United States Constitution, the singling out of a particular class of people (whether I was part of that class or not) and saying they didn’t have the same rights as other people seemed to me fundamentally (that word again) inappropriate.

Then a group of people in my state of California put a proposition on the ballot to specifically outlaw gay marriage. The proposition, known as Prop 8, which would add to our state constitution wording to the effect that marriage is strictly between a man and a woman and no other could ever be recognized.

The day after 8 passed, I was having dinner with an elderly, fairly conservative straight couple that I knew. He looked at me and said, with tears in his eyes, that he was ashamed of his state and he apologized to me. I said that I suspected the passage of 8 would bring the issue to the forefront and be a catalyst for amazing change in our country. It came from the philosophical idea that, once the time for a particular change has come, opposition to that change will grow louder, but will in reality be a huge part of instituting that change.

It seems Prop 8 has been exactly that. It immediately put the thought of homosexuality into the national conversation in a way it hadn’t ever been before. It forced people to actually examine their own beliefs and often find those beliefs lacking. It brought into stark focus the actual acknowledgment the thought that gay people existed, you probably actually know one or two and they are really just people. Before Prop 8, violence against gay people was sort of ignored. After, it was front page news. Because it became front page news, it seemed like there was a lot more of it, but in reality, there had always been a lot, we just never heard about any of it.

Who could have imagined, only a few years ago, major sports stars coming out in favor of gay marriage, major corporations, major politicians both liberal and conservative, both Democrats and Republicans, doing the same?

The more people thought about it, the more people started seeing gay marriage in different terms. They also started seeing gay people in general in different terms. Having Prop 8 pass did, indeed, change the conversation. Since it’s passage, a majority of Americans now favor allowing gay marriage, see that it wouldn’t affect their own marriage in any way and that all the energy wasted on the argument could now be focused on something else. Also, a lot of people who never really thought about it were able to openly realize they could accept the fact that gay people existed and that they had room in their lives for them.

The final proof of this is that so many people who had original authored, supported and voted for The Defense of Marriage act have now written Friend Of the Court briefs arguing for it’s removal from law and people who once supported and voted for Prop 8 now say they would like to see it repealed.

No matter what SCOTUS decides after the Prop 8 and DOMA arguments, Prop 8′s passage and its aftermath has eventually gone a long way to making me feel much more like an actual member of my society.

Now, can everyone stop using the red and pink equal signs (or are the red eights?) as profile pictures on Facebook? I can’t tell who anyone is!

By Geoff | Posted in Essay, My Life, Observation, Opinion | Comments (2)

Going Crazy for Fun and Profit

March 12, 2011 – 3:06 pm

Charlie's Straight Jacket Poor Charlie Sheen is now last week’s news. Things happen quickly around here and you’ve got to keep up. After a whirlwind romance with the spotlight in which he bared his tiger soul and winning mind, we have all moved on to the next deluded lunatic who panders to the lowest entertainment instinct of the general American public.

And it all happened entirely too fast for me to cash in on it.

I am able to get some Google juice by mentioning Mr. Sheen’s name in the first paragraph of this blog post, of course, so it didn’t completely pass me by, but my Peruvian sweatshop grandmothers haven’t yet been able to finish the ironing, much less get the first shipment of “I turn tin cans into gold” tee shirts packed into boxes and shipped to every outlet mall in the country. The Ex-TV Star doll, with the pull string that activates a voice spewing randomly generated cocaine-induced philosophical rants, isn’t out of development, yet. The Ninja Tiger website server crashed right before the official launch.

Maybe Britney or Mel will have a relapse. One can only hope.

By Geoff | Posted in Nonesense, Observation | Tagged Humor, Satire | Comments (1)

The Right to Privacy

August 27, 2010 – 2:29 pm

Image via Wikipedia

In a conversation I recently had on-line about an article regarding citizens being tracked by GPS, the subject of privacy came up. Okay, I did what I often accuse others of doing and jumped to a reaction before I’d read the article. The article was actually a serious look at an opinion by certain judges that it was all right for a governmental agent to sneak up to a person’s car that was in his own driveway and place a GPS device underneath it in order to track all his movements. Without going into details, I think this opinion is slightly abhorrent.

This post is not about that. It’s about what I thought the article was about before I read it. It’s about an expectation of personal privacy, especially on-line. Before I get too much further, I should state that if you Google me, you’ll see that I’m all over the Internet. You can’t get rid of me. Go ahead, Google me. I’ll wait. [Click here to Google Geoff.]

I often hear people get really, really outraged when they discover that some fact about them can or could be accessed by someone or anyone in some way. “How can people be complacent? How can we let this happen!?!” I hear them shout, shaking with indignation and righteous offense. I hear people complain about how much information “they” are storing about you. When we learn that Facebook is Gasp! telling advertisers our likes and dislikes, we’re stunned. And yet we use those store “Club Cards” to get discounts on every day purchases. What do you think Ralph’s market does every time you swipe that card? It tells a database somewhere what you just bought so it can spit targeted coupons at you. I see no evil in that. And sometimes I even use the coupons.

I’ve thought a lot about this over the years. My conclusion has been, “Actually, what does it matter?” I’m not complacent, I just don’t care. When everything we do, think or say is already on the intenets for everyone to see, there is so much information available no organization could ever possibly parse it all. (Think about the relatively small amount of information we had before 9/11 that no one had bothered to look at, most of which has STILL not been gone through.) Yes, I’d rather you didn’t know that, occasionally, I watch Xtube, but what the hell.

And, yes, any information collected could be accessed by the government. Which is okay when it’s our people in charge, but what about when their people are in charge? You know their people won’t hesitate to look you up and pull you in front of the court of public opinion because you read either the Communist Manifesto or Mein Kamf or Henry Miller in college. (I haven’t read any of them, by the way, in case you’re keeping tabs on me. Well, a chapter or two of Miller.)

The only way to not have everything you do, think or say be accessible to anyone who wants it is to go off the grid. I’m not willing to do that, so I’m at peace with everyone being able to know everything they care to about me. If I don’t want the satellite to know where I’m going, I won’t have a GPS. (Actually, I don’t have one, either in my phone or my car, but not for that reason. Just haven’t gotten around to get a phone or car smart enough.)

We love to be outraged by it all, but if we want to be “on-line” in whatever capacity we do want it, we have to know that there is no possible way to still say we have any real right to privacy, which is kind of a strange concept in any case.

The whole idea of privacy as a right is a very recent one in human history. It’s even recent in American human history. It started, like much in American philosophy, as the rights of propertied men and those particular individuals are still afforded more of a “right” to privacy than the rest of us poor slobs. (Poor slobs just being an expression. I don’t mean to imply that you have less money or are more messy than the average individual.) It’s not even really a part of our constitution, although in the 14th amendment it does say, “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized…” which goes to the heart of the original article (the one I hadn’t read when I started going off all half-cocked about privacy in the first place). That isn’t, however, really about privacy, per se.

We often don’t even know what we’re talking about when we talk about privacy. Some people equate it with a right to liberty, which is also a relatively new idea. Some think of it as the right to be left alone. Some simply think of it as the right to not have the masses of humanity know they read porn and beat their dog. Or their children. Or themselves.

Get used to it. What you do, think or say can and will end up in some database somewhere. There’s no point in outrage. If you put your name into the Google search engine and anything comes up, no matter how many pages deep, it’s already too late for you. Get used to it or live by candle light.

Carry on.

_______________________________
Geoff Hoff is co-author of the best selling satirical novel Weeping Willow: Welcome to River Bend

Court allows agents to secretly put GPS trackers on cars (cnn.com)

By Geoff | Posted in Essay, Opinion | Tagged Essay, Google, GPS, Outrage, Privacy, Rant, Security | Comments (2)

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