Eileen and I ended up waiting an extra couple of hours for our connection from Dallas/Fort Worth to Grand Rapids.
Since it was already a late flight, we got home in the middle of the night, around 3:30 AM.
Late hours for an old geezer like me.
Eileen and I figured out how she could loan me a Kindle book she bought. The rules are 1) the publisher must allow loans; 2) the loan is only for 14 days and 3) a book can be loaned only once.
Sheesh. It seems like a very old style approach to the free flow of information and ideas. Just a tiny leak in an area where so few people really participate (i.e. reading and thinking). But a leak it is.
So I’m reading Eileen’s Kindle Book copy of Scorpio Races.
The book seems directed at a young reader audience. The main characters, Puck and Sean, are in their teens. I am reading it because Eileen read it. Even though a death begins the book it doesn’t pick up until about half way through when the plot starts to develop. The interesting thing to me is the idea of capaill uisce. This phrase roughly translates from the Irish as “water horse.” It seems there is a legend that this author has made real about fierce flesh eating horses.
There is an annual race where these killer horses are caught and raced. This is the background of this book. I cannot tell how much of the legend is connected to fact, but it makes for a mildly interesting read and helped me pass time with the many waits I had yesterday flying back from California.
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On the ride home last night, Eileen and I heard a BBC report about CCTV technology the British are looking at which would allow software to monitor the overwhelming number of cameras the government uses to watch the population. There are so many cameras trained on the citizens that there is a surfeit of trained observers.
I was particularly taken aback when one person who was selling the tech said that one has two options: either to be monitored by software or spottily monitored by other humans.
My gut reaction was “Wait a minute. Those aren’t the only options. What about whether a society wants to trade (as the British society seems to want to do) privacy and dignity for safety (false safety in my opinion).
I thought more than once about the true reason the USA has such weird security measures in its airports: to lull the traveling population into thinking the government is making it safe to fly when indeed it is not. Perception seems to trump reality over and over these days. Just my exhausted morning after opinion, I guess.
Pass the drone.
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‘How Should a Person Be?’ by Sheila Heti – NYTimes.com
Recognized this author but wasn’t sure why until I realized she co-wrote Chairs are the people go.
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It seems to be that security, i.e. cameras by the government,means a loss in liberty. I do not travel on airlines anymore, but when I have I have loathed the process. I am very much opposed to this, not because of the “good intentions” of those who are doing their job, but because of the potential for government interference of liberty from people who are not interested in your liberty. This is exactly what happened in Germany Pre WWII.
Like so much I think we probably see this differently. For one thing the tech has been there for several decades to completely monitor our lives. Hard for me to think it’s not being used. And I think we are in a much different time than preWWII Germany. New stuff. But anyway, my favorite paranoid movie (with a killer soundtrack) is “The End of Violence” which deals with these ideas in pretty cool way. link to trailer FWIW. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_LIgQNPeNf0