Facebook Just Wants to Listen -- Like A Good Friend Would...

Read THIS if you don't mind. It would seem Facebook wants to record the ambient noise around you through the microphone on your iPhone or Andriod phone.

Oh, sure...it's voluntary. You can choose not to let them. No one is forcing you.

The horror ir that they are actually arrogant enough to ask and that there are those who will allow it.

I shouldn't be surprised that we live in a society in which anyone would choose to allow this. And I won't be surprised when that same society has signed away every last bit of its own privacy voluntarily...until they voluntarily sign away the right to choose to whether volunteer or not.

My advice, if you care...take Facebook off of your phone, at least. I did. They can't do it through your computer. Not yet.

We're like meat under the tenderizing hammer...with each blow, we get softened to the idea of living in full-view of anyone who cares to watch. "They only want to watch us so that they can personalize our Internet experience..."

We're so trusting. It brings a tear to my eye.

Time for Change: Taping Over the Digital Clocks

It was a high-level standardized test. A room full of very smart kids. "A" students. Honors students. He looked up at the clock. He looked at me. He seemed...uncomfortable.

"How much time to we have left?" he asked.

I looked at the board, where the exam's end-time was written in huge, black, block numbers. I looked at the clock...

"I, uh, can't really see the clock..." he said.

He was in the front row. The clock was large, round...clear, dark numbers on a white face. I looked him. He looked at me. He looked away...ashamed.

We both knew the truth.

He couldn't read an analog clock.

"You have twenty-three minutes," I said.

"Thanks," he said.

The Man and the Bird (A Riddle-Parable)

Dig...

The bird flies. The man walks.

The man sees the bird fly; he dreams of flight.

The bird flies and thinks nothing of it, because it is what he does. It is, to him, as walking is to the man.

If the man could fly, he would soon think nothing of it.

The difference: the bird just goes on being a bird, with no disappointment and no regret.The man laments his loss of wonder and begins searching for something higher than flight.

The bird dies a bird. The man dies a man. One of them missed the point.

Which one was it?

The Jackassery of Artistic Youth

Years ago, when I was in grad school – maybe soon after; back when I was playing in a band a few nights per week and teaching scattered courses at Rutgers and in community college for a living; back before I even know how to tie a tie, my girlfriend (who I was pretty sure at the time I would one day ask to be my wife) asked me: “What do you love more? – me or music?”

Genesis, past and future all at once. 

Do you know, I had a hard time answering that? What an absolute fool I was. You know what I said? I said, “I can’t live without either one of you.” 

What an ass.

I know full well there are those who might think that guy I once was amounts to a kind of Romantic type. I know this because the type has been lauded in movies for years: Amadeus, Titanic, etc. I know some might see my response as the artistic, back-of-the-hand-to-the-forehead kind of thing that works well in a two hour screening. But, it actually makes me ill, now, to think I said that to her.

Excuse You For What?

One day, many years ago, I was reading my students’ latest essays. At the time, I was in a room that was “split” – there was a folding wall between them. The wall was supposed to be sound-proof, but, it was more – how shall I describe it? – not sound proof. The class on the other side was pretty unruly.

At one point, the teacher called out: “Excuuuusse me…”

Noise continued.

“Excuuuuuuuuse me….”

Continued cacophony.

“ExcUUUUUse me!”

And, in the back of the room, a single student’s voice wafted through, a clarion voice below the general chaos. He was speaking to himself, really, but the science of acoustics is a fascinating thing. I may have been the only person to have heard his comment – his response to the teacher’s “ExcUUUUUUse me!”

He said, “Why? Did you fart?”

I laughed. I laughed hysterically. (I was alone – what was the harm?) But, after I recovered, I realized that the kid had a point.