Dragnet Nation by Julia Angwin

Dragnet Nation: A Quest for Privacy, Security, and Freedom in a World of Relentless Surveillance

by Julia Angwin

Julia Angwin did the research on our privacy and the good news is, you can wrap your phone in "tin foil" to stop tracking. The bad new is . . . it's all bad.

She is not anti technology. That is impossible, she said and she believes there is a benefit to living in a technological world. We can, however, do things so that we are less a target.

One suggestion:

Give up google and make the switch to DuckDuck.go. They do not track your searches and sell them to marketers. Something to think about.

If it's February 16th it's my birthday Big Brother

My mother didn't remember my birthday.  Memory is no longer an option for her. We spent the day at Green Key Park in New Port Richey. She enjoyed looking at the people especially the ones with lots of tattoos, some in scooters and a drunk disabled man who overturned his scooter to the amusement of his drunk friends.  Half way into the mangrove walk we rested. My mother says few words now. She pointed to a man on a bench tucked away in the mangroves and said, “Is that a guitar?” A middle aged man was playing softly. He looked at us and nodded. I waved.

On this birthday the sunshine and anonymous guitar player was lovely and healing. I didn't mind that my mother did not know it was my birthday. What I did mind was the Google logo spelled out with birthday cakes and candles. Google knew it was my birthday? 

My google page today.
This is what we were all screaming about in our twenties, and thirties, and …. It's too late baby. Too late.

I Was Hoping for a Woman

"I was hoping for a woman" now on SOUNDCLICK.

http://soundclick.com/share.cfm?id=12678314

I wrote this song for Helen, my flatmate in Newtown, New Zealand.
She was hoping that a woman would move into the empty house next to hers. While she was away in Australia, a man moved in.