Privacy 2.0

Edward Snowden and the conspiracy that surrounds his actions is a heated topic in my home. My wife believes in absolute transparency in governmental affairs. I think that is a beautiful ideal, but it is an unrealistic expectation. The government's actions were unethical, but Edward Snowden's actions were deliberate and malicious, as well as self-serving. Many people hail Snowden as a hero because he blew the whistle on the NSA. I don't think his motives were just. It is possible information he has could damage democracy, not save it.

It is interesting that I see Snowden as a traitor. With my history, one would assume I would e all for bringing down political corruption. My wife often laughs at the anarchy tattoos that I have on my hands.
 I recently watched the documentary We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks, this as the title denotes the story of Julian Assange and WikiLeaks. Once again my opinion is that this man is a self-serving criminal who is a product of the information age and too much anti-social social media.

Furthermore, the government's need to know is creating a scenario where there are things they need to know. What I mean by this is by looking for discontent they create discontent.

I find it interesting that privacy is such an issue in this day and age where people put everything and anything on the internet. They blog about t=things from breakfast to breakups. People believe that if they have allowed someone to view their page of "friend" them that they are not sharing information, not true. If you want to keep yourself to yourself, stay off the web!
Recently I have been looking for a new matress. I took my laptop, and while on campus googled and viewed a video about a certain matress, now this same mattress ad and others like it has made an appearance on my wife's facebook and in the random ads that show up when she uses the internet. Now that's scary!!

Religion 2.0

The topic of religion is an interesting one and somewhat difficult to broach. It is interesting that being from and living in this area that it is taken for granted that someone is a member of the most prominent religion. Often this isn't the case, or in other situations when talking with someone, I find out that they are a member of the "The Religion" and would never have assumes otherwise (I am sure that I fall into this category myself). What I'm saying is its funny how a discipline based on love and acceptance breeds common behaviors like stereotyping, shunning, and judgment.

I could use the rest of this post to engage in the standard practice of complaining about the religion of this area but I won't. I will, however, point out how with the ever growing presence of social media how religions have had to change the way they reach out and interact with others.
For example, when the LDS church came out with their most recent edict on gay marriage and the LGBT community. When they released the decision that homosexual relationships and marriages would not be recognized by the church they had to put out a press release to do damage control. This is not something they would ever have to have done in the past. Realistically in the past, their view if these marriages never would had been so widespread. What was laughable was the random numbers that were thrown around and the one story that I read about a lawyer representing s few thousand members who were renouncing their membership in the church. In case anyone doesn't know, you don't have to sue the church not to be a member; you just stop going.

Social media has changed the way we worship. Apparently, if I see something horrible on Facebook and scroll by without typing amen or sharing I am going to hell. SHIT!!