privacy

recently a topic has come up again and again between friends, acquaintances, politics, and media.  i would like to throw out some logical comments on this issue.

privacy.

in the last couple of years, there has been a lot of complaining that the government is stealing your information, even possibly spying on you to make sure you aren't doing something wrong.  looking for persons of interest within the walls of our country involves searching everywhere.  people hate it, moaning on and on about how it's not right, it's not fair, it's their human right to privacy (which by the way is not a basic human right).  but then when there is an attack on the states from within, everyone will be up in arms that the government didn't do enough investigations to prevent it.  well, you see, if we ban methods of intelligence-gathering that could protect our nation in return for your individual privacy, bad things can happen on a much larger scale.  and we as a unit will be much more vulnerable to those attacks.

even more confusing, those same people yelling and ranting about wanting privacy are the same ones who are posting every minute detail of his or her life on the internet.  facebook, twitter, tumblr, blogspot, instagram, pinterest, google+, foursquare, etc.  in many cases, way too much information.  really, we do not want to your about your child's rash.  or what you ate for breakfast.  yet they are the same ones demanding that no one know anything about them....hello, anybody home, mcfly??  you are the one putting it out for the world to see!  no one else.  this is all on you.  it's really simple - if you don't want the world to know about your life, then stop posting it and stop whining about it.

in addition to the above statement - if you've got nothing to hide, then why does it matter?  this is something i've struggled to understand my whole life.  if any aspect of my life were to get posted on yahoo's front page i wouldn't care, because i am not doing anything wrong nor am i ashamed of my life, who i am, and who i interact with.  i live with no regrets because everything that could be considered a mistake is a chance to learn.  if you don't make mistakes, you can't learn from it to grow into a better person.  i'm straying from the point, but really, when someone gets really worked up about protecting their privacy, i automatically think they've got something bad to hide.  and that's not the government's fault or a corporation's fault. 

end of initial comments, but i would be happy to start a dialogue with anyone who disagrees.

scuba

fun fact for those who don't live in waco, i am taking a scuba class!  so that i may enjoy the great barrier reef when i am in australia and have lots of fun adventures in the water elsewhere too.  the instructor makes it seem slightly terrifying though because he tells us horror stories of people getting injured, bent, or dying from diving every time we meet.  so i'm not even sure i really want to make this a normal thing, especially considering the really short times you actually have underwater (which i didn't know until yesterday when we learned how to use dive charts).  but i suppose knowing the skill can't hurt.  i just won't be buying anything other than a mask anytime soon...