Sumpins’ Up at the Tummy Temple

For the pass while I’ve notice on my daily trip to the Tummy Temple there are these new folks standing around. They don’t have carts but they do have nametags and clip boards. They stand out from the normal costumed staff as ‘suits’ or folks from the office area. They intermingle with the staff but not the customers. They point at things and then talk amongst themselves.

Still Toni stocks the blueberries, Brian sweeps up the spills, but Chris tells me these packs of unfamiliar white folks in their button down dress shirts and kakis are from corporate and are taking stock of the workers and workflow.

So after the Memorial Day rush for charcoal, burgers and buns I notice even more new faces. These guys are in a panic clearing shelves.

Is the Tummy Temple closing? Did I not tithe enough? With the closing of two other temples in the area and the increase congregation, are these deacons planning a better, faster, more efficient experience for collecting sustenance?

I’ve stuck with this temple for some time and have seen a few changes. There was a different name and location when I started attending and then it expanded to twice the size but there were still cornflakes and milk. There was no notice that I saw (I may have missed the memo) that the power that be decided to make a change, but them old folks who wander their aisles are not going to like it.

The last time the ‘rearrangement’ was an adventure. Products were moved to new places, new flooring was put down, signage changed and all the while the ebb and flow of existing patrons crammed their wire carts through the spaces that were now the size of an airplane aisles all the while grumbling about not being able to find artichokes. I don’t know where they are either?

I understand every now and then an organization needs to ‘shake things up’ and re-organize, but I’d read nothing in the business news about a takeover or restructuring. Again, maybe I missed the memo?

Today the frozen food section is being reshuffled. The frozen blueberries are moved to where the frozen burritos were and the frozen pizzas are not frozen peas. The calling cards have moved to the seasonal items and the worst part is the beer aisle is not being restocked.

I’ve seen some of the distributers (have I told you I’ve attending this temple for some time?) and they all look confused. I haven’t wandered much recently to other temples to check out the changes but to me, it seems pretty simple. Big truck backs up to a loading dock. The cargo is moved into a storage space. A constant stream of carts and wagons deliver the cargo to the shelves then shot with some sort of magical device that put a price on it then the rest is up to the congregation to come and get it.

Tomorrow I’ll go back and see if the bread has moved or if the walls are the same color. If in your ultimate wisdom decide to move the toilet paper, don’t worry. I’ll find it. If you decide to hitch your prices, I’ll just buy less.

That is the way it is on a hot and muggy day at the end of May restocking my clothing for the heat and storing the winter garb away until the furnace cuts on.

Pillow Talk

Maybe after a wild party or a long musical event or a formal dinner party, it is time to slip beneath the sheets and accumulate the thoughts of the day before the sandman knocks you into unconscious.

This is the private time to figure out what the day’s experience has been and, if fortunate enough, discuss with another.

Pillow talk time is where gossip and reality and dreams and bias all intermingle to form prejudice and perceptions. It should be in the dark.

“Did you see how Uncle Charlie was stumbling around? He must have been drunk.” “I heard from Aunt Fay he’d had a stroke.” “Sally’s boyfriend seemed very nice but that jacket was appalling.” “Did you notice her tattoo?” “I wish they had made chicken instead of whatever that ground up stuff was. I couldn’t eat a bite.” “Did you try it? It was very good with a shaker of salt.” “What were you drinking?” “The clarinet sounded like his reed wasn’t working.” “What do you know, you fell asleep during the bassoon solo.” “Why do they wait so long for intermission? I had to pee.” “Why did you keep applauding to your boss? He was just terrible.” “It’s my job.” “Was that his wife or his daughter?” “She did look mighty fine. Ouch!” “You wouldn’t have a chance.” “What?” “Did you see Jack checking me out? He was you know?” “Hate to pop your bubble but he was looking at Henry.” “No!” “Yes, he is that way.” “How do you know?” “Jack and I go back a long ways.” “I didn’t know.” “Well now you do.” “ Why was Benny going out to the pool house so much?” “ (pause)” “Oh!” “ Are we going to the Peterson’s tomorrow? I just don’t feel comfortable around them.” “And Hank always gets around the grill and tells old stories of how he got more points at Donkey Kong than any of his friends while burning the hot dogs and knocking over his beer.” “And Magarey smells bad. She always smells bad.” “Did you lock the car?” “I’m sure I did.” “Did you put out the cat?” “We have a cat?”

In just a few moments observations can become engrained judgment based on gossip and speculation.

See you in the morning or maybe I wish you had just gone home instead.

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Re-segregation

Not to shatter all your Kumbaya feelings, but I read this word in the ‘fake’ Washington Post news and it gave me a shutter. With all our devisees it seems that some of our elected officials (those we chose to represent our ideals) are trying to resurge the idea of separate-but-equal.

“LAST YEAR, Rep. Paul A. Gosar, an Arizona Republican, explained why he disliked an Obama administration plan to build affordable housing — as a means of helping minorities and poor people — in mainly white, middle-class neighborhoods.

“Instead of living with neighbors you like and choose, this breaks up the core fabric of how we start to look at communities,” Mr. Gosar told the Hill newspaper. “That just brings unease to everyone in that area.”

Yes: “Unease” at the prospect of neighborhood integration has long been central to U.S. racism, or a euphemism for it. It has also played a central role in an equally poisonous problem — the resegregation of public schools — that started accelerating 15 years ago, about a half-century after the Supreme Court ruled that segregated schools are “inherently unequal.” Washington Post

From what I remember separate was never equal.

There has to be a reason for separation idea?

“On Sept. 23, 1957, thousands of segregationists blocked nine young black students from enrolling in Little Rock Central High School, an all-white institution in the Arkansas capital. Gov. Orval Faubus ignited a nationwide crisis when he defied the Supreme Court’s landmark 1954 decision on desegregation, Brown v. Board of Education, and deployed the Arkansas National Guard to bar the students. Two days later, President Dwight D. Eisenhower ordered U.S. Army units to escort the Little Rock Nine into the school.

This fall marked the 60th anniversary of this pivotal moment in the history of America’s racial struggle. With the political landscape seemingly as divided as it has ever been, this moment provides an opportunity to examine the depth and contours of segregation in the nation today. Though clear advances have been made since the civil rights movement, the enactment of increasingly conservative social policies over the last half-century reveals how tenuous such progress turned out to be.

The consequences of creeping racial resegregation should constitute nothing less than a national crisis.

U.S. cities have grown more segregated over the past 40 years, and persistent and intensifying racial disparities between white communities and people of color have emerged. This systematic re-segregation has grave implications for access to health care services, education and accumulation of wealth.” Washington Post

I grew up in segregation. Just as two generations earlier people were forced into servitude as if the Middle Ages reigned over the colonies. It was the status quo born into.

Being of the ‘majority’ (aka ‘White’) population I could accept the privilege without knowing the consequences of my life compared to those across the street. Having an umbrella as opposed to running for shelter in the rain had little effect on me until I started to realize why everybody didn’t have an umbrella.

When ‘integration’ started at my school, it seemed no big deal because like any migration, ‘they’ kept to themselves and didn’t intermingle out of distrust or fear. If there had been aggression, bigotry, prejudice, I never saw it but for those who hide in the shadows?

So here is a politician suggesting the country move back to the times of separate-but…?

Now let’s think about it. Going back to a time of one race feeling superior to another due to whatever misguided factions could be brushed off as if we’d moved on, but have we?

On the other side, should we just throw away all our restrictions and regulations, as it seems to be re-evolving? Should we just drill anywhere because we done need that oil and should we just shoot any animal including our children and should we restrict people who are different to poverty and misery?

If we decide or are told to go back to basics, will we survive?

The basics are that we must have sex. We can go without food or shelter to have sex. We dream about it, we talk about it, we look at it, we desire (no crave) it, and other than taking a break for a sandwich and a poop, we feel we could just have sex all day and all night.

Unfortunately all that would do is make lots of babies, so we take a break to make money because we are too tired to hunt and gather. Then we start playing the hanky-panky game and sex turns to violence. Jealousy is such a funky emotion.

But on that take, we also enjoy killing. We make better weapons to wage war on each other with the excuse that we kill whatever animal we please to extinguish for the food on the table or the head on the wall. After the animal slaughter bores us, we move onto finding new ways to torture each other.

After all that, we, the people of this planet called ‘Earth’, need a reason for the unknown. Seems most of us want to believe in some omnipresent alien being causing all our problems.

So now we are getting back to the root of civilization where we are walking around killing each other and eating animals and having lots of sex.

Oh, I forgot a big one. We also want to be loopy. Whether it be drink or a puff or a snort or a shot or a pill, we want to feel no pain. Actually we want to feel goofy. Look at the excess today to prove if we had no restrictions, Katy bar the door.

While we are going back to the good-ole-days, lets take off those other restrictions like speed limits and building inspections and food testing and haircuts.

A little overdone for the ‘re-segregation’ theory, but now we are stumbling around naked with a weapon in one hand and our main squeeze (for the time being) in the other looking for the latest craft brewery or ultimate fight.

It wouldn’t take long for us to slide down the slippery slope of civilization to our worst intrinsic nature.

Every day we indulge in the propaganda while it chips away at our achievements.

Good luck citizens of the Earth. 
 

Sorry, I wasn’t paying attention

Mild cognitive impairment (MCI), also known as incipient dementia and isolated memory impairment, is a neurological disorder that occurs in older adults which involves cognitive impairments with minimal impairment in instrumental activities of daily living? MCI involves the onset and evolution of cognitive impairments beyond those expected based on the age and education of the individual, but which are not significant enough to interfere with their daily activities. It may occur as a transitional stage between normal aging and dementia. The specific etiology of MCI remains unclear as well as its prevention and treatment.

Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a mental disorder of the neurodevelopment type. It is characterized by problems paying attention, excessive activity, or difficulty controlling behavior, which is not appropriate for a person’s age. The symptoms appear before a person is twelve years old, are present for more than six months, and cause problems in at least two settings (such as school, home, or recreational activities). In children, problems paying attention may result in poor school performance. Although it causes impairment, particularly in modern society, many children with ADHD have a good attention span for tasks they find interesting.

Despite being the most commonly studied and diagnosed mental disorder in children and adolescents, the exact cause is unknown in the majority of cases. It affects about 5–7% of children when diagnosed via the DSM-IV criteria and 1–2% when diagnosed via the ICD-10 criteria. As of 2015 it is estimated to affect about 51.1 million people globally. Rates are similar between countries and depend mostly on how it is diagnosed. ADHD is diagnosed approximately three times more often in boys than in girls, although the disorder is often overlooked in girls due to their symptoms differing from those of boys. About 30–50% of people diagnosed in childhood continue to have symptoms into adulthood and between 2–5% of adults have the condition. The condition can be difficult to tell apart from other conditions, as well as to distinguish from high levels of activity that are still within the range of normative behaviors.

ADHD management recommendations vary by country and usually involve some combination of counseling, lifestyle changes, and medications. The British guideline only recommends medications as a first-line treatment in children who have severe symptoms and for medication to be considered in those with moderate symptoms who either refuse or fail to improve with counseling, though for adults medications are a first-line treatment. Canadian and American guidelines recommend that medications and behavioral therapy be used together as a first-line therapy, except in preschool-aged children. Stimulant medication therapy is not recommended as a first-line therapy in preschool-aged children in either guideline. Treatment with stimulants is effective for up to 14 months; however, its long-term effectiveness is unclear. Adolescents and adults tend to develop coping skills, which make up for some or all of their impairments.

The medical literature has described symptoms similar to ADHD since the 19th century. ADHD, its diagnosis, and its treatment have been considered controversial since the 1970s. The controversies have involved clinicians, teachers, policymakers, parents, and the media. Topics include ADHD's causes and the use of stimulant medications in its treatment. Most healthcare providers accept ADHD as a genuine disorder in children and adults, and the debate in the scientific community mainly centers on how it is diagnosed and treated. The condition was officially known as attention deficit disorder (ADD) from 1980 to 1987, while before this it was known as hyperkinetic reaction of childhood.

As a kid, I was famed for not paying attention. A butterfly distracted me. A painting that no one else saw and no one seemed to care. I could pick out a pitch and a rhythm but a woman standing at a blackboard spouting facts and cognitions only bored me. I would bounce up and down on the backseat of our car for hours to the song in my head. I’d bang my head on the pillow at night probably trying to rid myself of those strange dreams.

Television was my opiate. Fuzzy black and white animation with sound caught and kept my attention while books and sports and other social interaction were mere distractions of where my focus was.

Once I found instruments that could help me reproduce what I was listening to in my head, I was hooked on music. Still my interest was in watching, listening, figuring it out rather than structured study.

My point, as ever story must have a point, is if I am listening to you and start to wander off in disinterest, forgive me. I have a cognitive impairment.

Quality of Death

On this day memorizing those mostly boys and men who were handed weapons and marched behind a banner and sang anthems to causes they didn’t understand then authorized by a nation to murder others either in a invasions or defense then be slaughtered, maimed and mutilated in what is called ‘battle’, I’ll write about death.

As a ever recurring topic and inevitable event, I was reminded today of the futility of life as one of my bunnies’ corpse lay next to the street as natures undertakers do their work.

I heard or read something recently about deciding your ‘quality of death’.

Are you ready? Got all your papers in order and your family have already labeled all your stuff that they want.

Have you decided your favorite clothing to wear in the box? How much make-up do you want? Which way do you part your hair? Will you need shoes?

I’m not sure how many of the guys who invaded France or Iraq had much thought of things that the families usually have to decided, thought the armed services are good at telling each soldier, sailor, airman (and airwoman) are given dog tags to assist those who pick up the remains identify the mess that modern weaponry can produce aimed at each other.

So other than being murdered in war or hit by a train or a meteor falling on your head suddenly, you might get a chance to pass over or bite the bullet or croak in a method you choose.

Do you want your family around? Suppose someone doesn’t show up? Will you have enough cognition to understand who is there and who isn’t considering you will probably be pumped full of drugs?

The question I remembered from this article was ‘What music would you like to listen to when you are dying?’ That is a tough choice.

If your last thought on earth is to the soundtrack of an Ed Sheeran tune or a Booker T. and the MG’s groove is up to you. You might not want to listen to any harp music if you feel you are good enough to get through the pearly gates because after they give you your wings you will have nothing but harp music through eternity, but if you think your elevator is pointed down you will be hearing some of the hottest music ever.

Like trying to pick our your favorite movie or book or child, what is your favorite song? If it is a dance number it might not be appropriate for your last breathe (or maybe it would be?). If you move on before the end of the bridge will it be an earworm stuck through eternity? If the song is a favorite because it reminds you of another, remember this is ‘your last song’. There is no encore.

Once you feel secure with all your paperwork and discussions with relatives and friends about your final solution, you might want to practice it before it is too late. Strap yourself down in a bed and put on a gag and blindfold, then cover your body with tubes and blinking lights and beeping sounds. Next bring in your loved ones and listen to what they’ve got to say about the soon to be departed. That must be Aunt Elsie’s perfume. Is that Uncle Tom who smells like nicotine and stale beer? Did someone turn up the heat? Oops! I think I just spoiled myself but it is OK because there are those who will clean up after I’m gone, just like at Normandy.

It is one of those crossroads you don’t have to decide which way to go.

Implicit Bias Training

“More than 8,000 Starbucks® company-owned stores and offices across the United States will close in the afternoon on May 29 for a conversation and learning session on race, bias and the building of a diverse welcoming company. On Wednesday, May 23, the company shared a preview of the May 29 curriculum, which serves as a step in a long-term journey to make Starbucks even more welcoming and safe for all. 

As Starbucks executive vice president, U.S. Retail, Rossann Williams shared in a note to all U.S. partners yesterday: 

“Our hope is that these learning sessions and discussions will make a difference within and beyond our stores. After May 29, we will make the curriculum available to the public and share it with the regions as well as our licensed and business partners. Starbucks is a company built on nurturing the human spirit, and it’s on us to harness our scale and expertise to do right by the communities we serve. May 29 isn’t a solution; it’s a first step. By educating ourselves on understanding bias and how it affects our lives and the lives of the people we encounter and serve, we renew our commitment to making the third place welcoming and safe for everyone.”

Curriculum advisers Bryan Stevenson, founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative; Sherrilyn Ifill, president and director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund; and Heather McGhee, president of Demos, are among many, including researchers, social scientists, and Starbucks own partners, who have provided their advice, counsel, connections to other experts and recommendations to the company for the May 29 training. The day’s curriculum will set the foundation for a longer-term Starbucks anti-bias, diversity, equity and inclusion effort.

Recognizing that there are many ways to deliver racial bias training, Starbucks worked with advisers and experts to come up with a collaborative and engaging experience for store partners to learn together in a way that is right for the values and scale of the company. From the design of the curriculum, to new technology being deployed to stores, the company is investing in each store so that the experience for all partners is meaningful and significant on May 29 and beyond. Each store will receive a tool kit, which will allow for partners to learn together in small self-guided groups. This first training will focus on understanding racial bias and the history of public accommodations in the United States, with future trainings addressing all aspects of bias and experiences.

Starbucks will share training content and curriculum with other companies, organizations and individuals interested in training their audiences. The company will also share a new original film by award-winning filmmaker Stanley Nelson, who has more than 20 years’ experience as a producer, director, and writer of documentary films and videos examining African American history and experiences. 

From there, employees will discuss how they define biases, how biases exist within each person and how they have been personally affected by bias. The conversations will be accompanied by video interviews with implicit bias experts and Starbucks board members. Employees will also go through the U.S. legacy of racial discrimination in public spaces and efforts to address it, beginning with the civil rights movement.

While Starbucks is closing all 8,000+ company operated Starbucks® stores on May 29, most of its 7,000 licensed stores, like those operated by major grocery stores, hotels, universities or airports, are expected to remain open. Starbucks is sharing its training content with its licensed business partners, so they may have the option to make it available to their employees at a later date.” Washington Post

Unconscious (or implicit) biases are learned stereotypes that are automatic, unintentional, deeply engrained, universal, and able to influence behavior. Unconscious bias training programs are designed to expose people to their unconscious biases, provide tools to adjust automatic patterns of thinking, and ultimately eliminate discriminatory behaviors.

A critical component of unconscious bias training is creating awareness for implicit bias. Since 1998, the online Implicit-Association Test (IAT) has provided a platform for the general public to assess their unconscious biases. Although the IAT measure has come under scrutiny, it has sparked conversation about unconscious bias in both popular media and the scientific community. In addition to the public’s increased awareness of the influence of implicit biases, the reality of racial and gender inequalities in our society has led to the creation of many unconscious bias training programs. Facebook designed a webpage to make unconscious bias training videos widely available, Google has put about 60,000 employees through a 90-minute unconscious bias training program, and the United States Department of Justice has trained 28,000 employees on techniques to combat implicit bias.

Bias is prejudice in favor of or against one thing, person, or group compared with another, usually in a way considered to be unfair.

Biases can be learned implicitly within cultural contexts. People may develop biases toward or against an individual, an ethnic group, a sexual or gender identity, a nation, a religion, a social class, a political party, theoretical paradigms and ideologies within academic domains, or a species. Biased means one-sided, lacking a neutral viewpoint, or not having an open mind. Bias can come in many forms and is related to prejudice and intuition.

In science and engineering, a bias is a systematic error. Statistical bias results from an unfair sampling of a population, or from an estimation process that does not give accurate results on average.

Prejudice is an affective feeling towards a person or group member based solely on that person’s group membership. The word is often used to refer to preconceived, usually unfavorable, feelings towards people or a person because of their sex, gender, beliefs, values, social class, age, disability, religion, sexuality, race/ethnicity, language, nationality, beauty, occupation, education, criminality, sport team affiliation or other personal characteristics.

Prejudice can also refer to unfounded or pigeonholed beliefs and it may include “any unreasonable attitude that is unusually resistant to rational influence”.

Gordon Willard Allport was an American psychologist. Allport was one of the first psychologists to focus on the study of the personality, and is often referred to as one of the founding figures of personality psychology. He contributed to the formation of values scales and rejected both a psychoanalytic approach to personality, which he thought often was too deeply interpretive, and a behavioral approach, which he thought did not provide deep enough interpretations from their data. He emphasized the uniqueness of each individual, and the importance of the present context, as opposed to past history, for understanding the personality. He defined prejudice as a “feeling, favorable or unfavorable, toward a person or thing, prior to, or not based on, actual experience”. For the evolutionary psychology perspective, see Prejudice from an evolutionary perspective. 

Lene Auestad is an author and a philosopher from the University of Oslo. She has written on the themes of prejudice, social exclusion and minority rights, and has contributed to public debates on hate speech. Her book Respect, Plurality, and Prejudice combined critical theory with psychoanalysis and psychosocial studies, examining the underlying unconscious forces and structures that make up the phenomena of xenophobia, Antisemitism, Islamophobia, homophobia and sexism. It provides an overview of how social prejudices, and the discrimination and violence that often tends to accompany the latter, come into being. Moreover, It argues that in order to fully understand how a complex phenomenon such as prejudice works, we need to alter our traditional Western philosophical understanding of the subject as a supposedly fully rational, autonomous and individual agent. Auestad argues that we need a more situated and relational understanding of subjectivity and the subject, as prejudice and acts of discrimination always take place in a contextualized setting between subjects whose thoughts and actions influence each other.

Auestad suggested that psychoanalysis can be used to think about the invisible and subtle processes of power over symbolic representation, for example, in the context of stereotyping and dehumanization, and posed the question of what forces govern the states of affairs that determine who is an ‘I’ and who is an ‘it’ in the public sphere.

Auestad defines prejudice as characterized by ‘symbolic transfer’, transfer of a value-laden meaning content onto a socially formed category and then on to individuals who are taken to belong to that category, resistance to change, and overgeneralization.

I personally applaud Starbucks for the PR move and no dubitably costly afternoon session to try and change bias with a movie and a speech and some pamphlets and a sit around session of kumbaya and probably lots of coffee (do Starbuck’s baristas get free coffee? No wonder they are so jacked!).

If it works there are a bunch of others on the left and the right that need to sign up.

I’m afraid this is much deeper than a guidance session and then back to work. Here is an example:

 

Here is a junior high school math class from 1963. This was the class who was seeing Vietnam War, the Beatles invasion and a president shot. They had never seen a person of color except the janitor. Everyone in their house of worship or school or baseball team or beach looked just like them. This was also the Woodstock generation who witness a president resign, the women’s revolution, the gay revolution, the civil right enactment while the teachings of their parents and their clergy and their teachers and their peers made life so confusing they turned to drugs to find the answer. This was the generation that watched integration at school and diversity training at work handed down by laws with fines and punishment for not following the rules.

Still I appreciate the TedX effort to erase implicit bias without violence but through mild intimidation.

I’ll have a Mocha coffee Frappuccino® is enveloped between layers of whipped cream that's infused with cold brew, white chocolate mocha and dark caramel. On each layer of whipped cream is a dollop of rich dark mocha sauce. These layers ensure each sip is as good as the last; all the way to the end and where is the bathroom.

Peek-A-Boo!

We’re reaching out to let you know about upcoming changes to the Online Privacy Policy. These changes will make it easier to understand how we collect and use data to create great online experiences for you.

Our new updated Online Privacy policy, effective June 30, 2018, includes:

• More details about the information we collect from you, how we collect the information, how we make use of the information, and how we may share the information.

• A link to the new Privacy Notice for EU Residents, which governs the handling of information about EU residents under the new European Union General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) (effective May 25, 2018).

• Our new Statement Regarding Cookies and Other Tracking Technologies providing more details about the cookie and tracking technologies we use and how they work (effective May 25, 2018).

Thank you for being part of our Internet community.

Sincerely,

Your friends 

First of all, I must tell all you subscribers, regular readers and fans that I’ve already sold all your personal information so if you ever wonder why you are getting ads for outrageous deals on impossible items of immense worth, that was me.

Secondly, Happy GDPR Day!

I, for one, am so glad that all my privacy is protected now.

The European Union has a new law on the books for protecting data privacy. It’s the General Data Protection Regulation more commonly called the GDPR. This Friday, it goes into effect in the EU’s 28 member states.

It’s not just the household names of the Internet like Facebook that will have to comply. Health care providers, insurers, banks and any other company dealing in sensitive personal data will also be on the hook.

The regulation expands the scope of what companies must consider personal data, and it requires them to closely track the data they’ve stored on EU residents. If someone in the EU wants a company to delete his or her data, send copies of the data, or correct an error in the data, companies have to comply.

The law goes even further than that. EU residents can now object to specific ways companies are using their data, saying that they don’t mind if a company keeps the data as long as it stops using the info for a particular purpose.

What’s more, the law requires companies to notify users within 72 hours of a data breach -- something very few companies currently do.  

Information privacy, or data privacy (or data protection), is the relationship between the collection and dissemination of data, technology, the public expectation of privacy, and the legal and political issues surrounding them.

Privacy concerns exist wherever personally identifiable information or other sensitive information is collected, stored, used, and finally destroyed or deleted – in digital form or otherwise.

Improper or non-existent disclosure control can be the root cause for privacy issues.

Data privacy issues may arise in response to information from a wide range of sources, such as:

• ·      Healthcare records
• ·      Criminal justice investigations and proceedings
• ·      Financial institutions and transactions
• ·      Biological traits, such as genetic material
• ·      Residence and geographic records
• ·      Privacy breach
• ·      Location-based service and geolocation
• ·      Web surfing behavior or user preferences using persistent cookies
• ·      Academic research

The challenge of data privacy is to utilize data while protecting an individual’s privacy preferences and their personally identifiable information. The fields of computer security, data security, and information security design and utilize software, hardware, and human resources to address this issue. Since the laws and regulations related to Privacy and Data Protection are constantly changing, it is important to keep abreast of any changes in the law and to continually reassess compliance with data privacy and security regulations. Within academia, Institutional Review Boards function to assure that adequate measures are taken to insure both the privacy and confidentiality of human subjects in research.

How will the EU enforce the GDPR?

Each member state of the EU will have its own enforcement mechanism, with one GDPR supervisor per country.

Residents can make complaints to the governing body in their respective country. Companies found in violation of the law will face fines that could be very steep. The maximum fine for a GDPR violation is 20 million Euros or 4 percent of a company’s annual global revenue from the year before, whichever is higher.

When does the GDPR take effect?

Friday. The regulation was ratified in 2016 and organizations were given a two-year “implementation period” to prepare. This grace period ends on May 25, 2018, when enforcement begins in earnest.

Does this law apply only to companies based in the European Union?

No -- and this is why it’s major international news. The GDPR applies to any organization that collects, processes, manages or stores the data of European citizens. This includes most major online services and businesses that collect, process, manage or store data. Because of this, the GDPR essentially sets a new global standard for data protection.

What kind of data does the GDPR protect?

The regulation applies to a broad array of personal data, including a person’s name and government ID numbers. It also protects information that can show a person’s activity both online and in the real world. That includes location information, as well as IP addresses, cookies and other data that lets companies track users as they browse the Internet.

How will this affect Facebook and other social-media companies?

Many large online services and social-media companies are updating their privacy policies and terms of service to prepare for the new legislation. Facebook’s response is sure to be closely scrutinized by European regulators, given the Cambridge Analytica scandal as well as past concerns about the company's data collection.

These include the kerfuffle in 2007 over the company’s controversial Beacon advertising program that broadcast user activity on partner sites. And don’t forget user uproar when Facebook and its subsidiary Instagram claimed to own user profile data and photos. The GDPR makes it much clearer that these kinds of activities aren't OK.

How will this affect me, a non-EU resident?

Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter, Apple and others have all offered users beyond the European Union some additional rights over their data.

But those rights don't have the force of law behind them, which means you can’t file a complaint against Microsoft for violating the GDPR if you aren’t a EU resident. While you enjoy these rights only as long as a company says you do, it does show that the European regulations are reshaping the way major companies approach user data.

The other way this affects you is with the barrage of privacy policy updates you’ve likely received over the past few months. Many companies crafted new privacy policies in advance of the GDPR going into effect, and then they told you about it all at the same time. 

How does the regulation affect hacks and breaches?

The GDPR requires companies that have lost control over customer data, or that’ve been hacked, to notify users within 72 hours. That’s one of the rules that carries the maximum penalty. For instance, if Facebook was found to have failed to comply, it could be liable for a $1.6 billion penalty (based on its 2016 annual revenue of $40 billion).

Are there special protections for minors?

The GDPR requires businesses and organizations to obtain parental consent to process the personal data of children under the age of 16. 

Does the US have any legal equivalent to the GDPR?

No. Most states have their own laws governing data breaches and notification requirements, and most apply to only a limited type of data: Social Security numbers and health or financial information.

The SEC recently issued guidance on how public companies should disclose breaches and risks.

Californians could be voting on a data privacy law this year, the California Consumer Personal Information Disclosure and Sale Initiative. That would let residents request copies of their data from companies, find out which third parties companies have sold their data to, and ask companies not to sell or share their personal data.

Data Privacy Day began in the United States and Canada in January 2008 as an extension of the Data Protection Day celebration in Europe.

Data Protection Day commemorates the Jan. 28, 1981, signing of Convention 108, the first legally binding international treaty dealing with privacy and data protection. Data Privacy Day is observed annually on Jan. 28.

The National Cyber Security Alliance (NCSA) officially leads the Data Privacy Day campaign and is advised by a distinguished advisory committee of privacy professionals to help the campaign align with the most current privacy issues in a “thoughtful and meaningful way”.

Data Privacy Day is the signature event in a greater privacy awareness and education effort. Year-round, NCSA educates consumers on how they can own their online presence and shows organizations how privacy is good for business. NCSA’s privacy awareness campaign is an integral component of STOP. THINK. CONNECT. ™ - the global online safety, security and privacy campaign.

The Data Protection Directive (officially Directive 95/46/EC on the protection of individuals with regard to the processing of personal data (PII (US)) and on the free movement of such data) was a European Union directive adopted in 1995 which regulates the processing of personal data within the European Union. It is an important component of EU privacy and human rights law.

The General Data Protection Regulation, adopted in April 2016, has superseded the Data Protection Directive and became enforceable starting on 25 May 2018.

Now don’t you feel better knowing all that? Sure we had a bunch of fun posting all this stuff about ourselves and our kids and where we lived and what we ate and who were our friends and what our political and religious feelings were, so hey, no take backs. And though that photo of you might have been 20 years ago and you might have fudged a bit on your weight, it doesn’t matter. The bad guys will hack into your computer and you will fall for their ‘too good to be true’ deals.

 

On a similar front, yesterday I walked to the mailbox and retrieved my usual array of ‘Burger coupons’ and ‘Pizza delivery specials’ and ‘we have a pair of illegal aliens who will come to your house and clean out your nasty toilet while casing the place’ when I see this envelope from Wells Fargo. You know that bank with the western stagecoach (very American) and horses (like Budweiser) and special accounts you never ordered? Since I don’t have a Wells Fargo account I figured it was just one of those ‘how would you like to change your bank’ deals. After throwing away all the other junk mail, I opened the non-descript envelope with the Wells Fargo logo in the upper left corner. I noticed that my name was not on the address so I figured it was a scam…. And I was right. It seems, according to the letter, that almost $10k was deposited in ‘my account’ but not enough cash was included so the bank had to cover $900 to balance the deposit. Wow! These guys are swell. An 800 number was printed to call for more information. Okey Dokey.  Think about this. Someone magnanimous person(s) put $9+ grand in my invisible account with a bank I don’t use and all I have to do is call this number to find out how I can withdraw it and have a big party. There was no signature of a bank official and no address or usual corporate stuff at the bottom of the page. There was no reference to an account number. The page looked like it could have been printed on an ink jet printer but properly folded.

Beware Boys & Girls!

Inappropriate Behavior

The definition of inappropriate is someone or something that is not within the bounds of what is considered appropriate or socially acceptable.

Behavior Suitable or proper in the circumstance is appropriate.

Behavior that is suitable, proper, fitting, apt, right, relevant, pertinent, apposite, convenient, opportune will be accepted.

Appropriate is the proper behavior as accepted by society.

Inappropriate will not be tolerated.

Look those are the rules. I didn’t make them, but they are the law of the land.

Unless you can get away with it?

What Do You Care

How do you care for yourself? Get plenty of sleep, exercise regularly, eat your veggies and drink responsibility? What do you feel like when you wake up?

No matter all the poking and prodding and esteemed physicians and diagnostics, you know your body better than anyone else on this planet.

You can reference all the Internet options and various fixes and listen to the TV prognosticators with some new pill or potion that will cure everything from diarrhea to a lacking love life.

You can spend hours and $ waiting for 15-minutes with a person in a white lab coat with frames on the wall claiming knowledge to be told how you feel.

You know when it is cloudy and rainy and cold you don’t feel good. You know when you are sitting in the sand listening to the ocean under a bright sun you feel great.

You also know after you ate that delivered pizza washed down by a six-pack while watching some late night movie your pants don’t fit in the morning.

You can worry about all the aches and pains as you grow older or you can accept it as your body telling you to slow down.

Now those fine folks that will cart you off the street and patch you up when you are bloody and broken are well worth the price because who else is going to do it?  If you take all the pills and illogically it makes you feel better, it pays for itself. If Aunt Sallie’s chicken soup makes you feel better when you are laid up, then it is worth the cure.

All I’m saying is if you worry about that bum knee or become obsessed by that bump on your neck or become compulsive about following your medical regiment, you maybe missing the point.

You go around once on this carousal. When a child is playing and falls down, they don’t want to stop playing. Get up, shake it off, put on a band-aid (if necessary) or rub some dirt in it and go on with the game of life.

Take care.

Name Dropping

We describe ourselves by others. Associates, schools, companies, brands, etc. all fill our description of ‘who we are’. The number of ‘names dropped’ or the importance other place on them, can fulfill your resume and maybe get you into a late nightclub.

Today selfies verify the association with someone famous or being at a show or restaurant, but Photoshop is easy to use. Without a witness or an accomplice, the verbal history is only a one-off reference to a possibility.

Still the prestige placed when a name is dropped gets attention and in some cases respect. In other cases, skeptics will disbelieve without proof.

Facts in history get fuzzy and recollection can become confused, so be sure to take a picture, maybe a video with a sound recording to post on YouTube to show the world. It might make you famous?

What If?

You knew what your ‘friends’ really felt about you before you kick the bucket. Think about it folks, you could read all those inner most emotions from those nearest to you before eternity of silence.

You know all those ‘Kickstarters’ and ‘Fundraisers’ pages on your favorite social media pages?

Side note: If these really are a good way to make money, we should ALL have a page begging for cash (no personal checks).

Well, they also have ‘Condolences’ or ‘Memorial’ pages where moaners can post their regards to the dearly departed. They can even add flowers or teary face emoji. Some can write their buddy who checked out early with memories of joy and some can just remember the owed money that will never be repaid.

So why not turn off your phone, text, tweets then post a ‘Reminiscence’ page and see what happens? Present it like a game of “# What do you remember about our dearly departed who has crossed over to the other side?” If you do it right, ask for some money too to cover the expenses.

You might have to prepare for it by sending messages to your friends about how sick you have been or you are having some reaction to the drugs or you are so depressed you bought a gun. You could even publish a ‘death notice’ but you’ll have to be offline for a month or two to make it work, maybe longer.

You can create a ‘false’ identity and profile and start making new friends and but be sure not to use old contacts. That will void the game.

“What if no one places a comment?” you ask. Then possibly you are not worth it and should consider that gun.

“What if the messages are overwhelming?” you ask. You may learn some things about you only commented on in bedroom pillow talk or you may want to move and join the witness protection program.

Just think of the joy you will bring when you suddenly appear like some zombie back from the dead.

I was the bass player

I didn’t study to be a bass player. I didn’t play the stand up bass or ever use a bow. 

I started my string plunking on a uke and then a banjo and then a tenor guitar, all with 4-strings. 

When ‘the band’ was formed, I had a 6-string electric guitar but was still learning chords. Since the other two guitar players could play better, I was assigned to play the ‘bass’ parts. 

What we were interesting in covering were the early English Invasion bands, which had easy ‘bass’ parts. A plastic pick and using the lowest four strings I learned to plunk along to the chords. No runs or fancy parts but keeping the beat with the bass drum.

I had heard country music bass patterns of E-A-E-A plunk back and forth from a stand up bass. I had heard the background bass players for the folk music but it was basically the same thing. The simple rock and roll songs we covered were pretty much the same so I just left the top two strings on the guitar alone. 

Then someone got me an electric bass guitar. 

It was bigger and heavier and had a neck that went off forever. The strings were huge and thick so it was a learning curve. I was still using a pick but got a heavy duty to plunk the wires. There was no thought of using fingers or slaps or runs. 

Then the band got horns. With the horns came rhythm and blues. With the r&b came dance tunes and suddenly I was listening to James Jamerson, Duck Dunn, Bootsy Collins, Carol Kaye and even John Entwistle got my attention.

At the same time, the band got a new drummer. 

Instead of playing little hoppy poppy songs of three chords and a bridge, this music had a groove and the whole band had to work together to make it work. 

Learned lots of dance moves at the same time. 

Still the bass player is the guy in the back next to the riser for the drummer. The bass player lives in the shadows and unless you are Paul McCartney or Geddy Lee or Sting, you will be forgotten.

I finally got my chops down on the 6-string guitar but kept the bass close. 

Any music I listen to today, I fill in the bass riffs in my head. If the song ain’t got no bottom, I pass it by.