THE AIRLINER MYSTERY and A THUNK ON THE HEAD

THE WORLD'S ATTENTION

    It's the kind of mystery most of us connect with. We could imagine ourselves or a loved one being on board. We are surprised to learn despite, our presumptions, it is easy to lose an airplane. Those transponders, radar blips, engine tracking computers, air control towers, radio frequencies and etc. are more tenuous than we might like to think about.

    Coffee chatter in Cambria is no more informed than anywhere else, but we are populated by pilots-civilian and military, airline employees, engineers, frequent travelers with well used passports and some well informed folk. So the local buzz is hot.

    "It was an inside job." 

    "Someone knew how to cut all of the plane's signals." 

    "It landed somewhere before the search began." 

    "Some one hacked into the guidance systems."

    "It went down in deep water."

    "Maybe it was like a Bermuda Triangle thing."

     And on and on and on.  

     It's odd how some things grab the world's attention.  Ukraine, Russia, Crimea, violent weather, Venezuela, stock prices and more are there to occupy our minds, but the missing plane trumps them all.

     An unresolved mystery can not be ignored, even if we supply, mostly, conjecture, guessing and whole cloth fabrication. It keeps the talkers talking and the listeners wondering.

THE EUCALYPTUS ATTACK OF SAN SIMEON

     Frequent readers know about our Friday lunch flash mob that assembles each week below the famed Hearst Castle. It's like a continuing lunch hour confab.

    Notice those Eucalyptus trees in the background?

    Well, one of them decided to offer up a branch to the assembled luncheon mob. 

   Trouble! It came down directly on Lana's head and Diane's face and Ruth's arm.

  Lana has a knot on her head and a headache.  Diane may end up with a shiner. She thinks the cut on her lip could limit her kissing time.

   And then at a neighboring table, temporarily unoccupied, food left in the basket, a thief swoops in and makes off with a sandwich while an accomplice ends up empty handed, or beaked, as it were.

    Some of life's turns are easier to take than others. And in some, you find gold.

   See you down the trail.

  

HOW ARE YOU BEING MONITORED?

WHO KNOWS YOU ARE READING THIS?

    I was pleased to see a growing reaction to the reports about Google's accountability.  The info giant has reported

how government's around the world lean on them for information about users and push them for censorship.

   Since beginning this blog I have written about the

"INFORMATION WARS."  This reprises one of the more chilling accounts.

WHO CONTROLS YOUR SEARCH?

Maybe it is a leap, but perhaps it is closer to a chilling reality than we would
like to admit.  I acknowledge there is a bit of a stretch here, but it is one we should well consider.
In George Orwell's 1984, aside the from the image of Big Brother watching,
there was indeed the presence of the thought police.


"Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past."

"Thoughtcrime does not entail death, thoughtcrime IS death"

George Orwell
1984

Now to the relevance of this to you and your life here in cyberspace.

Did you know someone is already "interpreting" your thoughts.

Take a few minutes to watch this and consider the consequence.

The tailoring of a search, to your specific parameters, may seem a benefit.  But think of the underpinning dynamic.  Your information is analyzed and choices are made, ostensibly to assist you, but they are choices that eliminate, prioritize and assume certain values about you, without the benefit of your input.
That appears to be the beginning of a slippery slope.
THE HAUNTING IMAGE
In case you've forgotten, here is a trailer of the movie
that followed Orwell's visionary novel.

Some of you may recall the "free speech movement" and the more recent court cases orbiting around the First Amendment. We have a history of a vigorous defense of liberty and freedom of thought and speech, absolutely.  
The age of convenient communication and information brings a world to your keyboard, smart phone or pad.  But the glow that comes in the marvelous flow of information and the wondrous world of apps, could occlude a more sinister presence.
Data mining, surveillance of your private chats, and control of the information we voraciously consume could begin to turn against us.  We simply need to be mindful, aware, vigilant, and never cede an inch of freedom nor control of what we put into our minds. And we must be diligent about the sources of our information.


"He wondered, as he had many times wondered before, whether he himself was a lunatic. Perhaps a lunatic was simply a minority of one"


"Nothing was your own except the few cubic centimetres inside your skull."
George Orwell 
1984


Give it some thought.
See you down the trail.