Friday, November 30, 2007

A Thursday In Late November

What a strange world I live in! This Thursday I went over to Berkeley. Bruce had asked me to reformat a list of Eagle Court speakers, so I had my laptop with me. I set to, but soon discovered to my dismay that the list did not start at 1990, as I had supposed, but in 1984! I noticed a strong pattern of two relatives presenting the Oath and Charge - in one case, there were three brothers sharing one of the presentations! I did some Christmas shopping with Amy - super-bargain-hunting, of course - and then we took a pleasant walk across the Berkeley campus.

I attended a panel at the Commonwealth Club on the issue of privacy in modern society, especially online, a topic on which Amy had expressed no interest. But then, my parents have quite different interests. The panel included representatives of civil liberties, law enforcement, Google, and Facebook. The anecdotes and concerns ran the gamut, from the stupidity of the self-incriminating to the surprisingly nuanced definition of privacy among social network users.

Then Amy returned. We the Geary, which is indeed "dirty-eight" - I was glad that Amy did have to endure the sight of some of the undesirable elements. Such disdain and distrust may arise not so much from elitism as from the male's urge to protect his woman (a natural feeling, even if it appears sexist in this age). We went to a Chinese bible study on Euclid. The park there looks so decievingly flat on Google Maps! The Bible study seemed fairly mellow, but we were at a disadvantage because they were using a book and were halfway through it. I was the only "English" there.

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