Why second? Because that’s what actually happened, and frankly, first will just be a bit too cliché.

As it turns out, Manti Te’o’s girlfriend was not real; in fact, the “girlfriend” might had been a boy. Many people are now “vaguely enraged” (phrase borrowed from Kolsterman in his letters to Gladwell) because they ended up on the receiving end of the “just kidding” story of the year.

As of right now, nobody knows whether Te’o was involved in this not-so-malicious hoax. In fact, I made a meme for the occasion!

(I actually think it is also incredibly stupid for trying to dupe everyone, but the meme works out better this way)

So why do we care so much about this?

Gladwell, in his letters back to Kolsterman, described this sentiment very adequately:

Earlier this fall, I read many stories about how Kansas State quarterback Collin Klein didn’t even kiss his wife until they were both on the marriage altar. The public reaction was pretty much, “That’s strange, but I guess that’s nice.” It was just a little romantic detail that was widely believed, despite its superficial implausibility. Nobody thought that much about it (and — as far as I can tell — it’s completely true). But imagine if this had been proved to be a conscious fabrication. People would suddenly be outraged that Klein had lied about something they’d never previously cared about.

And I full-heartedly agree. I think there is even a bit more as to why many people are angry – because we really believed the story.

We believed the story because we love them. We love it when a basketball star overcomes sickness to hit the game winning shot, we love it when a squirrel rallies a team from behind to win the championship, we love it when an Asian basketball player defies underdog status and racial prejudice, and we love it when a football player leads his team to prominence after the tragic death of his girlfriend.

We also believe it because the media is powerful. It is our only way of finding out the “truth” short of going to South Bend ourselves and searching through Te’o’s internet history (oh wait, the media basically did that for us).

Because we believed in this story, we feel betrayed when we find out that it’s not true. This reminds me of a Barney quote from How I Met Your Mother: “People like being lied to. They just don’t like finding out they’ve been lied to.” How mad will we be if we find out that Michael Jordon wasn’t sick at all that game? Or that the squirrel was released on purpose to boost popularity? Or that Jeremy Lin is…um…not Asian?

It’s pretty crazy how much controversy a college football player can stir up nowadays, but really, why is this a big deal? Te’o is just a college student playing for his school. We shouldn’t even be paying that much attention to his personal life in the first place. Why are we giving SO much publicity to him? So what he was dumb and fell in love with a “girl” through texts and Twitter? Even if he did lie, is it worth broadcasting on national news over and over? Whatever Te’o did or did not do, it is better than Armstrong lying about doping, or Reggie Bush taking illegal benefits, or the Saints’ bounty program, or all the DUI and domestic violence stories we read on ESPN.

There aren’t any direct victims here, in fact, about $3,000 were raised for leukemia research in the girlfriend’s name. While it is not ethical to lie (if Te’o did lie), it certainly isn’t ethical either to construct this righteous image of a college football star and tear it apart in front of a national audience. The one thing we can be sure of is that the media is the winner. If there is a story that the media loves more than “new found strength due to death of a close one,” it is the fall of a hero.

Why is it that young adults have to give up their privacy when they choose to play for a popular sport in college? Or that they are assumed to be either flawless or dirty liars? These would not be issues if we just treat the athletes as who they are: college students playing sports. The Te’o hoax is funny and bizarre, but it really doesn’t mean much. We are mad because we bought into the system and it failed us, and if we zoom out to the bigger picture, that is exactly why being sports fans can be so devastatingly heartbreaking, so shouldn’t we be used to it by now?

Some see a mobile MRI machine, some see a mobile Mind Reconnaissance and Interrogation machine. Courtesy Lee Hayward via Flickr.

From ripping a person open to using X-Rays and giant magnets, there are a number of ways to find out what is going on in somebody’s head. It’s recently been shown, however, that it is possible to get a glimpse of what is going on in their mind. Scientists at a number of institutions are showing that there are now a number of ways, using various imaging and recording methods along with a good amount of computing power, to peer inside a person’s mind and in some cases, literally see what people are seeing. Similar methods can be used to get a vague idea of what topics people are thinking about or to fly helicopters (albeit in a virtual environment). While these developments are not nearly advanced enough to find out exactly what a person is thinking, they show that what was once regarded as a safe haven is no longer completely impenetrable. So what rights do our own thoughts ultimately have? Will there be a day when simply thinking of something can be illegal? Will businesses use this technology to perhaps make subconscious marketing more powerful? But not all of these technologies are negative-there is the possibility that new medical applications arise from them, or that we finally find out whether O.J. Simpson and Casey Anthony are killers. Thus, perhaps a better question we should ask is how we as a society plan to regulate similar new technologies and protect people from their less-desirable uses. Or, we could just leave the field open and without regulation, like the Internet in many ways is. I may be comparing apples to oranges, but the Internet and the development of atomic energy are similar-one was barely regulated, while the other was heavily monitored. Both have had immense impacts on people around the world, in both positive and negative ways. The government is not afraid of meddling in mind control, as seen here. Perhaps we are better off without the government getting involved (I’m thinking that there may need to be a separation of mind and state…). We can’t have a governing body that can influence the body it derives power from, can we? Clearly, the question of government intervention is a serious one. No matter how this turns out, I’m going to start wearing a tinfoil hat.

Lena Reppart was one of the three percent of airline travelers pulled aside for a pat down through airport security to fly from Florida to her native Michigan June 18. As if the process of being groped by a stranger wasn’t awkward enough, the security agent encountered a dilemma–Reppart’s adult diaper was full, and they couldn’t let her through the checkpoint without knowing for certain what the liquid was.

To make her flight, Reppart removed her diaper in the bathroom and went through security again, this time without a hitch.

Even more so than 8oz of shampoo or a water bottle, the prospect of a terrorist sneaking a bomb onto a plane through a used diaper seems preposterous and comical, even. But this is what TSA representative Sari Koshetz had to say:

“TSA cannot exempt any group from screening because we know from intelligence that there are terrorists out there that would then exploit that vulnerability.”

2008 Jeff Koterba cartoon, via internationalairportsecurity.com

I can understand this logic. We can’t just pull aside people who vaguely resemble Osama Bin Laden for “random” screening – not only because that’s racist – but because who’s to say that a 95-year-old, white, American woman doesn’t have a reason to commit an act of terror? The safety of American citizens is obviously important, and if that means we have to check a diaper, then we have to check a diaper.

As much as I value safety, though, I also value privacy – though the Reppart’s screening was in a private room, she still had to discuss her adult diaper with complete strangers and proceed to travel without any underwear. In what other circumstance would that be acceptable?

However, if the TSA is going to continue to enforce this rule, I would challenge them to be consistent.

Just a few days ago, they announced that they would attempt to avoid pulling aside children for intrusive pat downs, after a video of an agent searching a 6-year-old girl went viral in April. (Note: it has since been removed.) Just as they cannot exempt elderly women from their policies, they shouldn’t eliminate children–particularly those who are still in diapers who could smuggle mysterious liquids through security.

Under this amended policy, children would only be searched if their parents raised a “red flag” – but what constitutes a “red flag”? Reppart’s “red flag” was her diaper; so logically, wouldn’t an adult traveling with a young child wearing a full diaper raise a “red flag,” as well?

I’m honestly not sure if I’m convinced whether or not in-flight terrorism is really thwarted because of TSA security measures. Is it worth it to get an extra dose of radiation every time I pass through an x-ray machine or to have a woman run her hands down my thighs? Maybe it is. However, I’m sure it’s not in any way helped by the fact that TSA does pick and choose who are subject to extra screening.

Maybe people get pulled aside because they are every-25th-passenger, because they have metal joint replacements that set off the metal detectors, because they have brown skin and beards or because they are wearing adult diapers. I would say that an overwhelming majority of these people aren’t terrorists, but what about the seemingly non-descript 24th passenger? Or the man with a full-diapered baby?

Unfortunately, it isn’t feasible to thoroughly examine everybody who passes through an airport, and it wouldn’t be safe to stop examining them altogether. These half-way practices do, at least, make people feel safe, which might be all we can ask for.

iPhone tracking map, credit: computerworld.com

I don’t have an iPhone or any other kind of smart phone, not for any real reason. I just never felt the need to get one; I already have a decent cell phone. Now, however, I think I’ve found a reason to avoid them.

Last week, two developers found that iPhones log their users’ locations to a file called “consolidated.db,” each detailed with longitude-latitude coordinates and a timestamp. According to Time magazine blogger Erica Ho, Apple has been collecting this data for over a year in order to better assess where its users need service. Although it seems to be a mild enough excuse, I can’t shake the thought that this is more than a little bit creepy.

The information is stored on your computer – and if you have nothing protecting it, anyone can open up the “consolidated.db” file and see everywhere you’ve been with your iPhone. Not that I personally have anything to hide, necessarily, but I wouldn’t want my boss or my siblings or anyone, really, knowing my every move.

This reminds me of something I found out a few years back…With some phone companies, parents can track their children’s location through GPS. Although I’m not a parent, I can understand being concerned about your child’s whereabouts. However, there was a time not so long ago when there were no GPS or cell phones, so what did parents do back then when they wanted to have tabs on their kids every moment of every day?

There is a market for that, though, and I’m not going to criticize those who created the system. But I will question the parents themselves. I understand wanting to know where your kids are if you haven’t seen them in more than 24 hours or if you have reason to believe they might be skipping class or something like that. However, I strongly feel like this kind of technology will do nothing but further push parents to be unnecessarily overprotective. I don’t think my mom knew that this kind of technology existed when I was in high school, otherwise she would have (unnecessarily) used it. Or maybe she did, and I just didn’t know. Regardless, I don’t think it’s appropriate that she’s technically able to monitor my location at all times despite the fact that she really has nothing to be concerned about.

Similarly, if I were to have an iPhone that I occasionally charged or synched on my work computer, is it okay for my boss to look at that information? You could argue that he or she has a right to know where I go during work hours, but the information stored also contains details about my life off the clock. Furthermore, it’s not really any of his or her business!

Don’t fear, though, because you can encrypt the information, somehow, which prevents people from creeping on the files stored on your computer. It doesn’t, however, stop Apple from tracking your location. Because Apple’s motives are benign and you can actually protect your privacy, if you’re computer savvy, that is, I guess there’s no real harm done. Until this past week, though, information about the iPhone tracker has been kept under the radar. I’m sure people would have been much more receptive if the company had been open about it in the beginning and taught people how to keep their locations a mystery to everyone – except Apple, that is.

While our generation can still reclaim some dignity by stowing embarrassing childhood photographs and home videos in cardboard boxes buried deep in the basement, babies today are not afforded this luxury.  According to a February 18^th New York Times article, 92% of children have “online presence” by the time they are two!

With the advent of Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, and ShutterFly, zealous parents and grandparents load anything and everything onto the internet.

Check out some of my personal favorites:

Baby Corey: Dancer Extraordinaire

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ikTxfIDYx6Q]

Kittens Girl: Shrieking Storyteller Savant

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FtX8nswnUKU]

David: Future Dentist?

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=txqiwrbYGrs]

We think that these kids are hysterical, but what will they think of themselves ten years from now?  The problem with posting something on the internet is that it leaves a permanent trace.  Baby Corey may not be so happy to find when he is no longer a baby that his dancing, diapered jig will follow him for the rest of his life.

The broader issue here is not the permanence of these images and videos, but the intentions behind them.  Back in the old-school days of the non-digital camera, my parents took pictures of me to preserve the memories of my childhood.  Back before YouTube, my parents video-taped my first steps, my birthday parties, my every inane move for personal record-keeping.  But now, everything has changed.

We have to ask ourselves, why did these parents make these home videos?  Was it to preserve memories?  What kind of parent brings a camera to the dentist? Was it to entertain others, to seek fame?  Perhaps. (See article on the “Balloon Boy” incident for parental fame-seeking to the extreme).

Technology has permanently altered our use of photographs and videos.  We used to take pictures and videos for ourselves.  They were intimate, they were for us.  Now, we do it for others.  To show how much fun we are having.  To get a laugh.  To go viral on YouTube.

Although not every parent is fame-seeking, the digital age has certainly brought about a conundrum.  Why are we hesitant to show baby pictures to strangers in person but eager to share them with millions of virtual ones online?

“Happy 1 year! I love you baby!”

“You’re so sexy!”

“I can’t wait to see my hubby tonight!”

(Courtesy of Lamebook.com)

And many, many more. I’ll let your imagination fill in the rest.

The acronym “PDA” has gotten quite a bit of mileage out of it-from the Personal Digital Assistant to the Photo Diode Array to the Posterior Descending Artery to the Progressive Democrats of America. But now, PDA has settled into a newer and (for the time being) more permanent home: Public Displays of Affection. In fact, there is even a new term for a particular niche of PDA: the Facebook PDA, or PDA that is public (on the internet, at least) on Facebook.

Come next Monday, the internet will be filled with phrases like this. Should messages that most people would consider to be private really be shared in a public online space? Of course, it is up to the individuals committing the act (assuming the actions are legal) whether that should be allowed. But the real question is far reaching: is it alright for something to then leave the “private” realm of Facebook to be placed on sites such as Lamebook?

Naturally, there are two common responses to this question. One could take the more conservative route, claiming that a statement of this nature shared on a private website, such as Facebook, should be visible to those with whom it is shared. One could alternatively take a more liberal route, saying that anything that is placed onto the internet in an accessible manner is part of a public online realm, and thus can be shared with other people. In some ways, either of these approaches are acceptable-but the fundamental ethical question still remains: should people be allowed to repost and comment objects that they find on the internet onto other sites?

After considering how intricately social networking sites intertwine with our personal lives, it can be assumed that people are often putting their thoughts, feelings, and inner beliefs on their Facebook pages. Perhaps we feel that because we would not want all of our own personal information available on the web to be shared, we should likewise not share that of others. Nobody, whether in person or on a semi-private online realm, wants the details of their personal lives shared, and thus, you really should not do that to others. But if we take a different perspective, one where doing the right thing is simply doing the thing that makes the most people happy, maybe it is all right to post Facebook comments on a blog. A post online can make many people very happy, but it certainly can’t make a single person terrible unhappy. Without context, what does “You’re so sexy!” mean anyways?

In any case, as your Facebook feed this Valentine’s Day is filled with millions of random Facebook PDA posts from so called “friends,” consider your actions as you either laugh inside at your desk or laugh with millions of others on a blog.