It's Christmas

Merry Christmas to the entire Logic Connection audience!

I'm still waiting to see what all Santa left me this morning so I decided to be productive and pen a quick post before rushing down the stairs and diving into my pile of presents! (Ok, well I got too excited and had to rush down to open my presents before completing this post so it's now the day after Christmas but whatever)

I don't have much on the agenda for today's post, but there are three things I felt like discussing: personal information and retail transactions, ignorant people who refuse to acknowledge their ignorance, and the death of Christopher Hitchens.

- Seriously, is there a retail transaction these days that transpires without a sales associate requesting your name, address, phone number, email, date of birth, rank and file, social security number, zodiac sign, favorite color, and your mother's maiden name?? I've learned to simply state I do no wish to provide any personal information and the sales associate generally moves along without any remonstration. But, the other day, I made a small purchase at a used book store and it was the first time I was met with actual resistance to my refusal to provide any personal information to the point I thought the sales associate was going to decline to sell me her wares. She was simply dumbfounded as to why I wouldn't want to provide personal information that would then be used an untold number of times for advertising data resulting in an untold amount of email solicitation for products even Ron Popeil would be embarrassed to peddle. Oh I know, the book store probably has a strict privacy policy giving my personal information more protection than the Hope Diamond, except for those few exceptions where I give them permission to share my information with third parties for a small fee.

I was finally allowed to leave the store with my books after the sales associate was instructed by another employee to complete the sale without collecting my personal information. I think in the future I am going to begin requesting a copy of the store's privacy policy when I am asked for personal information. If an actual policy is presented, I think I'll take some time to read it over, all while annoying the other customers, and then bolt from the store leaving nothing but confusion in my wake.

But am I alone on this one? Am I the only one who refuses to submit when confronted with a demand to abandon my privacy? Or, am I just being over dramatic because it's Christmas morning and I still haven't seen what Santa left me yet?

- Also, a quick note on the ignorant insisting on maintaining their ignorance. I'm primarily referring here to the phenomenon of chain emails and email forwards, usually regarding something of a political nature, that purport to offer a fact or opinion (usually one the recipient agrees with) without any type of source or reference information whatsoever. To wit: a supposed screed written by historian David Kaiser that has been making the email rounds for over two years now. You can read Kaiser's response to this completely fraudulent email message here. I received this absolutely bogus email again recently with the subject being something along the lines of "What if he is right??" Well, instead of blindly accepting the truth of a message contained in a random forward simply because you are sympathetic to the idea that Obama is the modern day Hitler, how about taking two seconds to do some internet research so you can discover that David Kaiser did not write the message and that confirmation bias is a bitch.

And why does it seem that it's primarily those of the older generation that are more susceptible to such trickery? Whether it's emails comparing the Obama regime to the Third Reich, or emails about Mr. Rogers wearing long sleeves because of his battle tattoos from the Marines, maybe it's just because people my age and younger know that the number one rule of the internets is NEVER BELIEVE ANYTHING ON THE INTERNET... unless you've verified it on snopes.com of course. The internet seems to have bred a certain level of skepticism into most people, but that skepticism doesn't always seem to extend to chain emails containing political information. I don't think I have ever intentionally forwarded a random chain email to everyone in my address book and it's probably safe to say neither has anyone else my age, it's just not the cool thing to do. But if I ever do you can rest assured it will be after a thorough fact-check.

- Christopher Hitchens has passed. You can read remembrances galore here and here and pretty much everywhere else online. My introduction to Mr. Hitchens came during a brief stop on HBO while I was flipping through the channels and I just happened to tune in during this now famous exchange. Needless to say I was intrigued. I was fortunate enough to meet Hitchens after a debate at the SES Apologetics conference held in 2009 in Charlotte. I got his autograph, learned his middle name is Eric (the name we share in common with both his father and George Orwell), and also got the chance to ask him why Johnnie Walker Black label and not the Blue label. Maybe I'm just a sucker for the sharpest of wits being voiced with a british accent, but events will never quite be the same without knowing what Hitch thinks.