beta theta data

Online privacy has been an ongoing issue that is growing more every day with the expansion of the internet. Thanks to social media it seems the line of privacy is getting more and more blurred.  There is also the increasing use of online facebook quizzes. In the article "Facebook quizzes: What really happens to your data" there is an interview and a few question that talks about how your data is used. One of these interviewees states that the quiz only uses your data for the quiz. This may be true for some, but is it true for all. It seems people have become too free with the information about themselves. The data that sites like these may or may not be collecting is very privet. Regardless of what the information is being used for it is still an issue of privacy. Under our "about" page we post our age, family, gender, relationship status, family, and all sorts of data. Would do freely hand this to some stranger in the street? Much more, why would you freely give all this data about oneself to a faceless entity?

Buying war

9/11 changed a lot in our world today. So much resulted from it that we, America, even went to war. However, there are many questions about the war. Was it necessary and how did it gain support. Who bought the war? I theorize that we all bought it. The government was ready to go to war after the attacks and they needed to sell it. Everyone from government officials, civilian, and the media had to buy into it.
Media cover leading up to and during the war was very strange. It was handle, very much in the same way as the war was sold. If you for the war you were for America. If you were against the war you are now one of them. One of the people wanting America to fall. This made coverage of the 9/11 and the war very complicated. Criticizing the events was viewed as anti-American. There was immense pressure in dealing with the politics of it all. Even making it difficult to publicise that would undermine the events.  
For the most part, the left and the right wings of politics are on completely different sides.  That changes shortly after the 9/11 attacks. The only side anyone could be on was America's side. So eventually there would be nothing more to argue about. With the fear of being attacked by criticizing any of the events both sides soon formed very similar options.

Google For President

In the article “Research in India suggests Google search results can influence an election - The Washington Post” I read about how Google is affecting the elections. There is a strong case made that Google does affect elections but I have my doubts on strongly it does. I would like to be able to to review the work. Such as the statistic that were taken. How many test were done before he got these results? What was the Type I and Type II error of the test? What was the critical value he was measuring against to prove his results were significant enough to matter to prove his hypothesis. Even besides the test we, as in the students, have learned about Google and algorithm gatekeepers that only show information an individual would want to see. As the article goes on other information and stats are provided for us to see. What we are missing is information on outside influences. These other outside factors may be contributing just as much as Google is to the election. Google may influence elections but I feel more research needs to be done to say it influences and significantly as stated in the article.

Cameras and Cameras. Police and Police. Cameras and Police.

I have very strong feeling about the new body cameras that police have started to where. It has has come up more and more over time. Before I even talk about the subject I would like to talk about my stance since it will round back to the topic at hand. These cameras allow us to see more than ever before. Yet with so many more being placed everywhere, it has become an issue. It's more than just an issue of security, now our privacy is at risk. As a society we seek security but we seem to be giving up our privacy as well. Though they may be useful at times I know these cameras are becoming too abundant. Cameras can only see and hear. They cannot understand what is happening and  cannot react. So they are not the be all end all of reliability.

The other articles touch on the same issue. Perspective, that is the key issue here. Like with memory and sides of battle, change of perspective changes everything. These cameras only see what are before them. The idea that this will fix everything is childish. What good are a man's eyes if he is blind to the world around him? By making police wear body cameras we are creating more questionable situations then we are preventing. We, as a society, are coming to a point where there will be so much surveillance and security that we will cross a line and have more problems then we began with.  

Why and How?

"The Secret To Winning An Argument Is Ridiculously Simple" by Drake Baer is very interesting. It is a tactic I like to use when in discussion with another. People tend to have this idea that when something sounds right it is, because it makes sense to them in the short term. Yet when asked simple how and why will it work they have to think more critically. By questioning their statement and asking them to explain it will force them to think far more critically than they were. Now they have to lay out everything down to the contradictions and flaws. This is the very reason for arguments, so we can question one another and find issues so we can fix them. 

People need to be questioned, simply because most people can’t see past their own ego. Everyone thinks they are right without even thinking through ideas. If it is even for a good cause a person or group must be questioned. We need to be able to walk through our ideas because if we cannot explain them, how can we expect them to work. I disagree, however, with the how is more important the the why. They are both key components to an argument. If I can’t say why something works, just as how something works, then no real progress is being made.