{"id":2879,"date":"2002-09-08T10:38:13","date_gmt":"2002-09-08T10:38:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/staging.armedliberal.com\/?p=277"},"modified":"2002-09-08T10:38:13","modified_gmt":"2002-09-08T10:38:13","slug":"real-life-continues-to-interfere-with-blogging","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/?p=2879","title":{"rendered":"REAL LIFE CONTINUES TO INTERFERE WITH BLOGGING"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Sorry, but real life continues to interfere with time in front of the computer; yesterday Tenacious G (my SO) managed her re-entry motorcycle ride into the Santa Monica mountains, where we met and breakfasted with friends. She hasn\u0092t ridden in the mountain roads since her two accidents last year, and to be blunt, I haven\u0092t exactly encouraged her.<br \/>\nShe did great, a good time was had by all, and I will slowly learn to give up trying to ride her motorcycle and mine at the same time. It\u0092s not easy to live in anxiety about someone you care for, but in order to care for them you have to respect their choices\u0085even the ones that make you anxious.<br \/>\nThis somehow plays into today\u0092s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.latimes.com\/news\/columnists\/la-me-lopez8sep08.column?coll=la%2Dnews%2Dcolumns\" target=\"browser\">Steve Lopez column<\/a> in the LA Times (signin \u0091laexaminer\u0092\/\u0092laexaminer\u0092), in which he tells the story of a young man who ultimately succeeded in committing suicide, despite the efforts of his mother to protect him. He ultimately shot himself with his handgun \u0096 which had been taken away by the LAPD when he had been picked up and taken in for evaluation, and then given back by the LAPD when he was not admitted.<br \/>\nWe have a terrible mental health system here in California, where care for ill people takes a back seat to \u0091respect\u0092 for their rights, and a desire not to spend any money on them. The results can be seen daily on Main and Los Angeles streets downtown, where the homeless congregate. And can be seen in this small tragedy.<br \/>\nAnd above all the policy issues, we want to make things better and to keep our children safe.<br \/>\nSo again, in today\u0092s Times, an <a href=\"http:\/\/www.latimes.com\/news\/local\/la-fi-campus8sep08.story\" target=\"browser\">article<\/a> about a high school here in Southern California which is being used as a testbed for surveillance technology, in part because <\/p>\n<blockquote><p><I>\u0094 Schools are among the first to embrace new technology, often because companies view campuses as perfect testing grounds before rolling products out to corporate America.<br \/>\nFor instance, one of the companies behind West Hills&#8217; system, PacketVideo Corp., predicts that demand for products like SkyWitness will grow, as people are tracked at factories, office parks, stadiums&#8211;even places such as the Third Street Promenade shopping district in Santa Monica.<br \/>\nCompanies like the fact that students enjoy fewer constitutional protections than adults and have lower expectations of privacy than their parents.\u0094<\/I><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The desire to keep our kids safe places them in Bentham\u0092s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dnai.com\/~mackey\/thesis\/panopticon.html\" target=browser>Panopticon<\/a>, the perfect prison where visibility would ensure behavior. This is ass-backwards; I\u0092ll try and get into why <a href=\"http:\/\/www.aclu.org\/issues\/privacy\/Barnes_Testimony.html\" target=\u0094browser\u0094>it doesn\u0092t work<\/a> later, but for now, simply want to say that, hard as it is to say and do, we cannot provide total safety to those we love. I don\u0092t know enough facts about the case Lopez talks about, but I do know the feeling I get when someone I love straddles her motorcycle and rides away. And despite those feelings, I know that I simply have to put my head down, ride my own motorcycle, and let her ride her own.<br \/>\nAnyway, a great dinner with friends last night, too much <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bonnydoonvineyard.com\/wi_cds_bhr.html?s2p3\" target=\u0094browser\u0094>Big House Red<\/a>, lunch and a movie today with my brother (who still owes me for <a href=\"http:\/\/www.armedliberal.com\/blog\/2002_09_01_armedliberal_archive.html#81002806\" target=\u0094browser\u0094>this<\/a>), and another dinner with friends tonight.<br \/>\nIt\u0092s a rough life, isn&#8217;t it?<br \/>\nBut I&#8217;m working on a review of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/ASIN\/0195124375\/armedliberal-20\" target=\"browser\">Embattled Dreams<\/a> and some other stuff&#8230;so please come back tomorrow!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sorry, but real life continues to interfere with time in front of the computer; yesterday Tenacious G (my SO) managed her re-entry motorcycle ride into the Santa Monica mountains, where we met and breakfasted with friends. She hasn\u0092t ridden in the mountain roads since her two accidents last year, and to be blunt, I haven\u0092t [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2879"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2879"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2879\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2879"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2879"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2879"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}