NSA

The Telegraph-- NSA 'tracked 60 million phone calls in Spain in a month'

Adding to Edward Snowden's intelligence reports, El Mundo published an article about widespread telephone surveillance in Spain. Data seems cloudy at this point, published from sources in question, but America's NSA is receiving a lot of accusations.

The Huffington Post-- NSA Phone Records Lawsuit Filed By Parents Of Killed Navy SEAL

Rand Paul is trying to take a lawsuit agains privacy infringements to the Supreme Court, and "get 10 million Americans saying we don’t want our phone records looked at, [so that] maybe someone will wake up and something will change in Washington."

The National Review-- NSA Privacy Breaches: The Bad and the Good

Apparently our new surveillance skills come with a potential technological security against accidental and intentional illegal disclosure of information. But the NSA is still covering up. It's hard to know the intentions, especially when the important legal infringements are buried under infringements based on "typos". Still, there is "the bad and the good", certainly.

Annually, the College Board renews its threats on cancelling exams. Students must suffer the fear that their scores may be cancelled because of suspicious activity. There have been a lot of news stories about AP cheating scandals, or surrogate test-taking. But what about those who did not cheat and have to suffer along with those who did?

Aspiring lawyers at the University of Tasmania suffered that penalty this year. In these few efforts to stop the advance of cheating, we often delay a majority of honest people. This is another side to the cheating problem. Not only does its ubiquity cause our leaders to be dishonest, it also discourages the honest aspirations of many.

I would say that any meddling might worsen the problem, that allowing both the cheaters and the hard-workers to prosper would allow things to balance out a bit, but that is an extreme and a too hopeful view. I don't actually think that the re-take exams that students must sometimes take discourages our ambitious youths so completely. It is a rare enough thing, and the true leaders would certainly persevere. Additionally, if the cheaters prosper in school, what will stop them from continuing to prosper through the same methods as leaders?

Why Should We Complain?

I believe the unwillingness to dispel our dissatisfaction comes not only from a fear of authority, but from an unwillingness to disturb ourselves. Certainly, if one were sitting and sweating in a room, and all he had to do was rise and turn down the heater, even if the sole entity in the room, he may not take it upon himself to move. It isn't just fear that arrests us, but a heightened laziness. There have been times, for instance, in which I was too warm by a bit and had complete control over my predicament-- all I had to do was take off a sweatshirt-- but some mysterious unwillingness to move implored me to exchange the annoyance of an hour for of a moment's inconvenience. Similarly, if I needed to hydrate or relieve myself, I may hold off until I finish this chapter or this episode or whatever, rather than do so immediately. To do so would be an inconvenient exertion the lack of which brings about a perturbation I would rather suffer.

Along with the laziness is an element of apathy. Perhaps the specific annoyance isn't a big deal, so you don't deal with it. If we were to comb ourselves for every minor dissatisfaction, we would be relentlessly adjusting our corporeal position, or constantly itching our shins, or undergoing whatever other satisfactions. Such a procedure would be more annoying than any cottonmouth.

So, we put off or ignore things that don't matter much. It's a from of apathy, but not a necessarily bad one. I'm sure a lot of Buckley's buddies in the movie theatre either didn't care or didn't think it mattered much that the focus was a little bit off. Buckley doesn't have the only sound attitude concerning the "Why Don't We Complain?" idea. It isn't just about hoping someone else will do the job. I mean, what about Buckley's newspaper-reading seatmate, who did not seem at all disturbed with the temperature, but rather was annoyed by Buckley's "sibilant intrusion". Perhaps most of our apathy goes too far, but it remains as a deterrent to our complaints.