Saturday, April 27, 2013

Episode 68: Anonymous Sources of Good Character

I have noticed a trend in news stories in which something sensational happened and in which the government or big corporations are involved. My scientific research reveals that several to many times, sources referenced by reporters "spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak."

I'm actually really not sure where to go with this now because my brain gets stuck in an endless loop of illogical irrationality every time I see that statement.

As near as I can figure, what it means is as long as no one knows who did it, it is ok to do something you are not supposed to do. "I did it, but I'm not telling you who I am, because I wasn't supposed to do it." My kids are very familiar with this logic, as are most kids, which is why kids have parents, to debunk such irrational and irresponsible unreasoning. It would seem that reporter school is taught by children.

Try to apply this reporter logic to other areas of life. Go ahead, it will be fun. For example, what if the greedy bankers partly responsible for all the crazy economic woes used reporter logic? Some bankers took the hard-earned money you were planning on using for stupid things like your retirement and your children's education and spent it on important things like yachts, exotic sports cars, European vacation homes, and cocaine, but it was on the condition of anonymity because they weren't actually authorized to do so. Well, that changes everything, doesn't it. Now I guess we shouldn't hold them accountable, because they tried to be anonymous about it, they really did. Don't we all?

Isn't that kind of the rational we all use when we are trying to get away with doing something we are not supposed to do because it negatively affects someone else, even though it is for the great reason of positively affecting us in some usually insignificant and temporary way? Except we used to say, "it's okay unless you get caught." The anonymity thing does sound better if we are trying to maintain good character while doing things we are not supposed to be doing, so I can see why we have started using it, because character is important.

I'm going to try this character-saving reporter logic on the cops next time I get pulled over. "Officer, can't you just write down in your little book that you couldn't give me a ticket because I was speeding on the condition of anonymity because I was not authorized to speed?" If that doesn't work, I will just argue that I was authorized to speed but I cannot reveal the source of my authorization. I'll let you know how it goes, with my one phone call.

Thursday, April 11, 2013

Episode 67: Magic Boxes and Crazies

I did a crazy thing today, so crazy I almost don't want to admit it, not so much because it was insanely crazy itself, but rather because it is ridiculous that I thought it was crazy. It could be that I was just drunk on a heady cocktail of Rob Bell, Donald Miller, and Anne Lamott. My desk is littered with the evidence of a recent reading binge on those three, and they make you think about thinking about wanting to do and say and think and ask crazy things, like people who do not live in suburbs do.

In any case, this morning I went out, in the car, to at least two different places, without the one thing with which everyone on planet Earth must have. Yup, I actually went outside my house, not just in the yard out of my house, but at least 3 to 5 miles out of my house, without taking my mobile phone. I have to admit, I nearly had a panic attack when I thought of all the horrible things that could happen. What if someone tried to call me, or updated a Facebook status, or worse yet, what if I got a flat tire!? How did people deal with such things before? It was nerve-wracking, but I made it back without incident and only missed one call and no useful Facebook updates. What a crazy thing it is that these little magic boxes have gone from novelty to ubiquity to I-cannot-breathe-without-it-y in such a short time.

According to actual statistics, not just numbers I made up, there are around 6 billion active mobile phone subscriptions in a world of about 7 billion people. Not surprisingly, there are more mobile phones than people in the U.S. I started trying to think of people I know who don't have a mobile phone. The best I could come up with are a couple friends who keep their mobile phones in drawers instead of attached to their persons at all times and don't have unlimited texting.

My kids don't have phones yet, well, not exactly. The truth is they have my wife's old iPhone, but it is not actually active as a phone, so it doesn't count.

My parents used to give us their old phones too. We pretended to call people on them, or sometimes hit each other with them, or tied people up with the curly handset cords. So far, that is not what our kids do with the old iPhone, mostly because it has no cord, would break if they hit each other with it, and has so many games and Apps it is hardly recognizable as a phone at all.

The little magic boxes we call phones probably spend most of their time wondering what they have in common with some wrinkled dusty old antique device that only had one function, even though it was ten times their size. Life used to be so much simpler. People walked to places, talked to each other in person, spent time outside, and generally has less stressful lives. On the other hand, they couldn't play Angry Birds and look up interesting facts on the internet while stuck in a boring phone conversation, so life wasn't all rose petals and gummy worms for them either.