The webpage from beyond the grave

I've heard stories of high end cemeteries like Beverly Hills whereby you can embed a computer screen in your headstone that plays a video of you upon request. Sounds like science fiction but very doable (the hardest part would be power and weather proofing).

A much simpler solution of leaving a message that survives you is Facebook and other social networking sites where your personal page might remain long after your death. For some this is comforting, for others disturbing. Family members will sometimes ask Facebook for the password of a deceased loved-one so they can update the page with a death notice. Facebook does not have to comply with this request. Ditto for personal websites hosted by Google. There are few laws about passwords and death.

Our helpful government at USA.gov offers some suggestions: add a social media section to your will  (you do have a will, right?)

• appoint someone you trust as an online executor
• State how you would like your profiles to be handled. You may want to completely cancel your profile or keep it up for friends and family to visit. Some sites allow users to create a memorial profile where other users can still see your profile but can’t post anything new.
• Give the social media executor a document that lists all the websites where you have a profile, along with your usernames and passwords.
• Stipulate in your will that the online executor should have a copy of your death certificate. The online executor may need this as proof in order for websites to take any actions on your behalf.

Online Photos

I got a Nikon camera
I love to take a photograph
So mama don't take my Kodachrome away
- Paul Simon lyrics to Kodachrome

US News asks, "Is It Safe to Post Photos Online? It's a wonderful thing to share photos online but those photos can also be stolen and misused. Imagine your face used in an online dating service by someone not blessed with your good looks. Will friends believe you when you say, "But that's not me!"  Or your photo used by an advertiser without permission.

1. Check your online privacy settings.
Never allow everyone access to your photos. Restrict them to friends only.


2. Make sure you know who your friends are.
I have over 200 connections on LinkedIn. Are all these people really my friends? Do I trust every one of them? Consider de-friending anyone you don't trust 100%.

3. Disable the GPS technology before taking photos with a smartphone.
Even regular cameras are starting to apply GPS data to digital photos. When you post a photo with GPS data embedded, anyone can know where the photo was taken. Fun perhaps for a vacation photo but risky if the photo was taken at home.

4. Watch out for lower-tech ways of sharing too much personal information.
Your child's T-shirt could contain a school logo. Blur out your car license plate in any photos you post.

5. Don't post embarrassing photos.
Once posted, items on the internet may never die. Even dead websites can be brought back to life with http://wayback.archive.org/web/ or Google cache. Photo facial recognition is getting more and more powerful so in a few years it may be trivial for anyone to find online naked baby photos that match an adult face.

6. No means no.
If a friend or relative posts photos of your child and you don't want them to, ask them to take them down. If they refuse, some sites allow you to flag a photo as objectionable and taken down at your request.

7. Use a watermark.
Watermarks can be visible or invisible and will help prove that you own a photo if it's stolen and makes millions of dollars selling coffee. A watermark is an image or text that is mixed into the image itself.

Bottom Line

Share with friends but protect your photos.

Self Segregation

"If I have a cup of coffee that is too strong for me because it is too black, I weaken it by pouring cream into it."

- Malcolm X

Most humans are tribal animals. While some individuals are extroverts who love to mix and mingle, the majority of people form cliches and stay within their circle of friends. My wife and I observed this frequently in square dancing. When we visited another club, few of the natives wanted to dance with "the strangers". When we attended a square dancing weekend, dancers ate and danced with fellow members of their ownclub. One of the few times we saw true mixing was at a national convention where everyone was an outsider.

Cliches form on many levels. You may have your set of "church friends" or fellow parents of the same PTA at school. I also observed this while a graduate student at the University of Michigan. A dorm where I was a Resident Assistant had a "Black Pride Room".  I was suprised that there were students who wanted to be seperate, who endorsed (and wore T-shirts of) the Malcom X quote above that warns against mixing whites and blacks together. The university supported this self-seperation; one semester I taught a class called "Mathematics for Minority Engineers." This seemed to me, to be contrary to years of Integration efforts but the students liked it.

Bottom Line

Although people say they want to live in a color-blind world, in reality they tend to self-segregate. Look at this graph of census data from the NY Times, http://projects.nytimes.com/census/2010/explorer?ref=us.  Within NYC I was amazed at how solid the racial zones are for whites, hispanics and blacks. Some of the outlying cities like Newark are also uni-racial.

Social Steganography

"I don't at all like knowing what people say of me behind my back. It makes me far too conceited." - Oscar Wilde

Today I recommend the article, Social Steganography: Learning to Hide in Plain Sight. I have a friend with a 13-yr-old daughter and the daughter loves facebook (FB). The mother is concerned about FB and carefully watches her daughter's page for inappropriate topics and language. And issues have come up - one boy asked for sexy photos for example.

In the article cited above, the author describes a similar situation where a mother comments on her daughter's every post which "scares everyone away". The daughter, Carmen, has to think - How will my mother respond to my post? Will she freak out? So Carmen has learned to comment in "code" using references her mother will think is safe but her friends know differently. The example given is quoting lyrics from Monty Python's "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life" a happy song on the surface but if you know the story, "Life of Brian", it's sung by men being tortured to death by crucifixion.

The art of hiding secret messages in plain sight is called Steganography. Youth are forever creating new slang words to hide what they are saying. It's fat, or cool or bad. Parents are meant to be confused - does bad mean good?

Bottom Line

This gives a whole new spin to comments on FB. I often see song quotes or odd statements that have no context (for me). I'll have to start looking past the quotes to find the hidden message.

Bad Habits

I don't believe one grows older. I think that what happens early on in life is that at a certain age one stands still and stagnates.- T.S. Eliot

Prevention magazine has published 9 "Harmless" Habits That Age You. These are:

1. Lack of Sleep
2. Too much sugar in the diet
3. Too much stress
4. Lack of regular exercise
5. Playing iPod too loud
6. Not socializing with friends
7. Not eating vegetables daily
8. Eating too little fat
9. Not enough sex

Bottom Line

As we age we need sleep and a good diet. The body is just not as tolerant of abuse as when we were young. We also need to stay active both physically and socially. In fact a recent study claims too much sitting can be deadly.

Boxing Day

"Some boys are rich by birth beyond all wants,
Belov'd by uncles, and kind good old aunts;
When time comes round, a Christmas-box they bear,
And one day makes them rich for all the year." -- John Gay, Trivia (1716),

December 26, Boxing Day, is not about the pugilistic sport nor is it about tossing out empty gift boxes, returning gifts, or getting great bargains. Some historians say the holiday got started when servants, who were required to work on Christmas Day, got the following day off to visit their families. The day took its name from the tradition of presenting gifts of cash, food, clothing and other goods wrapped up in boxes to servants on Dec 26. Another theory is that church donation boxes were opened on the Feast of St. Stephen (Dec 26) and the money distributed to the poor. Wikipedia disagrees with both these theories and claims the day is named after clay boxes that served as a collective piggy bank for servants/workers in a shop or home. On Dec 26 the boxes were smashed open and the contents shared as a Christmas bonus.

Today Boxing Day is a British holiday for giving gifts to everyone who had rendered a service during the previous year: tradesmen, mail carriers, maids, butlers, doormen, porters, etc. It officially began during the reign of Queen Victoria during the middle 19th century.

Boxing Day is celebrated in Great Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, other Commonwealth of Nations, and Greece. It many of these countries it is a bank holiday (i.e. banks are closed). If Dec 26 falls on a weekend, the public holiday may be moved to Monday. So in a worst case, as a traveler in a British country, you could find yourself without access to a bank from Dec 24/25 thru Dec 27/28.

Bottom Line
Why an article about a holiday in a preparedness blog? As noted earlier in The Survival Encyclopedia and Protecting your Food Storage, few people can be 100% self-sufficient. We all rely on others, especially during times of crisis. It is always a good idea to build a social network and to say thank you to those that have helped you.