Still Life with Robin: Relativity

by Peggy Robin

A few months ago I had dinner out with my cousin, Kat, and her adult daughter, Janna, who were visiting from out of town.  Kat lives in Sydney, Australia and Janna lives in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. So far this sounds pretty straightforward; I'm sure you had no trouble understanding that my dinner companions are part of my extended family.  Except that the term "cousin" in this instance is not technically accurate; it takes a series of prefixes before the term "cousin" to present the full picture of how we are related to one another. But first let me say that however complex our family linkages are, I grew up with her and regard her as my cousin. Which would make her daughter Janna my first cousin once removed....that is, if Kat and I were your usual brand of first cousins. But we're not, so I must begin by describing how Kat and I are connected.

Kat is actually my stepfather's first cousin. But she is so much younger than he that she's much closer to my age than his. Since he was an adult when she was born (she's the daughter of his mother's much younger sister), he viewed her more as a niece than a cousin, and she grew up treating him like an uncle. So, to be accurate, I should call her my step-first-cousin-once-removed, because that's exactly what she is.

Still Life with Robin: How Not to Be a Loser

by Peggy Robin

I’ve lost a lot of things in my time: wallets, luggage, credit cards, keys. I’ve been remarkably fortunate in getting back most of the things I've lost -- but occasionally it’s been tough for the finder to track me down because I haven’t always had my things sufficiently marked with identifying information. Given my general level of absent-mindedness (which, unfortunately, only increases with age), I have of necessity become quite careful about tagging everything important that I own with some kind of label or marking that can be used to track me down. Of course I don’t put my address on my keys, because that would make it too easy for a bad guy to burglarize my house if he happened to get hold of them. I do, however, have several of those grocery store club tags dangling from my keyring, each with a distinct barcode, so that all the finder of my keys has to do is return them to the nearest store, which has promised to call me to let me know where I can go to pick them up.

Here are two stories of people who lost things that were not so easy to retrieve.

Cautionary Tale the First: Three Wrinkles in the Case of the Lost Luggage

Sharon was flying to Boston to attend a convention, along with a large group of co-workers. They boarded the plane en masse and Sharon was among the last to be seated -- and one of the last to seek space for her carry-on bag in the overhead bin. There was no room left, no matter how she tried to rearrange the bags to create the needed space. At last the flight attendant made her give up the Rubik's cube-like quest to align everything and turn over her bag to be “gate-checked.” So Sharon's bag disappeared, presumably to be stowed in the cargo hold with the few pieces of checked luggage on the one-hour flight. Now we come to wrinkle #1: Sharon did not receive a baggage claim check from the flight attendant. When that slip of paper wasn’t forthcoming, Sharon should have requested it – but she thought to herself, the bag is just going straight into the baggage compartment, so what could go wrong? The answer, is, of course, whenever you fly, you should be prepared for your bags to wander off on their own. Bags in an airline's possession are like socks in the dryer. Once they are out of your sight, they enter into some mysterious limbo with its own set of laws. You’re lucky that anything ever comes out right.

Today is National UnFriend Day

Today is National UnFriend Day. Yes, there's still time to figure out who's a friend and who's a non-friend. If you're uncertain about how to tell the two apart, Jimmy Kimmel has some ideas about that, because he's the man who invented this very useful new holiday.

Facebook Welcomes You to NAMBLA

Even if you're not on Facebook (and who isn't on Facebook?), you've probably heard about Facebook's new groups feature. The interesting feature about this feature is that anyone can add you to a group without your permission. There is no approval requirement.

So what can happen? You could be added to any group, as happened to Jason Calacanis, who became part of the NAMBLA* group on Facebook without his approval.  Here is the text of the email that Calacanis sent to Facebook when he found out about that

Someone...added me to the "NAMBLA" group on Facebook. I know I'm not a member of NAMBLA.

I've now been assigned to a group that advocates... well.... ummm.... you can look it up--it's very bad. Also troubling:

1. I was never asked to join the NAMBLA group 2. I was never informed that I was "force-joined" to the NABLA group.

Facebook's CEO responded to this issue by saying that it's easy for people to leave groups.  It appears that the actual Facebook is even more interesting to watch than the movie about Facebook.

Thanks to The Consumerist for spotting this.

*NAMBLA is North American Man/Boy Love Association

New Facebook Privacy Issue and It's a Doozy

Until recently you could only really mess up your own life if you didn't pay attention to Facebook's privacy settings. Now Facebook gives its users the ability to destroy all of your friends' and family's and acquaintances' privacy.

The new Facebook iPhone app gives users the option to upload their entire contact database to Facebook, including names, email addresses, phone numbers and photos. So, without your permission or knowledge, somebody --even just a casual acquaintance-- can send that information to Facebook, reports The Guardian.

Facebook warns iPhone users about this before the app syncs your contacts with Facebook's servers, but we all know how many people pay attention to privacy warnings. Who's going to track down everyone in their address book and ask, "Is it okay to upload your contact information to Facebook?" Nobody is:  People are just going to click "I Agree" and be done with it.