Angst Report

Last night, just as I was going online to try to figure out how to back up my mammoth photo library on the cloud, I caught wind of something that ought to make anyone think twice about trusting anything valuable to the web. Late last week, hackers breached security at Epsilon, an online marketing firm, getting email addresses from some of the firm’s big-name clients, including Capitol One, TiVo and Best Buy.

Internet security experts say passwords and credit card numbers were not stolen, but be prepared for lots of spam and phishing attempts from email addresses you know and trust. If you see something at all suspect don’t click, and above all, don’t give any private information to any emailer warning you of the breach and asking for passwords and such.

Read Epsilon’s lame press release, which doesn’t even offer an apology. Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s the latest: Tokyo Electric is now dumping 11,500 tons of radioactive water from the doomed Fukushima nuclear plant into the ocean. What does that mean? I’m sure, as with every other radioactive release since this disaster began, we’ll be reassured over and over, by scientists and government spokesmen, that levels of actual radioactivity are low. And the ocean is big.

Where’s the outrage? One year ago, Facebook was filled with clenched fists after the BP oil spill off the Gulf Coast. Pictures of oil-covered birds were everywhere. Will it take pictures of radioactive fish to spark some outrage this time? And what would they look like?

Can we not imagine a catastrophe that unfolds invisibly, over time? Or do we need to see small suffering creatures to get our ire up?

Photoshopped image based on original by malias on Flickr

Addendum: Immediately after posting this, my friend Thom Kennon posted a link to the radiation dumping story on Facebook, and asked:” Huh?! shouldn’t this be a group decision?”

My colleague Erika Bleiberg links to this post and ask Baristanet readers if the radiation news is giving them Sushi Angst?

Supposedly, the #1 fear most people have is speaking in public. I’ve always thought there were better things to fear like the dentist or getting cut off by an 18-wheeler, but I must admit that I do suffer fear of embarrassment from time to time.

Lately, those thoughts have swarmed around my upcoming trip to London later this month, while I tag along with my husband, who will be covering the Royal Wedding for the AP. I’ve tried to get some kind of reporting gig of my own for the 10 days we’re there — because being a reporter is my favorite form of psychological armor — but so far nothing solid has emerged. I know Warren will be super-busy, and I may or may not be able to accompany him on some of his assignments, so in my imagination I’m going to become a bump on the log, perhaps the biggest bump on the biggest log of all time (or would it be the smallest bump on the biggest log?) Everybody in London, the press, the Royals, the people who actually live there, will have something useful to do, while I will…

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As my Zadee would have said, with a thick Russian accent, “Vat a country!”

A poisonous cobra has gone missing in the Bronx Zoo, which could be causing a great panic, but instead the cobra now has a Twitter account with the tagline, “I’m an Egyptian cobra out on the town,” and 130,780 followers.

Recent tweets:

Getting on the ferry to Ellis Island. Let’s hope this goes better than that time on the plane. #snakeonthetown

Getting my morning coffee at the Mudtruck. Don’t even talk to me until I’ve had my morning coffee. Seriously, don’t. I’m venomous.

On top of the Empire State Building! All the people look like little mice down there. Delicious little mice. #snakeonthetown

The Angst Report is of two reactions here. I’m thinking of the Neil Postman’s famous book “Amusing Ourselves to Death,” which posits that our own triviality will be our society’s undoing.

But I’m also thinking of one of my favorite quotations, attributed to Horace Walpole. “The world is a tragedy to those who feel, but a comedy to those who think.”

I’m leaning toward Walpole. And I’ve just followed the snake on Twitter.

The garrulous and wise Gary Vaynerchuk was hawking his new book at Watchung Booksellers last night, and made several interesting predictions. Among them, that your refrigerator will go from just being a cold box with a light to being a smart machine — with the capacities you have come to expect in your mobile phone. Not too long from now, Vaynerchuk predicts, your refrigerator will be able to detect when you’re down to your last Diet Pepsi, and automatically order another case, which will then be delivered straight to your door. And, in the same way that Pandora now extrapolates a playlist based on one song or artist you like, Vaynerchuk says, your fridge will soon be suggesting other ingredients you should stock up on.

Well and good. This is the kind of World of Tomorrow scenario that enchanted World’s Fair visitors in 1939, a utopian vision of a convenient, intelligent, benign, robotic future.

But this wouldn’t be the Angst Report if we didn’t consider the dystopic possibilities of a smart, but malicious, refrigerator.

After all, we now know that cars have so much electronics in them that they can be hacked. A report earlier this month discovered that cars are now wirelessly hackable through BlueTooth and OnStar systems. If there’s one thing thrillers have taught us it’s that any time you get in your car and turn your key, especially if it’s late at night in a parking garage, your car could explode. Now the bad guys don’t even have to plant a bomb. They can just BlueTooth you to death. Lazy bastards.

What could a hacker do with a smart refrigerator? If we’re already imagining self-stocking refrigerators, how much harder would it be to imagine a scenario in which enemies see that the ice is melted, the milk is spoiled … or a little cyanide is added to the Diet Pepsi?

Yup, in rainwater. But nothing to worry about, of course, say the authorities. Hat tip to Mutterschwester for spotting it and sending the link.

When I was visiting my parents down in Florida this winter, I began to experience the existential pain that is the knowledge that death is coming. For people in their 70s and 80′s, it’s just beyond the door. So in the same way that last year, my 18-year-old kept hearing news of who got into what college, or when I was in my my mid 30′s, I kept hearing about people having babies, I could see that for my parents, the buzz is much more depressing. So-and-so is in the hospital. So-and-so just died.

In the past two weeks, I’ve gotten news of too many deaths: my yoga teacher’s father, my editor’s stepfather, my friend’s mother’s boyfriend, and my uncle’s cousin. My business partner’s father had a serious stroke and is ailing. That’s four deaths and one critical illness. Though all were men in their 70′s or 80′s — statistically near the end of their promised lifespans — that doesn’t mitigate the pain.

On Sunday, I went to a private family memorial for Leonard Weinglass,  a famous lefty lawyer who shared several seders with me at Aunt Frieda and Uncle Irv’s. He was esteemed for his work defending the Chicago 7, for his passion for justice and reading. But the stories that moved me most were about his love for his country house up in the Catskills. Living in a teepee until the house was built, romping with his dog. I can see him there, surrounded by his books and gardening catalogues, and I imagine it as a light-filled house, because that’s how I would want my country house to be. And I wonder if he would have traded all his life’s accomplishments for just another day there.

The truth is mortality sucks. We can distract ourselves with March Madness, the Kardashians or the iPad 2, but it’s still there, tapping its feet, waiting to ruin our day. Carpe diem.

If you and your loved ones are still alive, it’s only because you haven’t done anything dangerous like get a shot or ride an escalator. Here’s our weekly roundup of the everything you didn’t know was potentially lethal. Which either means you have to expand your angst … or that everything you have been worrying about is perfectly safe.

1. You know those alcohol wipes they give you before you get a shot, just to make sure you don’t get an infection? A recent CDC test found two thirds were contaminated with bacteria.

2. Giving your kid a good musical education? Think again. Used woodwind instruments are crawling with germs, which can cause staph infections and even brain abscesses.

3. And by the way, keep the little ones away from escalators.

4. Sayonara, Akita. Radiation released in a nuclear disaster gets in pet’s fur and can’t be cleaned, which is why dogs and cats had to be abandoned by Chernobyl evacuees.

5. Thought the sharp instruments were all you had to worry about during a pedicure? Turns out the UV lights they use to dry your nails at the salon can cause cancer.

6. You’re 2.7 times more likely to have a heart attack during or after sex, according to a new study.

7. California? From drug-resistant superbugs to car wrecks caused by naked PETA activists, it’s 840 miles of gorgeous coastline and constant danger.

UPDATE: Good news from benefits. The money will be moved to the right account.

After finally having signed up for a Flexible Spending Account for the first time, it turns out we did it wrong. My husband, thinking that a “Dependent Care” account covered the unpaid medical expenditures for me and our two children, signed up to put $2,700 into that account. When no payments were forthcoming, I called to check. It turns out that a Dependent Care account is for daycare — something that neither our 18-year-old or 22-year-old needs.

The question of the day is whether the Powers That Be will be able, or willing, to move that $2,700 to where it was intended: a Flexible Spending Account for our unpaid medical expenses.

Since the HR people are super fussy about Open Enrollment starting and ending at very specific times, I worry that they’ll refuse to open it up to help us with this honest mistake. On the other hand, my husband’s interpretation of the words “Dependent Care” — as applying to the  health care of his dependents — seems reasonable.

Could $2,700 really be flushed down the drain due to checking the wrong box?

Stay tuned.

More proof that all angst is personal. Despite devastation of apocalyptical proportions in Japan, it was the thing that went boom in the night, right outside my window, that distresses me this morning. And the thing that went boom in the night was a 20-year-old Bradford Pear that we planted with our own hands in 1991, when Margot was three, felled by the gentlest of snowstorms.

Somewhere, probably with the old unreturned library books or Warren’s long-lost prescription glasses, is a picture of Margot standing together with the brand new tree, both of them about the size of your average snowman. I looked, but couldn’t find it. That’s distressing me too.

By international standards, I should be ashamed of feeling anything for this damaged pear, which is still salvageable, even though the tree man recommends DNR. The Bradford has become known for its weak branching structure, something we’ve known for ages. If topped out and trimmed, it will probably split and fall again.

Even by local standards, this is a small tree disaster. We’ve got 100-year-old oaks in our neighborhood that fall and, every few years, kill someone. When a branch from one of those guys falls, like this one did in 2008, it looks like this. That was the end of our Subaru. It looks like this one didn’t even scratch the cars.

I’m not asking for pity. That would be unseemly. My neighbor across the street called this morning and offered some spontaneously this morning; that’s plenty. As losses go, it’s just a tree. Yet, like the doctor says when he gives you a shot, I feel a little pinch.

The Bradford Pear in happier times.