Well, this is terrifying. From Vice:

Tim Libert, a researcher at the University of Pennsylvania, has discovered that the vast majority of health sites, from the for-profit WebMD.com to the government-run CDC.gov, are loaded with tracking elements that are sending records of your health inquiries to the likes of web giants like Google, Facebook, and Pinterest, and data brokers like Experian and Acxiom.

From there, it becomes relatively easy for the companies receiving the requests, many of which are collecting other kinds of data (in cookies, say) about your browsing as well, to identify you and your illness. That URL, or URI, which very clearly contains the disease being searched for, is broadcast to Google, Twitter, and Facebook, along with your computer’s IP address and other identifying information.

It seems like every day I see a new article showcasing what little privacy we really have.

When I was younger, I was a huge comic book fan. You could even say I became a collector. I amassed a large enough collection to fill two long-boxes.[footnote]Long-boxes are boxes that are slightly wider than the width of a comic book and go about 3 feet deep[/footnote] Like most kids, I started with the classics. I was a huge Superman and Batman fan due to the movies, so I started there. Then, I naturally moved to comics that featured both of those characters, The Justice League of America.

Now in the ’90s, the only Justice League that existed was Justice League America, a shell of its former greatness. I preferred the heroes of old. Instead of reading the exploits of Booster Gold, Blue Beetle, and the Guy Gardner’s Green Lantern of the ’90s era Justice League, I was reading about Superman, Batman, Hawkman, Hal Jordan’s Green Lantern, The Flash, and The Atom. I tried getting my hands on as many books of the Justice League of America from the ’60s and ’70s as possible. What also drew me to the books was knowing that they were some of the same books that my dad read as a kid. It was a bonding experience to know that we were reading the same things. Eventually, I expanded my reading to the solo books of Green Lantern, The Flash, Hawkman, and even The Atom. Some of these titles were good. Others, not as much.

Once I started running out of books from the ’60s and ’70s I decided to try and pick up with my favorite characters in the present day. Again, some books were good and some were not. I really enjoyed the rebooted JLA of the late ’90s, which featured all the greats back together. Green Lantern with Kyle Rayner and eventually returning to Hal Jordan was also one of my favorites. I enjoyed a few issues of The Flash. Limited series, such as the DC event Final Night and the mini-series Kingdom Come were also excellent. It was about this time that I entered high school and started spending all my money on CDs instead of comic books. The comic book store was replaced by the mall, Best Buy, or even Blockbuster Music [footnote]I swear, no one remembers Blockbuster Music, but it was really a thing.[/footnote]One day, I just quit reading and I never thought about going back. Read more

To Kill A Mockingbird is one of my all-time favorite books. I was completely shocked this morning when it was announced that Harper Lee was coming out with a followup. Go Set a Watchman, which will be released in July, is essentially a sequel to To Kill a Mockingbird, despite being completed first. From Lee:

“It features the character known as Scout as an adult woman and I thought it a pretty decent effort. My editor, who was taken by the flashbacks to Scout’s childhood, persuaded me to write a novel (what became `To Kill a Mockingbird’) from the point of view of the young Scout.”

The premise of the book is that Scout (Jean Louise Finch) has returned to Maycomb from New York to visit her father, Atticus. She is forced to grapple with issues both personal and political as she tries to understand her father’s attitude toward society, and her own feelings about the place where she was born and spent her childhood.

While I don’t think anything can live up to Mockingbird, I’m absolutely looking forward to reading this.