The Oppenheimer Report 5/6/19

As I begin to write this week’s instalment of the Oppenheimer Report, the flood waters are receding in our community, and I can now see the stairs of our retractable dock at the waterline. The road leading to our house has re-opened, and I don’t need to make a 15-kilometre detour to pick up our mail down the road. Our phone lines are still out, but I won’t complain, because less than two miles away, along the Magnetawan River, people have had their homes destroyed. Indeed, we were very lucky, this time. The other day, I took the paddle boat out on the lake and surveyed the nearby shoreline. As I suspected, many of the rental cottages down the way, which have perennially flooded in the spring, are still underwater. One of the oldest cottages on the lake, across from us and long uninhabited, is showing visible signs of structural collapse. Today, as I waited in line for my turn to dump our garbage at the local landfill, I noticed one of my neighbors with a trailer full of debris from the flood. The cleanup from this one will be long and arduous. Even before this latest disastrous flooding, the winter of 2018-2019 was a destructive one for us here at Jasper Bark Lodge. Underground frost heaves and the wildly varying temperature changes have wreaked havoc with our out buildings and our land. Our hydro pole is at a 45-degree slant now and one of our garden sheds, where I keep the ATV, has sunk about 8” in the front. The other day, when I drove the ATV back into the shed, it started to roll back out. That was when I first noticed the new and pronounced slant to the building.

As I’ve mentioned several times before in this report, there is a segment that I enjoy every weekday morning at 10:10 a.m. on Hunters Bay Radio, called Tech 5. Hosted by my octogenarian friend Ben Harrison, this morning’s topic was Facebook, and Ben mentioned two statistics which surprised me. First, he said that Facebook was now worth about $600 Billion. I wonder if Mark Zuckerberg had any idea his social experiment would grow into the monster it is now, when he illegally put up its precursor, FaceMash, on the Harvard University private network back in 2003. The second statistic Ben sited is that, in 50 years, it is predicted that the number of Facebook pages dedicated to dead people will be greater than those of the living. This in turn begs the question, what impact might these posthumous pages have on the recording of history? Some, I included, argue that there is too much information out there, and ironically, sometimes too much information can obscure the truth. There are plenty of examples of rants people put up that I’m sure they wish they hadn’t. While one can take down a post, once it’s “out there” it’s hard to expunge. These days, with the truth on injured reserve, I’m not so sure a damning post would be as harmful as it used to be. When I think of some of the scandals that brought down former presidential candidates (e.g. Hart and Dukakis), and compare those to the raw sewage our Commander-In-Tweet routinely spews out onto the social network, I’m not sure the truth really matters to many people anymore. It’s certainly difficult to ascertain. I can’t help but wonder, what will my legacy be? What digital footprint have I left that will reveal my deepest darkest secrets?  

One of my musician friends, who performed on last Thursday night’s Live Drive show at the station, told me he’d just taken a brief Facebook holiday. I asked him about it because Shauna, who does a lot of the social media posting for Hunters Bay Radio, tried to tag him for the show announcement, and she was unable to do so. He said Facebook had become a suck on his limited spare time (ain’t that the truth) and that he needed to cut himself off. More and more, I’m hearing the expression “Facebook holiday”. What information have we, in a weak moment, inadvertently revealed during our 2-20 hours per week on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc.? Especially now that we are in this superheated era of political correctness, where sometimes inappropriate humor becomes a career-demolishing blunder, I’d be concerned if I were ever to aspire to public office (which I most certainly will not!) that my words would inevitably come back to haunt me. I’ve been writing this report for close to 30 years, and for the past 25 years, it has been posted in some form or another on the internet. Thankfully, I have about 13 loyal readers, but there are plenty of things I wish I hadn’t said, mostly nasty things about self-important celebrities, athletes, and politicians.

Nothing much happened last week in the news. U.S. Attorney General Barr stonewalled the Senate Judiciary Committee, while being questioned about the legitimacy of his de facto exoneration of Rump; in Russia a commercial jet was hit by lightning and exploded in flames while making an emergency landing, killing about 41; there was a failed coup in Venezuela, wherein opposition leader Juan Guaido attempted to unseat dictator Nicolas Maduro; and oh yes, the royal bun is out of the oven. Today, Harry and Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex today announced the birth of their baby boy, who is now our first biracial royal. The haters should be all over social media commenting on this last story. Can’t wait for that “truthiness”. Gotta go, Facebook is calling.

Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c 2019 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED