It's interesting the things we find ourselves googling for in the span of a week or two. I don't know how we did without the Internet and the information that is so readily available at our fingertips.
Need directions before driving some where? Google it. Need to know how to spell a word? Google it. Need a pic, want to know the symptoms to a mysterious disease you think you might have contracted, or just wanting to look up someone you use to know... Google it.
I blame my latest foray into googling on Vero. Yes Vero had to go and post a pic and talk about a rose she has growing and I of course had to google it. I had heard of the rose before. If I remember right another multiply user (Morgan Fields) , had also sung the praises of this pretty pink rose. I found out a lot about the rose by my googling. It can grow in shade, has few thorns, it's hardy, all sorts of things a gardener in the midwest likes to hear. But googling info on that particular rose was not enough. It lead me to googling other hardy roses like those in the Harkness/Parkland/Explorer series of roses, and it has me now thinking I want a Rambling Red rose. I need a hardy rose or vine for an arbor that is in full sun and in a bit of an open area. I worried that Vero's rose that can be grown in the shade might wilt when exposed so much.
My googling didn't stop there. I had initially been looking at hostas for awhile. I want to rip up part of a flower bed on the East side of the garage and plant more hostas. I thought I had my choices made until stumbling upon another website on hostas. Clicking on their new additions I came across, "candy dish". I now have extreme lust for a hosta and oddly there is no candy included. The hosta though is very shiny with rippled leaves and is quite striking in it's photo. Of course I HAD to look thru their whole listings for hostas and have notes jotted down on almost a whole page of hosta possibilities.
Googling can be dangerous for some people. It can be addicting. It can have us desiring things we didn't even know existed.
I have often wondered when typing in my search requests, what would people think if they saw my browsing history? Most would automatically think, ah a gardener, look at all of those gardening sites visited. They would also find this week, my googling for more pics of the blue Fugates of Kentucky. After reading an article on Yahoo about them I wanted to see more pics of blue people.
I also googled for a song I had heard but couldn't think of the title. I spent awhile on Youtube and searched for a lot of old songs. There was some bluegrass, some country, some pop and rock. Everything from Adele to ZZtop, it's all there just waiting to be found with just a word typed in the search box.
Quite awhile ago I did a lot of googling on oil, specifically the TransCanada Keystone pipeline that was to weave it's way across Nebraska. The more I read on the tar sands, the more I wanted to dig deeper. I googled the company, it's sister companies, I googled owners, lobbyists and all sorts of theories. I was starting to develop a theory of my own that linked Warren Buffet, Hilary Clinton, Ben Nelson, China and Israel. It was a vast network that seemed to creep in so many directions. I even wrote a blog on it for multiply, but somehow it disappeared when I went to post it. As I fumed and grumbled at my computer for eating my hard work, I began to wonder if a certain string of words when put together in a web search, suddenly had you been searched.
I got nervous, I got scared, I was feeling like Julia Roberts and her pelican brief and had no Denzel Washington to fall back on. Before I could finish up my theory, the pipeline was deemed defeated by Nebraska law makers. Hollywood left the capital steps and all sides against the Keystone pipeline claimed victory.
It had me wondering just what had happened here? The pipeline seemed to be so quiet, sneaking it's way across the prairie and suddenly it was up front and in your face. People were showing up, a political activist embraced it and made it their newest "cause". In a matter of weeks the big oil giant was ousted by legislation that even had the President involved.
It has me itching to do more googling. To follow the money trail and oil and lobbyists again. It has me wondering who was this original activist that seemed to come out of nowhere and how can enviromentalists claim victory when they will continue harvesting from the tar sands, but just reroute the oil in another pipeline? It has me wanting more answers. It was too easy. It was too fast. It reeks of oily money and puppeteers in Washington.
It has me feeling like I should be googling in the dark. It has me thinking what if my googles are somehow being tracked by more than just my computer? It doesn't help when reading about Google's new privacy policy. Your searches and visits to web pages are being compiled, but somehow they want you to think of it as a benefit to you. It's the same with facebook. Your life on the computer is being compiled into a neat little file or page.
It's unsettling when thinking how you are being followed and tracked and all of your googling moves watched.
I think I should go back to googling just flowers, they seem a lot safer, ....well except for my pocketbook.
