I can't bear to have people know what I'm reading in public. Friends who have come to my apartment have been shocked to find the majority of books on my mantle neatly wrapped in laconic brown paper, some with titles lightly and illegibly scrawled on their spines in some sort of secret code. To be sure: these are the books that really matter, and are often present in multiple copy, edition and date to reflect the progress of their realization as a text through the past century.

People have commented that it appears a bit eccentric née of an uber-reclusive character to demand this level of privacy. I smile, of course, and go on drinking tea.

But this raises an interesting question: precisely how much privacy am I entitled to? I know the font from whence I drink, of course: true to the overt Libertarianism of this forum, I'd be told that I'm allowed as much privacy as I want, and government regulations requiring individuals to notify other individuals that they are sex offenders, &c., are violations of some sort of personal rights. Although it would be a useful exercise to debate the crux of that particular question, I feel my question is different: how much privacy is too much privacy?

I feel the question is better defined in my academic life as a scientist: my primary role as a researcher is to pursue scientific inquiry according to a plan that I have discussed with my advisor, or, at the very least, my advisor has some sort of knowledge of and approves of as occuring in the laboratory (on some level). But an ancillary role to this role of researcher is an obligation to follow details of the research that are potentially interesting, as sort of side projects (depending, of course, on how well the initial research is going, how divergent these side projects are, &c.).

So the question is this: how open should I be about these side projects? Whereas I feel it's instructive to discuss these side projects informally with colleagues, and even to discuss different interpretations of data from these projects, I've often been chastized for not presenting these results at a formal forum of lab members (still a private setting, a more formal presentation of data in front of my advisor). My reasoning, I feel, follows in kind: although informal discussions are appropriate for developing these side projects, to state these projects at a formal discussion is to formally state that the data I'm presenting is not only reproducible, but has some fuzzy notion of scientific merit and that it is an interesting side note, or even potential project for future research. I view not presenting this data as a sort of safeguard for my advisor: a method of being able to distinguish a priori which data are interesting and which data are not, presenting only the interesting data and not diluting or distracting from interesting data with uninteresting data. My intention, to the best of my abilities is to inform, not mislead.

On some level, I feel that the same questions I just asked of myself as a scientist can be asked of my role as a citizen: as part of some grand social contact, how much am I obligated to let the general public know about myself?

My sense is not much at all, but there are complications: are people, on some level allowed to know what I'm reading on the train? should they be informed as to my book purcahses? my groceries? what movie I'd like to see? what music?

And more importantly--do they really care?

There seems to be some sort of standardization from the norm, of course--there is some social sense of smut, and it's generally advisable that this sort of thing shouldn't be read/viewed in public (Abercrombie & Fitch, take heed). But, and not to turn too statistical in this regard--the question remains not as to how far a standard deviation I can stray, rather how close to the mean I am allowed to remain.

Do Catholic universities have an obligation to sponsor, or even to allow to be performed, the Vagina Monologues? Rick Garnett reports on a recent campus kerfluffle on this question (see here and here). Since it's an intramural debate whose background I don't wish to delve into, I'd like to abstract away from the issue at hand, and concur wholeheartedly with a sentiment expressed by Professor Garnett (or by a student of his):

(A) rich understanding of "academic freedom" needs to take into account the freedom of distinctive institutions and associations -- subsidiarity, anyone? -- to construct and protect their distinct, expressive identities and messages.

Per my post below, I have been wondering if I, like Richard Posner, watch too many movies in law school. Now I discover that not only is Amber Taylor quitting her Netflix membership, but Netflix even admits to giving extra-awful service to those who (like me) spent several months turning around our DVDs almost immediately. (Something that had been persuasively documented some time ago.) It wasn't so much the extra lag-time that bothered me as the extra low priority for popular discs. I still haven't been able to get Netflix to send me the first episode of Battlestar Galactica, and it's been on my queue since last summer.

Now, I don't entirely begrudge them this, especially since they admit it. They're simply trying to eke out every bit of consumer surplus from me that they can, which is their perfect right to do so long as they're upfront about it and so long as I'm willing to put up with the abuse.

That said, this increases the incentive to ratchet down to the 2-discs a month policy. And if I had any reason to believe that another service would be less nasty about all of this, I would probably switch.