Who's The Security Risk?-Part 2

(EDIT 1/20/2010-See below)

This article ("Another Reason America Is At War") from the Chicago Sun-Times pretty much says it all. It's consistent with the notion that the only reason why the U.S. hasn't suffered a catastrophic terrorist attack since 2001 is because al Qaeda keeps sending incompetent mopes to attack us (i.e., Richard Reid and the latest chuckle-head).

For some years after 9/11, passengers were forbidden to get up to use the lavatory on the Washington-New York shuttle. Zero tolerance! I suppose it must eventually have occurred to somebody that this ban would not deter a person who was willing to die, so the rule was scrapped. But now the principle has been revisited for international flights, and fresh idiocies are in store. Nothing in your lap during final approach. Do you feel safer? If you were a suicide-killer, would you feel thwarted or deterred?


Why do we fail to detect or defeat the guilty, and why do we do so well at collective punishment of the innocent? The answer to the first question is: Because we can't -- or won't. The answer to the second question is: Because we can. The fault here is not just with our endlessly incompetent security services, who give the benefit of the doubt to people who should have been arrested long ago or at least had their visas and travel rights revoked. It is also with a public opinion that sheepishly bleats to be made to ''feel safe.'' The demand to satisfy that sad illusion can be met with relative ease if you pay enough people to stand around and stare significantly at the citizens' toothpaste.

The full column can be found here.

Edit 1/20/2010:   Steve Dahl's 1/13/10 column in the Chicago Tribune, Feeling naked and alone in the security line, repeats the question: are our reactive security measures making us more secure?

Who's The Security Risk?

So another dim bulb supposedly sent by al Qaeda has tried to blow up an American jet preparing to land in Detroit. Predictably, Homeland Security has "tightened" security rules in the aftermath. So far, we don't know much beyond the flight started in Nigeria, flew to Amsterdam, and then to Detroit. How this mope managed to get explosive materials on the flight remains to be seen, but the new rules we're likely to see will mostly make travel for the rest of us more difficult.

Am I missing something, or should we be doing things to make life difficult for al Qaeda and its hangers-on, rather than the vast majority of travelers? Some reports indicate this guy smuggled his explosives in his underwear from Nigeria. Now, everyone flying is going to be restricted to their seats for the last hour of their flight and won't be allowed to have anything on their laps during that time (including laptops and pillows). Presumably this would be to prevent the rest of us from setting fire to our pants (as this clown apparently did) while hidden by a blanket (or a laptop?). Wouldn't it make more sense to ensure that these jerks can't carry on explosives in their pants while the rest of us are carrying on laptops?

There's already been a report that U.S. officials were aware for two years that this particular Nigerian "could have terrorist ties." Despite that, he wasn't on any lists preventing him from taking commercial flights into the U.S. What's the point in knowing of potential terrorists if you don't think it's worth keeping them out of the U.S.?

What's wrong with this picture? If the Nigerian airport is unable or unwilling to adequately screen passengers leaving the country, wouldn't it make sense to prohibit flights originating there to land here? And if the passengers on this flight were also screened at the Amsterdam airport (which supposedly has a "good reputation for security"), what on earth happened?

In the meantime, the rest of the traveling public will be subject to more ineffective inconvenience and discomfort while flying. Bring on high speed rail service.

EDIT (12/29/09): As usual, Andy Borowitz gets to the heart of the matter with his "Department of Homeland Security Issues Terrorist ID Cards" article.

Anti-rape Amendment Signed Into Law

Back in October, I wrote about Jon Stewart's lampooning of Republican Senators who had voted against a Defense Dept. bill to ban contractors from restricting employee rights to go to court over workplace discrimination, including workplace rape.

Well, the legislation introduced by freshman Senator Al Franken was eventually passed and has now been signed into law by the President. You can read about it at ThinkProgress.org. There are also links to articles about how the Republicans were startled that Americans were unhappy with their votes against the measure.

Go figure.

Welcome To The New Dark Age

Two newspaper articles this week highlight a growing problem: lots of people with opinions, but not necessarily much information. One is a local story and the other is a global one. And underlying this issue is the fact that a growing number of organizations, both mass media outlets (newspapers, television, and their web presences) and what I'll call non-media (everything else), feel compelled to give voice to every "Tom, Dick, and Harry" out there. And some are way out there.

The AP article starts by talking about the shouting going on at the climate change conference in Denmark this week. The author points out that there is little of traditional debate left in the mix, with both sides largely shouting at each other, beating each other with opinions. Facts, and science, are left in the dust. "And public debate shifts from the provable and the empirical toward the spectacle of argument."

There has long been a bias on the part of the public against intellectuals and science, and some feel this was because the public simply didn't trust intellectuals and scientists. This carries over to public perception of intelligence in general, and spawned those bumper stickers that read "My kid can beat up your honor role student." The pursuit of mediocrity at best.

The spawn of the Internet has made things even worse. Our electronic communications encourage the expression of opinions, whether or not the opinions are based even a little bit on fact. Facts and information are kicked to the curb in favor of "beliefs" and judgments, and truth is irrelevant.

"What you have is the (presumption) of expertise by ordinary people who feel their opinions are as valuable as anybody else's. And at the same time, you have experts behaving like gods beyond what they know," says Frank Furedi, a sociologist at the University of Kent and author of "Where Have All the Intellectuals Gone?"

The second article is a story about a library in the Chicago suburbs that implemented a new online catalog of its holdings. Part of the new software provided for patrons to "tag" books "with terms they think other readers might find useful." All patrons have to do is sign up with a user name and email address and they can tag to their heart's content. The "news" in this case is that someone tagged the library's collection of Anne Coulter's books with the term "hate speech." This in turn, made another patron very upset. The upset patron felt that the library was letting people make "political statements" on the library's site and felt that was wrong. The library doesn't closely monitor the tagging and will only remove tags that are "explicit materials or racial slurs."

My question is why does the library feel it's a good idea to have patron tagging of books in their online catalog? Just because the new software enables this, what point is served? Does the library really thing it's a good idea for patrons to peruse one or two word "tags" in order to decide if they want to read a particular book? Not only is this not encouraging critical thinking skills, it's pandering to the lowest denominator. Other libraries allow tagging, but require the submitter to also provide a book review, which might at least be an indication the commenter actually read the book.

What makes a patron qualified to recommend or criticize a book or author with word tags? What makes a newspaper article reader qualified to expound about why the article is all wrong? What qualifications do either bring to the table?

My 11/22/09 post also dealt with this issue of ignorant opinions and news outlets.

The ignorant comments of the public after news articles (about ignorant comments of politicians) are even more worrisome than the politicians' statements. The anonymous public vitriol tends to discourage rational discussion, and is little more than online bullying. For an excellent post on what's wrong with the public comment sections of news related web sites, read Steve Dahl's excellent 11/11/09 article "Everybody is a know-it-all these days."

This issue is not going away and I remain convinced that society needs to find a way back to the process of debate based on facts. We need to abandon our apparently growing penchant for encouraging ignorant shouting by people unconcerned with knowing anything about the topic at hand. I'm not very hopeful.

Greil Marcus, an American cultural historian and co-author of "A New Literary History of America," remembers watching TV in the 1950s, "when there were all these TV dramas about science vs. religion." And, he says, "science always won."

No more, Marcus says. Instead, cacophony now prevails and the right to be heard trumps what is being said. "Welcome to the new Dark Ages," he says.

Climate Change Links

Added some new links to climate change articles. One is from the BBC and consists of a slideshow on how residents are adapting to climate changes (flooding) in Vietnam. Another is an article from Discover Magazine investigating whether the core of the Antarctic icepack is melting.

Montana? Who Knew?

Who knew that there once was a fairly large Jewish population in Montana? In the 19th century, Helena had a synagogue that seated 500 people. This article is about the fact that today there are three Rabbis in Montana. The story deals with a problem with the Helena police department's Israeli trained police dog, named named Miky:

Miky, pronounced Mikey, is in a Diaspora of his own. He was born in an animal shelter in Holland and shipped as a puppy to Israel, where he was trained by the Israeli Defense Forces to sniff out explosives. Then one day, Miky got a plane ticket to America. Rather than spend the standard $20,000 on a bomb dog, the Helena Police Department had shopped around and discovered that it could import a surplus bomb dog from the Israeli forces for the price of the flight. So Miky came to his new home in Helena, to join the police force.

The problem, the officer explained, was that Miky had been trained entirely in Hebrew.

You can read the rest of the story and learn how one of the state's three Rabbis is helping out with Miky and teaching his handler how to correctly pronounce the pooch's commands.

Thoughts for the Day

My friend Pat sent me these and I thought they were both insightful and hilarious! Hope you enjoy.

1. I think part of a best friend's job should be to immediately clear your computer history if you die.
2. Nothing sucks more than that moment during an argument when you realize you're wrong.
3. I totally take back all those times I didn't want to nap when I was younger.
4. There is great need for a sarcasm font.
5. How the hell are you supposed to fold a fitted sheet?
6. Was learning cursive really necessary?
7. Map Quest really needs to start their directions on #5. I'm pretty sure I know how to get out of my neighborhood.
8. Obituaries would be a lot more interesting if they told you how the person died.
9. I can't remember the last time I wasn't at least kind of tired.
10. Bad decisions make good stories.
11. You never know when it will strike, but there comes a moment at work when you know that you just aren't going to do anything productive for the rest of the day.
12. Can we all just agree to ignore whatever comes after Blue Ray? I don't want to have to restart my collection...again.
13. I'm always slightly terrified when I exit out of Word and it asks me if I want to save any changes to my ten-page research paper that I swear I did not make any changes to.
14. "Do not machine wash or tumble dry" means I will never wash this thing I have-- ever.
15. I hate when I just miss a call by the last ring (Hello? Hello? Damn it!), but when I immediately call back, it rings nine times and goes to voicemail. What'd you do after I didn't answer? Drop the phone and run away?
16. I hate leaving my house confident and looking good and then not seeing anyone of importance the entire day. What a waste.
17. I keep some people's phone numbers in my phone just so I know not to answer when they call.
18. My 4-year old son asked me in the car the other day "Dad what would happen if you ran over a ninja?" How the hell do I respond to that?
19. I think the freezer deserves a light as well..
20. I disagree with Kay Jewelers. I would bet, on any given Friday or Saturday night, more kisses begin with Bud Light than with a Kay jeweler product.

Climate Change Links

I have run into an annoying number of people lately who still don't "believe" that global warming is happening, or that humans are largely responsible for it. I doubt that there's any way to convince them to read the research, since they've apparently already passed up that opportunity numerous times. The information is out there; for some reason, some people would rather dismiss it as some sort of "liberal conspiracy" or a disguised attack on "our liberties."

Regardless of whether you accept that the human dependency on fossil fuels since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution is the culprit, it seems to me that denying that there is a problem is just plain nonsense. Whatever is causing the temperature increase, it's effecting us and our world, and in some very scary ways. Doing nothing would not seem to be an option. Science tells us that there have been at least 5 major extinctions in the past. The difference now is that humans are aware (allegedly) of their surroundings, their impact on the environment, and have some ability to change how they interact with the environment. The dinosaurs weren't and didn't.

I've decided to start collecting links to various online resources that cover the subject of global warming, climate change, or whatever other label may apply. I'm putting the links in a section at the bottom of the blog titled "Links About Climate Change - Especially For Those Who Don't "Believe" In Global Warming." Hopefully, it may be useful to those who are interested enough to read up on the topic. I don't plan to include any technical articles, because they tend to be pretty obtuse and hard to follow. I'd welcome comments as well as other links you may come across.

The first few links are from some Marketplace.org radio broadcasts and Discover Magazine. They present specific examples of how fossil fuels have raised temperatures with unexpected results and how CO2 (from fossil fuels) may be damaging our oceans more than anyone foresaw.