Yogi Bear in 3D/IMAX

No.

These folks are to be saluted.

Billionaires wanting to do their share and recognizing the value of a society in which we all benefit.

Bill Moyers

Adam Savage in SEA: WTF, TSA?

snOMG

Sure, there're lots of vids like this, but this one is but a few blocks away: (via Slog)

Print and share

Here's a good (PDF) to print and distribute if you're flying soon.

"The current practice of disparaging the science and the scientists only clouds our understanding and delays a solution."

A conservative Republican's take on the party's line on climate change.

Need a rejoinder to Fox News? Shakespeare wrote it.

King Lear, Act 3, Scene 2:

Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! rage! blow!
You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout
Till you have drenched our steeples, drowned the cocks!
You sulphurous and thought-executing fires,
Vaunt-couriers to oak-cleaving thunderbolts,
Singe my white head! And thou, all-shaking thunder,
Strike flat the thick rotundity o' the world!
Crack nature's molds, all germens spill at once
That make ingrateful man!

Is the TSA now officially at least as dangerous as the terrorists?

I know that various aspects of this story have been everywhere the past two days. (My original post on it was before the storm of stories.)

Security expert Bruce Schneier (who coined the term "Security Theater") has the most comprehensive wrap up of all the various stories on his site. Boing Boing's Xeni Jardin has been doing a Yeoman's job, as have so many others.

However, there's one point that I haven't seen explored (though Schneier does touch on it.) Let me start with a few observations to set the groundwork.

• Terrorists killed thousands on American soil.
• The President created the Department of Homeland Defense, which took over the Transportation Security Administration.
• The purpose of the TSA is to make the US safer.

Here's part of the story that's been on most major media in reaction to the implementation of the new scanners (emphasis mine):

Peter Rez, a physics professor at Arizona State University in Tempe, did his own calculations and found the exposure to be about one-fiftieth to one-hundredth the amount of a standard chest X-ray. He calculated the risk of getting cancer from a single scan at about 1 in 30 million, "which puts it somewhat less than being killed by being struck by lightning in any one year," he told me.
While the risk of getting a fatal cancer from the screening is minuscule, it's about equal to the probability that an airplane will get blown up by a terrorist, he added. "So my view is there is not a case to be made for deploying them to prevent such a low probability event."

I'm pretty sure the TSA itself cited this data as well, but I can't find a link right now. However, this information and these quotes have been widely reported. Of course, that doesn't make it true, but let's take it at its face value.

From this, we can assume that flying on a plane in the US, the TSA's scanners (assuming you do not opt out of them) are as dangerous, long term, as the terrorists. The scientists presenting this data seem to be framing this as a good thing.

If we go back to the groundwork above, the TSA is charged with making us safer. As of the implementation of this new screening procedure, the TSA is now as dangerous as the terrorists. How is that making us safer?

My conclusion is the choice to fly in the US is now a question of "which is more likely to kill me, terrorists or the TSA?" The answer is now both.

Crosspost

(This is an experiment in crossposting.)

  TSA stories are a dime a dozen today. This one has some interesting facts you can put together with all the others. 800M people fly every year in US. TSA says risk of harm from radiation is 1/30M. So your risk is a mere 3.75%.

I suggest wearing a kilt and go for the groping.

Airport body scanners may pose cancer risk, scientists say

www.sun-sentinel.com

As Americans grow increasingly concerned by the privacy implications of what many are calling "naked" body scanners at the nation's airports, U.S. scientists are offering even more reason for worry.

about an hour ago · Friends Only · · Comment · Share

• • 

    Joe Gallagher Again, there's too much info out there today, but this Slog is informative also: http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2010/11/17/opt-out-of-backscatter-x-ray-whole-body-scanners

    27 minutes ago ·
  • 

    Joe Gallagher Last comment on this (for now): The science/tech info is good to have, but misses the point that the larger issue is that we're being desensitized to the fact that we're easily ceding our privacy (now featuring your genitalia!) for some ineffective, farcical Security Theater.

    4 minutes ago ·

Words fail.

Nomenclature

Teabaggers, Tea Partiers, Patriot Movementarians, Birthers, Tenthers...

I've said it before, but please make an effort to agree to your own self-appointed name.

Teabaggers: This is what they themselves called their movement initially, until they found out it was a reference to something dirty. So I get excoriated and dismissed if I use that term.

Tea Partiers: This self-anointed term by some of the movement is not universally adopted, and they also are offended by the Alice in Wonderland/Mad Hatter implications, or the fact that it sounds like a child's game with stuffed animals. So I get excoriated and dismissed if I use that term.

Patriots: An obvious hypocrisy to the point that the more moderate-ish movementarians are offended by its militia implications. Not the good kind of militias, but the blowing-up-government-buildings and training-in-the-woods-to-fight-the-feds kind. So I get excoriated and dismissed if I use that term.

This actually could be an (accidental) strategy. Call your movement something; promulgate it; and when others with differing views use it, excoriate and dismiss them. Seems like it's a good way to self-perpetuate eternal outrage.

I give up.

I propose we just call them what they are: Neo-Birchers.

One of the reasons I avoid flying.

Via Glenn Greenwald, who had it forwarded to him by someone else:



Glenn also points to Digby:

These routine insults, humiliations and suspensions of human dignity are training us to submit to the police state. I noticed this morning that in all the blathering about tax cuts and deficits, not one person brought up Homeland Security. That bloated budget is going to get bigger and bigger and bigger and if you build it they will use it. And the results of that are obvious.

It'd be hard add much to this other than Glenn's "Are you angry yet?" But here's a more measured assessment. (Here's a snippet:)

The U.S. Travel Association, in fact, is worried that the more onerous screening process will discourage air travel.

“The system is broken, it’s extremely flawed and it’s absurd that we all sit back and say we can’t do anything about it,” said Geoff Freeman, executive vice president of the association.

Almost forgot: November 24 is national Opt-out Day in protest. Unfortunately, the new fondling procedures make this option as egregious as the naked-and-irradiating "back scatter" body scanners.

Enjoy your flight.

Write Your Principal

It's a good idea. And it complements nicely Dan Savage's It Gets Better Project.

Here's my letter:

Mr. Kozlowski,

I graduated from Brother Rice in 1982. I feel I got a good foundation, and went on to get a BA with honors from Kalamazoo College, and did my graduate work at Southern Methodist University (they only accepted three people in my program that year.) Over the past decade, I've held great positions at Microsoft, Amazon.com, and working for myself.

I only bore you with this minutiae because I actually had the opportunities to experience them. As you know, we've had a spate of suicides nationally due to middle and high school bullying. I'm writing to find out what Brother Rice is doing to confront this.

As a student, I was certainly bullied and beaten (I was a nerd before it was fashionable.) The despair of these students, who will never have the opportunities I have had, resonates with me. I hope it does with you, too.

Any response would be appreciated. Thank you for taking the time to read this.

--Joe Gallagher

UPDATE: The WYP site featured my letter on their homepage.

Not sure what Subaru's ad agency was thinking with this...

Jaunty tune, no doubt. But did they read or understand the lyrics? Or the fact that the frontman is:

Somehow reminiscent of Carnival Cruises using Iggy Pop's heroin-themed "Lust for life" for their ads.

Neology

Political types sometimes exaggerate, mislead and flat-out lie. I get it. Happens on both sides, or so the narrative goes. But frankly, one side has this down to a fine art.

Latest example: calling the Health Care Reform legislation "Health Spending".

But the fact is, if our primary legislative goals are to repeal and replace the health spending bill; to end the bailouts; cut spending; and shrink the size and scope of government, the only way to do all these things it is to put someone in the White House who won’t veto any of these things.

Other examples abound.

• Death Panels
• Death Tax
• Rendition / "Tough" Interrogation

And of course:
H1N1

Certainly, there was recently the "refutiate" Twitter typo by Sarah Palin (or more precisely, whomever writes her Tweets.) I give her a pass on this, because everyone knew what she meant, and it was amusing.

In contrast to Ms Palin's typo, the other neologisms are politically calculated to mean the opposite of what they actually say. And consistently, they are meant to inspire fear.

Fearmongers today often invoke Thomas Jefferson's quote "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots & tyrants". Those fearmongers apparently did not read the entire letter, because the main point of the essay, unlike the bumper-sticker out-of context quote, argues that it's imperative for a democracy to have a well-informed populace. The neologisms above are precisely what Jefferson was arguing against.*

Perhaps this snippet from the same essay would be more appropriate: "Wonderful is the effect of impudent & persevering lying."

* (Not to worry, the conservative school boards are making sure every reference to Jefferson is removed from their history books.)

On Global Warming

A conversation