We've had quite a dry stretch lately.
Just look at these photos of the Robeson-Vandaren Dam before and after Hanna.
Jon Stewart of The Daily Show takes aim at the hypocrisy of the Republican politicians and the conservative pundits.
The thugs, aka police, of St. Paul have arrested journalist Amy Goodman.
Friedrich Schiller famously wrote: "Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens." ("Against stupidity the gods themselves contend in vain.")
Which pretty much sums up the Transportation Security Administration (TSA).
Happily, I no longer have to fly, so I haven't been affected by the idiots in charge of airport security.
Here is Bruce Schneier explaining how to fly, even if you are on the no-fly list:
How to fly, even if you are on the no-fly list: Buy a ticket in some innocent person's name. At home, before your flight, check in online and print out your boarding pass. Then, save that web page as a PDF and use Adobe Acrobat to change the name on the boarding pass to your own. Print it again. At the airport, use the fake boarding pass and your valid ID to get through security. At the gate, use the real boarding pass in the fake name to board your flight.
The problem is that it is unverified passenger names that get checked against the no-fly list. At security checkpoints, the TSA just matches IDs to whatever is printed on the boarding passes. The airline checks boarding passes against tickets when people board the plane. But because no one checks ticketed names against IDs, the security breaks down.
This vulnerability isn't new. It isn't even subtle. I first wrote about it in 2006. I asked Kip Hawley, who runs the TSA, about it in 2007. Today, any terrorist smart enough to Google "print your own boarding pass" can bypass the no-fly list.
This gaping security hole would bother me more if the very idea of a no-fly list weren't so ineffective. The system is based on the faulty notion that the feds have this master list of terrorists, and all we have to do is keep the people on the list off the planes.
That's just not true. The no-fly list -- a list of people so dangerous they are not allowed to fly yet so innocent we can't arrest them -- and the less dangerous "watch list" contain a combined 1 million names representing the identities and aliases of an estimated 400,000 people. There aren't that many terrorists out there; if there were, we would be feeling their effects.
Almost all of the people stopped by the no-fly list are false positives. It catches innocents such as Ted Kennedy, whose name is similar to someone's on the list, and Islam Yusuf (formerly Cat Stevens), who was on the list but no one knew why.
[...]
But even if these lists were complete and accurate, they wouldn't work. Timothy McVeigh, the Unabomber, the D.C. snipers, the London subway bombers and most of the 9/11 terrorists weren't on any list before they committed their terrorist acts. And if a terrorist wants to know if he's on a list, the TSA has approved a convenient, $100 service that allows him to figure it out: the Clear program, which issues IDs to "trusted travelers" to speed them through security lines. Just apply for a Clear card; if you get one, you're not on the list.
In the end, the photo ID requirement is based on the myth that we can somehow correlate identity with intent. We can't. And instead of wasting money trying, we would be far safer as a nation if we invested in intelligence, investigation and emergency response -- security measures that aren't based on a guess about a terrorist target or tactic.
That's the TSA: Not doing the right things. Not even doing right the things it does.
Watching Obama's speech on YouTube. He's saying the right things, much more people-oriented. He might earn my respect yet.
Today I found a grasshopper resting on a yellow begonia.
Do I need to say anything more?
Click on the images to enlarge.
When I stepped out my front door a bit ago to gather the mail, I saw Hobart (the groundhog that lives on my property) was there eating an apple.
Normally he bolts as soon as I open the door, but this time he just continued his munching, which allowed me to snap a few photos with my iPhone.
Alas, they didn't turn out too well, and for the same reason that Hobart didn't scamper away.
I was in the shade and he was blinded by the sun, so he couldn't see me.
I just realized, I haven't watched any of the Olympics coverage.
Hmmm...
I have a lot of books that I doubt that I'll ever read again, so I decided to try Amazon's reseller program. I offered two books for sale.
The first was a hard cover edition of a recent bestseller that is about to come out in paperback. My copy was in excellent condition, so I offered it at ten dollars, which was about four dollars below the next seller. The advantage of having the lowest price is that it appears at the top of the list.
The book sold within a couple hours.
Amazon provided a shipping label and packing list for me to print out; so I went to the Post Office this morning and mailed it off. Amazon even let me send an email to the buyer, to let her know that it was on its way.
Using standard shipping Amazon adds $3.99 to cover postage; that proved to be not enough. I ended up paying about five dollars to mail it; that included the cost of the mailer and a 75 cent charge to track the package.
So factoring in the mailing costs, after Amazon takes its cut, I will only clear five dollars on the sale.
The other book was a paperback edition of a book that is temporarily out of print. Some resellers on Amazon are asking well over a hundred dollars for it.
When I listed it, the lowest price was about 69 dollars. I offered my copy for $39.99.
This morning I saw that three of the other resellers had lowered their prices to $39.97, i.e., two cents below my price. Obviously they wanted the top spot on the list.
So I lowered my price to $34.99. Within an hour one of those guys lowered his price to two cents below mine.
Well, it didn't do him any good. It looks like my copy has already been sold!
