Can anyone enlighten us on the snowglobe menace?

We note again that there is not a damn thing that makes sense about any of the TSA regs that have gone into effect since 9/11, and that they probably make us LESS safe. Binary explosives of the sort thought to be planned for the London non-attack-attack won’t work; nail files aren’t dangerous; the ID requirement is for the airlines, not security. It’s all bullshit, and nobody in a position to change anything cares. Hell, most citizens don’t care; they’re fat and happy and complacent, and naively assume this theater makes us safer.

And people wonder why we’re misanthropic.

From the LA Times:

Today, Hacienda Napoles is in ruins, taken over by jungle foliage and bats. The sprawling Spanish-style mansion has been gutted, scavenged by treasure hunters looking for stashes of gold and cash buried under the floors. Escobar is long gone, cut down in a hail of police gunfire.

But the hippos are still here.

The military locked up a whistleblower for 97 days in a maximum security facility in Iraq.

One night in mid-April, the steel door clanked shut on detainee No. 200343 at Camp Cropper, the United States military’s maximum-security detention site in Baghdad.

American guards arrived at the man’s cell periodically over the next several days, shackled his hands and feet, blindfolded him and took him to a padded room for interrogation, the detainee said. After an hour or two, he was returned to his cell, fatigued but unable to sleep.

The fluorescent lights in his cell were never turned off, he said. At most hours, heavy metal or country music blared in the corridor. He said he was rousted at random times without explanation and made to stand in his cell. Even lying down, he said, he was kept from covering his face to block out the light, noise and cold. And when he was released after 97 days he was exhausted, depressed and scared.

Detainee 200343 was among thousands of people who have been held and released by the American military in Iraq, and his account of his ordeal has provided one of the few detailed views of the Pentagon’s detention operations since the abuse scandals at Abu Ghraib. Yet in many respects his case is unusual.

The detainee was Donald Vance, a 29-year-old Navy veteran from Chicago who went to Iraq as a security contractor. He wound up as a whistle-blower, passing information to the F.B.I. about suspicious activities at the Iraqi security firm where he worked, including what he said was possible illegal weapons trading.

But when American soldiers raided the company at his urging, Mr. Vance and another American who worked there were detained as suspects by the military, which was unaware that Mr. Vance was an informer, according to officials and military documents.

They did this to an American citizen who could not have been more emphatically a good guy. And he had virtually no recourse. Trusting people in power is never a good idea; they need oversight, which is why we have a system of checks and balances in our government. This administration has sought from the very first to dismantle these failsafes and create an imperial presidency; stories like Vance’s are the inevitable result.

(Local PDF because the NYT links rot.)

Over the weekend, a couple NFL records were broken. Most famously, Brett Favre broke Dan Marino’s career passing completion record (4,974 and counting), which is pretty cool. However, a sexier-sounding record fell this weekend, too: Most Career Points.

You’d sort of think this would be a running back or a receiver, but no, not really: it’s a kicker. Morten Andersen (perhaps the only Dane in the game) of the Atlanta Falcons took the title on Saturday night with two extra points against the Cowboys. Andersen, who is forty fucking six years old, now has 2,435 points in his 24-year career, edging past the former record-holder, Gary Anderson.

Andersen had previously broken another of the prior Anderson’s records last week, when he kicked his 538th career field goal. He’s 538 for 679 on field goals, and 821 of 831 on PATs. Also, he’s old enough to have fathered the last few seasons’ rookies, which is just cool.

Continental is apparently in talks to merge with United, according to the Wall Street Journal (registration required; AP blurb here).

Continental typically ranks very highly in terms of customer service, on time performance, perqs, etc. They’re the only major not to hit serious trouble after 9/11 (Southwest, while bigger, is not usually called a “major” for some reason). United, on the other hand, is infamous for their customer-hostile behavior, baggage problems, and performance in virtually every category. But they’re big, so there’s that. Every single time we’ve flown on an airline that isn’t Southwest or Continental, we’ve had some sort of problem — lost or delayed baggage, cancelled flight, overbook, rude employees, something.

If this goes through, we suspect we’ll be on Southwest a hell of a lot more.

From the Onion: BCS Determines No Team Worthy Of Facing Ohio State In Championship Game:

COLUMBUS, OH — In what many BCS officials are citing as “proof that their flawless system indeed works,” no Division 1-A college football team was found to possess the sheer excellence required to face Ohio State, the No. 1 ranked team since the season began, in this year’s BCS Championship game.

[…]

Florida Gators head coach Urban Meyer agreed with [Michigan head coach Lloyd] Carr, saying that even if his team had been offered a chance to play Ohio State, he may not have taken it.

“We don’t deserve to play Ohio State. Period,” Meyer said, adding that though Florida had a tough schedule, being the SEC champion was not the same thing as being Ohio State. “Every coach that I know voted for Ohio State in the coaches’ poll, or at least had them second after their own team. In any case, I can certainly see why no one who votes in the BCS wants the national championship to be decided by a mere football game.”

All coaches interviewed supported Meyer’s claim, with the notable exception of Notre Dame head coach Charlie Weis, who said that despite his team’s two losses, weak schedule, and unremarkable defense, he still felt in his heart that Notre Dame deserved a chance at the title — a feeling that, according to a BCS official who wished to remain anonymous, was not completely overruled.

“First of all, I should note that although Notre Dame is an independent, and a highly regarded independent at that, it does not have its own special set of rules as far as determining its football team’s rankings,” the official said. “Instead, we use a special set of mathematical algorithms to determine its football team’s rankings, which the BCS specifically determines only after ranking all the other teams. And though I shouldn’t say this, we — er, the computer — would have dearly loved to have seen Notre Dame in the championship.”

Perfect.

Pinochet is dead. More here and here. Our government supported him. Aren’t you proud?