Today, we got a little amazed when we went to buy a memory card for our new phone, and spent $14.99 for a 1-gig card smaller than our pinkie nail. And then thought nothing of it.
Not that we’re not still bitter out our missing jetpacks and flying cars, though, dammit.
His Portrait of a Modern Terrorist as an Idiot is mandatory reading.
The recently publicized terrorist plot to blow up John F. Kennedy International Airport, like so many of the terrorist plots over the past few years, is a study in alarmism and incompetence: on the part of the terrorists, our government and the press.
Terrorism is a real threat, and one that needs to be addressed by appropriate means. But allowing ourselves to be terrorized by wannabe terrorists and unrealistic plots — and worse, allowing our essential freedoms to be lost by using them as an excuse — is wrong.
The alleged plan, to blow up JFK’s fuel tanks and a small segment of the 40-mile petroleum pipeline that supplies the airport, was ridiculous. The fuel tanks are thick-walled, making them hard to damage. The airport tanks are separated from the pipelines by cutoff valves, so even if a fire broke out at the tanks, it would not back up into the pipelines. And the pipeline couldn’t blow up in any case, since there’s no oxygen to aid combustion. Not that the terrorists ever got to the stage — or demonstrated that they could get there — where they actually obtained explosives. Or even a current map of the airport’s infrastructure.
But read what Russell Defreitas, the lead terrorist, had to say: “Anytime you hit Kennedy, it is the most hurtful thing to the United States. To hit John F. Kennedy, wow…. They love JFK — he’s like the man. If you hit that, the whole country will be in mourning. It’s like you can kill the man twice.”
If these are the terrorists we’re fighting, we’ve got a pretty incompetent enemy.
You couldn’t tell that from the press reports, though. “The devastation that would be caused had this plot succeeded is just unthinkable,” U.S. Attorney Roslynn R. Mauskopf said at a news conference, calling it “one of the most chilling plots imaginable.” Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pennsylvania) added, “It had the potential to be another 9/11.”
[…]
This isn’t the first time a bunch of incompetent terrorists with an infeasible plot have been painted by the media as poised to do all sorts of damage to America. In May we learned about a six-man plan to stage an attack on Fort Dix by getting in disguised as pizza deliverymen and shooting as many soldiers and Humvees as they could, then retreating without losses to fight again another day. Their plan, such as it was, went awry when they took a videotape of themselves at weapons practice to a store for duplication and transfer to DVD. The store clerk contacted the police, who in turn contacted the FBI. (Thank you to the video store clerk for not overreacting, and to the FBI agent for infiltrating the group.)
The “Miami 7,” caught last year for plotting — among other things — to blow up the Sears Tower, were another incompetent group: no weapons, no bombs, no expertise, no money and no operational skill. And don’t forget Iyman Faris, the Ohio trucker who was convicted in 2003 for the laughable plot to take out the Brooklyn Bridge with a blowtorch. At least he eventually decided that the plan was unlikely to succeed.
I don’t think these nut jobs, with their movie-plot threats, even deserve the moniker “terrorist.” But in this country, while you have to be competent to pull off a terrorist attack, you don’t have to be competent to cause terror. All you need to do is start plotting an attack and — regardless of whether or not you have a viable plan, weapons or even the faintest clue — the media will aid you in terrorizing the entire population.
[…]
So these people should be locked up … assuming they are actually guilty, that is. Despite the initial press frenzies, the actual details of the cases frequently turn out to be far less damning. Too often it’s unclear whether the defendants are actually guilty, or if the police created a crime where none existed before.
The JFK Airport plotters seem to have been egged on by an informant, a twice-convicted drug dealer. An FBI informant almost certainly pushed the Fort Dix plotters to do things they wouldn’t have ordinarily done. The Miami gang’s Sears Tower plot was suggested by an FBI undercover agent who infiltrated the group. And in 2003, it took an elaborate sting operation involving three countries to arrest an arms dealer for selling a surface-to-air missile to an ostensible Muslim extremist. Entrapment is a very real possibility in all of these cases.
The rest of them stink of exaggeration. Jose Padilla was not actually prepared to detonate a dirty bomb in the United States, despite histrionic administration claims to the contrary. Now that the trial is proceeding, the best the government can charge him with is conspiracy to murder, kidnap and maim, and it seems unlikely that the charges will stick. An alleged ringleader of the U.K. liquid bombers, Rashid Rauf, had charges of terrorism dropped for lack of evidence (of the 25 arrested, only 16 were charged). And now it seems like the JFK mastermind was more talk than action, too.
Remember the “Lackawanna Six,” those terrorists from upstate New York who pleaded guilty in 2003 to “providing support or resources to a foreign terrorist organization”? They entered their plea because they were threatened with being removed from the legal system altogether. We have no idea if they were actually guilty, or of what.
[…]
I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t have all the facts in any of these cases. None of us do. So let’s have some healthy skepticism. Skepticism when we read about these terrorist masterminds who were poised to kill thousands of people and do incalculable damage. Skepticism when we’re told that their arrest proves that we need to give away our own freedoms and liberties. And skepticism that those arrested are even guilty in the first place.
There is a real threat of terrorism. And while I’m all in favor of the terrorists’ continuing incompetence, I know that some will prove more capable. We need real security that doesn’t require us to guess the tactic or the target: intelligence and investigation — the very things that caught all these terrorist wannabes — and emergency response. But the “war on terror” rhetoric is more politics than rationality. We shouldn’t let the politics of fear make us less safe.
WORD. Seriously.
Once again, someone asks “how long before prosthetics can exceed original equipment?” It’s a valid question for Jamais Cascio, who’s just been fitted for hearing aids:
These aren’t just dumb amplifiers; they’re little digital signal processors, small enough to fit into the ear canal, and smart enough to know when to boost the input and when to leave it alone. They’re programmable, too (sadly, not by the end-user — programming requires an acoustic enclosure, not just a computer connection). And here’s where therapeutic augmentation starts to fuzz into enhancement: one of the program modes I’m considering would give me far better than normal hearing, allowing me to pick up distant conversations like I was standing right there…
I expect that, over the next decade, hearing aid technologies will have improved enough that most of the drawbacks will have been rectified, and I’ll have access to hearing capabilities better than ever before; over that same time, we may see biomedical advances that can fix deficient hearing, restoring perfectly functional natural hearing. Augmentation for therapy slides inexorably into augmentation for enhancement. Should I give up my better-than-human hearing to go back to a “natural” state?
How much longer are we going to put up with shit like this?
“I demanded to speak to a TSA [Transportation Security Administration] supervisor who asked me if the water in the sippy cup was ‘nursery water or other bottled water.’ I explained that the sippy cup water was filtered tap water. The sippy cup was seized as my son was pointing and crying for his cup. I asked if I could drink the water to get the cup back, and was advised that I would have to leave security and come back through with an empty cup in order to retain the cup. As I was escorted out of security by TSA and a police officer, I unscrewed the cup to drink the water, which accidentally spilled because I was so upset with the situation.
“At this point, I was detained against my will by the police officer and threatened to be arrested for endangering other passengers with the spilled 3 to 4 ounces of water. I was ordered to clean the water, so I got on my hands and knees while my son sat in his stroller with no shoes on since they were also screened and I had no time to put them back on his feet.
“I was ordered to apologize for the spilled water, and again threatened arrest. I was threatened several times with arrest while detained, and while three other police officers were called to the scene of the mother with the 19 month old. A total of four police officers and three TSA officers reported to the scene where I was being held against my will. I was also told that I should not disrespect the officer and could be arrested for this too. I apologized to the officer and she continued to detain me despite me telling her that I would miss my flight. The officer advised me that I should have thought about this before I ‘intentionally spilled the water!'”
Goatfuckers.
From yesterday’s briefing:
Helen Thomas: Are there any members of the Bush family or this administration in this war?
Tony Snow: Yes, the President. The President is in the war every day.
Thomas: Come on. That isn’t my question.
Snow: If you ask any President who is a Commander-in-Chief —
Thomas: On the front lines —
Snow: The President.
What a jackoff. Via TPM.
Best comic panel evar.
Software development is a terribly arcane art. Among the more advanced techniques is, of course, Abject-Oriented Programming.
Via MSNBC, but widely linked:
BOSTON — A 50-ton bowhead whale caught off the Alaskan coast last month had a weapon fragment embedded in its neck that showed it survived a similar hunt — more than a century ago.
Embedded deep under its blubber was a 3-1/2 inch arrow-shaped projectile that has given researchers insight into the whale’s age, estimated between 115 and 130 years old.
Twenty years later, we still don’t understand why there are cows in this video, but it’s still cool.
Two years ago, we wrote of Richard Yates, the least well-known of the postwar writers, and the only one who used to be our neighbor 16 years and a lifetime ago in Tuscaloosa. His most famous work, Revolutionary Road, may now find the audience it’s always deserved, as MeFi reports it’s becoming a film helmed by Sam Mendes.
A few years ago — say, before seeing The Departed — we’d have been discouraged by the casting, since it reunites Leo with Kate as the protagonist Wheelers. We’ve mellowed, though, and the once-annoying DiCaprio has matured a bit, so we remain optimistic.
Tonight, the Houston Bar Association is presenting an all-lawyer musical comedy called “Draculaw.”
Veronica Mars creator Rob Thomas (no, not this one) is reportedly in talks with DC to continue Veronica’s adventures in print, thereby allowing him to use currently-fallow 4th season storylines after all.
Hey, good enough for Joss Whedon is good enough for Veronica.
This inspires all sorts of awe for the sheer over-the-toppedness at work. Sure, it’s a 92-pound plywood box powered by a car battery, but it’s also got an 8-track deck, a cupholder, dual antennae, an internal FM hookup for your iPod, live cigarette lighters, and two conventional electrical outlets as well. We are not making this up. Don’t miss the video.
(From the makers of Wanky the Safety Cat.)
Two bits:
With Safari for Windows now available, you poor folks marooned on Windows no longer have any excuse. Pick Firefox or Safari, but for God’s sake quit using IE.
Webkit development on the iPhone doesn’t mollify us. It sounds like a pretty poor way to do “real” apps, like a hypothetical replacement email client, an SSH tool, etc. We’re still pretty happy we didn’t wait.
We’re really excited about Leopard, but October seems like a long time to wait.
More: Gizmodo has a long writeup on why the iPhone will be crippled by the lack of an SDK. It’s spot on.
Fear not! We’re fine! The long hiatus is all about “busy” and “travel;” we had to go see some weirdo get married over the weekend, which made it hard to catch up on Saturday. Rest assured we’ve got some posty goodness coming soon. In the meantime, here’s a tiny bit of dialog from a hung-over Saturday brunch:
Mrs. N: “You know, it IS possible for things to be shitty and fantastic at the same time.”
Mr. N: “Especially if you’re a coprophile.”
Later, we’ll also write about the most over-the-top wedding we’ve attended in a long while; perhaps the finest intro to the reception can be found in the fact that, upon entering the museum where said reception was held, we were confronted by the juxtaposition of Jesus, Juleps, and Sushi.
From CNN:
LOS ANGELES, California (AP) — Screaming and crying, Paris Hilton was escorted out of a courtroom and back to jail Friday after a judge ruled that she must serve out her entire 45-day sentence behind bars rather than in her Hollywood Hills home.
A Chinese newspaper clerk is in trouble for allowing a reference to the Tiananmen massacre in a classified ad. It wasn’t deliberate; as it happens, the clerk had never heard of the massacre, as state censorship of any reference to the event is profound and total, so the clerk had no idea what was special about “mothers of June 4.”
Check this out, from TED; Microsoft’s Blaise Aguera y Arcas demonstrates an interesting new way to use and manipulate photographs on the web:
The JFK airport “terror plot”, like the London liquid plot, turns out to be bullshit:
When U.S. Attorney Roslynn Mauskopf described the alleged terror plot to blow up Kennedy Airport as “one of the most chilling plots imaginable,” which might have caused “unthinkable” devastation, one law enforcement official said he cringed.
The plot, he knew, was never operational. The public had never been at risk. And the notion of blowing up the airport, let alone the borough of Queens, by exploding a fuel tank was in all likelihood a technical impossibility.
And now, with a portrait emerging of alleged mastermind Russell Defreitas as hapless and episodically homeless, and of co-conspirator Abdel Nur as a drug addict, Mauskopf’s initial characterizations seem more questionable — some go so far as to say hyped.
We love that Bloomberg is so honest in his assessment:
There are lots of threats to you in the world. There’s the threat of a heart attack for genetic reasons. You can’t sit there and worry about everything. Get a life. You have a much greater danger of being hit by lightning than being struck by a terrorist.
Achewood remains tops, but xkcd.com is pretty fucking fantastic. Here are two great examples:
So far we’ve avoided the whole Guitar Hero craze, but the 80s edition may well push us over the top. Like the best PS2 games, it’s actually possible for it to be a social endeavor, as opposed to a solitary one.
D-Day and the Battle of Normandy, perhaps the most significant day of the 20th century, began 63 years ago today.
We just caught the tail end of Leaving Las Vegas on IFC, and were amazed to see the following appeared in the film. We figure we need to see the whole thing again just to verify:
How to Make Thermite. This is just the sort of thing we’d have done in high school, if there’d been a public Internet back then. Of course, we’d have used better music.
(Mind the annoying ad.)
Godspeed, Tucker. Send your wishes to Mike and Anne.
Please get for us this clock.
Kohler’s advertising people are very, very strange. On the upside, the microdemographic of “people turned on by hot plumbers flushing objects not meant to be flushed” will be very, very pleased.
On Saturday, we finally broke down and got a new phone, which meant we also needed a new case. These things are too damned expensive to NOT have some kind of protection on the screen. The folks at Sena Cases did a fine job with the case on our old Treo, so we went over to their site and ended up ordering a very similar case for the 8525. Again, on SATURDAY. As we’re cheap, we also opted for the “fast, but US Mail” delivery option.
It arrived today.
(More on the migration from Palm to WinMo later.)
Archeologist Tired of Unearthing Unspeakable Ancient Evils:
“It’s true, I’ve got to stop reading the inscriptions on ancient door seals out loud,” Whitson said. “I also need to quit dusting off medallions set into strange sarcophagi, allowing the light to hit them for the first time in centuries. And replacing the jewels that have fallen from the foreheads of ancient frog-deity statues—that’s just bad archaeological practice.”