Spurrier’s Gamecocks dropped their second Vandy game in a row last night. Vanderbilt is now 2-0.
Monthly Archives: September 2008
Dept. of Bollocks
We reckon the pollsters are just tired of the ongoing SEC dominance, and as a consequence voted their wishes instead of their consciences this week: After a pair of blowout wins, somehow USC is magically ranked at 1, ahead of Georgia. In the preseason poll, the perennially-overrated Trojans were stuck at #3 (AP, behind Georgia and Ohio State, who also has no business that high) or #2 (ESPN, just behind UGa).
Actually, we’re being a little sarcastic; both Georgia and Ohio State played creampuff non-BCS teams, while USC played a BCS creampuff (ACC’s Virginia, who we suppose does have a football team — but a 52-7 win, how “quality” can they be?). So we guess there’s at least some logic. What DEFIES logic is that some of the pollsters are still voting for Ohio State as number one. WTF, people? Anyway, Georgia will likely move up as their “real” schedule picks up and they play more quality opponents (including a 4-week run of Spurrier’s Gamecocks followed by 3 ranked teams starting on 9/13). Their slate is as tough as anybody’s, given that they have to play in the SEC.
In other news, Alabama jumps mightily on the strength of the Clemson win: USAToday has them at 17 and the AP at 13. Clemson drops off the AP, and clings to 22 on the USAT. (Clemson and Illinois are the only 0-1 squads on the rankings.)
Look for NickyLou to bag the next two easily, hopefully: he meets Tulane and Western Kentucky in the next two weeks before opening the conference schedule against Arkansas a week after that. With a little look and more SabanSauce, the Tide could be 4-0 going into the Georgia game on the 27th. Kentucky and Mississippi follow with what ought to be gimmes before Tennessee (usually anybody’s game, but the Tide is waxing while Fulmer’s Vols wane), another should-be-easy with Arkansas State, and then the big LSU game on 11/8, more than 2 months away.
Bruce Nails TSA — AGAIN
In an LA Times op-ed, security expert Bruce Schneier rips the TSA a new one over the ID rules:
[T]he photo ID requirement is a joke. Anyone on the no-fly list can easily fly whenever he wants. Even worse, the whole concept of matching passenger names against a list of bad guys has negligible security value.
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.
[…]
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.
[…]
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.
Needless to say, the TSA has no intelligent answer to any of this. Their usual angle is “trust us; we know what we’re doing.” Frankly, we’ve never seen any evidence that’s true.
In a world…
Don LaFontaine is dead.
Ah, transparency
So, the Mythbusters were all set to do a segment on RFID security w/r/t credit cards — until the credit card companies got wind of it, lawyered up, and pressured Discovery to quash the bit. We’re sure that this makes the stupid RFID credit card implementations MUCH more secure, since everyone knows that security through obscurity is nearly foolproof.
Um. Wait.
The Onion, Yet Again
Cheney Waits Until Last Minute Again To Buy Sept. 11 Gifts. A bit:
Although Cheney himself has never received any Sept. 11 gifts, with the exception of a pair of silk pajamas from his wife and a second term in office, he insisted that he gets more joy from giving than receiving. According to Cheney, Sept. 11 is a time to reflect and give thanks for all the benefits and blessings 9/11 has given him in the past.
Twitter Treasure
A triptych of beauty from Merlin Mann:
Howlin’ Wolf sounds like everything that scared America in the 50s, except Russians, jews, and vaginas.
I’d enjoy a cable series where fictionalized Howlin’ Wolf, Capt. Beefheart, and Tom Waits live in a van and solve crimes. Maybe w/a monkey.
Oh, also? They’d have a band. And at the end of each episode, they’d sing a really weird song about morals and staying in school. Obviously.
Palin’s Policies
She thinks the Pledge of Allegience should be mandatory in school, since it was written by the founding fathers (er, no; it was written in 1892, and “under God” didn’t get added until the fifties), and would put creationism in schools. Lovely!