Dec. 29, 2009, 3:37 p.m.
I just read an excellent article on Gizmondo about the recent terrorist attack and the TSA's response to it.
The TSA isn't saving lives. We, the passengers, are saving our own. Since its inception, the TSA has been structured in such a way as to prevent specific terror scenarios, attempting to disrupt a handful of insanely specific tactics, while continuing to disenfranchise and demoralize the citizens who are actually doing the work that a billion-dollar government agency—an agency that received an additional $128 million just this year for new checkpoint explosive screening technology—has failed to do.
I totally agree with the article. The main thrust of the TSA has been a complete joke in my mind. I believe that terrorists are passionately crazy people. They are the kind of people that really can make nightmares into reality. That said, trying to stay a step ahead of them is madness. There are an infinite number of ways a terrorist could attack a plane ride and nobody can keep anyone safe from them all.
Bag Check
Where is one supposed to draw the line then? Do we keep escalating the security measures until we end up in shackles like Mr. Cage in Con Air?
conair
Posted via email from Ian's posterous
Dec. 29, 2009, 3:37 p.m.
I just read an excellent article on Gizmondo about the recent terrorist attack and the TSA's response to it.
The TSA isn't saving lives. We, the passengers, are saving our own. Since its inception, the TSA has been structured in such a way as to prevent specific terror scenarios, attempting to disrupt a handful of insanely specific tactics, while continuing to disenfranchise and demoralize the citizens who are actually doing the work that a billion-dollar government agency—an agency that received an additional $128 million just this year for new checkpoint explosive screening technology—has failed to do.
I totally agree with the article. The main thrust of the TSA has been a complete joke in my mind. I believe that terrorists are passionately crazy people. They are the kind of people that really can make nightmares into reality. That said, trying to stay a step ahead of them is madness. There are an infinite number of ways a terrorist could attack a plane ride and nobody can keep anyone safe from them all.
Bag Check
Where is one supposed to draw the line then? Do we keep escalating the security measures until we end up in shackles like Mr. Cage in Con Air?
conair
Posted via email from Ian's posterous
Dec. 24, 2009, 3:57 p.m.
A while ago I started keeping a journal. Except it really isn't a journal in the normal sense. It may look a lot like one, it is a big notebook and each page has the date on it. Some pages have more than one date and a lot of them are technical musings about designing my bike maps web app. I think about it as a journal produced by a 'left brain' thinker. Everything is logical and well organized. I've got the date that every page was edited, headings, and text fields. It is a far cry from the journals all the girls I knew in middle school kept, the ones filled with poetry and deeply personal dark narritive. My journal is more like a technical lab book. If you want to reproduce the experiment titled 'Ian B Harper' here are the steps I went through. Materials are available upon request.
I started the journal as a way to put some things out of my head. When the thought train is about to derail write it all down and hop abord another. Today I'm in Vancouver visiting my folks and I left the journal up in Bellingham. So this will have to do as a substitute.
I've got a lit of ideas swirling around in my head for a good reason. Today I went a little nuts managing all my web 2.0 accounts. I changed my wordpress blog from a seo tool to a personal blog with an seo bonus. I integrated that blog into my posterous blog which posts to posterous, Twitter, my facebook profile, and picasa. Not to mention that my personal blog shows up as an rss feed on my facebook profile as well. Yikes what a mess!
The idea is to only send posts to posterous so I don't have to worry about managing all the different accounts. That is a lifesaver and really the major reason why I have all the accounts.
Before today I thought I had a pretty good handle on the Internet but now I realize I'm just looking at the tip of the iceburg.
Sent from my iPod
Posted via email from Ian's posterous
Dec. 24, 2009, 3:57 p.m.
A while ago I started keeping a journal. Except it really isn't a journal in the normal sense. It may look a lot like one, it is a big notebook and each page has the date on it. Some pages have more than one date and a lot of them are technical musings about designing my bike maps web app. I think about it as a journal produced by a 'left brain' thinker. Everything is logical and well organized. I've got the date that every page was edited, headings, and text fields. It is a far cry from the journals all the girls I knew in middle school kept, the ones filled with poetry and deeply personal dark narritive. My journal is more like a technical lab book. If you want to reproduce the experiment titled 'Ian B Harper' here are the steps I went through. Materials are available upon request.
I started the journal as a way to put some things out of my head. When the thought train is about to derail write it all down and hop abord another. Today I'm in Vancouver visiting my folks and I left the journal up in Bellingham. So this will have to do as a substitute.
I've got a lit of ideas swirling around in my head for a good reason. Today I went a little nuts managing all my web 2.0 accounts. I changed my wordpress blog from a seo tool to a personal blog with an seo bonus. I integrated that blog into my posterous blog which posts to posterous, Twitter, my facebook profile, and picasa. Not to mention that my personal blog shows up as an rss feed on my facebook profile as well. Yikes what a mess!
The idea is to only send posts to posterous so I don't have to worry about managing all the different accounts. That is a lifesaver and really the major reason why I have all the accounts.
Before today I thought I had a pretty good handle on the Internet but now I realize I'm just looking at the tip of the iceburg.
Sent from my iPod
Posted via email from Ian's posterous