I almost never publish links posts. But I was really stuck when I read Radley Balko's Saturday Morning Links post because every one was awesome. Balko is not only one of the best bloggers out there, but a great journalist as well in a field of us pundits who put on pretensions of being pajama-clad investigators. So here are all of his morning links:
Legless frogs epidemic probably not caused by pollution, but by dragonfly nymphs with a jones for frogs' legs.
Obama administration will support indefinite detention of terror suspects without a trial; drops the news late in the evening on a summer Friday.
TSA detains man for comic book script. Kicker: Scropt was about a guy who gets wrongfully harassed by the government for writing fiction about terror attacks that came true.
Anyone who flies regularly and has not thought of at least five ways they could easily beat airport security isn't really trying. Jeffrey Goldberg actually tries a few:
Suspicious that the measures put in place after the attacks of September 11 to prevent further such attacks are almost entirely for show"”security theater is the term of art"”I have for some time now been testing, in modest ways, their effectiveness. Because the TSA's security regimen seems to be mainly thing-based"”most of its 44,500 airport officers are assigned to truffle through carry-on bags for things like guns, bombs, three-ounce tubes of anthrax, Crest toothpaste, nail clippers, Snapple, and so on"”I focused my efforts on bringing bad things through security in many different airports, primarily my home airport, Washington's Reagan National, the one situated approximately 17 feet from the Pentagon, but also in Los Angeles, New York, Miami, Chicago, and at the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton International Airport...
Schneier and I walked to the security checkpoint. "Counterterrorism in the airport is a show designed to make people feel better," he said. "Only two things have made flying safer: the reinforcement of cockpit doors, and the fact that passengers know now to resist hijackers." This assumes, of course, that al-Qaeda will target airplanes for hijacking, or target aviation at all. "We defend against what the terrorists did last week," Schneier said. He believes that the country would be just as safe as it is today if airport security were rolled back to pre-9/11
levels. "Spend the rest of your money on intelligence, investigations, and emergency response."
Though I have to give props to the TSA for supporting first Amendment rights, I am not sure their concern over free speech and privacy was driving this encounter:
On another occasion, at LaGuardia, in New York, the
transportation-security officer in charge of my secondary screening
emptied my carry-on bag of nearly everything it contained, including a
yellow, three-foot-by-four-foot Hezbollah flag, purchased at a
Hezbollah gift shop in south Lebanon. The flag features, as its
charming main image, an upraised fist clutching an AK-47 automatic
rifle. Atop the rifle is a line of Arabic writing that reads Then surely the party of God are they who will be triumphant.
The officer took the flag and spread it out on the inspection table.
She finished her inspection, gave me back my flag, and told me I could
go. I said, "That's a Hezbollah flag." She said, "Uh-huh." Not "Uh-huh,
I've been trained to recognize the symbols of anti-American terror
groups, but after careful inspection of your physical person, your
behavior, and your last name, I've come to the conclusion that you are
not a Bekaa Valley"“trained threat to the United States commercial
aviation system," but "Uh-huh, I'm going on break, why are you talking
to me?"
It turns out, incredibly, that most airport employees are not screened. Because, you know, it would be grossly unfair to subject airport staff to the same sort of time-wasting indignities to which we all must acquiesce. Also, many commercial flights have a belly-full of US mail which I am pretty sure is not inspected in any way.
I am on my way to a few days of skiing in Utah, but I thought I would leave you with this travel story. A few weeks ago I was traveling and was at the airport really early. I had forgotten to remove the toothpaste from my stuff, and I was flagged for extra screening because they saw it on X-ray (I remember the good old days when they were X-raying for guns and stuff rather than toothpaste, but I digress).
The screener pulled it out and said - sorry, this is more than three ounces. So, as an engineer with no sense of self-preservation, I asked, "Weight or volume?" The screener asked what I meant. I said that an "ounce" is a unit of both weight and volume, which did he mean? (The TSA site is no help, it just says ounces). He said "volume." Still being stupid, I said "but the 3.5oz on that toothpaste is weight -- you can tell by the 'net Wt.' in front of it and the number in grams behind it. He looked at it for a minute, and then gives me an answer right out of Spinal Tap: "But its over 3 ounces" [but this one goes to 11]. Anyway, I gave up and surrendered my Crest to government authorities, and the world was that much safer.
I am told by an airline exec that the policy was originally volume, but after many complaints, the government realized that an ounce was also a unit of weight and they have informally changed the policy to "3 ounces weight or volume" but they never really communicated this change fully because it's too, you know, embarrassing that they operated so long not knowing the difference.
Have a good week -- I will probably post a bit but it will be light.
Yesterday, I had what will likely (given ticket prices) be a once in a lifetime experience for me -- I got to take my son to the Superbowl. Our ability to afford this event really was a result of our living in the same city as the Superbowl. The obvious reason for this is that we did not incur any significant travel costs and did not have to pay peak demand level hotel pricing. The less obvious, but ultimately more important, reason was because we could afford to watch the ticket prices on the secondary market up until the absolute last minute. If your were bringing a group from New York, waiting until Friday or Saturday to buy tickets might have been a bit uncomfortable, given other sunk costs.
As it turned out, Superbowl ticket prices this year on the secondary market (e.g. TickCo, Stubhub, et al) followed a parabola. They were below their peak early-on, particularly since sellers did not have the tickets in hand. You can buy tickets weeks before the Superbowl, but they will be listed as "for this general area." You could end up in the front row or the back -- it is a bit of a crap shoot. So they are cheaper because of this. The peak pricing came the week before the AFC and NFC championship games when many sellers had tickets in hand and could advertise specific seats. All along, I was looking for a ticket to just get in the door, so I was looking for the cheapest seats (likely upper deck end zone). At their peak, there was nothing gong for less than about $3800 (when you included the seller commission or transaction fees, typically 10-20% for this type of ticket). Beginning the Monday before the game, prices started falling -first 10%, then 20-30%, and finally as much as 50%. I jumped in towards the end of the week because a pretty good (or at least better than the worst) seat came up for a good price. I am told by a friend who showed up on game day at the ticket company office that he got in for less than $1500.
Anyway, here is the stadium - yes it is kind of odd looking. This was taken about halfway through our walk from the car to the stadium. We just barely parked in the same county. We showed up about 6 hours before game time and were in the last half of arrivals:
The stadium is a taxpayer-funded boondoggle that is a good hour away (on the complete opposite side of a very large city) from old Scottsdale where most of the parties and social activities and player hotels were.
The security included a ban on any bag over 12x12x12 inches, a pat down, and a metal detector. And the NFL did a MUCH better job than the TSA. MUCH. It is hard to see, but the tent on the left is about 1/4 of the length of the full security screening area. They had at least 25 lanes open in parallel. Despite thousands of people, we had no wait at all (the lines below are all moving briskly and continuously).
And look! We must be in the front row! Well, of the upper deck, but these turned out to be great seats and, having watched prices for weeks, a very good price-value point (in context). My son braves the wrath of all the surrounding Giants fans by wearing his Cowboys jersey.
I thought the fast set up and takedown of the stages was pretty amazing, and something you miss on TV. Here is Tom Petty's stage going out (or in, I can't remember). The funniest part was the crew of NFL guys who followed along with rags and buckets to dust off the grass after the equipment passed to make sure it looked good for TV.
We had a decent view of Tom Petty's back, which once I saw his scraggly beard was probably a good thing. The crew of screaming fans at the stage was pretty funny. They ran these folks out for Alicia Keyes, then kicked them out of the stadium, then ran them back in for Tom Petty, and then back out again. I saw one show on TV last night, and the audience looked young, but to my eye the great mass of the crowd was middle aged women, which I thought was kind of funny.
And here is the last play and confetti burst:
It was a great, perhaps historic game, and we loved the whole experience. Now back to work to pay those bills.
So, here are the [sports-related] events on my must-see list I have tackled:
Baseball all-star game, Superbowl, game at Fenway, game at Yankee stadium, 16th hole at the Phoenix Open, center court at Wimbledon, BCS Championship game, Daytona 500, personally playing golf at St. Andrews, Big 10 home football game, Rose Bowl, Cowboys home game [update: and an original 90s-vintage American Gladiators filming live]
Yet to be tackled:
the Masters, Packers home game, game at Wrigley, NCAA final four, SEC home football game (maybe Tennessee or the cocktail party), maybe at World Series, maybe a World Cup
As most of you know, Andy Warhol once predicted that "In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes." The statement seems eerily correct given the explosion of talk shows and reality TV, which mainly happened after his statement.
I would like to follow-up on Mr. Warhol's bold prediction with one of my own:
In the future, everyone will be on the TSA's no-fly list
The TSA has the ridiculous policy of stopping everyone with a similar name as a single terrorist subject. So, once a John Smith comes under scrutiny as a possible terrorist, every John Smith gets turned away at the gate.
Sarah Zapolsky's 1-year-old son had better get used to being looked at as a
possible terrorist every time his family gets on a plane.
That's because experts and officials say there's no way the toddler's name
will be taken off the federal no-fly list - even after he and another tot made
headlines for being stopped as potential terror threats.
"His name is the same or similar to someone on the no-fly list," said Ann
Davis, a spokeswoman for the Transportation Security Administration, explaining
that even though a baby is not a threat, someone out there with the same name
is, and the name must be kept on the list.
