Over the weekend, an idiot walked the wrong way through a secure exit for arriving passengers at Newark airport. An entire terminal was shut down so that everybody on the “sterile” side of the security barriers could be herded back out and rescreened. The entire process took just under seven hours. The cascading delays disrupted air travel worldwide. They didn’t even catch the doofus who caused the ruckus. No doubt, if they’d announced his location over the paging system, he’d have been drawn and quartered by a mob of traveling salesmen from 3M and a gaggle of middle-school girls returning from a volleyball tournament.
Now, I should back up. When I referred to the “sterile” side of the security barrier, I was using the term narrowly, to refer to folks who’d been through the metal detectors. Because to use the word “sterile” in its usual context in a sentence with “airports” — those belching Petri dishes of bathroom effluence and unidentifiable noisome miasma — would be a grotesque abrogation of journalistic trust.
According to the latest epidemiological research, airports reside somewhere between no-frills Haitian brothels and Penn State fraternity bathrooms when it comes to hygiene. USA Today recently surveyed the health-inspection records of airport restaurants and found that serious code violations were as commonplace as rat and mouse droppings; 77 percent of 35 restaurants reviewed at Reagan National Airport had at least one major violation.
I could go on, of course. The petty humiliations, the routine deceptions from airline employees desperate to rid themselves of troublesome travelers (“Oh, they can definitely help you at the gate!”), the stress-position seats, the ever-changing rules for what can and cannot be in your carry-on, being charged for food that the Red Cross would condemn if it were served at Gitmo: Air travel is the most expensive unpleasant experience in everyday life outside the realm of words ending in -oscopy.
Jonah Goldberg, “A No-Fly List? Count Me In: Flying before 9/11 was already awful, and it has only become worse”, National Review, 2010-01-08
January 9, 2010
QotD: The awfulness of airports
January 4, 2010
Sony’s latest consumer mis-step
Dark Water Muse treated himself to a new bit of electronic kit over the holidays, a Sony Reader Touch. He wasn’t best pleased by the purchase:
The Sony Reader is an all but useless device, certainly at its current price point. Especially if you already happen to own a portable electronic device capable of rendering common document and media file formats — got a smart phone? Got a netbook or laptop? Then you’re already living the dream that is merely Sony’s Reader Touch nightmare.
DWM gives the Sony Reader Touch negative 1 out of 10. Truly impressively bad, particularly when measured on a scale of +1 to +10.
How does DWM compute negative one? Read on.
Only the newly arrived on H. G. Wells’ Time Machine could find utility in a Sony Reader. Or if you’re too proud to admit you fucked up by buying one in the first place and prefer to go to your grave, Sony Reader over your heart (trust DWM when he says, any friends you might still have after becoming a Sony Reader Touch owner, or surviving relatives, want to see it buried with you too), rather than get your money back.
DWM returned his Sony Reader Touch after making extra special efforts to try and modify his relationship to reading text with it. He wanted the Sony Reader to work. He was willing to tolerate “a little” deficit in the reading experience, if only to avoid having to slaughter one more tree to feed his hunger for crime novels. But, feeling disappointed and defeated, DWM sent his Sony Reader Touch back to from whence it had come (extruded from that great product anus behind so many retail consumer products).
I’ve got a couple of dozen books on my iPhone, but I consider them to be “emergency” reading . . . for those times when I don’t have internet access. It’s great that the iPhone can work as a small ebook display, but the key word here is “small”.
December 30, 2009
If the terrorists don’t kill off the airlines, the TSA will
Radley Balko joins the chorus of protests about the latest set of how-stupid-can-you-get “security” rules from the TSA:
Seems to me that what this, Flight 93, and the Richard Reid incident have shown us is that the best line of defense against airplane-based terrorism is us. Alert, aware, informed passengers.
TSA, on the other hand, equates hassle with safety. For all the crap they put us through, this guy still got some sort of explosive material on the plane from Amsterdam. He was stopped by law-abiding passengers. So TSA responds to all of this by . . . announcing plans to hassle law-abiding U.S. passengers even more.
If you’re really cynical, you could make a good argument that they’re really only interested in the appearance of safety. They’ve simply concluded that the more difficult they make your flight, the safer you’ll feel. Never mind if any of the theatrics actually work.
After my last business flight (the day of the Shoe Bomber’s transatlantic aircraft attempt), I’ve actively avoided commercial air travel. This latest set of Security Theatre set dressings merely extends the range I’ll be willing to drive rather than putting up with the flight — actually, the flight preparation, rather than the flight itself.
Update: Don’t know why I thought it was the Shoe Bomber . . . it was the would-be liquid bomb conspiracy that happened while I was in transit through Atlanta.
December 29, 2009
Air security gone insane
Hard to disagree with Gulliver on this one:
In the wake of Friday’s attempted bombing of a Northwest Airlines flight from Amsterdam to Detroit, the people who run America’s airport security apparatus appear to have gone insane. Despite statements from several officials, including Janet Napolitano, the secretary of homeland security, that there is “no indication” of any broader plot against American airliners, some truly absurd security “precautions” are being implemented on US-bound flights worldwide.
The most ridiculous new rule prohibits passengers on US-bound international flights from leaving their seats or having anything on their laps—even a laptop or a pillow—during the final hour of flight. You’re probably thinking “Wait, what?” Indeed. The New York Times elaborates:
In effect, the restrictions mean that passengers on flights of 90 minutes or less would most likely not be able to leave their seats at all, since airlines do not allow passengers to walk around the cabin while a plane is climbing to its cruising altitude.
Gulliver looks forward to the barrage of lawsuits from the first people who are forced to use the bathroom in their airplane seats. This is the absolute worst sort of security theatre: inconvenient, absurd, and, crucially, ineffective.
December 22, 2009
December 15, 2009
Heart-warming story of the day
Jon sent me this heart-warming story, and I thought it best to share:
A millionaire businessman who fought back against a knife-wielding burglar was jailed for two-and-a-half years yesterday. But his attacker has been spared prison.
Munir Hussain, 53, and his family were tied up and told to lie on the floor by career criminal Waled Salem, who burst into his home with two other masked men.
Mr Hussain escaped and attacked Salem with a metal pole and a cricket bat. But yesterday it was the businessman who was starting a prison sentence for his ‘very violent revenge’.
Jailing him, Judge John Reddihough said some members of the public would think that 56-year-old Salem ‘deserved what happened to him’ and that Mr Hussain ‘should not have been prosecuted’.
But had he spared Mr Hussain jail, the judge said, the ‘rule of law’ would collapse.
He said: ‘If persons were permitted to take the law into their own hands and inflict their own instant and violent punishment on an apprehended offender rather than letting the criminal justice system take its course, then the rule of law and our system of criminal justice, which are hallmarks of a civilised society, would collapse.’
Salem, who has previous convictions, has already been given a non-custodial sentence despite carrying out what the judge called a ‘serious and wicked’ attack.
Well, it’s nice to know that some judges carry the best interests of “society” close to their hearts. And he’s right, you know: society would indeed collapse if the courts were forced to spend their time trying and sentencing career criminals like Salem. They’re career criminals. Custodial sentences would interfere with their careers, which would be a serious infringement of their human rights. Can’t have that.
The courts, however, are well situated to send serious messages to wanton millionaires like Hussain, who need to be regularly reminded that their wealth and privilege does not give them rights over and above those enjoyed by normal non-millionaires. I have no need to remind you that non-millionaires are not allowed to defend themselves against criminals either.
So, clearly, justice is served.
In some parallel universe, anyway.
Jack Ruby rides again
Ezra Levant points out the contrast between media reaction to a silly Tory joke image in 2008 (a puffin pooping on Liberal leader Stephane Dion) and this:
Image from the Liberal Party’s website.
December 10, 2009
Russia does it again, to NATO’s benefit
Sometimes, the Russian approach to diplomacy results in exactly the opposite to the intended outcome:
In the 1990s, when enlarging NATO to take in the ex-communist countries still seemed perilous and impractical, help came from an unexpected source. Yevgeny Primakov, a steely old Soviet spook who became first head of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service, then foreign minister and even, briefly, prime minister, liked to say that it would be “impermissible” for the alliance to admit ex-communist states.
His remarks, and others in similar vein by leading Russian politicians, proved counterproductive. The more the Kremlin huffed and puffed about ex-captive nations deciding their own future, the harder it became to dismiss those countries’ fears: if your neighbour terms it “impermissible” for you to install a burglar alarm, people will start taking your security worries seriously. Some wags even suggested that a “Primakov prize” be established to mark the boost he had given to the cause.
But the lesson apparently was not learned:
Instead, Russia is adopting the opposite course. It habitually violates Baltic airspace. It maintains a vocal propaganda offensive (such as a report being launched in Brussels this week by a Russian-backed think-tank, which criticises Baltic language and citizenship laws). This autumn, it scandalised NATO opinion by running two big military exercises, without foreign observers, based on highly threatening scenarios (culminating in a Strategic Rocket Forces drill in which Russia “nuked” Poland). The exercises demonstrated weakness and incompetence, as well as force of numbers and nasty thinking. But they made life hard for peacemongers and strengthened the arguments of NATO hawks and the twitchy eastern Europeans.
December 9, 2009
“There is no app for that”
Alex Tabarrok looks at the Chilean “Cybersyn” project:
Cybersyn was a project of the socialist government of Salvador Allende (1970-1973) and British cybernetic visionary Stafford Beer; its goal was to control the Chilean economy in real-time using computers and “cybernetic principles.” The military regime that overthrew Allende dropped the project and probably for this reason when the project is periodically rediscovered it is often written about in a romantic tone as a revolutionary “socialist internet,” decades ahead of its time that was “destroyed” by the military because it was “too egalitarian” or because they didn’t understand it.
Although some sources at the time said the Chilean economy was “run by computer,” the project was in reality a bit of a joke, albeit a rather expensive one, and about the only thing about it that worked were the ordinary Western Union telex machines spread around the country. The IBM 360 two computers supposedly used to run the Chilean economy were IBM 360s (or machines on that order). These machines were no doubt very impressive to politicians and visionaries eager to use their technological might to control an economy [. . .] Today, our perspective will perhaps be somewhat different when we realize that these behemoths were far less powerful than an iPhone. Run an economy with an iPhone? Sorry, there is no app for that.
[. . .] The control room is like the bridge of the Starship Enterprise in another respect–both are stage sets. Nothing about the room is real, even the computer displays on the wall are simply hand drawn slides projected from the other side with Kodak carousels.
December 8, 2009
This is what qualifies as “toughened” standards?
An aside in this week’s Tuesday Morning Quarterback column by Gregg Easterbrook caught me completely by surprise. I had no idea that the US housing market was quite this dysfunctional:
As Part of Tough New Standards for Subsidized Mortgages, Home Buyers Will Be Required to Rub Their Heads and Pat Their Stomachs at the Same Time: The Federal Housing Administration underwrites mortgages for people having problems. Before 2008, the FHA supported about 2 percent of the nation’s mortgages, now the number is nearly at 30 percent, which shows how deep the subprime mortgage issue runs and how much taxpayers now subsidize home ownership. Last week, the FHA said it will toughen lending rules. Borrowers will now be required to put up 3.5 percent of the mortgage as cash or gifts from relatives, and there will be a cross-check against the down payment’s appearing to come as a gift from a charity but actually coming from the seller or builder through a middleman disguised as a charity. A generation ago — a decade ago! — home buyers were expected to have a 20 percent down payment; that made them unlikely to try to buy something they could not afford, and banks wouldn’t be exposed if something went wrong, since they were lending only 80 percent of the value of the property. Now requiring 3.5 percent down is viewed as “toughening” standards. Isn’t this an invitation for yet another cycle of mortgage problems?
Absolutely mind-boggling.
December 4, 2009
PayPal detects phishing attempt . . . from PayPal
You know those bogus emails you get pretending to be from PayPal, including poisoned links? If you’re the conscientious type, you forward them on to the anti-phishing folks at PayPal, right? You’ll usually get a response saying something like You’re right, it does look suspicious:
Banks and financial institutions are fond of lecturing customers about the perils of phishing emails, the bogus messages that attempt to trick marks into handing over their login credentials to fraudulent sites. Yet many undo this good work by sending out emails themselves that invite users to click on a link and log into their account rather than going a safer route and telling users to use bookmarked versions of their site.
The problems of the former approach are neatly illustrated by a blog posting by Randy Abrams, a former Microsoft staffer who is now director of technical education at anti-virus firm Eset. Abrams complained about the inclusion of a link in an email from PayPal as it looked rather too much like a phishing email.
I’ve noticed a number of rather more sophisticated phishing attempts in the last couple of weeks, which makes this PayPal error all the more dangerous . . . because it lowers peoples’ wariness about other legitimate-seeming messages.
December 1, 2009
QotD: Nomenclature, 2.0
Paused over lunch to roll through the Deadpool on TechCrunch, reading about expired internet companies. Been a while. Most had to do with “social media,” and most got millions of dollars to produce a novel way where X could connect Y with P using Z, and then: profit! The names of these companies makes me weep:
Zopo, Lefora, Meetro, Ning, Sinopio, CapaZoo, Joox, Foonz.
These are not businesses. These are characters in a pre-school TV show. I have a tough time imagining a hard-nosed venture capitalist saying Well, it’s an interesting idea you have, and on behalf of my group, we’re willing to invest $12 million in Shagafumoo.
James Lileks, Bleat, 2009-12-01
November 30, 2009
2012 Olympic logo not just ugly, but also cartoon porn
One of the least aesthetic Olympic logos ever devised may also be deemed pornographic:
Government zeal in pursuing anyone suspected of harbouring paedophilic tendencies may shortly rebound — with unintended consequences for the 2012 Olympic logo.
Earlier this month, the Coroners & Justice Bill 2009 received the Royal Assent. This Act was another of those portmanteau pieces of legislation for which the current government is famous, mixing up new regulations on the holding of inquests, driving offences, provocation in murder cases and, crucially, a new law making it a criminal offence to be found in possession of an indecent cartoon image of a child.
The horror facing the unpopular Olympics logo is that this is a strict liability offence. If an image is indecent, or held to be so by a jury, it is no good the Olympic Committee claiming that it was not intended as such.
Regular readers will be aware of the controversy that surrounded the current logo since the day it was launched. Critics were not impressed by the £400,000 that had allegedly been shelled out to creative consultancy Wolff Olins to come up with the design. However, it was the logo’s perceived suggestiveness — with many sniggering that it appeared to show Lisa Simpson performing an act of fellatio — that excited internet controversy.
You’ll not that I was careful not to show the offending logo, both for fear of prosecution and because it’s hideous:
[Perry de Havilland]: What does it look like to you? To me it is obvious: a collapsing structure of some sort, perhaps a building at the moment of demolition. The sense of downwards motion towards the bottom of the page is palpable.
Breathtaking. I mean what truly magnificent symbolism. The entire Olympic endeavour has been a massive looting spree with already grotesque cost over-runs (and it is only 2007), so surely something that conjures up images of collapse and disaster is really on the money . . . and speaking of money, at £400,000 (just under $800,000 USD) for the logo, it perfectly sums up the whole ‘Olympic Experience’ for London taxpayers. [. . .]
[James Lileks]: Seriously, what is the matter with people who come up with this? And what is the matter with the people who approved it? Ads that showed the logos have reportedly caused seizures among British epileptics, but I think this thing would make a fossilized femur bone suffer convulsive muscle spasms. If you can’t tell, it’s the year of the London games — 2012. I think it’s also meant to imply a human form — say, a discus thrower, or a runner bursting from the blocks. Whatever it is, it’s an aesthetic catastrophe, and would seem to indicate there’s no one around in the London Games who had the nerve to bark “rubbish, that; try again, and give me a proper logo with some bloody numbers.” I think there’s a point at which people lose the ability to pretend they have any sort of aesthetic criteria, and embrace whatever’s loud and ugly simply because loud and ugly is the style of the times. There’s always a fair amount of coin to be had for dissing the traditionalists, of course; I imagine that if someone submitted a logo with a flag or a bulldog they would have suffered a gentle sneer: still pining for the empire, eh, Smithson. Well, Kipling’s dead. Yes he is. Dig him up, you’ll find Posh Spice’s heel stuck in his heart, the coffin stuffed with I Heart Diana memorial teddy bears.
