hawkeye’s thoughts of tomorrow

Good news everyone! Japanese girls are getting even hotter.

[via Reddit]

The TSA’s “Red Team” (they’re like super-heroes!) has been testing airport security and found out that despite the absence of toothpaste and swiss army knives, bombs and IEDs are still perfectly easy to get on planes.

“The good news is we have our own people probing and looking and examining the system,” said Rep. Ed Perlmutter, a Democrat in the 7th congressional who sits on the House Homeland Security and transportation committees. “The bad news is they’re finding weaknesses.”

What a wonderful quote, I wonder if he does Play-by-Play commentary in his spare time?

If they miss something that’s obvious, often times that could happen, we will pull them off the line and retrain them,” said Security Director Earl Morris at TSA headquarters in Washington, D.C.

My advice would be more along the lines of…don’t hire idiots in the first place. Perhaps something in the interview like:


“If a woman tells you the bandage on her leg isn’t a bomb…but it’s setting off the metal detector, you should”:

• A. (In a friendly manner, not accusing) Ask her what surgery she had that would cause the metal detector to go off, ask her if she would mind taking off the bandage in a private screening room
• B. Rip off the bandage while yelling, “I found a trrrrrrrist!”
• C. Take her word for it, after all, she’s not brown.

“There’s very little substance to security,” said former Red Team leader Bogdan Dzakovic. “It literally is all window dressing that we’re doing. It’s big theater on TV and when you go to the airport. It’s just security theater.” *snip*
Dzakovic was a Red Team leader from 1995 until September 11, 2001. *snip*
Dzakovic, who is currently a TSA inspector, said security is no better today.

Can someone explain to me why, if you believe it doesn’t do any good, you would continue working for the TSA? Are the benefits particularly good (I’m sure they are), like enough to outweigh knowing that every day you work for an organization that wastes billions of taxpayer dollars in an effort to make people feel safer than they actually are while simultaneously making travel about as enjoyable as eating broken glass. I feel less safe just knowing people like that work for the TSA.

“We have a very robust program of which we are very proud, in which we utilize testing at all of our airports every single day,” said Morris.

I don’t give a flying rat’s ass if you’re proud of your system, what bearing does that have on it’s efficacy? He’s also apparently an idiot since he’s still maintaining its robust, when it was proven not to be.

According to the GAO, screeners at 15 airports missed 90 percent of the explosives and guns agents tried to sneak past checkpoints.

That’s kind of deceptively worded. Does that mean that 15 airports had 90 percent of the mistakes? or that 15 airports each failed 90% of their tests. Because one of those is fixable and the other isn’t.

Most test results, including results from the Red Team, are secret, classified as SSI or sensitive security information. Morris says they do not make them public because they could point out holes in the system.

…what? If there are holes in the system…YOU FUCKING FIX THEM! NOW! Why shouldn’t this all be public knowledge? For the money we’re paying them there shouldn’t be a single god-damn hole in the system. Why not make it a big open project? I’d say this is a place where the wisdom of crowds would excel. Ask 1 million people, “If you were a terrorist, how would you blow up a plane?” I bet they’d get some answers they never even imagined being possible. More importantly if they opened up the process they might get experts (on say, explosives) commenting on things instead of untrained bureaucratic buffoons who make decisions like banning toothpaste and bottled water.

Original Story from 9News

Found and Interesting link from this Reddit post

Living like hippies in New Zealand, could be worse, could be an MBA.

This is probably going to be a helluva lot easier than emailing a bunch of stuff every day…besides, this way other people (yeah, like anyone actually reads this) can see interesting stuff daily too.

Idiots are almost always amusing…especially when smarter people abuse them bitchchecker (for some reason in my head I read it as bitchhacker)

Veritas Airways
I laughed pretty hard at this one. Good thing stupid people won’t read it or they might start getting uppity about the silly hoops we have to jump through on planes. (That clear-air turbulence shit ain’t no joke either, scared the hell out of me

Chernobyl
Seriously beautiful and tragic pictures, it’s amazing to see how nature takes over like that, especially in just 20 years. The bizzare scattered artwork is really amazing. Also reminds me how everywhere, even Chernobyl, is more beautiful than Florida.

Borat
This review needs some serious spoiler tags, but the last paragraph is almost worth it.
When you laugh at something that is bad, it loses much of its power.
That sentence alone needs to be plastered up everywhere, on every billboard and street sign. We’re all funny, black/white/asian/hispanic/etc, every culture has it’s funny and weird quirks. We have to understand that and more importantly that we each have our own perfectly normal (to us) and hysterically bizzare (to others) traits. Why beat someone up because they’re different, when you can laugh at them instead? When someone laughs at you, why get offended when he’s just as silly as you in his own way. We need to realize (both the mocker and the mockee) that they’re just generalizations, maybe not every black dude drinks grape soda and eats fried chicken…but a large percentage do (and why not, it’s goddamned tasty). Not all white people are educated damn fools (no common sense, lots of high-falutin’ knowledge), but there sure are a lot more percentage-wise, than other races. We need to admit that we’re all pretty bizarre and that it’s something to celebrate for it’s absurdity.

Speaking of being different…girls are weird. Guess this pretty much dispproves that women are equal to men…unfortunately it proves they’re better ;(

I don’t know how a livejournal post made it on Reddit, but mentos answer to this girl’s question is hilarious.

Bush = Nazi (Not that one, another one)
Guess it just goes to show you, that family is all in it for the profits. (BTW that article was tl;dr, so forgive my foxnews style summary)

Tonight was…interesting to say the least. Went up to Ueno (park) and saw the Tokyo Museum of Western Art. Pretty standard museum with your standard western art (needs more Salvador Dali). Then wandered around Akihabara a bit (couldn’t find the Sanyo Xacti for a decent price), then wandered around Shinjuku for awhile. Shinjuku changes alot at night, more black dudes who speak english trying to get you into their “clubs” (read: “buy-me-a-drink” bars, like strip clubs but more expensive). After seeing that for a bit I headed home. I did find a really nice asian couple at an Irish pub though, gonna meet with them tomorrow and probably go to Roppongi with them, it’ll be nice to have Japanese speakers for clubbing tomorrow night.

Went to the Mori Art Museum in Roppongi today. Pretty standard modern art stuff, except the whole museum is on the 52F and it’s got a 360 degree view of Tokyo, really neat what you can see from up there. Reminds me of Dallas/Fort Worth in the way that it just keeps on extending into the distance as far as the eye can see. They also had the “Pixar: 20 years of animation” exhibit which was absolutely amazing. Concept art and sculptures from all the Pixar movies, and we all know how much I love concept art. Roppongi’s an interesting place. Kinda imagine CityPlace but more Tokyo (compact and vertical). Basically super-overpriced things at fancy shops. Lots of english speakers there too, which was a nice change. Managed to find an Irish Pub that wasn’t lying (unlike Denny’s…grrrr), irish beers with chicken and chips (yes they had fish and chips, no I don’t like fish and chips). Really cute waitress who was fun to talk (read: flirt) with too. She’d just spent the last year at Boston University and spoke excellent english, she was headed back to the states next year to go to Denver, Colorado. Really nice girl but I had to resist the urge to invite her out to dinner ;Roppongi Pics

That’s pretty much it, easy day (I could’ve gotten more accomplished but I failed at finding Roppongi)

Made it back from Nagoya just fine. Great trip is was really great to hang out with Achim while I was here (there, whatever). I didn’t realize Nagoya was such a nice city or I’d have planned to spend more time there. Achim, Yurika, and I went up to Kyoto for the day. It was supposed to rain but turned out bright and sunny, perfect for the views from the shrine on top of the hill, some gorgeous vistas. Saw a bunch of other neat stuff too, little shops with various nick-nacks. Went back to Nagoya that evening and got to spend Monday on my own in Nagoya. Unfortunately the one day I got to wander around was Monday and most of the good museums were closed Still had fun checking out Osu Kannon and Nagoya Castle. Osu was the first place I could actually afford anything, picked up a couple good t-shirts while I was there. Also saw my first real arcade since I’ve been here. Remind me to NEVER challenge a japanese person to anything, they’re playing games that even in English would probably make my brain hurt. Ikaruga’s a child’s game compared to these. They did have Time Crisis 4 though which made me happy. Left there to check out Nagoya Castle, really neat artifacts and stuff inside, beautiful views from the top. Met up with Achim after that and had dinner (Hitsumabashi, Nagoya’s famous food, special eel over rice, delicious). We hung around and talked for a bit then I jumped on the Shinkansen and headed on back, then proceeded to pass out. Fun but exhausting, I’ll be glad to get back home. Two weeks is almost too much in one strech, certainly by yourself. Not sure if I’ll get anything done today, it’s already like 3PM. Maybe head out late and check out the night-scene.

Forgot to link the pics

Today was pretty simple, went over to Harajuku to see if I could find any silly cos-players. Nothin much on that front but I did see some hilarious goth/punker kids. The stores are awesome too, got some good pics but don’t really have any way to upload them till I get back home on Tuesday. Important thing is, Bullet Trains are cool. It’s basically like being in a fuselage strapped to a set of wheels…except way more comfortable than a plane. Like 5 times the legroom.

I’m in Nagoya, it’s cool, I’ll probably be back to my normal schedule by Tuesday, till then who knows when I’ll post.

Museum’s a silly looking word.

Set out with one purpose today, ok two. A) Get a nice hearty meal at Denny’s B) To find a bookstore that sold English books. Well the Denny’s part went…ok (see the pictures but apparently Kinokuniya at Takashiyama Times Square does sell English books. So I went there and got Children of Dune, God Emperor of Dune, Neuromancer, and Lonely Planet’s Tokyo Pocket Guide. After I left there I stopped at a Starbucks (I swear the Chai Tea had a taste of seaweed in it, blech) and read the guide, settled on the Tokyo-Edo Museum and headed out there. First off, that building is MASSIVE. Apparently it’s meant to be as tall as the main castle keep was before the Kanto earthquakes, but something about it’s design just makes it feel oppressivly huge. Got my ticket and headed up to the main exhibition where I learned all about Edo/Tokyo (same city, changed names). The history stuff was pretty neat, you don’t generally hear about Japanese history and in a lot of ways it’s similar. Also interesting to me was how early western influences set in. From basically the Meiji emperor onward they were heavily influenced by western culture in some way or another. The WW2 section was neat too. Though they decided not to mention in all the plaques about how many people died in one bombing or another, that they started the war with us. I didn’t realize we’d bombed the crap out of Tokyo though, worse than Germany hit London by their accounts.

Left Edo to check out the Ryogoku Kokugikan (Sumo Stadium/Museum) but it appeared to be closed, found a neat little park next door though! Got some lunch, got my ticket for the Shinkansen (Bullet Train) to Nagoya and headed home.

Plan for tomorrow is to go to Harajuku to check out *drum roll* cosplayers! *giggles* Then I’ll be off to see Achim.

Well I was going to hang out with Ben, except it took me 2.5 hours to get to Atsugi. Apparently the shortest distance is not a straight line, it’s the long way around (but with faster trains)

I say again, GRRRR >:(

On the plus side though I’ve almost finished Dune: Messiah. I’m turning Japanese, first I was sleeping on the train now I’m reading (while standing mind you…and walking). Only down side is trying to find a bookstore here with an english copy of Children of Dune :\