hawkeye’s thoughts of tomorrow

Just another article on free-form schooling.

I wasn’t going to post it, but I saw this and had to share. Edwards response about voting for the war:

For the future, it has made it much clearer to me what I would do under similar circumstances. Which is gather the information as best I could. Get people who have a very different view in front of me to express their view. Be certain that I had all the contrary information, and not be swayed by the advocacy of one side or the other, but instead make a very independent judgment about what makes sense under the circumstances. That’s what I’d do.

O_O

Wow, that’s the completely opposite side from Bush’s ideology of, “I’m right because I’m divinely inspired…and ’cause I said so”.

So is this a dream job, or the worst job imaginable? (or a joke?)

Office Jester

I saw an article over at ArsTechnica today about a report released by The World Economic Forum. It shows the US falling way behind in the NRI (Network Readiness Index), which sounds like a bullshit indicator to me, but let’s go with it for the sake of argument. I can’t get FTTH, I have to pay unbelievable amounts for cable, we’re easily years behind most of the developed world in cell-phone technology, we’re extremely dependent on fossil fuels, and public transit is almost non-existant (except for a few select cities), so let’s just assume for a minute that the U.S. is a little bit behind the rest of the world. I think there’s a few reasons behind this, but let’s start with the one that jumped to mind first:

The average age in the 110th Congress is 62, the youngest of which is John Sununu at 43 years old (Wikipedia). Currently you must be 35 for Presidency, 30 for the Senate, or 25 for the House of Representatives (Wikipedia). However, in Denmark, Sweden, and Finland, the age you can be elected is 18. They seem to be doing pretty well overall. I’d say it looks like the 18 year olds aren’t ruining the government with their “inexperience”, so what’s the point of restricting government offices to older people? Sure, I don’t want an 18 year-old to be in charge of the country, but how bad would it be to see a few of the younger generation shaking things up in Washington? Perhaps someone who would question things like the DST change benefits, giving massive subsidies to already profitable oil companies, and “The Surge!”. In my experience 18 year-olds are much more likely to question things than their older brethren, and it sure would be nice to see Washingtonians squirming as they have to explain their hair-brained schemes to someone who doesn’t just see things differently, but lives in a different world entirely.

How many 60 year olds do you know that have a firm grasp on copyright law, the internet, foreign policy, or modern economics? I’m certainly not saying they can’t understand these things, some people stay knowledgeable and “hip” into their 80’s and 90’s even, but those are not the normal case. There’s a place for the older generation in politics, but I don’t think they should so thoroughly dominate it.

We currently have politicians in office that think the telecoms should be allowed to rob the government for billions of dollars with no recourse. That giving a contract to Diebold for unproven voting technology just because it has the word “electronic” is a good idea. That sending a miniscule percentage of extra troops to a country in a civil war is going to defeat an ideology. I’m willing to see what the alternative is to that kind of psychosis.

Apparently the DST change didn’t result in any power savings. Seems the mornings offset the evenings, who’d have thought? ArsTechnica already did the hard work of layering heaps of thick sarcasm in their commentary about the DST change. Rather than add my own I’ll just link it.

ArsTechnica: DST change: no savings, no point

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

This just in, John McCain is an idiot (or hires idiots which makes him look like an idiot…which is close enough). This is yet another reason why politicians who are old and senile shouldn’t be allowed to run (let’s say, over 50). These are the people who set the tone for the future, do you really want someone who doesn’t even understand the future is?

By the way, WTF happened to McCain? How did the Republican party castrate him so completely? Anyone remember when he had his own opinions and wasn’t just one of Bush’s parrot creatures? He just went away one day and came back a Stepford Wife.

Finally noticed an email in my Inbox from the Obama campaign pushing the Iraq War De-escalation bill again, didn’t think too much of it till about half-way through where it says.

On this page, you can also find a link to various ways you can assist troops in the field, veterans who’ve returned home, and the families of those whose service we honor. And so as we work to get them out of harm’s way in Iraq, please take a moment to do something for those who have sacrificed most.

The site actually links to AmericaSupportsYou.mil, so it’s not like they created their own page or anything (nor is there really a reason to when a resource already exists). It struck me as an interesting twist to push the “Support the Troops” rhetoric at the same time as the “Stop the Iraq War” rhetoric, since the Republicans have tried so hard to make them polar opposites.

Ok, this dude is A) incredibly talented and B) a huge nerd.

Also, I want to do something this awesome at some point in my life.

The Star Trek Voyager Studio Apartment

Finally noticed an email in my inbox from Barackobama.com. Seems he’s trying to get his message out about his Iraq War De-escalation Act. Comes with an interesting link too. He actually wants people to sign on to it, it’s almost as if he cares what people think, it’s even got a comments box. Why have none of the other campaigns implemented something to this effect? Only reason I can come up with is that they’re idiots.

Even if you don’t agree with the Act (which is linked in it’s entirety on that page, not hidden away to be passed under the cover of darkness) there’s no denying how brilliant this is when you consider how apathetic the populace has become. Sending out a, “Hey, this is what I stand for, tell me what you think.” email to gauge the public’s opinion is genius. Admittedly he’ll be getting a biased sampling, but he’ll still get opinions that might differ slightly (like mine). It’s cheaper than the current polling methods and I can’t imagine it’s any worse. Plus it will make people feel like they might actually have some say in the political process (even if they don’t).

Obama might be the first candidate to pull the tech-savvy-bleeding-heart-college-student vote, and if he does he’ll blindside all the other candidates.