Saturday, December 12, 2009
Homeland Security claims that the famous 'no-fly list' has only about 2,500 names on it. The ACLU has estimated that the Terrorist Watch list now has more than 1M names attached. Somewhere in between is the number of people who get hassled at the airport for no good reason–other than their name being, say, 'Robert [...]
Monday, November 10, 2008
More thoughtcrime stuff. Simply stupefying.
Back in 2005, a high school junior in Kentucky was arrested for writing a zombie story.
police say the nature of the story makes it a felony
The charges were eventually dropped but he did receive two years probation. I would dearly love to read that story. If anyone can dig it up [...]
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Once again I warn you to be careful what you write in your blog.
U.S. House Resolution 1955 seems to blame the internet for some peoples' thoughts and actions, whereas the real blame lies with…peoples' actual thoughts and actions.
But are newspapers, books or other media specifically covered in this H.R.? Of course not.
The problem seems to [...]
Thursday, September 11, 2008
Should a vice-presidential nominee be expected to know what the Bush Doctrine is? Here is Sarah Palin at that cringe-making moment when she is asked a question she doesn't understand. Luckily, the friendly host Charlie Gibson lets her off the hook.
The whole thing reminds me of my French oral exam: no matter what the question, [...]
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
The Penguin
Most observers of the Bush White House will be aware of the firm Halliburton and its ties to VP Cheney.
In 1995 the multi-billion dollar oil services company hired Dick from the U.S. Department of Defense as CEO (with no business experience) and with his assistance quickly moved up the ladder from 73rd to 18th [...]
I was reading another horror story about the TSA and Homeland Security, taking people's electronic equipment, barking orders, going through text messages and photos. The usual.
But it was a little story from the comments section that caught my eye.
A reader was reminded of a friend who had travelled extensively on business throughout the 1980's. When [...]
We are watching you watching us
Imagine someone staring at your face for hours, straining to see the slightest indication that you are a terrorist. Blinking too much? Or not enough? Sweating on a cold day?
Now imagine a computerised face-analysis system on an aeroplane, with one camera for each seat.
I think I'd go all squirrelly if [...]
arab
You may remember back in September we had that piece about the passenger manifests of Flight 77 (the aeroplane that supposedly that hit the Pentagon on 9/11).
In that article I tried to show how dodgy that whole deal was by picking a person's name at random and investigating their background. You might want to refresh [...]
