This is What the TSA Has In Mind For You

If the new head of the Transportation Security Administration gets his way, all airport screeners will be retrained within 60 days to better detect explosives and spot weapons and more passengers will enroll in the agency's expedited security checkpoint program.

And one day travelers will be able to use fingerprints or some other biometric identifiers instead of paper or electronic boarding passes.

Peter Neffenger, who has been on the job as TSA administrator for four weeks, went before the House Homeland Security Committee on Wednesday and said it was a "huge concern" that the agency's officers failed to identify bombs, weapons and other security threats 96 percent of the time during recent undercover testing.

"It greatly disturbs me to know that we had that failure rate at the checkpoint," he said.

The nature of those failures have been carefully studied, Neffenger told the panel, underscoring an immediate need to "train out those failures."

International traveler Stephen Morrissey has a story to tell:

On leaving the US on 27 July I flew from San Francisco International Airport to London on flight BA 284.

At 2:30 in the afternoon I went through the usual airport security procedure including the stand-up 'scanner', and all was well - no bleeps and nothing unusual.

Before I could gather my belongings from the usual array of trays I was approached by an "airport security officer" who stopped me, crouched before me and groped my penis and testicles. He quickly moved away as an older "airport security officer" approached.

The officer who sexually assaulted me was identified as the General Manager On Duty. Luckily I was accompanied by two members of British Airways Special Services, who were horrified at the sexual attack and suggested that I lodge a complaint. I asked if there would be any point in lodging a complaint since, as with any complaint against a figure in "authority", the complaints are simply collected in order to protect the guilty officer should the matter go further. The British Airways Special Services employees assured me that a complaint was worthwhile, and so I filed the appropriate information.

Here's what the TSA is doing wrong--Morrissey is not a threat to you or anyone else. Leave Morrissey alone and focus on the people who are actually breaking the rules.

It's like we're stuck on stupid or something.

Combat Gum

I found this old piece on the New Yorker website:

Hale predicts that combat gum could save the military a hundred million dollars annually. Dental emergencies account for ten per cent of all injuries that cause soldiers to be evacuated from the battlefield (not counting battle itself, of course). There are forty-seven types of dental emergencies, ranging from the mildly uncomfortable (gingivitis, say), moderately painful (pericoronitis), and severe (totally avulsed tooth). When it gets that bad, a soldier might need to be helicoptered into a dental theatre on another continent. The cost of transportation, plus that of the treatment itself, on top of the unit’s lost manpower, adds up to tens of millions of dollars each year. According to Hale, forty per cent of recruits have at least three cavities. “They have developed a decay pattern,” he said. “We diagnose, pull their teeth, and fill them. This is a constant thing for us, because we have tremendous turnover.”

This is the sort of thing that would have automatically prompted me to write a post, had I seen it back in March of 2014. I had occasion to see dentists in the Army, and I can't remember any bad experiences. I even had my wisdom teeth taken out while stationed in San Antonio, Texas. I was regular Army, and I was referred to the Air Force hospital for removal.

It took a week for me to feel normal after that because I had waited until I was about 30 to do the wisdom tooth extractions. I had all four of them out at once. No fun.

What is referenced in the article gets to the heart of a problem for deploying soldiers. We had categories for everyone, and I seem to recall that they ran from Cat I to Cat IV. If you were a one or a two, you could be deployed. That meant that you had seen a dentist and didn't have any issues. If you were a Cat III or IV, you couldn't deploy. Typically that meant that you hadn't been to the dentist in a while or that you had outstanding issues, like root canal work that needed to be done.

I always went to the dentist. It was free and it wasn't that bad. If they can give you a gum that will keep your teeth in your head, sell it to the civilian world and make money. Precious few innovations come to soldiers nowadays. The last big innovation was the Camelback drinking system. Gum that kills bacteria and prevents tooth loss? We should give that to everyone.

Les Femmes d'Alger

Actually, it's not much of a story--it's more of a testament to the ability of the wealthy to overspend:

In May, Pablo Picasso’s 1955 painting Les Femmes d’Alger (Version “O”) was snapped up at Christie’s for $179 million, setting a record for the most expensive artwork ever sold at auction. Naturally, the headlines focused on the sheer magnitude of the sale, which broke the old auction record of $142 million — the cost of Francis Bacon’s Three Studies of Lucian Freud. The painting itself, though, has a story to tell beyond its price.

The price tag of $179 million resists criticism because this is a Picasso; however, it's not a major Picasso in the sense that:

Picasso’s friend and biographer John Richardson doesn’t place it “in the first 100 of Picasso’s best paintings.”

Slam!

Stolen Twice

I didn't think it was possible, but I now care less about comic books than I did fifteen minutes ago when I started reading this story about how some jackass used embezzled funds to buy a collectible comic book. After storing the comic in a storage facility, an investigator then stole the comic and sold it at a convention.

At the end of the day, who gets to own it? I know. I don't care, either.

Woody Allen

The point of every Woody Allen film now seems to be a masturbatory fantasy of "old man screws young woman" nonsense:

The film critic David Thomson has described Allen as “a major-league fantasist, in which he is the central figure,” adding that “his mingling with attractive actors and actresses has been an immense fantasy inspiration to him.” Irrational Manfantasizes about murder, but also, less intriguingly, about its protagonist being an object of extraordinary desire to everyone he meets. The news of his arrival on campus is buzzed about by students and teachers alike. “I hear he has affairs with his students,” says one young woman excitedly, while an older professor remarks that the appointment will “put some Viagra in the philosophy department.” Upon arrival, Lucas has the charisma and heavy-lidded, wackadoodle charm of Phoenix, but he’s also a mess—overweight, sweaty, and inebriated. Still, neither his washed-up appearance nor the uninspired nature of his classes (“Philosophy is verbal masturbation,” he tells his students) seems to lessen his appeal.

Perhaps I am oversimplifying things, but how does that succeed as art when the vast majority of Woody Allen films are never seen by the public? Who goes to see these films? How do they end up being revered such as they are?

I apologize for asking dumb questions, but I am a man of simple ideas and thoughts and I have no fucking clue why anyone would bother engaging with a Woody Allen film? Does the world have an endless supply of attractive young women who only want to sleep with aging, insufferable men?

If it does, shame on the morality police for not doing more to stop Woody Allen characters from soiling the future hotties of this country.

The Raunchiest Photo Simply Won't Do

Is This The Raunchiest Photo They Could Find?

July 20, 2015

If you're going to write an anti-Katy Perry story, make sure that you find the raunchiest photo you can find:

The nuns filed suit against the Archdiocese last month over the proposed sale of the sprawling property, situated on a Los Feliz hilltop with “expansive views of downtown Los Angeles and the San Gabriel Mountains,” the Los Angeles Times reports.

The legal battle arises out of competing deals to sell the parcel: the Archdiocese is trying to push an all-cash sale to Katy Perry, while the nuns would prefer to see the land go to a developer who would pay $100,000 upfront and $10 million on a promissory note.

The court case is essentially asking a judge to determine which group has the authority to sell the property, but the issues—some faith-based, some legal—run much deeper. The Archdiocese, the nuns say, has repeatedly lied to them and tried to bully them into selling to Perry, who they apparently object to on moral grounds.

It's a real estate dispute. It has nothing to do with immoral behavior and everything to do with sentimentalism. Guess what happens when being sentimental runs up against California real estate laws? The judge will throw out signed documents and legal precedents and see this raunchy picture of Katy Perry and rule in favor of the nuns.

Hating Zooey Deschanel

With Gawker seeming to dominate the news this week, I thought I would dig up this rusty, worn-out old post about how they have relentlessly targeted Zooey Deschanel and serve it up like something I just found.

Even today, whenever Gawker posts about Deschanel, I usually just ignore it. However, in the comments, people are basically calling out the site and pointing out that bands like the Yeah Yeah Yeahs have similar bans on the use of phones. So, you know, blog fail or whatever.

This is the 'mean girls' aspect of Gawker that doesn't get enough attention. Why do they go after people like Deschanel and why is it newsworthy? She's a celebrity, she can probably handle a fair amount of attention, but Gawker usually goes above and beyond normal decency. We saw that last week and I think we'll see it again unless someone dismantles Gawker and fires everyone.

The gist of my original post centered around trying to get people to watch the show instead of taping it on their phones. Artists have begun trying to separate fans from their phones and from the practice of holding this rectangular plastic thing in front of them so that they can claim to have watched the show in person. How that translates into an experience is beyond my grasp. Why not enjoy what you are seeing without worrying about your phone?

If you have to record something just to remember it, your mind is already gone.

The Art of Runic Cipher

Kiss me.

That's what one Viking said to another, in code, with runes. And, in the process of figuring all of this out, we find a universal truth in communication and in human interaction--nothing changes. Simple emotions and sentimental ideas worked a thousand years ago and they work today.

The

Jötunvillur code

is actually fairly easy to understand. The complexity comes from not having a complete picture of how to break it out:

Forklaring_jotunvillur._Jonas_Nordby_None.png

It's a substitution code that can be easily broken if you know the sounds of the letters. This is one of the most common ciphers, and it's not uncommon to find these forms of communication in old or ancient texts. I think what made it difficult to break was the fact that we don't converse in the language anymore.

Andrea Peyser is Still Insane

Holy crap:

Bill Cosby is a lousy husband and a possible sex addict. But is he a rapist?

I have my doubts.

Is Cosby, 78, so diabolically creepy that he secretly slipped Quaaludes into the mouths of his alleged victims, as even President Obama suggests? Perhaps.

But I’m starting to think that Cosby’s “crimes’’ were not rapes, but high-pressure seductions.

This may be female heresy.

Still, I wonder if some, if not most (or maybe all?), of the dozens of women who claim Cosby attempted or completed sexual assaults against them, dating back as far as the 1960s, swallowed drugs willingly before the encounters.

That kind of contrarian bullshit could only have been written by a crazy person working at the New York Post. In other words, Andrea Peyser. Someone is paying this bag of nuts to write things in public?

In case you missed it, a high-pressure seduction is rape when the man admits to giving the woman drugs to shut down her central nervous system.

Jeeeee-zus.

Prurient Purposes Thwarted

How far does freedom really go?

The man with shoulder-length red hair stood by the sidewalk just north of Island Park Pool. In the muggy heat, he wore gray slacks and a silky, blue, long-sleeve shirt.

From his perch along First Avenue South, the man, who appeared to be in his 20s or 30s, could peer down on swimmers by the pool’s diving boards. He would look around, act like he was smoking and then snap a photo using a camera with a zoom lens.

Jed Felix said he witnessed all this on Monday afternoon. After watching the man surreptitiously take photos for a while, Felix confronted him and asked what he was doing. “He said he was just taking pictures and that he was an artist,” said Felix, 26, of Fargo. “He said it’s completely legal.”

Now, imagine the impending freakout--they're violating his rights.

Well, yes, but no. They've made this an issue of trespassing, which means he went somewhere that he wasn't welcome and he did something specific that violates the use of public property for personal or prurient reasons. This is not the sort of thing that would stand up in every court, but it does make sense when considering the safety of the public.

This is because the man in question, regardless of what he's wearing, is using technology (a camera) to violate the privacy of others. Should they get a search warrant and see what's on the camera? Would a judge sign off on that? Who knows? Your right to be a weirdo is guaranteed up and until the moment when you start taking telephoto lens photos of kids and women (which should be good enough to ban paparazzi, but oh well).

The kicker in this whole article will appear briefly before your eyes:

One of the comments was from a woman who said she saw the same man taking photos of women in bikinis on Friday in Island Park.

“We watched as he set his camera on his lap and aim it at women in the park and then moments later look through the shots he just took,” she said in a post on her own Facebook site, which included a photo of the alleged photographer, a man with long red hair who looked like the man Felix encountered.

Felix said the man he approached would not tell him his name or show him the photos he’d taken.

“He was very calm during the entire thing like he knew that he was in the right,” Felix said. “He said that until it’s illegal, he’s going to keep doing it.”

Why didn't the man want to show a perfect stranger, a common citizen, what was on his camera? Because he doesn't have to. That's a matter for the courts. Short of that, using trespass laws to keep him out of public places is about the only recourse left to the community, which has rights as well. He's made up his mind to be an asshole. That's his right! Nobody else has to put up with that, though.

Don't be an asshole. You're ruining freedom for everyone else.

Dr. Stacey Patton is a Fraud

I've read more of Dr. Stacey Patton's work than she's read of Amy Schumer's work, so I can safely conclude that she's a fraud.

Dr. Patton said a few things that surprised me. For starters, she said she’s not a specialist on comedy or humor. While she does enjoy comedy (she likes George Carlin, Richard Pryor, Martin Lawrence, the Queens of Comedy, and Bill Maher among others), she told me that watching comedy isn’t something she gets to do often. In fact, before the ‘Schumer issue’ came up, she had never seen Amy Schumer perform stand up, and she had never seen Schumer’s Comedy Central television show. Even more surprising, she said she didn’t watch any of Amy’s performances or shows while writing the article, not even as background for the piece. Her judgement was based on what she read, presumably in The Guardian, which had just published an article accusing Schumer of “having a blind spot for race.”

The Interrobang; Have you ever watched Amy’s television show… in preparation for the article?
Stacey Patton: Nope. Not at all.
The Interrobang: Her stand up set[s]? have you ever watched any of them?
Stacey Patton: Nope. None of them.

Despite seeing the quotes out of context, and without the benefit of knowing anything about Amy’s comedy, she was comfortable making judgements about whether Schumer’s comedy was or wasn’t racist. She also was comfortable deciding whether Schumer’s audience was or wasn’t racially diverse (she characterizes Amy’s following as predominately white), and she was comfortable to conclude that Schumer’s comedy breeds racism in others.

Nope. Not at all.

Patton savaged the work of an artist without ever hearing or seeing that work.

At a bare minimum, the holder of an advanced degree who comments on something in the culture should, you know, have actually seen the thing on which they are commenting. I think it is safe to say that this constitutes a form of academic fraud that would make any administrator cringe and run away.

To be this willfully dishonest about something speaks volumes on the veracity of Dr. Patton's work. And while this works great when you only have the low, low standards of Fred Hiatt's editorial page as your barometer, it doesn't work so well when you're trying to pass yourself off as a legitimate thinker.

Now you know what the bottom of the barrel looks like. This is really more of an indictment of the standards of the Washington Post than it is a curious glance inside of the swirling rage of Dr. Stacey Patton. At least she's up front about being a hack.

Heh, Indeed, Mr. Alinsky

I was hoping to see something of substance when I checked out the crazies at Powerline, and all I saw was a rehash of what most emphatically did not keep America from electing and then re-electing President Barack Hussein Alinsky Benghazi Obama of rural Kenya. Darn the luck.

You can wade through the Saul Alinsky material if you want, but it's just going to give you a headache. Instead of seething nutters gnawing at the insides of their own mouths, we get practiced outrage and guilt by association.

These people are bonkers and there are no more attendants with butterfly nets to chase them down and put them in the padded cells. Such a pity, such wasted lives, but the ads are super!

I don't know how they still live in Minnesota, these crazies from the Powerline blog. Minnesota is booming, it has a liberal governor who refuses to burnish a national profile, and it sits next to the slapdash clapboard monument to conservative policy ideas, Wisconsin. Every time someone compares Minnesota to Wisconsin, you can hear Packers fans howling about how they've won Superbowls and things like that. What you can't hear are people walking out of a Wisconsin unemployment office with anything but fear and a kick in the ass for their troubles.

It must be impossible to contemplate the idea that Saul Alinsky was on to something, and that his minions now govern us, using his thoughts and words and deeds to give people jobs, health care, safety, and unheralded progress in the face of a multi-decade conservative freakout over nothing.

Wait, were the first three words in that Powerline article really The David Horowitz? And no one thought to hide that fact? Sonofabitch...

Dustin Hoffman is Correct

The only film I'm interested in seeing right now is the one with the Minions from Despicable Me. And the only reason why I want to see it is because my kids want to go. So, when Dustin Hoffman says this, there's a grain of truth in it that cannot be ignored:

“I think right now, television is the best that it's ever been, and I think it’s the worst that film has ever been — in the 50 years that I’ve been doing it, it’s the worst,” he said in an interview with U.K. newspaper The Independent.

Nobody in American could make a film for adults with adults speaking in complete sentences right now unless it had fucking Batman in it. Even then, it would have to be a Batman-related movie with excessive special effects and the right amount of misogyny in order to appeal to the Chinese teenager market.

Nobody is saying that American filmmakers have to go out and make Woody Allen films--not even Woody Allen goes to see Woody Allen films. Those are made for academic purposes only and are not even widely released to the public. No, the last adult film that got made in this country was probably Silver Linings Playbook, and nobody is lining up to make another one, even though it was a massive artistic success.

Key emphasis on "artistic" of course.

Foolish Blood