total information awareness

The award for scariest Halloween story goes to Schneier on Security, which is reporting that the DOD's Total Information Awareness project is back.  Like a character in a bad slasher flick, you just can't keep it down.  T.I.A. II, now a classified program called Tangram, "A Fully Automated, Continuously Operating, Intelligence Analysis Support System," actually returned in a DIA Presolicitation Notice on November 23, 2005.

Since this question often comes up in conversation, it seems fitting to address it here: why is this thing scary to honest citizens?  After all, if you don't plan to do anything illegal, what would you have to worry about?  The danger is that ordinary citizens don't get to define what is legal or illegal.  You can scrupulously avoid doing anything you would consider bad or wrong, but you can still wind up doing something illegal because someone else changes the definition of a crime to include whatever it is you're doing, or simply makes the definition fuzzy enough to plausibly cover you.  That someone else might be a political opponent (remember COINTELPRO?) or someone who just doesn't like you very much, say if you were Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the other person was J. Edgar Hoover.

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happy Halloween

 

negative productivity

Negative productivity is the idea that you're so out of it that any work you do is likely to make things worse off than they were before.

I'm having a negative productivity morning.  My brain's moving so slowly it's like thinking through molasses.  This morning, for the first time in two and a half years, I left the laptop's power adapter at home.  (Fortunately it has a good battery and there's always pen and paper as a back-up.)  I also preregistered for next semester's classes this morning and made oodles of mistakes on the form, though fortunately nothing that can't be fixed.  And the day's just getting started.

I think the plan for today is to make as few permanent decisions as possible.

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working on the porch

We live in an older, 1920's-vintage house with a front porch.  Right now I'm working on outlines, one of my least favorite school-related things to do, so I've decided to work on the porch.  I've got a wireless link going to a Hawaiian music station and am pretending the traffic noise is the sound of the ocean.

So let's see.  Nick's settled into the new place in PB and says Noelle's now moved here from Ireland.  Maria's mostly moved in and has even been able to switch her blog to beta--I like the new look! 

Life largely continues.  We're keeping an eye on the news and hoping they can bring the Esperanza Fire under control soon.  Personally, I'm especially concerned about family in Palm Desert, but our thoughts are also going out to the families of the firefighters who've died, and our thanks to all the folks on the fire line.

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AOPA article on general aviation no-fly zones

Bruce Schneier's picked up the AOPA's excellent opinion piece on the perceived versus actual risk posed by general aviation.

OK, for all of those ranting about "threats" from GA aircraft, we'll believe that you're really serious about controlling "threats" when you call for:

• Banning all vans within cities. A small panel van was used in the first World Trade Center attack. The bomb, which weighed 1,500 pounds, killed six and injured 1,042.
• Banning all box trucks from cities. Timothy McVeigh's rented Ryder truck carried a 5,000-pound bomb that killed 168 in Oklahoma City.
• Banning all semi-trailer trucks. They can carry bombs weighing more than 50,000 pounds.
• Banning newspapers on subways. That's how the terrorists hid packages of sarin nerve gas in the Tokyo subway system. They killed 12.
• Banning backpacks on all buses and subways. That's how the terrorists got the bombs into the London subway system. They killed 52.
• Banning all cell phones on trains. That's how they detonated the bombs in backpacks placed on commuter trains in Madrid. They killed 191.
• Banning all small pleasure boats on public waterways. That's how terrorists attacked the USS Cole, killing 17.
• Banning all heavy or bulky clothing in all public places. That's how suicide bombers hide their murderous charges. Thousands killed.

Number of people killed by a terrorist attack using a GA aircraft? Zero.

Number of people injured by a terrorist attack using a GA aircraft? Zero.

Property damage from a terrorist attack using a GA aircraft? None.

I agree. The empirical data just isn't there to support a ban.

Humans have evolved a risk assessment mechanism in which we weigh more recent events, and more unusual events, more than less recent, less splashy ones. It's not a terrible proxy when you're in a fairly stable natural environment, where your main threats are things that are likely to recur over long periods and have limited impact. For instance, if you're in an area with sabre-tooth tigers, and you see someone eaten by one, the powerful incentive it gives you not to play with sabre-tooth tigers is a good thing and likely to be useful in the future. And one sabre-tooth tiger can't wipe an entire city off the map before someone reacts to it and deals with it.

Nowadays, though, we have technology, which amplifies everything including risks. And many of those risks aren't apparent without statistical analysis. If we take action using the old instincts, we do so at our peril. Animals use those instincts because that's all they've got. Humans have the capability to perform a more accurate assessment. We also have the need, because resources we use to protect ourselves against one potential threat are resources we're not using for a different one. And some of these risks really can wipe out a city or worse, so we need to deal with them before they happen. In light of those issues, banning light airplanes is a just plain silly waste of resources.

new drill bits

I am now the proud owner of ten (10) brand new #41 cobalt-tipped drill bits. I can tell they're aircraft quality because each and every one is individually wrapped.

When you're doing the law school thing, you take your excitement where you can get it.

Actually, there is a difference between normal hardware store drill bits and the ones used in aircraft work. The manufacturer grinds the tip at a different angle to improve the bit's accuracy. Or at least that's what they tell us so we'll pay a dollar a bit, and once we've paid a dollar a bit we're strongly predisposed to believe anything that justifies the price.

In any case, I bought these bits for drilling out rivets. When you put in the smaller rivets, you drill the hole using a #40 bit. A #41 bit is slightly smaller--for whatever reason, higher numbers mean smaller bits--so it reduces the chance of enlarging the hole when removing a rivet. I pretty much wore out my old #41 bit pulling the skin off the rudder. This new set should last quite a while.

military families lining up for food

Presented without further comment because, frankly, it pretty much speaks for itself: this San Diego Chronicle article on military families in San Diego that need to stand in charitable food lines to make ends meet. The article's been making its way around the blogosphere.

These families are among a growing number of military households in San Diego County that regularly rely on donated food.

As the Iraq war marches toward its fourth anniversary, food lines operated by churches and other nonprofit groups are an increasingly valuable presence on military bases countywide. Leaders of the charitable groups say they're scrambling to fill a need not seen since World War II.

. . .

The base's list of recipients swells by 100 to 150 people a month as the food programs streamline their eligibility process, word spreads among residents and ever-proud Marines adjust to the idea of accepting donated goods.

. . .

“The bases are in the more expensive parts of the county and things like gas, food, insurance and rent are just higher here,” Chavez said.