Category Archives: Crap For Brains

People and especially governments do some incredibly stupid stuff. This is about those stupid actions.

Societal engineering

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This started out to be a comment in response to Lyle then it got a little out of scope. The short background story is that Lyle says gun control advocates are vacuous loons and that if we had our act together would have politically crushed them decades ago.

Lyle, It’s a little more complicated than what we would like. Read what Dar Korra’ti has to say to get a feel for just one of the issues involved. Another is, as I like to say, it is irrational to expect people to be rational. For example, people have a very strong tendency to believe what they want to believe regardless of the facts.

Also, many would like to believe that it’s possible to create a perfect world–if only someone was given sufficient power/control/money to do it. They don’t understand that trade-offs are a part of any engineering task whether it is an automobile, a plane, a computer, or a society you are trying to engineer. Most people accept a certain number of automobile, plane, and computer crashes while realizing, at some level, that with the money, time, and other constraints things are working pretty good and certainly they wouldn’t be able to do any better themselves.

But when attempting to engineer a society nearly everyone believes themselves to be an expert and that anything short of perfection is reason to throw some baling wire and duct tape at the perceived deficiency. Then with nothing more than opinion they forge ahead. The rare few that bother to try to put numbers on things and pretend to do an actual engineering analysis almost always only look at one side of the equation. They only look at the potential good that might occur from their changes. They fail to look at the actual and/or potential damage their proposed changes will cause.

Are they “vacuous loons”? Well, yes. But I’m of the opinion that is the present state of the average person and there isn’t much we can do about that. And that a form of society/government in which the loons are unable to participate is likely to have serious deficiencies of its own.

Someone thinks they are a mind reader

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Someone apparently believes they can read my mind from reading part of my blog. And she thinks I have problems:

By Sheryl, 10-07-07
I checked that guys site out, very disturbing. I found the home life thread especially very disturbing. Any grown man that likes to brag about intimate relations with his wife on a public blog has some real personal problems. Using sexual terms to generate more search engine hits in conjunction with posts about his children saddens me. What an awful environment they must have grown up in. It frankly disturbs me even more that such a person has access to assault weapons and explosives.

Such a dark world we live in.

I left the following comment but was told “Akismet thinks your comment is spam, so it will be moderated first.”

Sheryl, I regret to inform you that you are unable to read my mind or my motives. The only thing truthful about your comment is that which you shared about yourself–you are disturbed.

Update: Interesting… someone else’s comment, again very negative, showed up but my comment and that of Miss C don’t. Does the moderator have an agenda?

You better get used to it

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Uncle says see-through frogs are creepy. I say you better get used to it. People are now creating completely new species. Future Shock is here and now.

I read Future Shock in about ’75 and my opinion hasn’t changed with 30+ years of evidence–Toffler just likes to blather about things no one can or has any need to measure.

Do you think we can gain any traction with the environmentalists who whine about the loss of species if we started creating new species faster than we made old ones extinct? No? I didn’t think so either. There’s just no making some people happy.

They just don’t get it

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I suppose its to be expected. You can’t get more government contracts if you were to tell them the problem cannot be solved as long as they are headed in that direction. But what you can do is sell them millions and millions of dollars of technology that can be defeated with a few dollars worth of mu-metal and/or a Faraday Shield. I guess it doesn’t matter. It’s just government money. They have to spend it on something anyway, right?

Here are the details:

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has a comforting prospect for the million or so daily passengers on U.S. airlines. Los Alamos National Laboratory is working on an alternative to the “sandwich bag” solution for carry-on liquids.

Passengers’ ability to carry liquids with them during boarding has improved since the original total ban installed after a plot involving liquid explosives on transatlantic flights was busted in London in August 2006.

A total ban has given way to a partial ban because current X-ray machines can detect liquids, but they don’t know the difference between Gatorade and a liquid explosive.

But the so-called “3-1-1” plan for placing smaller-than-3-ounce liquid containers into one separately scanned, quart-size plastic bag per passenger remains an annoyance for many airport travelers, a fact that has not been lost on the department.

Within a month after the London scheme was foiled, said Michelle Espy, LANL’s co-principal investigator on the project, the laboratory had sketched out a “proof of concept” for a liquid-sensing instrument that has come to be called SENSIT.

In May this year, Brian Tait, a program manager in the Homeland Security Advanced Research Project Agency made a presentation on LANL’s demonstration for using magnetic resonance technology to perform non-invasive “liquid and solid explosive detection at ultra-low field without radiation.”

Espy said the technology is a variation on magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), a very low-field approach that the lab has been using for studying the brain in a technique known as magneto-encephalography, which is a way of reading signals emanating from the brain.

The sensor or magnetometer used in both the brain study and the bottle analyzer is known as a SQUID, an acronym that stands for Superconducting Quantum Interfering Device.

Comforting? I suppose you could say that. It will give some people a false sense of comfort. But then that’s what TSA is all about anyway. A Security Theater that makes some people feel good.

In Boston, of course

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Of course it was in Boston where the cops all went bonkers because someone was carrying around some wires and LEDs (via Bruce):

Star Simpson was charged with possessing a hoax device today at Logan International Airport for wearing a sweatshirt that had a circuit board affixed to the front with green LED lights and wires running to a 9-volt battery.

This is not a bomb:

And furthermore, being the nit-picky engineer that I am, it’s a breadboard, not a circuit board.

If someone wanted to carry a bomb around at the airport they would almost for certain put it in a suitcase instead of wearing it in the open on their sweatshirt. And since it was in the open you can easily see there is no detonator and no explosives attached. But this is Boston. And so:

Outside the terminal, Simpson was surrounded by police holding machine guns.

“She was immediately told to stop, to raise her hands, and not make any movement so we could observe all her movements to see if she was trying to trip any type of device,” Pare said at a press conference at Logan. “There was obviously a concern that had she not followed the protocol … we may have used deadly force.”

Simpson was arrested…

Bruce says Refuse to be Terrorized. I say Boston was just exercising their authority as a police state. And the police probably hadn’t gotten to play with the sub-guns in weeks. They had to justify having their toys by actually pointing them as someone occasionally.

I do agree with Bruce that the true terrorists are probably laughing at us.

Another example of TSA’s uselessness

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Box Cutter Sails Through Airport Security

At least TSA put on a little bit of a show for their Security Theater. They make him pour out his coffee.

Funny

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Old “fake but accurate” Dan Rather is suing CBS:

The lawsuit, first reported by The New York Times, alleges that CBS violated Rather’s contract by giving him insufficient airtime on 60 Minutes after he was ousted from the anchor seat at the CBS Evening News in March of 2005. It also claims that the company commissioned a biased investigation into the Texas National Guard controversy, resulting in a flawed report that “seriously damaged his reputation.”

[…]

The suit says the public apology Rather offered to viewers and to Bush on his newscast on Sept. 20, 2004 was written by a CBS corporate publicist, and that he delivered it “despite his own personal feelings that no public apology from him was warranted.”

It’s amazing isn’t it? It was conclusively proven the memo he reported on was a fake but no apology was warranted. Had he been getting away with that sort of crap for so long that he thought it was acceptable? If so then how much damage did he do before he finally got caught? His betrayal of the public trust should have required of him something much more substantial than a public apology. It should have been an exceedingly stiff fine and perhaps some jail time.

Quote of the day–Ronald Reagan

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The best minds are not in government. If any were, business would steal them away.

Ronald Reagan
[The difference I saw between working on government contracts as a “Senior Research Scientist II” at PNNL (I was once told I would be considered a “god” if I had a PhD) and working at Microsoft as a Software Development Engineer was like teaching high school Freshman versus earning my MSEE. But you don’t need to be an engineer to see the truth of Reagan’s statement. Just look an some of our government agencies, like the TSA. This is just part of the reason why government should be limited; they are too stupid to spend our money wisely.–Joe]

Unobscuring Kip Hawley

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TSA head Kip Hawley (http://www.kiphawleyisanidiot.com/) attempts to explain the reason for the three ounce limit on liquids and why the rule is reasonable. He is deliberately obscure in places:

“This is something we thought a lot about. There’s a whole classified section to the answer, but in the unclassified part we are limited to discussing, with 3-1-1, the major focus was first, to stop assembled bombs,” he said.

“The nature of liquid explosives is that they are very volatile, unlike military-grade explosives that react predictably. With homemade explosives, while the benefit is that they are made of easy-to-get ingredients, the downside is that you get widely different results for the same quote-unquote recipe.

“If you’re going to use these explosives in the aviation context, you have to be very precise in the mixing because, as we found in the testing, minor variations in formula have a very dramatic effect on whether or not the explosives are successful.

“So 3-1-1- eliminates the ability to assemble the ingredients in a laboratory, using expert people to provide a finished bomb for somebody to use on a suicide mission on an airplane,” he said.

On a plane, mixing up a bomb in a suitable container “isn’t like mixing a beverage,” he said, adding: “This stuff is very volatile; it is very obvious; you can smell it a long way away. It’s very corrosive.”

The volatile stuff he’s talking about would be the acetone used to make acetone peroxide. And yes acetone is very smelly. I have never made acetone peroxide and have no plans to. It’s called “Mother of Satan” for a reason.

The “very corrosive” stuff would be nitric and sulfuric acids used to make nitroglycerin; probably the most well known of all liquid explosives.

Yup. Mixing up either of those explosives without being noticed would be difficult on a plane. The acetone in particular is very noticeable. Finger polish remover is frequently acetone. So if someone starts working on removing their fingernail polish don’t be surprised if you see the flight crew getting a little excited about finding the source of the smell.

The problem with the whole explosives testing thing is that there are lots of things made out of stuff they don’t, and essentially can’t, test for that make the whole exercise just A Security Theater. That money would be far better spent on finding the bad guys before they ever got to the airport. But don’t expect Hawley to tell you that. It’s not his job to tell you his job is a sham. His job is to make you feel safer. Do you feel safe yet?

Quote of the day–Ginny Burdick

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It’s just ludicrous to allow guns in schools under any circumstances. There are regular common-sense gun owners who overwhelmingly want the local school board to at least be able to make their own decision on this at the local level. Most of the parents I talked to had no idea, and they were horrified when they found out it was possible to bring a gun to school. . . . Johnny’s parents don’t want his first-grade teachers packing heat.

Ginny Burdick
Oregon State Senator
D-Portland
September 11, 2007
Teacher demands to carry gun in school
[Oh really? ANY circumstances? How about when some nut case or (redundancy alert) religious fanatic is shooting up the school? Should the cops leave their guns at the station when they come out to put a stop to it? If no, then why shouldn’t the teachers put a stop to it even sooner? And how about this teacher who has a nut case ex-husband? If she is a teacher then she doesn’t deserve to be able to defend herself? And it’s particularly noteworthy that she appeals to “common-sense”–because there is no factual data to support her conclusions. If she lived in the deep south 40 years ago she would be appealing to the “common-sense” laws prohibiting blacks to use the same water fountain with whites. It’s typical that she claims she is an advocate for “gun safety legislation”. I’ll bet she has never taught or even attended a gun safety class yet wants to legislate on the issue. In conclusion, not everyone is a bigot or has mental problems like Ms. Burdick. Some people want teachers to be able to protect themselves and their students. That is the real “common-sense” which should be adhered to.–Joe]

Cleaning out the bomb help email

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I sort of ran out of snark for these sort of things and they have just sat around in my Inbox “forever”. Some I would have turned over to law enforcement but it has been so rare that I have received even an acknowledgment of receipt from them that I got discouraged. If they don’t care then I guess I don’t much care either.

But maybe you will get some amusement out of them:

From: Pgleon@
Sent: Wednesday, June 28, 2006 3:29 PM
To: JoeH
Subject: DA BOMB

hey joe i was wounderin how 2 make a bomb could u plz tell i at least wana blow a little hole in a wall or somin blow a hole in da floor i meen grass like a golf hole but a bit wider and deeper could u plz send me instruction but i avent got much 2 spend on it and i live in the uk. send this 2 gesty@ thx dude

From: Jordan
Sent: Wednesday, July 05, 2006 6:59 PM
To: JoeH
Subject: bomb

i was wondering if me and  a friend put black powder in a concled place with a wick would it explode and how big. Well anyways can you give us directions on a big bomb blow a few feet into the ground?
Jordan

From: yunus 
Sent: Thursday, July 06, 2006 12:14 AM
To: JoeH
Subject:

hiii

c
i trying to some kind a loud bomb for a trick but i cant be there and so i
need also a timer but i have no idea so i hope you will help  me

whatting your answer
please

_________________________________________________________________
En etkili ve güvenilir PC Korumayi tercih edin, rahat edin!
http://www.msn.com.tr/security/

From: René
Sent: Sunday, July 16, 2006 10:30 AM
To: JoeH
Subject: Can u help mee?

I want to Build a Big Bomb with a big boom… It can be expensive but easy to get the stuff to it…..
Nothing else matters

From: SCOTT 
Sent: Tuesday, July 25, 2006 1:48 AM
To: JoeH
Subject: HOW TO EXPLOSIVES

Hello Mr. Huffman,
 
I would like some info on how to build a bomb, something with the power of about 2 sticks of dynamite. I might like to try and put a hole in a cement wall or something to that affect.
 
                                                    Thanks!
 
                                                           Scott

From: mark 
Sent: Saturday, August 12, 2006 10:54 AM
To: JoeH
Subject: help me

Dear Joeh;
   I have an enemy in my neighborhood who’s always trying to get me arrested. She hates me and tries to hurt me in anyway she can. Well, I want to teach her a lesson once and for all. Help me build something that can be thrown through her window and severely hurt that bitch. Remember it can’t be to heavy because I have to be able to throw it.
                                                                    sincerely,
                                                             troubled housewife

From: ASHTRAYASHTRAY13
Sent: Wednesday, August 30, 2006 12:59 PM
To: JoeH
Subject: basic bomb

hi,
 
i was wondering how to make a small basic bomb with simple and easy available ingridients. i would be very grateful if you could possibly tell me ??
 
regards,
Ash

From: Mirjana 
Sent: Monday, September 04, 2006 5:29 AM
To: JoeH
Subject: Homemade bomb

Can you tell me how to make a bomb that can make a hole in the ground (about 20 cm). Not too strong so i have to run like half a mile, and not that it explodes in 5 sec… I don’t have many materials avalible, just stuff that you can find in every home. I know how to make one bomb… but i need some weird acid so i can easily get hurt.
 
If you don’t reply me, thanks anyway…

From: louis
Sent: Thursday, December 07, 2006 6:04 PM
To: JoeH
Subject: u are a faggot and u cant catch me bitch hahahahahaha!!!!!!HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!

y dont u leave the 15 year old texan alone, dont u have something better 2
do! try and track me ass hole wow u have my e-mail big deal, i am 15 as well
and im guna make a bomb, throw it into a hotel swimmig pool

From: extinct02ws6
Sent: Sunday, January 28, 2007 11:12 AM
To: JoeH
Subject: Just Curious

 Hey. I was wondering how to build 2 types of bombs. the first, small, how to build a hand grenade. and second, larger, how to blow up a car. fused or timed. doesn’t really matter. thanks!
                                                                                                               tommy

From: Kayci
Sent: Saturday, February 24, 2007 8:47 AM
To: JoeH
Subject: Plan

Okay,so a friend and I need to build a series of explosive devices for a plan we have that will
probably take a few years to finalize. Anyway,we need to build 2 or 3 types of bomb:2 gas bombs,most likely propane,and some handy throwable explosives like grenades or pipe bombs. For the propane ones,we need complete instructions on engineering and remote
detonation. We want to take out a large building,roughly the size of a high school gymnasium. We want to injure many people in the proccess. We need the pipe bombs and grenades so we can fend off any resistance. We also might need a car bomb or two,for a good distraction. So,let me know what you got,I need the info soon.
Thanks,
KC

Quote of the day–John Crook

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Shooter groups, like the Sporting Shooters Association, who want to break our gun laws; take away gun registration; take away limits on hand guns; are in my opinion the most anti-social and dangerous type of groups that Australia has recently seen outside of course of certain criminal drug-related gangs.

John Crook
Gun Control Australia’s president
http://ssaasa.org.au/alerts2.htm
[Just so you know what they really think of you.–Joe]

Quote of the day–Dalton McGuinty

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Let’s ban handguns in Ontario. Let’s ban handguns across the country. Let’s declare war against handguns.

Dalton McGuinty
Ontario Liberal Leader
September 12, 2007
Gun ban needed, not school metal detectors: McGuinty
Responding to concerns after a student had been stabbed to death at a Toronto High School.
[Via Phil. Many of the comments to the article are just as nonsensical. These people have mental problems.–Joe]

Cultural or Drug Induced Behavior?

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It seems there are a lot of people stopping nearly a full car length behind the broad white line at traffic lights lately.  This was once a rare occurrence (old people who can’t see, stoned kids, etc.) but I’m seeing it every day now as I drive through town.

Is this some new cultural phenomenon, or do we suddenly have more pot smokers in Moscow, Idaho?

Doublespeak from an airport police chief

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First a refresher course.

I don’t know if he actually believes this or not. Maybe he does and just doesn’t have a good imagination. Or maybe it’s just that it’s part of his job to comfort the sheepeople even if he knows he isn’t telling them the complete truth:

Chief Troyer has been a driving force behind all of the airport security changes that has especially been focusing on removing items from people’s luggage that could be used to make explosives.

But we get this doublespeak and I just get annoyed with him:

“I don’t necessarily see it as being stricter as it is begin responsive to the threat,” Spokane International Airport Police Chief Pete Troyer said.

Whatever. The guy is just an actor in a security theater. What can you expect from someone like that? He reads his lines and he entertains the public.

Quote of the day–Melanie C. Brandon

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It was amazing seeing something that was used for so much violence, hurt and destruction, to watch its power being taken away. This really hits so close to home.

Melanie C. Brandon
Fashion statement for gun control Designer Melanie C. Brandon has made jewelry from a machine gun and pistols seized in Phila. and melted down.
[Her tag-line: “With each piece made, another gun is taken off the street.” It must be like some sort of primitive religion that believes spirits inhabit inanimate objects. The “power” is in the gun. Maybe an exorcism ritual would just as well. Or if it’s not evil spirits inhabiting the gun then maybe it’s the shape of the piece of metal. Do wearing crosses or some other shape of metal ward off evil spirits? Maybe putting smiley faces on the guns would make them acceptable. Whatever it is, it’s not about the facts of gun ownership.–Joe]

Social engineering and Security Theater at it’s finest

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Via Bruce we find, once again, that if you look and act like you belong you can belong:

The skit had been approved by ABC lawyers, but it had been assumed they would be stopped at the first checkpoint, hundreds of metres from the President’s hotel.

Instead, they were waved through the first checkpoint, then a second that had sniffer dogs. They eventually stopped in sight of the hotel.

The ABC later released a statement saying the team had no intention of entering a restricted zone and had been wearing mock “insecurity passes” that stated the convoy was a joke.

“It was a piece testing APEC security and the motorcade looked pretty authentic,” the Chaser source said.

“They approached the green zone, and they just waved them through – much to their amazement, because the sketch was meant to stop there with them being rejected.

“They were then waved through into the red zone, but rather than go all the way through they made the call to turn around.”

“Apparently that was the first time the police realised it was not authentic and they swooped in and arrested everybody.”

This is the funnest part to me:

“The police only detained the Chaser motorcade when it was turning around and after Chas Licciardello emerged from a car dressed as Osama bin Laden.”

Good security is extremely difficult. It only takes one weak link to break the chain. But had APEC security been part of a Hollywood movie it would have been in the series The Keystone Cops. Again, from real life:

LAST week, a butter knife was a handy dining implement. This week, it seems, APEC security staff have declared knives and forks as potential terrorist weapons.

On the same day police won a court battle to stop protesters marching down George Street through the APEC security zone, it emerged yesterday that at least one cafe near George Bush’s hotel has been ordered by police not to set outdoor tables with silverware, lest it fall into the wrong hands.

And office workers in Bridge Street’s AMP tower have been told to stay away from the windows, draw the blinds and not to look at helicopters.

[…]

“On Monday an APEC security officer asked us to limit our outdoor furniture. He said if you are setting a table, don’t set it with knives and forks because they can be used as a potential weapon by terrorists.”

[…]

On Tuesday night, about an hour before Mr Bush arrived at his hotel, a police officer approached a Herald reporter and demanded to see what he had written in his notebook.

He told the reporter other police in the area might make similar demands. Two minutes later another officer made the same request.

Security Theater at it’s finest.

Good choice of background music

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The Brady Bunch has a link to this video about “microstamping” on their website. They ignore obvious and important points of their critics such as:

  • Shell casings found at a gun range can be deliberately scattered at a crime scene
  • Revolvers don’t leave shell casings at the crime scene unless the shooter reloads
  • Replacement firing pins and breech faces would have to be registered and tracked as well as the firearm itself
  • Gun parts are easily modified or manufactured
    • Firing pins can be manufactured from scrap metal with simple hand tools–they may not last more than a few dozen shots but they should be more than adequate for most crimes
    • Breech faces markings can be ground off and/or filled in with metal filled epoxy
  • There are many millions of guns already in circulation
  • Stolen guns aren’t going to be associated/registered with the criminal who used it in a crime
  • A black market will likely develop in unmarked gun components or components that have phony numbers (such as fake SSN cards that have valid numbers but belong to someone else)

One must assume they believe in some sort of supernatural capabilities for this technology that defies the laws of physics and human nature as we know it. But regardless of all the reasons why this scheme could never work the big thing that I noticed while watching this video was the background music–the theme from The X-Files.

The VPC declares victory

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If your organization was concerned with reducing violence you would assume you claim victory when violence was reduced after expending your energy to accomplish some task. But that’s not the way it works with the Violence Policy Center. They claim victory when the number of gun dealers is reduced:

The sharp drop in gun dealers is one of the most important—and little noticed—victories in the effort to reduce firearms violence in America. Fewer gun dealers reduces the potential number of sources for high-volume illegal gun trafficking.

I’m pleased to note they report Idaho still has more gun dealers than gas stations however:

America Once Had More Gun Dealers Than Gas Stations, Now Only Five States Do: Alaska, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, and Wyoming.

As a reminder, it was their buddy former President Bill Clinton and fellow criminals in the legislative bodies obtained an dramatic increase in the price of a Type 1 Federal Firearms License (FFL). This drove hundreds of thousands of dealers out of business and gave the VPC their “victory”.

If the VPC is going to claim victory when the number of gun dealers is reduced instead of when the rate of violence crime is reduced they really should be called the “Victimization Proliferation Conspiracy”.

Happy Labor Day, Socialists

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Now I don’t suppose you’d be ready and willing to honor all the creative people, the inventors, those who put their dreams into action, and the venture capitalists who have put their capital at risk so you could have a chance at a job in the first place, by going to work on a weekend at no charge to your employer.  What; turnabout isn’t fair play?  Its all one way with you?