It's Just SO five years ago

A Layered Security System.

No single security measure is foolproof. Accordingly, the TSA must have multiple layers of security in place to defeat the more plausible and dangerous forms of attack against public transportation.

Recommendation: Improved use of "no-fly" and "automatic selectee" lists should not be delayed while the argument about a successor to CAPPS continues.

Recommendation: The TSA and the Congress must give priority attention to improving the ability of screening checkpoints to detect explosives on passengers.

Those are quotes from the 2004 report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States.

And as a quick alternative reading recommendation... Ruth Marcus in the Washington Post isn't one of my must-read columnist but her column's (you may need to register at the site) about as good as any I've read in discussing last week's airplane incident.

Now, security and I have a kind of ambiguous relationship. I've ranted about the idiocy of requiring photo IDs when you check into a hotel. I'd really like to see a grass roots movement formed to protest that. Waiting on line to show a photo ID to get a visitor badge to enter any run of the mill NYC office building is a ridiculous stupid time tax that should be obliterated off the face of the earth.

But I'm also not a privacy purist. NYC has random bag checks on the subway system that do something to harden a very soft target without being silly or imposing an unacceptable time tax on three million people a day. And don't get me started again about the baseball teams that let you bring in a factory-sealed water bottle, but not an empty water bottle.

The main problem with the whole airplane thing is that there's a huge time tax imposed on lots of people that wastes goodness knows how many billions of person hours every year, and it still doesn't work. The system is so inefficient and awful that I'm tempted to say we should just do away with the whole thing entirely. But then sanity rears its ugly head. The system is an outgrowth of a bona fide problem with hijacking planes, and if we could all just cart a fire arm on to a plane... I don't want to make it so easy for people to pop on to airplanes with explosives, either.

But yet, the system we have is layered in the worst possible way. It's layered like my office IT had been two years ago. I had a system that barely worked when I started it, then kept adding on to it to do no things and more things, and bit by bit I had a system so bad that I don't think my business would have survived 2009 if the IT hadn't been un-layered in 2008.

Once upon a time we had a system that just scanned everyone very quickly for metal, so we couldn't keep on with open season for hijackers. And you know what, that actually mostly worked, there were way fewer hijackings, and if the system even then wasn't perfect (plastic guns, hijacking without guns, etc.) it worked well enough. Then we started with checking the boarding passes so that only people actually getting on flights were allowed in. Then we started with checking the photo IDs. Well, OK. Photo IDs can be counterfeited, and so can boarding passes, but OK. 9/11 happens, and we start to add more layers at the security checkpoints because we realize we need to worry about things other than just guns. Like knitting needles and nail clippers. Well, OK, some of the most vibrant idiocies of this era were eventually dialed back. But then we get the shoe bomber. Now we all need to take off our shoes, and we have the liquid rules. For a time, I couldn't even bring an empty bottle past security and then fill it up from a water fountain, and again some of the most vibrant idiocies were eventually curtailed, but the end result was still yet another layer. Now we have the Qaeda Underpants Bomber, and I'm sure some of the most vibrant idiocies of the past week will eventually be rolled back but we'll still have another layer.

Well, this isn't going to work.

The enemies of western civilization have already achieved a victory in adding all of these new layers to the process, increasing the friction and time tax to airline travel with each new layer. The ability to move from place to place on an airplane instead of being limited to the horseback riding of the typical fantasy novel is a big part of contemporary western civilization. Even high-speed train travel has its limits, and if we had only that I'm sure the bad guys would try and make that untenable as well (recent bomb on Moscow/St. Petersburg train in Russia). We can't make flying so miserable that nobody wants to do it at all.

But at bottom, I think we need to start over from the beginning, ask what we're really trying to do, and find some way that doesn't require everyone to wait on line, take off their shoes, take off their jacket, take off their belt, put the laptop in a separate tray, but the 100ml bottle of Prell into a little plastic baggie, put all of this thru a metal detector, wait around to go thru the explosives detector.

Clearly, there always has to be a chance that some people will need to do something like this, because an element of random security isn't such a bad idea. But maybe one hour it just needs to be everyone on some flights, and some other hour some people on every flight. Maybe today you get screened at the entry to the gates and tomorrow you get screened at the gate and the day after that at the bottom of the jetway and occasionally no place at all. And maybe it's a hand pat one day, a full screening of everything the next, and an interrogation about your travel plans the day after that. And you know what, Granny Wither Walker and Artie Fish Alney will need to be screened every so often, because if the bad guys know neither of them are ever going to be screened, they'll find themselves a Granny or an Artie.

But what we have now is a farce.

I know a lot of people right now who are flying less or not flying at all because they're just not comfortable with the process. I fly because I like going places, but I like the screening routine less and less with each passing flight (I did go thru a next-gen body scanner flying back from Miami in August). Now, happily, we did away with the policy where everyone who was on a one way flight, and everyone who paid cash, and everyone who didn't check baggage, was going to get the once-over. But somebody who does all three, who's on the radar of intelligence and security forces in multiple countries, and we're all being good boys and girls taking off our shoes and our belts and our jackets, and this still happens?

We've got to do better, and when the experts talk about layered security, the layers we've got going now just can't be what they have in mind. I think we'd probably be safer and more secure with less security than we have now.

The Trial

Um, no, not the Kafka one.

Gail Collins has always been a favorite columnist of mine. Many years ago she was at New York Newsday. It was a great loss when she left for the NY Times where she was on the Editorial Board and thus having to submerge her voice, and a great pleasure when she returned to being a columnist.

So it's no surprise that I liked her column on the Khalid Shaikh Mohammed trial, but I also think she's going at something very important without quite going deep enough.

To keep this part of it brief, and for those not following the whole saga very closely, KSM is one of the Al Qaeda masterminds of 9/11. Several months ago, the Obama administration decided to try him in Manhattan at a courthouse in Lower Manhattan not far from the World Trade Center. A lot of people in NYC were "hip hip hooray, we're better than those wimps in Illinois who don't want no stinkin' Guantanamo inmates." Then, we get word of the NYPD plans to secure the trial. Which would turn all of Lower Manhattan below at least Canal Street into a giant prison full of barricades, policeman, road closures, random searches, and the like. Then everyone says it isn't such a good idea, and the US has decided to seek alternate locations.

Gail Collins says, not without some reason, (and I paraphrase) that we need to cowboy up and stop acting like this, where anything goes in the war so long as it doesn't go near us.

But where she doesn't go is where I think we need to go. Our society is so enmeshed in fear, hiding from any risk of terrorist anything, that we're forgetting the whole "who watches the watchmen" part. Some people at least question the TSA about security theatre at airports, in part because it's such an in your face annoyance to the rich and powerful including the politicians who have to fly back and forth to DC. But I've hardly heard anyone in the mainstream, Gail Collins in this column included, questionning the deeper assumption in the KSM trial debate.

Which is, why the heck does hosting this trial require such a deep level of security that Lower Manhattan would have to be turned into a war zone at this level and expense of security, to try this guy? I think that's bullshit. New York is a terrorist target right now today. We're less than a month shy as a write of the 18 month anniversary of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. I've been living in a terrorist target for at least 18 years. If we need to have this $200M/year security plan for the KSM trial, then we should have a $500M/year security plan for the entire city that's in effect every single day, because the bad guys will be just as happy to bomb the subway tomorrow as to do it while KSM is on trial.

But everyone is buying into the security plan. The rich real estate interests that won't be able to sell a luxury condo in lower Manhattan in the middle of a war zone aren't lining up at police HQ to say "yo, Commissioner Kelly, come back with a better plan," they're just saying the plan is right and we can't live with it.

I'm torn on the subject.

I want Guantanamo closed. I don't like torture. I don't like lopsided military tribunals. I think America has ideals it should stand for even when they're inconvenient because we need to lead by example and show we're better than the other guys.

And I don't want to live in a police state. I did not want NYC to get the Olympics because that would have been a forced three week vacation while I left the police state behind. When the WorldCon was in Boston in 2004, I headed up a few days early so I could entirely avoid the police state New York City during the Republican National Convention, and I didn't even like my layover in New Haven switching from Metro North to Acela because even there the station was too full of police and police dogs for my enjoyment. I don't like walking around midtown east when the UN General Assembly is in session.

If the only way we can try KSM in Manhattan is to have a police state for the duration, then I'll go with the people saying "thank you, but no." But first, I'd like to go back to NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly and say "great job, Ray, but that's not the kind of approach we're looking for right now. What else you got for us?"

So I'm kind of ending up in the same place as the people I don't want to be with, though from the exact opposite direction.

Though I'm not at the same places as Charles Krauthammer, the conservative columnist who likes digging his teeth into Barack Obama like Joshua Bilmes into a slice of Devil's Food Cheesecake from Juniors. He wants for Congress to defund any civilial trial at all for KSM. I think it's a better thing for the US to have him given a good old-fashioned criminal trial somewhere than to say our courts aren't up to the task. And I'd be very happy if we could try him right here in NYC with me living a few miles away, in a way that says we can go about our daily business for the duration. I'm not convinced that we can't do that.

Another rant on homeland "security"

Sadly two Hungarian touriststs died in a duck tour accident in Philadelphia this week. That is two more people than have died from succesful islamic terrorism attacks in the in the US in the past 8 years. Yet we live our lives under constant assault from the security state that has developed in the US. I can enter a major league baseball stadium with a factory-sealed water bottle but not with the same bottle in its entirely empty state. I must wait on line and present photo ID to enter midtown office buildings filled with people and companies nobody in the world cares about. Airport security theatre.. Bag checks for the Bryant Park FIlm Festival. I'm not linking to all of my earlier posts, click the Homeland "security" tag to find more.

And as it turns out, going on a duck tour in Philadelphia is more dangerous.

OK, I'm being a little tiny bit flip here. If or even when there's a successful suicide bomb attack in the NYC subways, that will be a very bad thing on a level of awfulness far beyond two Hungarian tourists dying in the Delaware. And in fact, I think the random bag checks the NYPD does in the NYC subways are some of the few instances in which there's a balance struck between privacy issues, a tax on time and resources that hurts our economy and ourselves in many subtle ways, and the need to keep the western world functioning without choking on security bullshit.

But will the country ever wake up and realize that our civil liberties aren't just what the NRA decides is meant by the Second Amendment. That there is something very wrong when we go around passing laws that make it easier for all of us to have guns but make it a sin to bring in a factory-sealed 16oz bottle of Diet Coke to a Mets game vs. a factory-sealed water bottle? When I have to carry my papers to visit my accountant in his office building.

And what scares me even more is that there's a generation of people, as it's nine years now after 9/11, that's growing up to consider all of this bullshit normal. I remember when we didn't have to do these things, and I'd like for the government to say that our goal is to stop doing things like this, and not to stop when our war on terrorism is over. Because that war is never going to end, and the new normal isn't something we should be willing to accept. Where is the Tea Party to rebel against government control when it comes to the "security" policies of Major League Baseball.

The Never-Ending War

So New For 2013, as the main draw of the US Open tennis begins Monday, they have announced that this year everyone will get to be wanded and go through a magnetometer.

Why?

For the past ten years, you've only been able to bring in one small bag, and that one small bag has been hand-inspected as you go in.  There's no way that the Boston Marathon scenario could repeat at the US Open as it has been run, security wise, for the past decade.

Adding a magnetometer adds no additional security.

None.

Nada.

Zilch.

Of course, it is a nice make-work program, because now the company that provides the security forces for the US Open gets to hire more people!  Most of these people are temps of some or another sort, and I am sure the contractor that provides this service for the Open makes a nice additional profit.

Of course, it is a nice make-work program for the people who make wands and magnetometers.

Of course it makes everyone feel so much more secure.  Even though it doesn't add any actual security.

It does add nicely to the time people will spend queuing to get into the Open.  Let's be very conservative and say that it's just an extra two minutes.  That's very very conservative.  But there are 40,000 people a day going to the open, so that's 80,000 minutes, for 14 days.  That's over two years of lost time.

Just dandy.

And of course, there's no going backward on any of this.  The day will never come when the polie or anyone else will say that the world has gotten safer and we can go back and do less, spend less money and lose less time and less productivity and still be reasonably safe.  It will only get worse.  Because no matter what we do, we will never be 100% safe.  There is risk to everything we do every day, and some day some other bad thing will happen that will require us to come up with some other layer of security.

Happy happy joy joy.

Messaging & Politics

So it's That Time of the Year, that biennial season when you can turn to CSPAN at off-hours or streaming on their website with oodles and oodles of political debates.

And it's that time when I am perennially reminded how good the Republican Party is.  Not on ideas or policies, there are very few of those that I agree with, but their messaging is always so much better and so much more consistent.  You watch a handful of debates, you'll see the Republicans trotting out their well-tested talking points.  And you'll see the Democrats -- well, you never know what you'll see the Democrats doing.  Do Democratic strategists watch debates?  Can't they figure out after the first few what the Republican message is and start to get some counterpoints out by the time debate season is into its third or fourth weeks?  Will Democrats ever realize that you can get only so far trying to distance yourself from your party or your President, that one of the great Republican successes of the past four years is their unity, the single-minded purpose of their opposition to the President, their ability to get everyone to switch gears and oppose things they favored two days ago?  Why do I want to trust the Democrats to do anything when they go years and decades not getting their political messaging together?

Several election cycles back, it was clear that the Democrats were doomed when they couldn't seem to figure out any way to sell the estate tax, when week after week in debate after debate they were utterly flummoxed by the Republican message on repealing the death tax.

So of course, it's pointless to look at debates and try and figure out the main message the Democrats are trying to get across, but we can see some of the main Republican themes.

I'm seeing a lot of focus on entitlement programs this year.

Argument #1 is a very nice line, that we need to do something about Social Security and Medicare, and if younger people like myself or my employees will just realize that something needs to be done, if we're willing to recognize that these programs will have to look different in the future than they do today, that we can leave things the way they are for our grandparents.  This is a very powerful argument, and the mainstream media isn't picking up on it or talking about it very much.  It's an argument that is directly contrary to a shibboleth in the commentariat that nobody asks for sacrifice from the American people.  Well, stop, look, what's that sound, one of the main Republican talking points this year is a direct appeal to sacrifice.  This is politics, the argument isn't being made in detailed specifis on the sacrifices that will be needed, but the idea that one generation can make things right for another with a little bit of sacrifice is being made very clearly.

Argument #2 is related, that we need to "fix" Social Security and Medicare.

Now, if I'm a a Democratic political strategist, I'd have a little bit of a hard time finding the right counter to Argument #1.  But what about Argument #2?  There's no Democratic strategist who can get the candidates saying "yeah, haven't we all seen the movie where the bad guy says 'I need to you to fix this for me,' and we all know even though it's never said what the fix is supposed to be?  

Also on the messaging front, the 47% remark Mitt Romney made does seem to have done a lot more severe damage to his presidential hopes than the "legitimate rape" comment to Todd Akin's Senate race in Missouri.  Why do some Republicans think, and maybe correctly, that Akin could still win with the right support, while Romney's remarks have clearly hurt not just his campaign but had some downwind effect on Senate races as well ??

Agree or disagree with the statements, or with the positions they lead to, Akin's actual position isn't really different from the Republican party's platform.  He takes a different approach than others might to get to that position, but when you get down to it, his comment will cost him votes mostly from people who disagree with his reasoning.  If you disagree with the position itself, you probably weren't voting for him anyway.  Since his position is reflective of the party platform, he has a valid argument now when he campaigns against the political bosses who are running from him.  Which helps to limit losses from that group of "position yes, reasoning no" people.

The problem with Romney's remark about the 47% is that he doesn't seem to realize that a lot of the wonderful political messaging the Republican party has, see Argument #1 and Argument #2 above, see turning the estate tax into a death tax, is designed to get votes from the 47%.  From seniors on Social Security who don't pay income tax, and might be willing to have Social Security and Medicare fixed or saved so long as it's more the other guy's burden than theirs.  So leave aside all of the agreeing or disagreeing with the statement, it costs votes from people on his side.

That's when the gaffe can become a really huge problem, when it will cost you votes among people who were planning to vote for you on a position basis, not because they already disagreed with the position, or who wish you wouldn't say things like that in public, but with people who were on your side of the ledger and now wonder if/why they should be.

And downwind, it's a lot harder for the Republican candidates for the House and Senate to disavow Romney's positions.  If there are people on the Republican side of the ledger who start to question if that's the side to be on, you can't do what you just did with Todd Akin and kind of disavow the person while keeping with the policy.

Personal preference aside, Bob Kerrey doesn't deserve to win his Senate race in Nebraska.  He was saying yes, we need to fix or repair or mend Social Security or Medicare, only with less passion and less articulately than his opponent, Deb Fischer.  Who clearly considers these to be winning issues for her.  So if both candidates support the same policy, you've got to vote for the better advocate.  Isn't there a Democratic strategist somewhere who can supply Kerrey with words that he can say with enthusiasm and passion that don't try quite so hard to cede the main issue in the campaign to his opponent.

The After Sandy

So it's been an interesting last ten days or so!

For the first ten years of JABberwocky, I worked alone in my apartment, it's never given me cabin fever the way being forced to stay in my apartment by weather does.  It's not just a recent thing with Irene last year or Sandy this year, I remember an MLK day many years ago when there was an ice storm sort of thing and the sidewalks were too dangerous.  But Sandy might have been the worst of it, in part because of the subway flooding.  All the years I was working alone, I would go to the Post Office because I had to do it, I could stop at the library to read the paper, I did my own messenger work for a good chunk of that time and could go out laden with manuscripts and enjoy some fresh air and exercise.  But with Sandy, the office was closed last Monday and Tuesday, the subways weren't running, it was hard to do much of anything social, and there wasn't any choice.  And I had power!  Many of my Scrabble friends especially live in the part of Manhattan that didn't have power for days.

I am so glad the NYC Marathon was cancelled.  Mayor Bloomberg has always had this weak spot for sports, for the football stadium on the west side of Manhattan, or his Olympics bid, now this, he's lost most of those battles.  Currently, there are plans to expand the Tennis Center in Flushing Meadows Park, which have some community opposition, but which don't look to take too much more parkland, and also plans to build a soccer stadium in the park, which would take up lots of parkland. And would be in the "Fountain of the Planets" area, part of the grand design of the park for the 1964 Worlds Fair.  I'd rather the city find the money to restore that area of the park and to restore a little more of the public grandeur.  Sometimes people join me for the qualifying at the US Open, if they haven't been to Flushing Meadows before I'll take them around the park, and it's so much "that used to be, this used to be" and not near enough of what actually is.  One of the world's richest cities should do better.  I don't think it's just that I'm biased in favor of tennis.  Having spent a lot of time in the park before the expansion of the tennis center in the 1990s, I didn't perceive that the tennis was taking away a lot of high value area in the park, the soccer stadium would be.  When I walk people around the park, I've always pointed to where the soccer stadium would be as "shameful the way the city has let this fall to rot," deciding it can only be saved by covering it with a soccer stadium isn't right.

On tennis, Jerzy Janowicz continued his amazing run at the Paris ATP Masters, winning a semi-final match convincingly against Gilles Simon, currently ranked #20 and as high as #6.  Five wins in a week against top 20 players.  The run ended in the final against David Ferrer, top 5, who heretofore had the most victories in ATP Masters 1000 events without actually winning one.  Ferrer's a short player, it was funny watching the trophy presentation because Janowicz is tall, a foot higher at least, and he's quietly become one of the best players in the game outside the big 4 without getting much attention.  Janowicz moved up to #26 in the world, over 40 notches higher, going from nobody to somebody, from qualifying every week to making every tournament by direct draw and guaranteeing himself a seed in the Australian Open.

Comic books.  DC is filling "5th Wednesday" months with Annuals and other non New-52 books, it keeps the New 52 on schedule without leaving holes.  The last time we had a 5th Monday week the Annuals weren't very good.  This week I picked up a Batgirl Annual and a Swamp Thing Annual that were both quite good, and an Action Annual that was solid.  Steve Niles has a new horror story Lot 13 with a first issue out from DC that was a little like a Zebra genre horror novel from 25 or 30 years ago but with some nice art and on balance pleasant.  First of 5 issues, I look forward to the rest.  I didn't like the last in the 8-issue New Deadwardians Vertigo mini-series quite as much as the series as a whole, and I'm not liking the final issues of the current American Vampire arc as much as the first, but still, both were solid enough.

And now I want to get on my soapbox a bit.

I could talk a lot more about my personal experiences during Sandy Week, but I came off a lot better than most, JABberwocky didn't do so badly, for the most part I was just coming away with memories for the memory bank, of walking across the 59th St. Bridge with thousands of people instead of dozens, or watching dozens of cars lined up for gas.

Instead, I'm going to talk about human irrationality as viewed thru the prism of Sandy and 9/11.

The two events can't be directly compared, in part because you can't easily compare thousands of lives lost in 9/11 with the far-flung economic damages from Sandy and other weather events.  But we can safely say the events are in their different ways catastrophic.

So why did 9/11 inspire so much action, while a decade of ever-increasing natural threats like Sandy doesn't seem to get much to happen?

If you read my blog regularly, you know I've gone one at some of the things we tolerate in the name of stopping a terrorist event.  Enduring patdowns at baseball games, and rules that allow us to bring in factory-sealed water bottles but not an empty water bottle (i.e., a factory-sealed water bottle that we dump out the moment we pass thru the turnstile) to fill at a water fountain.  "Heightened security" at office buildings full of people that no terrorist cares about, showing photo IDs or even having drivers licenses scanned to gain admittance (what does building management do with your scanned license?), though happily very few of the buildings have magnetomers, so as long as we have photo ID we can go as postal as we want once inside.  All the BS at TSA checkpoints, the layers of reactive-to-the-last-threat security.  And the things I rant about are the tip of a vast and mostly hidden security apparatus (link goes to a major Washington Post series) that has huge costs, not just in actual money but in time and in loss of liberty. My point here isn't that all of these things are bad (random bag checks on subways, I think strike a good balance and are worthwhile), but to say that we definitely do a lot, and a lot of that not rationally.

As to extreme climate events?

Well, even if I limit myself only to things that deal solely with the extreme climate events themselves and not with underlying causes, we don't do very much.  Forget about if it's rational or irrational, it's not done.  It was often very easy for railroads and for highways to follow river valleys, so there are lots of railroad lines like the Metro North Hudson Line commuter rail here in New York, parts of the Amtrak line between St. Louis and Kansas City that are very close to water, all over, which are more and more likely to be damaged as sea level rises, which is currently happening.  We're not talking about that at all.  We've done very little in New York City to add "baby gates" in the subways that might keep the water from coming downstairs.  It would make lots of sense to bury power lines in DC which is getting walloped with lots of damaging stores, and fewer than 35% of the electric customers would want to see a dollar a month added to their bill to help pay for it.

What gives?

For one security silliness does gives an immediate sense of benefit, right or wrong but it does, so we don't ask what they actually protecting against, the odds of that bad thing happening, or multiply out the little costs to our time and to our wallet of all of these things. And we rarely pay directly.  It's buried in the rent or the price of a baseball ticket or a 9/11 security fee hidden in the fine print of the airline receipt.  Small but visible benefit, invisible damage to our wallet, often small time cost that we never think to multiply out.   Even small things to deal with climate events will have larger visible costs.  We don't actually know every dime our government spends on our homeland security apparatus which is hidden away in black areas of the budget, but if we spend money on sea walls in New York like those in the Thames which protect London or the tidal barriers which were built 50 years ago near Providence RI, those are large public expenses.  And after we spend that money, we don't visually see the result, people in Providence don't have a way to visualize the return on investment from spending a lot of money fifty years ago.  It's like this with a lot of infrastructure.

Second, we have a political system that reacts to money, and which is designed to protect streams of money more than one-time floods.  An example:  you give a private company a contract to run a prison, the private company makes a profit, it can use some of that profit to invest back into the political system via campaign contributions and ads in the right places to keep that profit.  It's the same with cable companies and health insurance companies and defense contractors and virtually any other business that relies on getting us or the government to give little bits of money on an ongoing basis (and just to mention, there are also people who get government benefits, but food stamps don't supply a lot of profit that you can invest back into the system in order to keep getting food stamps).  Some of our money, some of the government's money, goes to guarantee the need for us to keep paying that money.  The constructions trades and construction unions also lobby for infrastructure money, but there isn't quite as much spare cash splashing around because a lot of those things are one-time.  If you want to leverage the money the construction trades and construction unions have, it usually can't be for infrastructure being built as as long-term public good, but rather needs to be tied to something like the Keystone Pipeline.  There, the construction people get business, which leads to a steady flow of oil flowing through the pipeline, so the oil industry is happy to spend money to talk up the (likely inflated) number of construction jobs from the Pipeline, creating a nice resonant echo chamber.

And finally, human beings just aren't very good at evaluating risks.

Which makes it very difficult to do things the way Dr. Spock might logically have us do them.  There are way too many areas where we evaluate risk feebly.  And since government is us, all joined together...

So what do we have?

The NY Times reports there are many prominent office buildings that are closed for weeks or months in lower Manhattan as a result of flooding.  I'm sure over the past ten years that these buildings have, as a rule, spent very generously on lobby security, which has kept all of them safe from terrorist plots.  And all that money might better have been spent on something else.

I'm not all that optimistic that Sandy will change very much.  The buildings will reopen, and every day the people in them will feel very secure because they have a turnstile in the lobby, and each one of those days Sandy will fall a little further into the past.  And we don't have politicians these days of any stripe that want to fiercely advocate for the idea of government as a public good that sometimes needs to step in and do things -- great things, sometimes -- that we can't do ourselves.

Collective Punishment

Wikipedia defines collective punishment as "the punishment of a group of people as a result of the behaviour of one or more other individuals or groups." Which is the easy part.

Because in some circumstances, collective punishment is a routine part of life. In football practice or boot camp, when everyone has to run suicides or do push-ups because another member of the group screwed up.

And in other circumstances, it's a crime. Like if Israel demolishes a home because one member of the family committed a suicide bombing.

And so where do we put the recent United States TSA directive that "every individual flying into the U.S. from anywhere in the world traveling from or through nations that are state sponsors of terrorism or other countries of interest will be required to go through enhanced screening."

To me, it's another tragic and bad example of a security system that's rotten to the core, which I've been big on ranting about the past ten days (follow the TSA tags...).

Yes, not all countries are created equal. Some fund and breed terrorism and suicide bombers more than others, some breed crazed courthouse gunmen more than others, some have nice beaches and others good skiing. But nonetheless, this latest TSA directive serves to collectively punish many people from some countries because of the actions of a very few. Will the people who have to endure the extra screening blame the extremist elements in their own society and engage in introspection, or will they focus their anger on the US? It closes the world a little bit by discouraging casual travelers (which suicide bombers are not). Yes, we can all now see ourselves as Doing Something, too bad it's just not something very good or helpful.

And as I discussed before, we continue to layer our security in the worst possible way.

Once the full body scanner proves to be fallable or to be circumventable -- and it will; there will be another Qaeda Underpants or Shoe Bomber and maybe the next will succeed -- there aren't too many more layers of security to go before we all start removing all of our layers in order to get on a plane. Off goes the underwear, one TSA agent carefully checks that by hand, another carefully sticks his hand up the rear while another has us say "aaah. Or maybe we can get to the airport a day early, have awful blue liquid, not eat for ten hours, and then board the plane after the colonoscopy's done. Can I have my prostate checked at the same time and have the insurance co-pay billed to the credit card used for my plane ticket? And when that time comes, will we all happily accept it because we've become bit by bit by bit more and more inured to more and more outrages in the name of safety and security, like the pigs in Orwell's Animal Farm who bit by bit discover that all are created equal but some more equal than others?

Youthful exuberance

OK, so to set the record on this straight, the TSA Director said at a senate hearing on Wednesday 17 November that they haven't done a good job of communicating that children under 12 are exempt from the "enhanced patdown."

So aren't we all happy and comfortable now. To know that our young children can only be subjected to the regular patdown! And, really, who doesn't mind having their 14 year old daughter felt up the thighs and buttocks.

If this is the security regime we have, then we do have to give people of all ages an equal opportunity to be subjected to it.

The problem is that we have a security regime that routinely subjects people of any age to this.

Benjamin Franklin may not actually have said “They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security” but whomever said it, says it right.

Stupid Security Cocktails

So Hachette was having a cocktail reception this afternoon for literary agents to show off their beautiful new open plan offices.

To which I RSVPed on December 15.

Now, I'm curious as I walk up what kind of security thing they'll have, because having dozens or hundreds of agents waiting in line for their building passes would be kind of silly.

So they have this check-in desk with a little Hachette sign and people holding scads of pre-printed bar-coded building passes.  And we're told that these are under the agency names, and I say I'm there from JABberwocky, and like half the people on line, I'm told "we don't have your badge; you'll have to check in with the main desk" where you need to get a nice individual photo guest barcoded badge.

And I just didn't feel like it.

Did they have the badge under my name even though I was told twice it should be under the agency's name?  The email signature on my RSVP did just have my name on it and not the company name, though in theory if they're checking the RSVPs the database list would have both, and if they aren't certain, maybe somebody could check both my name and the agency's name, but Person A might have one letter of the alphabet and Person B might have the other letter, and do I really want to spend my time asking them "are you sure, do you want to check under name name as well as the agency name" when they're all so sure the badge is under the agency name?

What's the point of the security charade anyway, because pretty much anyone can say they're here for the Hachette reception and get a badge regardless of whether they're on the list or not.  So just walk over to 1290 Avenue of the Americas right this instant, wait on the first line, then have them tell you to go on the second line, and you're golden.  You can do whatever you want.  Shit, tell them you're Joshua Bilmes.

It's just bullshit, and I've got better things to do with my time than deal with bullshit in order to get a glass of wine or champagne from Hachette Book Group.

Like write a quick blog post to call Vornado, the landlord of Hachette's building, and Hachette, on their bullshit.  This is stupid security theatre.  It's scores or hundreds of agents each having to wait on line, or on multiple lines, for three or five minutes.  It's five hours of productive time on this Earth that's lost for no reason at all.

Another Link for Breakfast

David Brooks in the NY Times had a column on Friday about reactions to Qaeda Underpants that I also think is worth reading.

And another thought on what he calls (as have others) "Security Theatre." As best as I know, we don't have a good track record for unraveling plots against air transportation by catching bad guys going thru security checkpoints. I say "best as I know" because I want to recognize the possibility that we've done so but that it's been put under lock and key and kept under wraps to protect intelligence sources or an ongoing investigation or something like that. I kind of doubt it; it's hard to keep that kind of thing wrapped up, and too tempting to leak for political points, but it's possible. But 9/11, the shoe bomber, Qaeda Underpants, let's forget about Lockerbie because that was so long ago when the Theatre was much shorter than it is today, it seems like the bad guys have a good track record for getting on board the planes. So why are we all going this ever more layered security checkpoint? Can we say we haven't caught the bad guys because they don't bother trying because our security is so good?

Nationals Follies

So I just got back from seeing a ballgame at Nationals Park with a friend.

Now, even in the height of the fluid rule stuff when flying, when you couldn't bring on any liquid of any sort at all, I was able to bring on an empty plastic bottle which I could ask the flight attendants to fill up for me the moment I got on so that I would have some water at my seat during the flight. Even once when I had to go thru the security check with my empty bottle and then one of the random checks they were doing when you boarded. Even today, I still bring an empty half-liter soda bottle with me so I can go to the drinking fountain and have water without having to buy a new bottle of bottled water all the time.

So when I read up on the Washington Nationals web site about their security rules and saw this "one per person, a factory sealed water bottle of up to 1 liter," I decided to test it. Knowing I was doing evil, I had an empty 16 oz plastic bottle in my bag, which I hoped to fill with water at the drinking fountain. And the security people at the First Base Gate at 6:05 on a Friday night were having none of it. The supervisor grabbed the A to Z brochure to show me their Rule, and my empty plastic bottle had to get tossed.

There is no possible justification for this. I could have a 33 oz bottle of water, factory sealed, take it 5' further thru the turnstile, dump it on the ground, and that's OK. And that is the exact same thing that I was just forbidden to bring in.

This isn't because the Nationals want to be the only people to sell you food. You can bring in the 1 liter bottle of water, and other food in small quantity. I wasn't trying to bring in some Colored Liquid that could be Anything. It was an empty clear plastic bottle, just like a factory sealed water bottle would be if I dumped it out 5' from where I was standing. Any evil thing I could do with the 16 oz plastic bottle I had to toss I could do twice that with the allowed factory-sealed 1-liter water bottle.

Well, two possible reasons. The Nationals are on a water meter, and they can afford to give people refills but not give everyone their entire water for the game. Or, the US idea that there might be somebody like me who thinks it crazy not to re-use a plastic bottle, thinks it crazy not to use the drinking fountain at the airport or the ballpark or the wherever instead of buying new petroleum-based plastic water bottles all the time, is so alien to the culture of America right now that it never occured to the Nationals that somebody might want on a hot day to reuse a water bottle, and bring in an empty.

Both of these would be very sad.

Six degrees of separation ... if you know anyone who knows anyone who knows anyone in Nationals land, let them know about this silliness. The same empty bottle I take on plane should be fair game for Nationals Park.

I filled out a complaint form at the stadium, I will write to the Nationals, I will write to the Washington Post. If I ever go to a Nationals game again I do not want to be forced into buying another bottle.

And my friend is upset that none of the level 3 garnish stands for the hotdogs had been filled with onions. You can have all the relish you want with none of the onions, and all the factory-sealed plastic bottles one per person, but no empties.

Good Living Through Pop Culture

I saw Invictus on Saturday night (at the Bow Tie Cinemas Palace, Hartford CT., auditorium # 14). I liked it quite a bit. After being a bit disappointed a year ago with Clint Eastwood's last directorial effort Gran Turino, I was quite quite pleased with this. It's a sports movie and historical biopic all in one, set in the first half of the 1990s. Nelson Mandela is released from prison, takes the reins of government in South Africa, and in an effort to build unity in the country throws his full support behind the Afrikaans rugby team the Springboeks that to blacks has become a symbol of oppresive white rule. The captain of the team is played by Matt Damon, who's fine in a character role that's much less showy than the Bourne movies or The Informant. Mandela is played brilliantly by Morgan Freeman. The movie is occasionally a bit too obvious, but generally in small quick ways as opposed. Maybe Mandela explains why he's doing a bit more often than we need, enough so that it's surprising there isn't a quick rules lesson about rugby. But the big Power Scenes aren't as gushingly maudlin as is often standard for movies of this sort and instead have a bit of powerful not-quite-understatement that's moving without seeming manipulative. There's a quick glimpse of some security forces prepping for the big game where one of the persons we cut too is shorn of context just enough for the segment to be jarring, as if these scenes should have been left on the cutting room floor or some other scene with the character not left there. But generally you can count on a Clint Eastwood movie to be a well-made affair, and this doesn't disappoint.

The life lesson: Mandela makes a point of adding hold-over security from the white regime to his trusted security lieutenants, which is the source of some tension. When Matt Damon's rugby captain is invited to tea by Mandela, one of the white bodyguards is escorting him in, and Damon asks what he thinks of Mandela. The guard's response is along the lines of "with DeKlerk, I was invisible. With Mandela, he learned that I like toffee, and when he went to England he came back with a box of english toffe for me."

This line resonated with me. I try to be the person who would remember to bring back the box of toffee. I won't claim to do it perfectly, I can't claim to keep track of the lives of people like my mother, who manages to send more greeting cards to more people for more occasions than anyone else I know, but I try. And I think it's a trait worth having. Be a little curious about the people you work with, try and find out who likes the toffee. It's a social grace that I don't find near as much as I should.

On Sunday night it was time for the finale of Survivor: Samoa, the 19th edition of the pioneering reality show.

I had been a Survivor snob for its first three or four years, proud of ignoring it. And then one year I watched an episode on Thanksgiving night (sadly in recent years this episode has more often been an enh-y clip show than an actual newbie) with my younger brother and his family and found myself hooked. And have watched pretty regularly for the past six years or so. There've been good seasons and bad seasons and some boring episodes along the way, but overall it gives me pleasure.

This was a really good season, which helped to revise the show's gentle ratings decline. Sunday's finale was seen by a few more people than last December's, and even a bigger improvement over Season 18 in May.

And the finale was one of the more interesting, because I, at least, found it hard to root for the best man to win. An oil company executive named Russell clearly played the best game this season, perhaps one of the best in any season. He had a plan from the beginning, he executed it impeccably, he held to a core alliance, formed shorter alliances to be sure he could always vote out the people he wanted to vote out, when he wanted to do it.

And he lost the vote to become sole survivor and winner of the million dollar prize. Not even close. 7-2 in favor of another player who advanced that far prettty much entirely by hanging to Russell's coattails.

Why?

Well, Russell never stopped playing the game.

After the votes, the show has a few seconds where the departing player talks on his elimination. The next-to-last player to be voted off said in his remarks "the least I deserved was to be told that I was going home." And this departing player was right. There are times in the game when it's too dangerous to stop playing the game. Often not at the beginning, when there are too many votes to sway when nobody knows anyone else yet. Certainly not at the end, when alliances are so well cemented that there aren't votes to sway. So there's no harm in telling someone "sorry, but tonight's your night."

Boy, did that never happen in Survivor: Samoa. Week after week, the person being voted off was blindsided with no idea what was coming. Russell never told anyone tonight was their night. He was always telling person B that person C was being voted that night, person C that it was person B.

Life lesson: there's some truth to the adage about being nice to the people you meet on the way up because you might cross their paths on the way down. You can't always be playing the game.

I don't know how close that scene in Invictus is to anything that happened in real life. Survivor isn't real life. But nonetheless I think both of these things are teachable moments.

homeland humor

So there's this ad by Lindor, the people that make those wonderful little truffle balls that you can buy at the Borders checkouts, or with a $2.50 coupon in the latest Costco coupon book. You've got that Roger Federer guy going through airport security, and the people at the x-ray machine see that his carry-on is full of balls. "Hey, look at this, he's a tennis player" says blue-uniformed TSA person #1 to TSA person #2. Then they open the bag and see that it isn't tennis balls, but rather a big full of those delightful little Lindor truffle balls, while Roger Federer says "Swiss tennis player." Because it's swiss chocolate, get it. And then the TSA people say they're going to have to confiscate the bag, and Roger says "you've got to be kidding me," and the commercial ends with a freeze frame shot of the two TSA people looking very very serious about needing to confiscate that bag.

I find this funny. I don't find much to laugh about at airport security, but I find this funny.

And then tonight I audited the first 15 or 20 minutes of Due Date. Where Robert Downey Jr. has his carry-on switched with one of Zach Galifianakis' that has marijuana paraphernalia and such, and Downey has a dialogue with the TSA guard that's full of the two talking past one another. And then he's on the plane and he starts lecturing Galifianakis on how he shouldn't use words like terrorist and bomb and ends up being shot at by an air marshal with a rubber bullet, tossed off the plane, put on the no fly list. And after not really laughing once, or smiling, or even grinning even the teeny-tiniest bit, even beseeching the gods of comedy to explain why anyone thinks the "driver pulling away when someone tries to open door of car" gag is supposed to be remotely funny, I decided I'd rather get to Whole Foods and buy some dinner before they closed and get home than stay around in the theatre to midnight or so watching a not very funny movie.

So why is this? Why am I willing to enjoy one comic look at the insanity we call airport security while the other leaves me absolutely cold? Is it because I like Lindor truffle balls more than Zach Galifianakis? Because the one is so clearly unreal and exaggerated that I can view it from a distance while the other seems all too real? Because Roger Federer is a better comic actor than Zach Galifianakis?

guns and butter

OK, let's wade into this debate, and let's say pretty bluntly, anyone who agrees with "best way to stop a bad guy with a gun is to have a good guy with a gun" post-Newton argument doesn't have the right end of this argument.  Reasonable gun control is perfectly reasonable, and we should have a whole lot more of it.

And I'm not the crazy one for saying this.

And FYI, I grew up in a small town in rural New York State, first day of hunting season kids would take off from school, the highway would be full of people doing the hunting thing, full of police doing spot checks that cars didn't have more dead deer than the allocation.  Wasn't my scene, but I'm not without familiarity with a culture of sport hunting.

However:

The common sense way to keep bad things from happening, the way that we keep any other bad thing from happening that you can possibly think of, is to make it more difficult for that thing to happen.  You want less speeding, you add speed bumps or other traffic calming measures, you have and enforce a speed limit that's lower in front of a schoolyard, you don't say that the solution to speeding is to soup up cop cars.  In fact, police departments usually have regulations on when cops can engage in hot pursuit.  You want less bank robberies, you add dye packs and glass partitions and security cameras, the NYPD has even gotten on some banks that they think make their banks too easy to rob in the name of customer service.

And you want less dead hunters, you get real strict on the idea that people went out to the woods in hunting attire.  You want people to take only as many deer as they are supposed to, you spot check on the highway on the first day of hunting season.

Since common sense is on my side, I think the people who want to argue that gun violence is the one bad thing that can be reduced by having more guns with more people in more places have the onus of explaining why gun violence is the exception to the common sense idea that you make things more difficult if you want them to happen less.

One person I know tweeted after last summer's movie massacre that the solution was clearly to have more concealed carry holders in the theatre.  What about friendly fire? Which the best-trained best-equipped US military still has happen every now and again.

So if you're going to seriously argue that the solution is that we have more people with more guns in more places -- well, we won't give all of them military training, but what kind of licensing or training requirements are you going to require of these people so that we can at least go some distance toward having friendly fire incidents in movie theatres that won't be too much worse than what the best military in the world might have.

Because let's say you've got multiple people with guns in that movie theatre?  The other people are going to be stampeding for the exits, they're not going to be ducking for cover and acting like a trained soldier who's just come under ambush. A second person starts shooting, are they taking aim at shooter #1 or are they part of a plot with shooter #1?  There are a lot of quick decisions to be made that should be given at least the attention that I got in a driver's ed simulator in high school.  IPDE -- identify prepare decide execute -- trained enough I can still tell you about it long after I stopped driving a car regularly.

But of course, most people who want more people with more guns in more places want it 100% on the honor system that the people will take gun classes and be trained and keep their guns securely protected when they aren't being used.  I'm sure they'll all do that, just like we all have 16-character passwords for our websites that are different and include a symbol, a number, and an upper-case.

There's also the fact that a successful functioning state is one where the state has a monopoly on the use of force.  Failed states are ones where lots of people have guns and group into their own militias and can act independently of the state.  We worry about a country like Libya becoming a failed state if the state doesn't gain control of the militias.  We worry about states like Somalia that are essentially failed because everyone has guns but the state  Yet, in the US, where we have a right to bear arms based on this language "A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed" the current thought is that second amendment rights mean not only that we should have guns independent of any "well-regulated" or "militia" or "well-regulated militia."  We're told we have "second amendment remedies" to Obama or Obamacare? That doesn't sound like it goes along with "necessary to the security of a free state."

It's also suggested that the problem isn't our guns but our culture of violent movies and video games.  These violent games and movies are among our most successful exports to the rest of the world, yet the US has a uniquely high rate of gun violence.  There's a lot of searching to find excuses for our high rate of gun violence that don't come down to "we have more people with more guns in more places."

There are always counterfactuals.  The person who wasn't wearing a seat belt, so the person was thrown free of a crash and otherwise would have been killed.  But good public policy should be based on usual outcomes, on the better odds.

So why is limiting gun purchases to one a month crazy?  I think of growing up, I think of families having a gun -- a, as in one person -- and maybe passing one down like a family heirloom, not of having arsenals.  Cameras at gun stores don't strike me as more of an issue than cameras at the bank, both would film thousands of people doing things they are entitled to do and likely never capture a criminal but why is one worse than the other?  If we could spot check for killing too many deer, can't we stop thinking of silly reasons why fingerprinting guns or ammo or gunpowder is a miserable way to back-trace someone who actually does kill too many people?

Maybe I am crazy, I look at concentrations of policeman and say "what kind of dangerous thing is happening or about to happen here where I need all these policemen to protect me" and feel less safe in that kind of environment.

This post isn't full of links to this study or that study, this or that statistic.  I don't think I need them.  You want less of something to happen you make it more difficult for that thing to happen.  You want to say more guns are the solution, you need to tell me how you're going to train all those gun owners to make good decisions in the crunch.  I don't know if George Zimmerman was right or wrong under Florida law to take aim at Trayvon Martin, but don't you think it's strange to have the state of Florida giving him more or a right to shoot his gun than the police or a GI??

Disappointysium -- a guest review by Tim Akers

It was so much fun doing an exchange of movie reviews with Bryce Moore last month for Pacific Rim that I thought it would be fun to do another one with my client Tim Akers for Elysium.  Tim has just started selling an e-collection Bones of Veridon which collects some of the short fiction that first attracted me to Tim's work,  and you can also enjoy two Veridon novels, Dead of Veridon and Heart of Veridon.  Also highly recommended -- Horns of Ruin, the first fully realized blend of steampunk and sword & sorcery.
The JABberwocky page for Tim Akers
Tim's Blog, main link
My review, on Tim's blog.

Disappointysium

I want to start by saying that I kind of liked this movie, in the sense that I didn't walk out and I didn't feel like I had wasted my money and I only got blood-humming angry a couple times. But really, it was a movie of great potential that made dozens of small mistakes and one major mistake that killed it for me. I wanted to like it more, but didn't. Here's why.

Elysium felt strangely like a science fiction movie written by someone with no experience in science fiction. That's odd, because Blomkamp delivered the excellent District 9 (enjoyed it, will never see it again) and is supposed to be something of a ninja among science fiction directors. But from the very beginning there were a number of gaffes that felt like they were being made by someone who heard about this science fiction thing, and thought maybe he'd try his hand at it. Let me tell you, it's not for everyone.

Let's start with the science stuff. I'm not the kind of guy who freaks out about impractical science in my fiction, especially movies. I have a friend who hates Firefly because of the kitchen table in the space ship. It's too big, he says. You'd never waste that kind of space in a real space ship, and certainly not with a wooden table. I'm not that guy. But from the very start of the movie there were just. So. Many. Things. There's an early scene where a bunch of 'unfortunates' tries to sneak into Elysium with some stolen shuttle IDs. Three shuttles go up, two get destroyed en route by a (wait for it) shoulder launched missile system, and the third crashes into someone's lawn. Everyone is rapidly rounded up by adorable droids, except for a mother and her daughter. These two break into someone's house and, using the forged DNA-ID on the kid, use the rich people's health care to cure the girl of something debilitating.

Begin the questioning, sir.

Why are they shooting at this shuttle from earth, rather from the station itself? Wait, how are they going to land when there must be some kind of shield keeping the atmosphere in the... huh. Ok, how are they keeping the atmosphere in the... wait, they caught *everyone* in a matter of minutes? Well what's the point of trying to get up here if literally everyone gets caught? Oh, so this scene is some combination of the voter ID laws, universal health care and white privilege, I guess? Ok... but...

And that's all the stuff that came to me in one scene, and there's one thing I'm leaving out that's *huge* to the plot that, I guess, never occurred to the director. But I'll get to that later, when I'm yelling about the ending. Spoiler: fuck the ending.

This kind of bizarre, poorly thought out inconsistency in the mechanics of the world, both societal and technological, never ends. I kind of hoped it was just some convenient hand waving at the start of the movie to demonstrate the shape of the world and to foreshadow the rest of the plot, but no. No luck. I can't go through every little thing that happened because it's a lot of things, but suffice to say that there's not a scene in the movie where I wasn't questioning some bit of the technology. That bothered me mostly because I'm really, really not that guy. I'm *so* good at suspending disbelief. But for most of the movie, I just couldn't do it.

Ok, so that's the technology/science stuff. Next up, characters. Max is that type of main character who makes mistakes to move the plot forward. I don't like that kind of character. He basically keeps falling forward until everything works out (for everyone except him). Sure, the system he's stuck in is horrible, and he's just trying to make the best of a bad situation, but there simply wasn't a lot of appeal. I won't go into his girlfriend, because she was just a foil for her child. I won't talk about her child because honestly nearly every line they gave that child made me sick to the stomach.

Also, and this is important, the second you meet the kid she tells you she's sick. It's literally the first thing that she says. And you immediately flash back to that early scene I was bitching about, with the mother and the kid and they steal their way to Elysium so the kid can be cured. And now you know what's going to happen for the rest of the movie. The only person who doesn't know that this is the shape of the rest of the movie? The protagonist. And what active role does he take in this forward movement of the plot? None, at least not until the very end. The kid and her mom get up there on the same ship as our hero, but not because of anything specific that he's done. No, they're just along for the ride, and so the antagonist and his pals can constantly threaten to rape the mother. Got it.

There's other character stuff. The antagonist is just a monster. Jodie Foster's character... I don't know how best to say this. She's portrayed as one of these people who will do anything, commit any atrocity, push any boundary to accomplish her goals. She authorizes lethal force against those shuttles at the beginning. When those assets are taken away from her (without being replaced by more humane or politically acceptable systems. I really don't understand why they aren't replaced, or why there's NO APPRECIABLE DATA SECURITY anywhere in this world that apparently runs on data and algorithms) she conspires to overthrow the government by way of a system reboot (as a former helpdesk nerd, I couldn't help but say "Society not working? Have you tried turning it off and then back on?") because the programs that run Elysium apparently function in such a mechanical way that if you reboot the central computer and put your name in the data field labeled "President" you're suddenly the president. And when the homicidal rapist murderer who just got his face shot off and rebuilt does something stupid, she goes down there without any security and berates him. Because who would *dare* try to stop her? But when that same homicidal rapist murderer puts a piece of glass in her throat and throws her into a room with a nurse, and that nurse tries to bandage the wound so that they can get this woman to one of the billions of miracle-laser medbays that are just outside the door, what does this unstoppable force of nature do?

She gives up. She lets herself die. Because...?

Again, these are the most obvious things. There are more things, but I don't want to get into all of them. Suffice it to say that I doubted a lot of the character choices. But whatever.

I'm going to talk about the ending now, because up until the end I was still enjoying the movie. I know it sounds like I wasn't, but there was enough fun stuff going on that I was able to push most of this behind me. And then we got to the ending, and I was all 'Screw it!' and then there were some credits.

Here are the relevant details. Jodie Foster is going to overthrow the database. I mean government. She's going to overthrow the government with a database. To do this, she employs the assistance of Jerk #1, CEO of the company that builds all of these lovely droids that are everywhere. Jerk #1 does something in a unix shell that, when uploaded to the central computer in Elysium, will reboot the system and make Jodie Foster president.

Let's pause, because while that's ridiculous at nearly every level, I'm going to let it slide. It's the kind of big idea that science fiction sometimes depends on, and since the movie is nothing more than a clumsy metaphor for disenfranchisement, we're going to let it go. After all, in my first book there was a church that was based on strange pieces of machinery that floated down a river, and they built a god by fitting the pieces together even though they had idea which parts went where. So metaphor is a thing I enjoy. The problem, though, is one of plotting. Jodie Foster explains her plan to Jerk #1 while they're on Elysium. He then goes back to earth (with nearly no security) writes the program to carry out this mischief, encrypts it with a 'fatal' algorithm (more on that later) and then travels back to Elysium. Except, of course, he doesn't make it back. He gets hijacked by our hero, who downloads the contents of Jerk #1's brain into his own brain, to steal bank accounts or passwords or something. And instead of bank accounts, he ends up with this program to overthrow Elysium. Then Jerk #1 dies.

Let's talk about that encryption program for just a second. How is it supposed to work? I'm not going to dwell on how encryption actually works, because that's irrelevant in this world, it's just shorthand for 'protected'. So if it's supposed to protect this data with a 'fatal' algorithm, how should that work, if you really want to protect that data? Shouldn't it kill anyone who tries to download it without permission? That's how it would work if it were my head being hijacked. But no, that's not how it works. It kills the person carrying the data, but only after it's been download. Why? Because otherwise the plot wouldn't work, that's why. So Matt Damon is able to download this protected data, and then other people are able to view it, and finally he's able to run the program on Elysium (more on that later) and then tragically die. Very tidy. Almost as if someone wrote it that way.

Anyway!

At the end of the movie, Matt Damon runs this program on Elysium, only instead of making Jodie Foster the president (she's dead, anyway) they make all the people of earth citizens of Elysium. So now the droids can't arrest them, the medbays will heal them, and they all get matching polo shirts with the swell Elysium logo.

Actually, I want a polo shirt with the Elysium logo. I think that would be cool.

So all that happens and Matt Damon dies and the day is saved. All the world's problems have now been solved by universal health care.

Except obviously they haven't. Things are the way they are on earth because of overpopulation, environmental disasters, poor resource management and a general societal collapse. There are no jobs! Resources are scarce! Are you going to solve those things with the fifty or so medbays you just shipped down to earth? No. No you are not. You are going to cause riots, all while disabling the primary security system you've put in place (the droids, who can apparently no longer arrest people because they're citizens of Elysium) oh and now all of those people are probably going to try to fly up to the space station and live there because why not? What's to stop them?

Here's the final kicker? Remember that first scene I was bitching about, where the shuttle crash lands and the people go running out and then get apprehended and deported? Each one of those people had been given a valid Elysium ID, burned into their skin. The medbays scanned them as valid citizens. Theoretically, since it's all one big database, the droids would have too. Oh, and the droids were able to arrest those citizens, because...?

So when they reboot the system on Elysium and make everyone a citizen, those droids are not able to arrest the new citizens even though they were able to earlier. And there's no system in place for reversion of citizenship, or amending the terms of citizenship, or any kind of backdoor anything to undo this act. Because...?

Look. I actually liked the movie, kind of. But it failed on so many levels, in so many little ways. It was lazy in its metaphor, inconsistent in its application of technology, poorly paced (I didn't even get into the movie's structure. Gods, the pacing!), and the characters frustrated me. But that ending! What. The. Hell.

Seriously.

by Tim Akers

Tennis, Anyone? -- the 2015 report

Last year I chose to skip the US Open tennis qualifying, which I enjoy quite a bit, in order to go to Eurocon and see Dublin after the 2014 World Science Fiction Convention.  It was nice to be back after a year's absence.

Some changes since two years ago.  It's the first time since the JABberwocky offices moved to Manhattan, so popping into the office for a few minutes now meant walking into Manhattan, visiting for a few minutes from 9-10am, and then taking the subway out to the tennis.  The mileage isn't much different, adding up the walk to the office, to the subway, and from the subway to the tennis, than if I just walked to the tennis, but it felt like I was walking way less.

It's also the first time I got to see the qualifying with use of the new improved Courts 4/5/6 that opened last year, all of which offer excellent elevated seating on both ends.  Court 5 has a little shade in front of the TV booth, though it wasn't hot enough this year for shade options to dictate my court choices.

And it's the first year I went to qualifying since they "enhanced" the security measures.  Because a bag check of a small bag wasn't enough.  Starting the first day with a bag check, a metal detector and a wanding wasn't enjoyable.  I adjusted a little the next days by using a small bag to put everything from my pockets into the large bag.  But on the whole, I'd rather have fewer guns and fewer metal detectors in the US than more of each.  And come Monday, with the arrival of 25,000 people for the main event, the line to get in and go through the security screening will itself be a soft target.

Finally, the older I get the slower my metabolism, the less my appetite.  I used to pack a lunch and then eat a full dinner after, and get an ice cream bar, and the Lemon Ice King and etc. etc.  Now I have to lighten the sweets load and have a lighter lunch in order to have a full dinner.  And I still feel like I'm overeating.  Of course, I also need to hydrate.  The weather topped out at 90 degrees on Tuesday, warmer than predicted, and I had to refill my two water bottles often.  The other days, put in my 40oz at the start of the day and didn't need to visit the water fountains much afterward.

The first round of the qualifying is often not very scintillating.  A lot of bad players, a lot of one-sided matches or dull matches.  And this year, Tuesday was pretty bad even by the standards of bad first round matches.  In fact, looking over the results the only thing to come of the day was noticing Elias Ymer, a 19-year old from Sweden, on Court 5, while I was watching a match on Court 6, who looked better than what I was watching.

Wednesday's schedule was a feast of riches.  Alexander Zverev, who had some good results over the summer right after the deadline for automatic entry into the Open, was playing.  Veteran players like Jurgen Melzer and Nicolas Almagro were on the schedule.  I started the day watching a young Japanese player Yoshihito Nishioka playing Indonesia's Yuki Bhambri.  Good match.  Marked Nishioka as a player to watch.

That match was chosen because it was the #23 seed I'd never heard of vs. another player I'd never heard of, which is often my way of choosing first round matches.  But for my next, I did opt to watch Nicolas Almagro, who's been in the top 10, playing Igor Sijsling, who's been in the top 55.  Almagro won, but not too easily.  The match went into a first set tie-break.   But history aside, Almagro, who just turned 30 a week ago, didn't look like a slam dunk to beat the best qualifiers.

I stayed on Court 6 for the next match, which featured a Russian veteran, Alexander Kudryavtsev, against a 19-year old Chilean, Nicolas Jarry.  The match was a demolition derby; Kudryavtsev won the first set in just 18 minutes, which might be the fastest set of men's tennis I've ever seen, and the second 6-4 set was just 34 minutes.  But even though Jarry lost, it didn't seem to be a skill issue.  Rather, Jarry was just spraying shots all over the place, seeming 100% overwhelmed by the moment even though he's done qualifying for the last two grand slams.  If he could get his head in the game...  Tuesday I could barely bare to watch the winners.  Wednesday even the losers were interesting.

Alexander Zverev, the 18-year old German, is a major up-and-comer.  In 2015, he's won matches in around 10 ATP tour events, reaching the quarter-finals at DC's Citi Open, the semis at the Swedish Open, and the quarters in Marseilles and the round of 64 in Miami, the last two even before his 18th birthday.  How all that didn't collect points enough for him to be in the automatic entry for the US Open, I don't know, but seeing his name in the qualifying draw reminded me of ten years ago, when Andy Murray had a break-through summer a little too late to avoid US Open qualifying.

I was expecting Zverev to march through the qualifying like I remembered Andy Murray doing, and there was every sign of that in his first match as he took only 50 minutes to beat Horacio Zeballos.  But his second match on Thursday was a dog-fight against another German, Nils Langer.  Zverev showed quite a bit of temper, arguing about line calls consistently.  On one occasion, he screamed quite loudly that a ball could not possibly have been out even though he was at the diagonally furthest end of the court from where the call was made and couldn't possibly have seen it.  As there were many Germans watching this match between two of them, I was able to get translation for another call.  The first part I didn't really need a translator because you know what's being said:  "the ball was out."  The second part, however...  when his opponent refused to acknowledge that the ball was out, Zverev said "maybe where you come from in the South," referring to the different regions of Germany the two players were from.  Zverev lost the second set in a tie-break in 68 minutes and then went down a break in the third set, but apparently his opponent's physical fortitude was less resilient than Zverev's complaining.  Nils Langer just sort of drifted away in the latter half of the third set, and practically gave Zverev the match. On Friday, I had to settle for standing at the back of the seats in Court 13 to watch the last half of another dog fight with Ivan Dodig, a Croatian veteran, now 30.  A tight tie-break ended a 72-minute first set, and then the second set was tight as well, ending anti-climactically when Dodig lost focus in the final game and double-faulted to end the 128-minute two-set match.  It's as rare for a set to go 72 minutes as it is to go 16.  But ultimately, Zverev prevailed, and advances to the main draw.  Whatever player, whatever ranking, you don't want to find him as your first round opponent.  This kid is going places.

Turning back the clock to Wednesday...  After sitting in-between two stultifying matches on the backwater Courts 14 and 15, I heard the announcement of a new match getting underway on Court 11, and drifted over to watch Marcos Giron, a 22-year old NCAA champion, against Alejandro Gonzalez from Columbia, a few years older and one of the seeds in the qualifying with a rank in the low 100s.  Very entertaining match.  Gonzalez won, but not easily.  Giron looked good, but he kept putting books short and into the middle of the court allowing Gonzalez to then all too often take control of the points.  If Giron could do that a little less often, he has potential.  Again, better losers on Wednesday than winners on Tuesday.  And Gonzalez ended up winning his next two matches to qualify.  In fact, his match on Friday ended around a minute after Zverev's on the next court over, but the press of humanity watching the two matches was so vast that I could barely turn around to try and peek over anyone's head to see it.

Zverev, Ymer and Nishioka were my three main follows for the qualifying tournament, and for better or worse, something interesting happened -- they all won all three of their matches.  Better, because it means I found good players to follow.  Worse, because sometimes when the player you really like in Round 1 loses in the later rounds you've found someone even better to watch later on.

Court 17 gets the marquees matches in the qualifying, but it has no "open" seating, so unless you get to the court before the start of the match you can be stuck waiting for several minutes in a dank enclosure below the court to gain admittance.  Hence, there were some other players that maybe I could have seen, like Wimbledon boys champ Tommy Paul, whom I missed because I didn't have feel like dealing with Court 17 and never had good timing to go there for the start of a new match.  I did see the final few points of the qualifying match for Andrey Rublev, a 17-year old Russian who looks like a live wire, potent and promising.

Looking at the main draw...

Tommy Paul has a match against the 25th seed Andreas Seppi, whom I saw years ago in qualifying.  I don't consider Seppi to be any kind of world-beater, and on a good day with crowd support, Tommy Paul could win this.  It has the looks of a Grandstand Court match.

Elias Ymer is blessed.  He's going to play the 75th ranked Diego Schwartzman, which is a winnable match.

Alejandro Gonzalez may be even luckier.  He has the 98th-ranked Filip Krajinovic to play.  This is about as close to a qualifier-qualifier match as you can get in the first round of the main draw without actually getting it.

Andrey Rublev less lucky.  He has Top 20 player Kevin Anderson of South Africa in the first round.

Luckiest?  I might have to give that to Yoshihito Nishioka, who has one of those qualifier-qualifer matches in the first round, and goes up against Paul-Henri Mathieu.  This 33-year old Frenchmen got as high as #12 in the world in 2008, but that's a very long time ago.  Nishioka has some clear disadvantages in height and experience, but I wouldn't be complaining to have this first round match.

Not so lucky.  Alexander Zverev.  After the joys of playing a second-tier countryman in the qualifying he goes up against Philip Kohlschreiber, the top-ranked German and #29 seed.

Not entirely a surprise that Nicolas Almagro couldn't make it through the qualifying.  He lost in the 2nd round, and doesn't have a chance even to be a "lucky loser," a loser in the final round of qualifying who is randomly drawn to fill any spots that open up in the next few days from last-minute withdrawals.

I'm reasonably certain I'll be enjoying some of the players I saw this year on my TV set in the years to come.  Which I can't always say.

Food:

On two days, I got both a mint chocolate chip and vanilla chocolate chip from the Lemon Ice King of Corona.  I got a meatball hero from Pat LaFreida stand at the Open.  Too long in the warmer, so the ricotta cheese was a cold coating on top of the meatballs.  Served warm on a busier day, it might be OK.  I ate at Pho Banc, a Vietnamese restaurant in Elmhust that was excellent, and which I will return to.  At Mustang Thakali Kitchen, a Nepalese/Tibetan in Jackson Heights, that was very good.  And at De Mole, my standby for Mexican in Sunnyside.  One Cherry Garcia bar from Ben & Jerry's.  Some heirloom tomatoes and apples that I brown-bagged.

Odd Job Wins

Dear Mr. Biederman:

I have never missed a year at the HBO Bryant Park Film Festival, but on account of your new security procedures, which cannot be justified, this year I will not attend.

Let me be blunt, here. In 2002, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9, all years after 9/11, I was able to take a seat on the lawn and enjoy the film festival without going to an armed camp. Which is the way it should be. The line for the bag check is a soft target. Like people coming off a train at Grand Central or Macy’s on a busy day or the Sheep Meadow or the subway. I don’t feel more secure because you turn the Lawn into a barricaded camp, I wonder why there’s so much security and start to think it must be dangerous. To me, the Film Festival is a more menacing and dangerous place in 2010 than in any year before, because Bryant Park is acting like it’s a dangerous and menacing thing.

Did I worry occasionally over the past ten years sitting on the Bryant Park lawn once or twice a year for a movie that I could be killed if the person next to me had a bomb in their wine and cheese? Yes! But I live my life. After debating if I need the indignity of a bag search to enjoy myself on the Bryant Park lawn for a movie, I realized that if I had to think about it that long then it clearly wasn’t worth the invasion of my privacy.

I don’t know why you feel you need to do this now, but you don’t. Just say “no.” Challenge the mind set that acts like we’re safer because we waste time giving photo IDs to get visitor passes at anonymous office buildings with anonymous companies that nobody gives a shit about. Challenge the mind set that says it was OK for me to knowingly risk being blown up during Superman: The Movie in 2008 but that I can’t be an adult in 2010 and choose to see Goldfinger with 5,000 fellow New Yorkers all looking for a pleasant evening.

Every time our enemies add frictional time and frictional expense to our daily lives by forcing us through this bullshit -- yes, they’ve won. And your bag check, it wouldn’t catch Odd Job. His hat would get right through your bag check. It’s a sad day for NYC that I don’t feel safe and secure and comfortable going to watch a movie tonight.

JOSHUA BILMES
jabagent@aol.com

security!

You know how much I love our airport security regime, so here's a nice article sent my way courtesy of a tweet from Elizabeth Moon

http://www.salon.com/technology/ask_the_pilot/2010/08/06/airport_security/index.html

And of course it isn't just at the airport. Still have fond memories of the Washington Nationals, who let you bring in a factory-sealed water bottle but not the same bottle empty. For all the TSA lunacy, at least they let me bring an empty bottle in to fill up at water fountain and take on to plane.

Why do we put up with this, people? Why do we put up with it??

My favorite rant

one man's adventures with TSA...

http://johnnyedge.blogspot.com/2010/11/these-events-took-place-roughly-between.html

here the NY Times travel writer Joe Sharkey talks about his fun-filled pat-down experience...

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/02/business/02road.html?

and the Washington Post tells us there is starting to be some backlash against the patdown regime...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/12/AR2010111206580.html

I'm getting genuinely frightened about this. I'm not sure I want to fly anywhere any more. I got a token patdown coming back through SFO in September for no particular reason, it looked like they were just having some fun where every second or third passenger at this checkpoint was getting one for one or another reason, in my case it was because I had cargo pants with extra pockets. It's a demeaning and degrading thing. The TSA isn't the SS, but it's still worrisome that the US is now proving that you can pay people to spend their day patting down and frisking people and having them touch their private and personal parts.

And it's wrong.

We will never have absolute security flying on an airplane, no more than we do driving a car or walking down the street or riding an escalator. Our cargo can never be entirely secure. The fact that we now can't ship toner cartridges in airplanes points to the ludicrousness of our approach to security, because tomorrow terrorists can put bombs into teddy bears and the day after that into hollowed out books and the day after that into power adapters.

What will it take for this to stop? Do we need to find some way that every Senator and Representative heading to DC for the lame duck session can be given a nice brisk patdown?

Guns & Butter

After the gun shootings at the theatre in Aurora or the school in Connecticut, those of us who favor gun control were told that the problem was, in fact, gun control.  If there had been people in the theatre or teachers/security guards in the school who had guns, then somebody would have stopped the shooter and it would have been so much better for everyone.

This week's shooting took place on a government military installation, and 12 people died.

It might have been worse.  The gunman had to "settle" for buying a handgun when Virginia state law didn't allow him to buy something more powerful.

From what I've read, the shooting spree might have been extended when the gunman was able to take a gun from one of his victims.

I'm not sure how to square this with the whole idea that gun control costs lives, and that having more people with more guns saves them.

I will certainly be told that the problem isn't with gun laws or the lack of gun laws.  The problem will be the lack of enforcement, or that this guy was a bad apple and nobody connected the dots, and he never should have had a security clearance and never should have been allowed on base.

All of these things are true.

But if all of those things had been equally true, and it had been harder for him to buy a gun...

Everything else which we consider to be a bad thing, we make it harder to do.  If we want less gun violence, we should make guns harder to have.