screened

Transportation Security Authority, Protecting Passenger Privacy:

Strict privacy safeguards are built into the foundation of TSA’s use of advanced imaging technology to protect passenger privacy and ensure anonymity.

The officer who assists the passenger never sees the image the technology produces.

The officer who views the image is remotely located, in a secure resolution room and never sees the passenger.

Miami Herald:
Miami airport screener accused of attack after jeers at genitals

BY DAVID OVALLE

A Miami airport screener, agitated at continued ribbing after colleagues saw his body parts in an imaging scanner, attacked a colleague, police said.

A Miami International Airport federal security screener has been arrested for allegedly using an expandable police baton to beat up a co-worker.

The source of their conflict, police say: daily ribbing about the size of the screener's genitalia.

Dear,

I'm having fun reading a big library book on Dutch design, called False Flat. Daniel van der Velden's art gallery invitation below is not typical of most of the book's graphic gorgeousness, but it combines ART with found letters, two of my favorite things.

5/5

bixby

As I say, eco's not my subject, but having made money at advertising agencies for three decades I do know something about branding. And one of the environmental movement's biggest problems is their main brand, "global warming."
It wasn't foreseeable at the time, the specific manifestations of human stupidity being so protean, but the strong identification with "warming" is slowing acknowledgment that we the species are fucking up. It was cold today, where's your warming now, huh huh huh.
Had we known, "global disruption" would have made for much better branding. Easily applied, for example, to the flooding in Nashville this week, or whatever not-easily-associated-with-heat-by-dummies phenomenon is coming up next: the drowning of the Hamptons or a tornado in Los Angeles, whatever.
Less formally, one could refer to Weather Wilding or Coo-Coo Climate. We need something easily graspable, between "Uh-Oh" and "ohmigodwe'reallgonnadie."
(Yes, I'm a little cranky today. It's not the heat, it's the humanity.)

ecko wrecko

I don't "do" the environment. I recognize its importance (and how stupid is it that one has to state that), but it's not my topic the way civil liberties and free speech are. Hoping to maintain (because it would be delusional to think that in any but the smallest imaginable way I am helping to maintain) civil liberties and free speech is my contribution to the environmental movement. For example, didja know that the FCC is leaning against regulating broadband to maintain free speech?*
I don't expect the American government and associated businesses to do anything pro-environment until rich people suffer on a huge scale.
That could be something like the current oil spill in the gulf, or the children of wealthy communities sickened by a contaminated water supply, or some sort of economically non-discriminatory pandemic. It could be near- or totally-riotous protest by nonrich people with nothing seemingly left to lose. Or as I am increasingly coming to think of it, "America's last best hope."

*Maybe not (5/5/10).

fact

Lots of interesting conjectures to be made about the Times Square attack this weekend. But I'm going to restrain myself, and instead point out this from a NY Times interview with Raymond Kelly, current Police Commissioner of the City of New York:

Asked if he considered the failed bombing the work of terrorists, Mr. Kelly said: “A terrorist act doesn’t necessarily have to be conducted by an organization. An individual can do it on their own.”

This is not an official pronouncement, but Kelly (formerly on the executive committee of Interpol) is one of the people most wired in to the American and international security apparatus.
I'll be posting soon about an American citizen held and about to be tried as a terrorist partly because of weak links to an organization that is not even on the official terrorist watch list.
It's possible that soon no links to any organization or person will be needed for extralegal detention and prosecution. Somebody powerful will be able to just point and say, "That one."

a popsicle soon

I've broken the tabu, and my head feels clearer, my body lighter, my soul less stifled than it has in months.
This must be what it was like decades ago (or maybe it was last week), to say, yes, I am a commie, or yes, I am a Jew, I am a homo, or yes, I once voted for a Republican. (Not all of these examples taken from my own life.)
I am putting my cards on the table. Sarah Palin will be the Republican candidate for President in 2012.
The last time the Repubs nominated somebody overtly intelligent it was Richard Nixon. He expanded food stamps, pursued desegregation with the first affirmative action programs, proposed legislation that led to the creation of OSHA and the EPA, and shook hands with the Red Chinese. Then he lost his political base and had to resign. They're not going to make that mistake again.
They pretty much had to run Ford since he took the fall for bribing (or "pardoning") smartypants Nixon out of the White House. Also, the same deal had made him a sitting President. That makes you a dead cinch for the nom unless they find you in bed with a live boy or a dead girl.
In with Jimmy Carter. I'll never forget Carter standing shoulder to shoulder in DC with Reza Pahlavi, Shah of Iran, wincing not with moral disgust, but because teargas had drifted over from where it was being dispensed against Iranian students protesting Pahlavi's torture corps. Other than that, which pretty much assured a hostile government in Iran once the Shah was overthrown, I thought Jimmy was an OK president. Now he's regarded with such general contempt that calling him "history's greatest monster" has become a trope on The Simpsons, America's most viewed guide to what to think about ourselves.
[I've recently become fond of the word "trope." It instantly elevates the intellectual presumption of any conversation or writing in which it appears, and since it only has one syllable, it lacks the smack of pointyheadedness. Using "trope" is also a trope. Trope trope trope.]
Sorry. I've digressed to the Dems, who are irrelevant to this discussion except as props for the Republican Party. Just like in real life.
Here was the brilliant turn in Republican strategy. They invented the inverse-Nixon (not the anti-Nixon - that was McGovern). They nominated a man without the brain of a Nixon. A man without the tortured soul of a Nixon. A man without the homely bodily instantiation of a Nixon. A man without history, a man without qualities. A man who took direction, never had a first thought, and shone with the light of a thousand thousand projectings. The Gipper.
This is the beginning of the Sarah Palin model. All flash, no filigree. Wait, I take that back. All filigree, no flash. Immune, freakin' immune from criticism and responsibility. Cop to Iran-Contra criminality and then mutter "I still don't think" arms were traded for hostages on the way out. Lose your way in THE ONLY PREPARED PORTION of the Presidential debates at the end of your first term and whisk your party to a historic victory. Become renowned for your chuckle.
The operating system (as contrasted to the slick user interface) of the Reagan presidency was George H.W. Bush, former Director of the CIA. Bush's life story is riddled with links to covert operations, oil wealth, and family privilege - he came from the milieu that had been grooming Reagan since the 1950s. He was the ur-Cheney, the sensible man of industry and power, the mind over matter of figurehead Reagan. (Holy smoke! Cheney was the ranking minority member of the Congressional committee investigating Iran-contra! Thanks, Wikipedia cross-checked with the NY Times!)
Easing Bush out of the Prez chute was not an option - added to all the reasons to go with a Veep is the matter of how much H.W. could incriminate others in Iran-contra and associated matters. (Jeez, I barely scratched the surface googling - george bush testimony iran-contra - and it was even worse than I remembered.) They made what many thought a dumbbell move at the time but in retrospect was a smart experiment in flipping the script - keep the OS, prepare the public for the next revision - Dan Quayle (aka Microsoft Bob, for the ancient among us).
Bush-Quayle, that pastoral duo, lost out to what critics decried as a slicker interface, but time would reveal as an attempt to reverse-engineer and personalize the Repub OS. That was (Macintosh) Bill. I liked him, even as I knew before he won the election that he had never met a principle he couldn't betray.
Yada yada, two terms of Clinton-Gore. Who did the Repubs run in '96? Oh yeah, Bob Dole.
Quick, who was Dole's running mate? I keep wanting to say Gerald Ford, but that's just because when Dole was Ford's veep-manque I giggled like crazy every time I saw the spoonerism "Dord-Fole." The answer is Jack Kemp. What was the question?
I'm so tired, and we haven't even reached the age of Kali Yuga. Can I take a break? I promise I'll tell you why the administration of George "W" Bush was an unqualified success, and how Sarah Palin will be the Republican candidate for Prez in 2012, maybe even if they find her in bed with a live girl or a dead boy.