Jeff's Lunchbreak

Well, to start easing back into blogging after my vacation, I'll start off with a short little rant, that actually is relevant to trip I just took. In short, I really, really dislike the TSA. (I know the title of this post says that I hate the TSA, but that's a little stronger feeling that I actually have. However, "I Really, Really Dislike the TSA" just doesn't have the same ring to it as a headline.) I have written a bit about this before, but that article was more about the restrictions on general aviation.

It's not that the TSA did anything uniquely annoying during this trip. It's just that every time I have to go through the security checkpoints and jump through hoops that do practically nothing to actually increase security, I get just a little more pissed off. This trip, I was so busy unpacking the laptop, loading up all our bags onto the belt (we had more carry-ons this time now that the airlines are charging for checked luggage), and taking off my shoes, that I forget to empty out my pockets and take off my belt. That's probably enough metal that it would have set off the metal detector even back in the good old days, but when you're already irritated with an organization, it makes you that much more irritated. Plus, thanks to actually doing good on my diet the past few weeks, taking off my belt meant holding my pants up the whole time. I started grumbling once I got through the checkpoint and was getting dressed again, when my wife told me to just be quiet so that we could enjoy our vacation.

I recall hearing a joke one time, and I can't remember where I first heard it now, but this blog has a similar joke in the comments.

First the terrorsits tried to sneak bomb onto a plane using their shoes, so they made us take off our shoes.

Then the terrorists tried to use liquid explosives, so they made us give up our drinks and toothpaste.

The day they realize that a terrorist could try to smuggle a bomb up his ass is the day I quit flying.

But when you stop to think, how much indignity are we willing to take in the name of safety (assuming, of course, that the TSA is increasing safety, which I'll get to in a minute)? We already have to go barefoot through the metal detectors, and take off our belts and hold up our pants. If you take a carry on, you see the inspectors rifling through all your personal belongings. A few years ago when my wife, my daughter and I flew up north to visit the rest of my family for Christmas, presents already wrapped, the TSA didn't just take them out of the wrapping paper - they unpacked everything completely, down to removing the toys from the plastic and twist ties that held them in place (I guess I could be thanking them, since everyone knows what a pain it can be to get toys out of their packaging sometimes).

To point out just one more pet peeve - why can't people that aren't flying wait with you at the gate anymore, or come meet you at the gate when you arrive? I know the current policy does nothing to keep out anybody determined enough to sneak in. The fact that all it takes is a computer printout of your itinerary or tickets to get it, means that anybody with a computer and any type of ingenuity can print out counterfeit tickets or itineraries. They probably wouldn't work to get them on the plane, but they'd certainly get the people into the gate area. Perhaps the point is to reduce the number of people in the gate area, to make observation and surveillance easier. I still don't like it.

Okay, you get it - I think the TSA's annoying. But have they actually done anything to increase security? In anticipation of anybody that's going to say that we haven't had a terrorist attack since 9/11, therefore the TSA must be working, I have a tiger repelling rock I'd like to sell you. I've had this rock for years, and haven't seen a tiger the entire time, so it must work, right?. (Realizing that Simpsons episode was from way back in 1996, it's eerie how well it predicted the country's reaction to 9/11 - do anything, even if there's no evidence it works, just so it seems like we're doing something.)

I've got a little experience "smuggling" things past the TSA myself. As I mentioned in the essay I linked to up top, I've forgotten about one of my pocket knives a few times. It's a small little knife that looks like a key, and goes on my key ring. The blade's only about 2", but that's exactly the type of thing the TSA was supposed to be keeping off planes. And I managed to get by security with it once during the highest threat level. (The knife actually has some sentimental value to me, so I've since taken it off my key ring, just to make sure I don't ever forget about it when flying and find that one TSA agent who notices it.)

What about more serious threats, besides pocket knives that probably aren't going to be worth much of anything, anymore? Well, there's this case where, "Investigators with bomb-making components in their luggage and on their person were able to pass through security checkpoints at 19 U.S. airports without detection." And what about the student who smuggled bleach, matches, box cutters, and clay that resembled plasic explosives, onto multiple airplanes, told the TSA about it, and some of the items still weren't found for over a month.

Or, just read these articles, from the column, Ask the Pilot on Salon.com. It's written by an airline pilot, Patrick Smith, who doesn't like the TSA all that much, either. He describes all types of silly regulations the TSA follows, including not letting him get through security because he was carrying the exact same knife that the airline gives out to passengers aboard the plane, not to mention that most airport personnel who aren't seen by passengers have very lax security regulations. He also has a good article on the N.Y. Times site.

I understand that we probably do need security. I just don't like seeing an organization that does very little good. At best, it's a minor convenience. At worst, it's a false sense of security, and a waste of resources that could be better applied elsewhere.

Posted by Jeff on Friday, Jul 25 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Just two weeks ago, I made an aopolgy for not keeping up with my post per week goal on this blog, and even made a promise to make two posts that week to make up for it. Well, I only got out one real post that week, and didn't post anything at all last week. And here's the reason - I was on vacation in Florida last week. With a few important projects I had to wrap up before I left, I worked through my lunch breaks so I didn't have time to write any more posts here at work. And with packing and doing a few projects around the house, I didn't have time to write at home, either. I had been planning on trying out my new phone to make an entry while on vacation, but when you're making sandcastles on the beach with your daughter, or splashing around in the ocean, or sipping a beer on the deck while watching the waves break on shore by the light of the full moon, that post per week goal just doesn't seem so important.

Anyway, I'm back now. For the next couple days, I'll be pretty busy catching up, but some time this week I'll be back to writing blog entries.

P.S. I should have a new page on my main website for the Florida trip once I have a chance to go through the pictures.

P.P.S. Doing a Google image search for "intermission" yields some pretty surprising results (NSFW).

Posted by Jeff on Monday, Jul 21 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I wrote an entry a while ago, about finding some religious inserts in Lyra's Oxford, a short book written by Phillip Pullman as a kind of mini sequel to the His Dark Materials trilogy, as well as a few other children's books. Just recently, on the advice of several people (including Eric of the New Minority blog), I finally decided to purchase The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins' book on religion. (I'm already most of the way through it, and hope to put up a review some time within the next couple months. In short, I agree with most, though not all, of what Dawkins has written.) Just about the time I was halfway through the book, a little card fell out into my lap:

The card was printed by the same organization, Living Waters Ministries, headed by the same person, Ray Comfort, as the cards I found in Lyra's Oxford and the other books I mentioned in that entry (man, that took some restraint on my part not to use a different noun to describe Comfort). Given Dawkins' subject material, I wasn't nearly as surprised this time as when I found the inserts in the children's books, and this insert isn't nearly as disengenious. Still, it seems we have a misguided busybody at our local bookstore. Plus, it's always a bit unpleasant to be reminded of the inventor of the argumentum ad bananum.

Posted by Jeff on Tuesday, Jul 8 | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

I have a goal of posting an entry on this blog at least once per week. I missed last week, for which I apologize. We had an issue at work where I spent my lunch breaks working, and didn't much feel like working on this website once I got home. Then, with the 4th of July, and a few get togethers I had to go to, I didn't have time to blog over the weekend. Anyway, I'll try make up for it with at least two entries this week.

Posted by Jeff on Monday, Jul 7 | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

I've been neglecting the main part of my website a little too long, but I've finally made an update. I got another factoid e-mail in my inbox that was just too ripe to pass up, so I now have Factoids Debunked & Verified, Part III. This was one of the worst factoid e-mails I've ever received. Usually, there are at least some germs of truth. This one seems to be fabricated through and through.

Updated 2008-06-30 - corrected the link to go to the proper page.

Posted by Jeff on Friday, Jun 27 | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

There's a strange phenomenon I've noticed with e-mail. I kind of hinted at it in an earlier blog entry, How to Spot an E-mail Hoax. I was fairly neutral in that entry, saying to be wary of politically related e-mails in general. But the thing I've noticed, is that the vast, vast majority of dubious politically related e-mails I've received are from the right side of the spectrum. In fact, I can't recall a single chain e-mail I've received personally that has denigrated Republicans, social conservatives, or the religious right. But I've received plenty that criticize or demonize their opponents, almost always by either stretching the truth or by outright fabrication.

At first, I wondered if this just had to do with sampling bias. I do live in Texas, after all, which is pretty well known for being a "red" state. But after doing a Google search for "are all e-mail forwards right wing," I found that I'm not the only one that's noticed this correllation. A guy by the name of Chris Hayes published an entry on his blog, The New Right-Wing Smear Machine, which examined how this phenomenon has spread. I found a blog entry on The Blog From Another Dimension dealing with this very issue, which even addressed an e-mail that I've covered before here. There's even a blog, My Right Wing Dad, devoted entirely to posting examples of these types of e-mails.

So, assuming this is a real phenomenon, what I don't understand is why. It would be tempting to quote studies such as this one, which indicates that "liberals are more likely than conservatives to have a strong response in the area of the brain used to inhibit responses at the time when they are supposed to inhibit response" (which could be taken to mean in relation to this e-mail question - stretched beyond the actual resuls of the study - that liberals would be more likely to question the validity of an e-mail even when it confirms their political biases). You could also point to this article. One of the paragraphs (on page 2) states:

The most comprehensive review of personality and political orientation to date is a 2003 meta-analysis of 88 prior studies involving 22,000 participants. The researchers—John Jost of NYU, Arie Kruglanski of the University of Maryland, and Jack Glaser and Frank Sulloway of Berkeley—found that conservatives have a greater desire to reach a decision quickly and stick to it, and are higher on conscientiousness, which includes neatness, orderliness, duty, and rule-following. Liberals are higher on openness, which includes intellectual curiosity, excitement-seeking, novelty, creativity for its own sake, and a craving for stimulation like travel, color, art, music, and literature.

But, as those articles also point out, political affiliation is a pretty complicated thing. Plus, even if you were willing to say that on average liberals were smarter, or more interested in checking the veracity of claims, could it really be such a big difference as to account for my inbox getting a dozen dubious right-wing e-mails per week, and no such left-wing e-mails in the last five years? I mean, there are also liberals who don't always have such a good grasp of reality. What keeps these people from spreading all types of false e-mail rumors about the right? And is it really just the right-wingers that forward on all the other e-mail hoaxes?

I don't know, maybe it's still a sampling bias. Maybe I just happen to be finding all the bad examples of right-wing e-mail, while other people find all the bad examples from the left-wing. No matter what the case, could everybody just please do a little fact checking before clogging my inbox with all these false rumors?

Posted by Jeff on Friday, Jun 20 | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

I've stated several times that my goal for this blog is to make at least one good substantive post per week, or to at least make an update to the regular part of this website. Well, I've spent my lunch breaks this week typing up a response to two comments left on one of my older blog entries, Problems With Day-Age Interpretation of Genesis. Basically, I expanded on the original essay with a few more issues. My main problem with a day-age interpretation is that it's still not consistent with the actual history of the universe and our planet. But I pretty much didn't address that in my response, to concentrate on two issues that I thought were most troubling even ignoring actual history - what does the wording in the second day even mean? And how could plants have survived without the sun and without pollinators? If that's the type of thing that interests you, you may want to go check it out.

Posted by Jeff on Friday, Jun 13 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I just finished reading Gulliver's Travels, which was written way back in 1726 by Jonathon Swift. I'm sure that just about anybody reading this blog has heard of the book, and knows the basic story. A doctor, Lemuel Gulliver, has several adventures in distant lands. In one, he is a giant among the Lilliputians and the Blefuscudians. In another, he is among the giants, the Brobdingnagians. In a third adventure, he visits the lands of Laputa, Balnibarbi, Glubbdubdrib, Luggnagg and Japan, inhabited by intellectuals, a magician who can conjure the dead, and one land with a class of people who couldn't die. And in his final voyage, he visited the land of the Houyhnhnms, a race of intelligent horses, which was also inhabited by Yahoos, a race of humans with practically no intelligence or reason. (Here's the Wikipedia entry, for a few more details of the story.)

First, for a bit of trivia, for anyone familiar with the concept of endianness in computing (byte order), this is where the term comes from. A long standing rivalry between the Lilliputians and Blefuscudians existed over which was the proper way to open an egg, whether from the big end or the little end. Hence, there were Big Endians and Little Endians. And here I always thought it was some technical term.

To be honest, this wasn't one of my favorite books. Perhaps that was partly to do with the fact that it was a political satire, and I didn't get the jokes. I suppose it's a bit like when my daughter watches The Daily Show. She understands the sillier bits of humor, but just doesn't get the parts that require an understanding of our political climate, or the personalities involved. The edition of the book that I read did have footnotes to explain some of the references, but as everyone knows, a joke's not funny once you have to explain it.

The book also satirizes an area that I personally find very intersting - science. This occurs when Gulliver is in Laputa and Balnibarbi. Basically, the people are all intellectuals, who go to the extreme of relying entirely on theory instead of practical knowledge. I'm sure Swift wrote this in response to the Enlightenment, and to the then not so old Royal Society. However, this attitude of questioning the reason for doing science when there's no clear practical application irritates me. Knowledge for its own sake is good enough. In the same way that some people may find beauty in a painting, others can find beauty in a deeper understanding of the mysteries of our universe. I've written about this previously so I won't go on about it anymore here.

The section on Glubbdubdrib was on another subject that irritates me. The king of Glubbdubdrib had the power to bring people back from the dead (but only a day at a time, and no more than once every three months). It was basically one long section on how things were so much better back in the good old days, when the kings were nobler, the generals braver, the philosophers smarter. I've written about the good old days before, too, and they weren't always so good.

Finally, the book was just so negative. It didn't start off too bad, but became increasingly pessimistic as time wore on. In reading other people's reviews online, I've seen many of them characterize it as misanthropic, and I have to agree. You definitely don't put down the book and walk away with a skip in your step.

I guess that there's probably a reason that a book's still in print almost 300 years after it was first published. To quote the Wikipedia entry on Swift:

Gulliver's Travels is an anatomy of human nature, a sardonic looking-glass, often criticized for its apparent misanthropy. It asks its readers to refute it, to deny that it has not adequately characterized human nature and society. Each of the four books--recounting four voyages to mostly-fictional exotic lands--has a different theme, but all are attempts to deflate human pride. Critics hail the work as a satiric reflection on the failings of Enlightenment modernism.

Perhaps my main problem is that I just happen to like Enlightenment values.

Posted by Jeff on Friday, Jun 6 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

This is a story that's already made its way around the skeptical neighborhoods of the blogosphere, but it definitely bears repeating for anybody that hasn't heard it yet. Last Friday, the Texas State Board of Education approved the new English Language Arts and Reading curriculum standards.

According to the news release put out by the Texas Education Agency,

A less repetitive, more grade-level specific set of English Language Arts and Reading curriculum standards will go into use in Texas classrooms in the fall of 2009 after having been approved by the State Board of Education May 23 on a 9-6 vote.

The process of revising the 1997 standards began in 2005. Hundreds of teachers, numerous experts, national facilitators, and State Board of Education members worked on many drafts of the document over that time.

The standards ultimately approved by the board represent a blending of a document crafted by teacher work groups, with the help of facilitators from StandardsWork, and a version drafted by a coalition of English teachers. Many of the same teachers worked on both documents.

Other board expressed strong concerns about being asked to approve a draft document that emerged on the final day of deliberations. Consequently, the board agreed to go through the document page by page, spending several hours looking at the latest revisions.

After working two and a half years on curriculum standards, I can imagine that board members would have "strong concerns" over a document that they'd had less than a day to review. There's an article in the Dallas Morning News that lists more details of how that document was released:

"I find it's really wild that we can work for three years on a project and then the board is so qualified they can pull it out of their hat overnight," said board member Pat Hardy, a Fort Worth Republican who, like other board members, received the substituted document when it was slipped under her hotel door less than an hour before their meeting was set to convene Friday morning.

The article also discusses how the "seveal hours" were spent reviewing the new document.

After first saying he would not give board members time to go over the new document during the meeting, Chairman Don McLeroy, a Republican from College Station, eventually relented, allowing a quick run through of the new document with an explanation of the changes.

But the squabbling did not end there.

"Mr. Chair you're going so fast ... you're moving so fast we can't find it in the other document," Berlanga said, shortly after the page-by-page explanation began.

After more complaints, McLeroy declared that he would continue at the fast pace.

"The ruling is you're being dilatory in dragging this out," McLeroy said.

The Houston Chronicle also has an article on what happened, with an opening paragraph that sums up the situation quite nicely.

A three-year effort to rewrite English language arts and reading standards for the state's public schools came down to a last minute cut-and-paste job Friday.

The way the Board of Education handled this was completely improper. Don McLeroy, the head of the Board of Education (who also happens to be a creationist, and a dentist, with virtually no qualifications for heading that board) should resign, and if he doesn't do so voluntarily, should be removed by the governor.

And don't forget that the science standards are the next in line to be reviewed. If the board can be so underhanded on a topic as uncontroversial as English, I fear just what stunts they're going to pull when it comes to subjects like biology and geology.

The best write up I've seen of this in the blogosphere comes from Phil Plait's Bad Astronomy Blog

Posted by Jeff on Wednesday, May 28 | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

City of Ember is a young adult/children's book written by Jeanne DuPrau, which I'd highly recommend. Without giving away any more of the plot than what you'd pick up in the first couple chapters - Ember is a city with no natural light. All the illumination in the city comes from street lights and lamps. The city gets its electricity from a giant generator driven by and underground river. But the generator keeps breaking down, they're running out of light bulbs, and there's nowhere to go - indeed, the people of Ember think their city is the only city there is.

Long ago when the Builders constructed the City of Ember, they had an important secret that the people were supposed to learn in 220 years. They enclosed the secret in a box with a mechanism that would open at the appropriate time, and entrusted the box to the mayor, who was supposed to hand it down to the next mayor, who was supposed to hand it down to the next mayor, etc., until the box opened and the citizens of Ember learned the secret. Unfortunately, one of the mayors broke the chain, and the box with the secret was lost.

Now, the two main characters, Lina and Doon, must figure out a way to solve the city's problems.

I really enjoyed reading this book. To give an idea of how engaging the story is, I read the book in two days, my wife read it in three, and our eight year old daughter read it in two. It's written in a style that sucks you in, so that you really want to just keep reading to see how it's going to end. Granted, it may not be perfect. It's a little predictable, and I definitely have a few unanswered questions (which may be resolved in the sequel or prequel, which I haven't read, yet), but those slight shortcomings are more than made up for by the story telling. I'd recommend this book to anyone, young and old alike.

Posted by Jeff on Friday, May 23 | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)