news roundup

[calimac]

1. Here's one of Bruce Schneier's great columns on counter-terrorism. As he's pointed out, he says the same things over and over - this is because nobody in charge is listening to him - but he says them so well. I wouldn't have the patience.

I particularly liked this on what he calls "security theater":

These measures are only effective if we happen to guess what the next terrorists are planning. If we spend billions defending our rail systems, and the terrorists bomb a shopping mall instead, we've wasted our money. If we concentrate airport security on screening shoes and confiscating liquids, and the terrorists hide explosives in their brassieres and use solids, we've wasted our money. Terrorists don't care what they blow up and it shouldn't be our goal merely to force the terrorists to make a minor change in their tactics or targets.

It seems to me that planning against the last attack, like the French planning for the last war, operates on the principles used for planning against natural disasters. If, say, you live in an area prone to earthquakes and your buildings fall down, you build stronger buildings. It won't make the earthquakes go somewhere else. If you live in a city that was flooded by a hurricane, and you build dikes that would have been proof against that hurricane, it won't make the next hurricane say, "Woah, that won't work any more; I'd better go hit some other city instead."

But terrorists are not natural disasters. They have two things that earthquakes and hurricanes, at least outside of horror novels, don't: malevolence and agency. If you change your plans, they can change theirs to match yours. That never seems to occur to planners.

2. Here's an article on being rude back to rude cell-phone users. I have a few thoughts on this:

a) Why is hearing half a conversation from a person alone at the next table with a cell phone so much more annoying than hearing a whole conversation from two people at the next table? I think it's because people tend to talk more loudly on cell phones, which in turn is probably because reception is so bad. So this is a problem that may have a technological fix.

b) I have hardly ever yet overheard a cell phone conversation in which the caller did not, at some point, describe exactly where he or she was located and what they were doing. This includes, on one memorable occasion, "I'm in the theatre watching a movie."

c) The apostolic descendant of Emily Post advises politeness on the grounds that "You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar." This is fallacious on a couple of grounds. First, it is factually incorrect. Vinegar makes a great fly-trap; better than honey, and you can leave it out longer. Second, I for one only use the "vinegar" approach only after I've tried the "honey" one and it doesn't work.

3. Here's Levi Johnston making ads. You know, I feel almost sorry for him. When he and Bristol went canoodling, her mom was not yet a celebrity. (Obscure governors of unpopulated states are just not that important.) There are thousands of ordinary schlubs out there who carelessly raked their oats into teenage fatherhood. This one, and only this one, became the subject of burning media attention and the butt of a nation's humor. If he wants to respond by milking his fifteen minutes for all they're worth, I may avert my eyes but I can hardly blame him for trying to get some kind of silver lining out of his humiliation.

Comments

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

One explanation I've heard for why people raise their voices on cellphones is that they don't hear their own voice through the phone, as you do with a regular phone. Not sure if that's true, but I hadn't thought about that difference between phones before.