Ask a volcanologist about funding

Were you wondering about the Republican response to the State of the Union speech where Gov. Jindal derided the '$140 million for something called "volcano monitoring."'? Me too. I did a double-take, and I assume most others with geoscience backgrounds did too. Regardless of your political leanings, I would assume people would want to know if a volcano erupted (say while you were in a jet plane heading to Japan) or what the risk was if there were an eruption (if you lived in a possible lahar zone, like parts of Tacoma, for instance).

Take a gander at an interview with Rick Wunderman at DCist.

Telecom immunity

The president insists that Congress pass his preferred version of the domestic spying bill, with telecomm immunity, saying "The companies were told by government leaders after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, “that their assistance was legal and vital to national security,” the president said. “Allowing these lawsuits to proceed would be unfair.”

Let me get this straight. Both sides of Congress passed a FISA extension bill, the difference being the House version doesn't have retroactive telecom immunity. Both would keep the ability of the NSA to conduct warrantless spying in America. Because Bush refuses any scenario but getting everything he wants, including telecom immunity, the extension expires and the NSA chief claims Americans are in danger because of it. But they then blame the expiration on those who correctly separate the extension from the immunity issue!? What twisted illogic is that? I can't understand why people buy this.

If telecom assistance was legal, as the president says, then the companies have nothing to fear from a lawsuit. Then why give them immunity? Senator Kennedy says the same thing, in an amazingly coherent argument:

And Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts said the president was using “the specter of terrorism” to push his own agenda.

“If the telecommunications companies didn’t break the law, they do not need immunity,” the senator said. “If they broke the law, the American people deserve to know the size and scope of their lawbreaking. Adhering to the rule of law would not ‘aid our enemies’ — it would uphold the very principles we are fighting for. The President’s position has nothing to do with protecting Americans and everything to do with sweeping under the rug illegal activity by his administration and his corporate partners.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/28/washington/28cnd-bush.html?hp

End of the year non-review #4: copyright and the public domain

Edging closer to the mission of where I work:


Happy Public Domain Day!
We need serious copyright reform. What is the value of most of the works older than say fifty years?

Data that should be free, since it's governmentally produced and therefore in the public domain already:

Invaluable US government docs to be scanned and posted

Making a Brouhaha in the Blogosphere -- Peter Brantley
1.8 million pages of US federal case law to go online for free
Carl Malamud Takes on WestLaw

See an amazing amount of rescued video and data at: The Internet Archive

Libraries or Pirate Places?

End of the year non-review #3: Civil rights and the government,

I continue running through my overflowing Google Reader "Starred Items" list.

TSA to punish fliers for facecrime a la New screening technology might detect terrorists before they act


The TSA and DIY culture clash I used to naively think as long as it passed the swab test, the TSA would professionally act accordingly and let it through, as it couldn't possibly be explosive. It seems that any exercise of your rights means immediate retaliation. The days of me refusing to let screeners and the Secret Service take photos through my cameras is probably over.

Watching FISA fizzle
Chris Dodd's actions on the telecom immunity provisions made me reconsider who I'm voting for in the primaries. More here.

DEA War on Plants
98% of all "seized marijuana plants" is wild hemp with no active drug content.

Another Man Arrested For Using Free Cafe WiFi

Ethicist Says Nothing Wrong With Using Free WiFi
When your operating system automatically connects and uses an open wifi system, how the hell can anyone claim that's illegal? Close your systems if you don't want people to use them off-site. This nonsense is why we don't currently have a ubiquitous and free wifi in dense cities.

My own philosophy comes from the old days of radio, where any radio wave entering your home or your personal space was fair game to receive and listen to. Telecom interests lobbied and paid campaigns well to get the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986, which suddenly made certain wavelengths illegal to listen to, all because their cordless and cellular phones were poorly designed and completely open to listening.

Australian DRM from 1923 - dumb radio idea that refuses to die

The Schneier section.
Bruce Schneier usually gets it right about security and insecurity in the world.

• We're All a Little Nervous in a post-1748 World The stupidity and inanity of prohibiting public photography and "note-taking".
  
  
• Buildings You Can't Photograph
  This should be entitled "Buildings They Claim You Can't Photograph". Know your rights: The Photographer’s Right
  
  
• Essay on Fear
  
  
• I have nothing to hide, why should I care if the government looks at it?
  Why this argument is fallacious.
  
  
• Security Theater Imagine the cost of all the security, all the waiting in security queues, all the overreactions. What does that cost us economically?
  
  
• U.S. Government Threatens Retaliation Against States who Reject REAL ID
  
  
• Interview with National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell
  
  
• The War on the Unexpected
  

Papers Please: Arrested at Circuit City for refusing to show ID, receipt
Remember that you are never required to show a receipt to leave a store. I never do, and it saves me much time on leaving busy stores like Fry's.
A members-only store may issue such rules, but common law says when you bought the item, it's yours. Some of the people exercising this right are jerks, but that doesn't excuse the stores and their aggressive rent-a-cops.

Insect Spy

Protesters might even nab one with a net -- one of many reasons why Ehrhard, the former Air Force colonel, and other experts said they doubted that the hovering bugs spotted in Washington were spies.

So what was seen by Crane, Alarcon and a handful of others at the D.C. march -- and as far back as 2004, during the Republican National Convention in New York, when one observant but perhaps paranoid peace-march participant described on the Web "a jet-black dragonfly hovering about 10 feet off the ground, precisely in the middle of 7th avenue . . . watching us"?

They probably saw dragonflies, said Jerry Louton, an entomologist at the National Museum of Natural History. Washington is home to some large, spectacularly adorned dragonflies that "can knock your socks off," he said.

At the same time, he added, some details do not make sense. Three people at the D.C. event independently described a row of spheres, the size of small berries, attached along the tails of the big dragonflies -- an accoutrement that Louton could not explain. And all reported seeing at least three maneuvering in unison.

"Dragonflies never fly in a pack," he said.

Paranoia from activists or real? I'd really like to know--this is tantalizingly straddling the border between the kooks and real technologies. I don't trust either sides' judgement or statements on this.

California Police Camera Surveillance Increasing
The only solution now that public surveillance is out of the bag is to require the government to open up all the video and use of the system to the public. ,

Video of Man Tasered to Death
Incredibly uncomfortable, so much so I haven't watched it. Tasering is torture and our society uses them way too much. Overescalation is epidemic.

Your color laser printer has been compromised and is leaking data.

End of the year non-review, #1

A non-review, since I didn't post about things I saved in "starred items" in Google Reader. So, some quick posts about them.

Grist complains Senator Harry Reid is defending the 1872 Mining Law, which is still on the books. Parts of it are stupid; we should hold profitable companies to clean up their messes and begin to increase the tiny rates charged for minerals on public lands. But in parts of Nevada mining is all that keeps the area inhabited. Reid comes from a down and out mining town to the south of Las Vegas that I've spent plenty of time in; and no one would argue it was having a too-hot economy. Reid also gets re-elected by the will of the people of Nevada every six years, and to be honest, it can be a close vote every time. Reid is not perfect; a true politician as I found when I talked with him years ago; but he's fantastic for Nevada--holding off the results of the "Screw Nevada" bill and deflecting the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump as long as possible, despite the efforts of many in both parties. He works well with Senator Ensign on nonpartisan issues for the state like smart planning on wilderness and auctioning federal lands in southern Nevada. All these things would be much worse off if he were defeated--there would be no Mining Law reform, no wilderness declarations, no effective attempt at ending the bureaucratic environmental disaster that Yucca Mountain will be.

Why we can't allow the telecoms immunity

The telecoms allowed broad and widescale spying on domestic communications prior to and after the September 11th attacks from the NSA. This illegal action wasn't about terror operations, but just the easy access to constitutionally protected communications that allowed the "war on drugs" to escalate.

New York Times: Wider Spying Fuels Aid Plan for Telecom Industry

None of this is any surprise to anyone watching the wholesale destruction of the American Republic by the current administration. To listen to the director of the NSA is to think that the USA is endangered by discourse and independent thought. God forbid Americans not violate the law--oh wait, that's only for patriots.


Tell your senator that the USA will only survive if companies are required to follow the law.

Don't talk about it either

Quantum Mechanics and Dick Cheney

bwhahaha. A good one.

Seen at SciAm Blog.