You are looking at posts that were written on September 20th, 2007.
Posted on September 20th, 2007 by Mark.
Categories: Just Dumb, News.
Hot on the heels of the information that the Dept. of Homeland Security is amassing huge amounts of data on travellers, comes this story. Talk about your mumbo jumbo and your modern day psycho babble!
What’s gotten DHS’ attention is the institute’s work on a system called Semantic Stimuli Response Measurements Technology, or SSRM Tek, a software-based mind reader that supposedly tests a subject’s involuntary response to subliminal messages.
SSRM Tek is presented to a subject as an innocent computer game that flashes subliminal images across the screen — like pictures of Osama bin Laden or the World Trade Center. The “player” — a traveler at an airport screening line, for example — presses a button in response to the images, without consciously registering what he or she is looking at. The terrorist’s response to the scrambled image involuntarily differs from the innocent person’s, according to the theory.
“If it’s a clean result, the passengers are allowed through,” said Rusalkina, during a reporter’s visit last year. “If there’s something there, that person will need to go through extra checks.”
So this is where our money is going? Don’t worry about the borders or the ports, nothing to be done there… let’s submit people to some hocus pocus subliminal mind machine. Oh, wait… here it is… the machine is based on work by a scientist named Smirnov (close enough to almost seem… subliminal? Drink up!). It’s all making sense now.
Smirnov was a Rasputin-like character often portrayed in the media as having almost mystical powers of persuasion. Today, first-time visitors to the institute — housed in a drab concrete building at the Peoples Friendship University of Russia — are asked to watch a half-hour television program dedicated to Smirnov, who is called the father of “psychotronic weapons,” the Russian term for mind control weapons.
Feeling any safer? We really have hit rock bottom haven’t we? We’re out of ideas and options. Yeesh.
Posted on September 20th, 2007 by Mark.
Categories: Entertainment.
I watched Kid Nation last night. Yeah, I’ll admit it! I had to see what all of the fuss was about. All of the gnashing of teeth and wringing of hands over how it put kids in danger or was an experiment doomed to devolve into ‘Lord of the Flies’ territory, seems unwarranted. These kids do not appear to be put into any more dangerous a circumstance than any of the myriad of latch key kids that exist in this nation from day to day. The huge difference of course is that there are cameramen, medics and a whole host of other adult “supervisors” watching these kids as they perform dangerous tasks like COOKING! Oh the humanity!
The only thing I found truly shocking was that none of these kids seemed to know how to do much of anything to take care of themselves. They couldn’t manage to get macaroni and cheese right until one girl, (the only one to this point that seems to have a clue) took charge. Thankfully for these kids, they have an ample supply of food. They were cooking up oatmeal, pancakes and who knows what else in no time. Hunger, the TRUE mother of all invention.
The episode’s “challenge” was to determine what jobs the teams would be assigned to perform within the western ghost town that they inhabit.  There is a four tier economy in the town with wages being paid to these kids for performing their assigned duties. Some are laborers, some are cooks, some are just deadbeat aristocracy and then you have the kids that run the town’s saloon and general store. Well they need a place to spend their hard earned money, right? Candies, toys, soda, you name it these kids have it available to them for purchase. I imagine the real trouble is going to arise when parents take these kids of theirs for their next dental visit!
The one bright spot of the episode… the council chose additional outhouses (they only had one for 40 kids *ewwwww*) rather than a television as a reward for completing a challenge.
Will I watch it again? I don’t know. I didn’t find it very compelling or inventive. Survivor with brats and candy… whoopee!Â
Posted on September 20th, 2007 by Mark.
Categories: Editorials, News, Uncategorized.
Is this for real? I can’t believe that anybody other than the United Nations would be giving Ahmadinejad a forum. This is a man that gleefully plots our nation’s destruction! Freedom of speech has its limits, nevermind that the guy isn’t even an American and therefor not entitled to any “free speech” rights in this country. I wonder if he’ll rant against the zionists or declare the holocaust a hoax while nibbling from a deli plate provided by some adoring sad sack that considers his or herself “educated” and “enlightened”.
I sincerely hope the University of Florida will be making their security team available to Columbia! I wonder if the Iranian President has managed to learn a little english… “Don’t taze me bro!”
Posted on September 20th, 2007 by Mark.
Categories: Editorials, News.
Why? Why are airport screeners collecting so much data about people? I’m all for protecting the country, but noting what people are reading, what they’re carrying, etc., just seems absurd. Why keep a DATABASE on this kind of nonsense? I don’t shy away from profiling, and think that it has its place in realistically dealing with terrorism. If the example in this article had been a disgruntled looking arab with a Quran and a ‘How to’ book on bomb making, this would make sense. A pothead computer nerd though? Are they serious?
The so-called Automated Targeting System scrutinizes every airline passenger entering or leaving the country using classified rules that tell agents which passengers to give extra screening to and which to deny entry or exit from the country.
The system relies on data ranging from the government’s 700,000-name terrorism watch list to data included in airline-travel database entries, known as Passenger Name Records, which airlines are required to submit to the government.
According to government descriptions, ATS mines data from intelligence, law enforcement and regulatory databases, looking for linkages in order to identify “high-risk” targets who may not already be on terrorist watchlists.
Sounds reasonable enough, although broad and unfocused.
The government stores the PNRs for years and typically includes destinations, phone and e-mail contact information, meal requests, special health requests, payment information and frequent-flier numbers.
Eh? They had me until the meal requests… everything after that seems like overkill to me.
One report about Gilmore notes: “PAX (passenger) has many small flashlights with pot leaves on them. He had a book entitled ‘Drugs and Your Rights.’” Gilmore is an advocate for marijuana legalization.
Another inspection entry noted that Gilmore had “attended computer conference in Berlin and then traveled around Europe and Asia to visit friends. 100% baggage exam negative. Resides 554 Clay Street , San Francisco, CA. PAX is self employed ‘Entrepreneur’ in computer software business.”
Wow! Any day now, I expect to be greeted by gun toting thugs demanding, “Show me your papers!”
This all boils down to us losing. We are more like those that we fear than we will ever willingly admit. We are slowly becoming what they want us to be, and fast losing who we were. People can say that I need a reality check, and that the world has changed but that doesn’t change facts. We’ve caved in. We’ve given up. We are all of the things that we used to loathe about the rest of the world. Country singers can sing about being free, and people can wave their flags… but things aren’t what they used to be and for that, we have a reason to war. If I truly believed that killing the enemy would bring back LIBERTY in the United States, I would demand that we destroy every last one… but the genie is out of the bottle. We’ll never get back what we so freely have given up. Who knew freedom was so cheap. Three thousand dead on 9/11 was all it took for us to say, “Take it.” With the loss of those lives the dream was forfeit. Never mind that a hundred times that number over the past two centuries had given their lives in defense of the dream, that’s irrelevant. We should all be so proud.