I've been thinking about the Rand Paul / Security Theatre news story for a while today (if you haven't heard of it, here's the ABC article, which also has a two-minute interview with the Senator. While I'm opposed to the idea of special treatment for a certain subclasses of citizens, I must take notice of the fact that he is a US Senator, and was ( Read more... )

"Murder Suspect Has Witness: A MetroCard" by Benjamin Weiser: shows the positive side of all the new technologies being used to track and follow everyone, but ever since a Law & Order episode several years ago that used a MetroCard record to convict someone of a crime (an issue which is also touched on briefly in the article), I've taken to ( Read more... )

The midtown office building I've been spending a lot of time in gave me two of those rigid plastic id cards. One I have to place in front of a scanner on a podium to enter the building (it beeps, my picture and record show up on a monitor for the "security" fellow standing at the podium, and I walk in). The other actually unlocks the door to get ( Read more... )

Yet another entry in the modern world's lexicon of double-speak: now the Dime Savings Bank of Williamsburgh (a good bank with which I've done business in the past) is concerned about their customers' "safety." So much so that they've posted a sign in the window. The stupidity of the double-speak made me take the pictures behind this cut:

( cut for pictures; I think I've done this properly )

A couple of weeks ago, I posted this wondering about some sort of makeup to interfere with a camera recording one's face.

Today, courtesy of Making Light, I came across this article about an artist, Desiree Palmen, who paints camouflage outfits and then photographs them in use. It's not really camouflage, because the model has to hold still in ( Read more... )

I may be the only one (I certainly hope I'm not) who feels this way, but I'm getting very frustrated by the governmental slant that the news media is both buying and reinforcing. You know the one: where they say "we're doing this to protect ourselves from terrorism." Bullshit. Terrorism-in its most overt form-is killing people and destroying ( Read more... )