Month: January 2006

don’t lean on me

So I can totally understand having to lean against the person next to you on the bus when it’s packed. For a few blocks on the way home this afternoon, the shuttle was like that, but then the density lightened up a bit. But did the guy next to me get the off of me? No. He practically laid on me the entire length of the mall. Tip to the world: When it’s not absolutely necessary, don’t lean on the person next to you on the damned bus!

This, my friends, is a bad idea

Frequent Fliers to Get Security Pass – Forbes.com

It’s a fucking travesty that the terrorist attacks of 09/11/01 have led us down the primrose path to hell to this point.

The Registered Traveler card would let frequent fliers go through airport security lines more quickly if they pay a fee, pass a government background check and submit 10 fingerprints, according to a federal official familiar with the program’s details, which were being announced Friday. The program will begin June 20.

*insert that cliche quote about liberty and security here*

“It sounds like they want private companies to be in the business of law enforcement and intelligence gathering,” Hofmann [an attorney with the privacy group Electronic Privacy Information Center] said.

Once again. Bad idea.

There’s already a private company running a Registered Traveler test program at the Orlando (Fla.) Airport. Verified Identity Pass, which was started by media entrepreneur Steven Brill, charges $79.95 for the card.

Earlier this month, the company told the TSA that it tested whether commercial data services could authenticate that a person is who he says he is.

The results: “We dropped the idea after fully testing it and finding that it had no security benefits and significant, almost show-stopping negatives,” the company said in a document responding to the TSA’s request for information.

Well of course it’s got no security benefits. The entire TSA operation of airline passenger screening has not appreciably increased airline safety for anyone I contend.

Other private companies such as General Electric, ARINC and Iridian Technologies, along with airports, think there’s money to be made in the business of verifying people’s identity at airports.

Well of course there’s money to be made here. Isn’t that the entire fucking point?

illusion-like enlightenment

All things in this worldly existence
That are colored by attachment and aversion
Are in reality devoid of any existence.
When this is seen, everything is seen as golden.
When we meditate upon the illusion-like nature
Of all illusion-like phenomena,
We attain illusion-like enlightenment.

~ Dakini Niguma, sung to Tibetan yogi Khyungpo Naljor in a charnal ground, 1th Century A.D., India (trans. Glenn Mullin)