The security illusion

No system of detection is perfect, whether it be in medicine or police work. There is always the chance of false positives and the wider you make your dragnet, the larger the number of false positives that you are going to get. While the massive secret databases of the NSA are touted as an efficient means of detecting patterns to thwart terrorist attacks, it is simply a statistical fact that any pattern matching software will throw up false positives. [Read more…]

More fun with the separatists

Yesterday I posted about the absurd plans of people who want to create separate armed enclaves where they hope to live free lives without the government imposing its will on them. As readers were quick to point out, while the military fortifications and weaponry envisaged may have been barely adequate in medieval times, it would take a modern army less than five minutes to overpower them. [Read more…]

Small milestone

Some time yesterday, this blog passed the two million pageviews mark since I started blogging at FtB on January 10, 2012. Before that I was blogging at my previous home since January 2005, so a lot of words (I estimate about 3,000,000) have emerged from my keyboard since the very beginning.

Thanks to all who read and those who comment. My goal has been to create a community of people who are interested and want to engage in important issues thoughtfully and respectfully, and I think that has been largely achieved.

In the process I feel like I have got to know many of you quite well, even though the interactions haste been entirely online.

The difficult situation of the T in LGBT

Although by now most everyone knows what LGBT stands for (and many even know the expanded LGBTQQIA), it is clear that the transgender community has not reached anywhere near the levels of acceptance that the gay and lesbian (or even bisexual) community has. They still face all manner of serious discrimination, apart from the other complications of living in a society that is not being prepared to deal with this issue. [Read more…]

Moving towards a ‘no tipping’ society

I have written before that I find the practice of tipping to be distasteful, since it seems to encourage servile behavior and has overtones of the master-servant relationship. Of course, I still tip 20% because the people doing those jobs are almost never paid a decent salary and need the tips to survive. But I wish that they were paid decent wages and benefits so that they were not dependent on tips to make a living. [Read more…]

The government’s talking points on the NSA scandal

In its effort to counter the fallout from the leaks of the NSA’s secret spying on people, the administration has handed out a set of talking points to its friends in the media and in Congress so that they don’t have to go through the chore of trying to figure out for themselves why they are comfortable with an authoritarian government.

Mike Masnick puts the talking points under a microscope.

Why do police believe psychics?

A judge in Texas has ordered a psychic to pay a couple $6.5 million for the harm she caused them by telling police that a mass grave containing 25 to 30 bodies was on their property.

But the major question is why police would act on the basis of information provided by psychics. Surely there must be someone in the police department who could have pointed out that psychics are useless people who prey on the gullible and desperate?

This is another consequence of the magical thinking promoted by religion.