Does DHS have an actual job?

I take it that the job of homeland security officers is meant to have something to do with securing the homeland.

I'm not sure what that has to do with protecting federal property from bumper stickers.

...on February 7, at his day job for a federal natural resource agency, Scarbrough got a call from, of all places, Homeland Security.

An official told him to come out to the parking lot and said he was in violation of the Code of Federal Regulations.

When Scarbrough came out, he found two armed officers of Homeland Security, who told him he was violating the regulation against the posting of signs on federal property.

...the signs were really subversive, like “Honor Vets, Wage Peace,” and “Another Veteran Against War with Iraq.”

Or making sure library patrons aren't looking at porn.

Two uniformed men strolled into the main room of the Little Falls library in Bethesda one day last week and demanded the attention of all patrons using the computers. Then they made their announcement: The viewing of Internet pornography was forbidden.

The men looked stern and wore baseball caps emblazoned with the words "Homeland Security." The bizarre scene unfolded Feb. 9, leaving some residents confused and forcing county officials to explain how employees assigned to protect county buildings against terrorists came to see it as their job to police the viewing of pornography.

An excellent question! Unfortunately, as far as the article goes, it's one that has yet to be answered.

Other questions that don't get answered:

Montgomery County will not specify how many officers are in the department's security division, citing security reasons.

Entirely reasonable. We wouldn't want to jeopardize DHS operations. They're the only thing stopping Bin Laden from gaining access to the computer terminals at Montgomery County libraries, and using them to view one of those clips of Paris Hilton.

I found the conclusion to this story somewhat confusing.

Still, Montgomery plans to train its homeland security officers "so they fully understand library policy and its consistency with residents' First Amendment rights under the U.S. Constitution," Romer said in his statement.

Because a key component of homeland security is a proper understanding of library policy. It's not a problem if homeland security officers spend their time on the job not doing their jobs--they just need to not-do-their-jobs better.

Unembedded

Someone on Deviantart posted a link to this - it's a site with independent photojournalists' work in Iraq. I haven't seen work like this appear in the mainstream media, except a few on the BBC (like the ones Toby posted below, a few days back).

link here.

On Canuckistan and combustion

Peter Tertzakian talking to Jon Stewart on the Daily Show:

Tertzakian: Canada is your largest supplier of oil--or, in the addiction metaphor, your pusher, I guess.

Stewart: Why haven't we invaded them?

Man, you guys have such short memories.

The War Of 1812

In 1812, Madison was mad,
He was the president, you know
Well, he thought he’d tell the British where they ought to go
He thought he’d invade Canada,
He thought that he was tough
Instead we went to Washington....
And burned down all his stuff!

And the White House burned, burned, burned,
And we’re the one’s that did it!
It burned, burned, burned,
While the president ran and cried.
It burned, burned, burned,
And things were very historical.
And the Americans ran and cried like a bunch of little babies
Waa waa waah!
In the War of 1812!

(etc)

Ha ha ha! It's been almost two centuries, and it's still funny.

But not just funny. If not for the bravery of the British and Canadian troops (and the incompetence of the Americans) in that war, Bush would now be our president, too (ohgodohgodohgod).

Some War of 1812 trivia: Jefferson predicted that invading Canada would merely be "a matter of marching"; the Americans thought that, once the British troops were taken care of, the population of Upper Canada would just let the American invaders parade through the streets of York--but instead they met with armed resistance from the Canadian militia. Plus ça change....

Anyway, on the topic of stuff Americans don't know about Canada, we recently treated some of our American friends to some insight as to how Canadians view the way that Americans view Canada. Recall: the Golden Age of Rick Mercer.

St. Valentine's Day

A seminar got cancelled for some reason or another, so the prof scheduled a make-up session for this Tuesday, 7-10pm. The timing was never mentioned.

Academia rocks!

British troops videoed 'beating Iraqis'

Story.

Video.

The anticipation voiced by the cameraman ("yer gonna get it") suggests that he expected that beatings would follow (i.e. this is not an isolated incident). It also sounds as if watching these kids getting beaten is arousing him sexually.

Tal Afar shooting

A couple of posts ago I linked to this picture--old news, over a year ago, but it's such a terrifying shot that I'm a bit peeved that I'd forgotten about it.

I originally saw it on the BBC site, but I also found coverage on Newsweek with different (and uncensored) pictures, plus audio commentary from the photographer, Chris Hondros.

When you talk about war being hell, this is what you mean.

When any country says it's going to go to war, these are the kinds of things that we can expect. Because these are the things that happen in war. And I've seen lots of wars around the world and these happen in all of them. It's just that... Americans involved won't pay attention.

The official response at the time, according to the BBC: 'military officials extended their condolences for this "unfortunate incident" and were investigating.' That was over a year ago, and I can't seem to find any information about how that investigation went.

Our encounter with the authorities, and hers

Around about 2 AM, someone rang up the apartment over the intercom. They said it was the police, and asked me to buzz them up. I told them I couldn't (that function is disabled in the building, presumably for security reasons), and would come down to let them in instead.

Kate and I wondered what it might be about. We'd had a bunch of people over for dinner and a viewing of Shaolin Vs. Wu Tang (given to me by Dave as a late present for my birthday, because Kate had to go and mention that I had such a thing). It might have been a little noisy, but everyone had left at around midnight, and we'd pretty much stopped making any noise at all by 1. So we were somewhat confused.

So I went down to let them in, and it turned out it didn't have anything to do with us. The cops had been called by someone else on a noise complaint having to do with some other apartment. When the guy who called them told them he couldn't buzz them up, I guess they assumed that that was just a problem with the buzzer for that particular apartment, and called on us thinking that our buzzer might be working.

Luckily my sleeping pattern is what it is, and so this little task was a minimal inconvenience. Still, there are things that I'd rather have done with my time than walking up to four large police officers to ask what they wanted with me. (Yep, that's four police officers on a noise complaint. In addition to the Chicago police, the university employs its own police force with overlapping jurisdiction, making the police presence in this neighbourhood fairly significant.)

Speaking of stressful birthday-related encounters with armed authorities, about an hour after mine, I read about Riverbend's.

Suddenly, two of them were in the living room. We were all sitting on the sofa, near my aunt. My cousin B. was by then awake, eyes wide with fear. They were holding large lights or ‘torches’ and one of them pointed a Klashnikov at us. “Is there anyone here but you and them?” One of them barked at my aunt. “No- it’s only us and my husband outside with you- you can check the house.” T.’s hands went up to block the glaring light of the torch and one of the men yelled at her to put her hands down, they fell limply in her lap. I squinted in the strong light and as my sight adjusted, I noticed they were wearing masks, only their eyes and mouths showing.

OK, so our experiences aren't quite comparable.

World Press Photo awards

Screw the Olympics. I'm a bigger fan of photojournalism than I am of hockey (or whatever), so I don't think any gold medal would be able to stoke my patriotism more than Canadian Finbarr O'Reilly winning World Press Photo of the Year, with this shot of Mother and child at emergency feeding center, Tahoua, Niger.

The whole Winners Gallery is worth browsing through. Here are some that really need to be seen by everyone (and with all due respect to my fellow Canuck, I feel that some of them might have been worthier of the top prize):

Child labourer in a textile factory, Bangladesh
Indigenous family, Guatemala
Boy helps his father to dress, Sierra Leone
Reburial of Srebrenica massacre victims' bodies, Potocari, Bosnia
Car bomb explosion at Tahrir Square, Baghdad, Iraq

They say a picture is worth a thousand words. This one is worth about a million:
Young girl grieves her parents killed by US patrol, Tal Afar, Iraq

(I've actually seen that last one before, with some more context, here.)

Warning: Not Safe For Contentment.

New Blog

I started a new blog. I'm not 100% sure yet, but I may be leaving Chicago, and I wanted to really try to see it before I left. Seeing as I'll be doing a lot of this sightseeing on my own, I thought I'd keep all that stuff separate. You can see it at this site.

Radical new developments in business

GM is in trouble. It's been recording billions of dollars of losses, quarter after quarter, with some business pundits perceiving the possibility of Chapter 11 over the horizon.

In response, GM is taking "radical measures": the guys at the top have agreed to make "personal sacrifices". The chief executive is halving his salary (to a mere $1.1 million, I guess), other directors are taking pay cuts, and no executives are getting bonuses for the year during which the losses accumulated.

Question: How is any of this radical?

What the hell is wrong with a business culture wherein it's radical for the remuneration of the guys running a company to be somehow related to the fortunes of the company itself? In what way is it radical to suspend executive bonuses (BONUSES!) while the company is losing billions of dollars?

They loaded the fortunes of GM into big, ugly, gas guzzling (dare I say: socially irresponsible) SUVs, and drove off a cliff. Now they deign to allow themselves to be adversely affected by this tremendous failure--and that is radical, and it's called a sacrifice.

Apart from the sacrifices of the company directors, some employees are losing their jobs entirely. Does firing 30,000 people count as radical, too? Ford announced a comparable round of lay-offs two weeks ago, and for some reason I don't recall it being described in such dramatic terms.

Chicago Cubs : Spring Training : Ticket Information

Spring Training tickets for the Chicago Cubs vrs. Rangers. I'm hoping to go March 7.

Slashdot | NASA Science Under Attack

(here's the article from the NY Times.)

Oh man...So now the Bush administration are dictating what scientists must or must not say?

This is from a memo written by George Deutsch (NASA press officer/presidential appointee) - he's the guy who insisted the word "theory" come after every mention of the Big Bang:

"The Big Bang is "not proven fact; it is opinion," Mr. Deutsch wrote, adding, "It is not NASA's place, nor should it be to make a declaration such as this about the existence of the universe that discounts intelligent design by a creator." "This is more than a science issue, it is a religious issue. And I would hate to think that young people would only be getting one-half of this debate from NASA. That would mean we had failed to properly educate the very people who rely on us for factual information the most."

Miscellaneous Asiatown

Well, that's kinda what it is, though they call it Chinatown.

A bunch of us went there on Saturday, and we picked a lovely day for it, too--chilly, snowing, windy. Luckily we didn't have to do too much walking, since Chinatown extends over maybe 3 blocks.

We went to a Chinese restaurant. Not like the ones back home. The names for some of the dishes were strangely different, though vaguely recognizable from American TV. They only gave us plates, so Kate and I had to ask for rice bowls, and then when they came they weren't bowls so much as oversized cups. Talk about culture shock.

We also saw a sign advertising some sort of medication with the key ingredient of "Testo-gland". It didn't say what it was for.

Still, we plan to back sometime, for bubble tea if nothing else. (With the uncooperative weather, cold drinks didn't seem appropriate at the time.) It's not terribly far by bus and train.

About the train. Half the train stations seem to lack ceilings. There are heat lamps installed in places, but those areas aren't actually sheltered by, say, walls. I'm sure that makes them very useful on the 3 or 4 nights of the Chicago winter when it isn't windy, but Saturday night was not one of those nights.

Hate of the Union

So it was a day late, but we decided to have a State of the Union Viewing Party--complete with popcorn! I invited a bunch of people, but I could only get one British guy to come. For some reason none of the Americans I know can stand to sit through a Bush speech (apparently it's worse if he's actually your president).

Some days, it's good to be a citizen of the Commonwealth.

I must admit, we weren't entirely civil while watching the speech; there may have been some heckling. A skeptical outburst or two was heard when Bush started talking about what needs to be done about America's "addiction to oil"; and, whaddya know, the moment the speech finished playing and I went online, I ran across this story (via Dadahead), in which we discover that that bit of the speech wasn't meant to be taken "literally".

From my point of view, the flip-flop seemed to happen instantaneously, but, to be fair, in reality it took a whole day. (A whole 24 hours, though? The timing is somewhat vague.)

I actually kept my cool pretty well through the whole speech, I thought, until the bit near the end where Bush declared, "We've entered a great ideological conflict we did nothing to invite." I sort of lost it at that point.