The Washington Post has this grab-bag of op-eds from a variety of commentators ranging from Elizabeth Warren to Turd Blossom to Ed Begley Jr.. The theme of the collection is “!2 Things The World Should Toss Out”, and several of them are about topics near and dear to my heart such as lawns, Internet memes, and bullshit political journalism.
Tag Washington Post
RFID For Dummies
Well, not really, but this Washington Post article from Saturday does a good job of summing up the current state of affairs with the use of RFID tags, including the significant privacy and identity theft issues that have yet to be well-addressed in the policy sphere. Regular BKO readers have read me spouting off about RFID for years, but newcomers and drive-bys might benefit from reading this. There are many valid and even desirable uses for RFID tags — after a false start several years ago, Wal-Mart is compelling ALL of their suppliers to tag every case and pallet they ship and that will ripple through the entire retail sector — but there are just as many, if not more, poorly conceived and downright shady schemes that are going to be upon us. Better awareness now will be well-used later.
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We Can Dish It Out, But Can We Take It?
Former commandant of the United States Marine Corps Charles Krulak and former CENTCOM commander Joseph Hoar have written this editorial in today’s Washington Post. It addresses the Bush Administration’s policies on the use of torture, recognizing from personal experience with combat that torture is next to worthless as a method of intelligence gathering and serves only as a method of terrorism itself. While it might create a level of “security theater” designed to assuage a panicky public, it creates a whole new set of problems: not only does counterterrorism seem to embolden and strengthen the resolve of the insurgents, it all but guarantees that these same methods will be used against our troops now and forever.
Sadly, 43% of Americans approve of the use of torture (scroll for it; it’s a long way down the page), and, as my post below discusses, collectively we are deliberately ignorant about the things we do, deliberately in denial about the reality of the situations that confront us, easily spooked into panic-drive over-response, and able to gin up our own fantasies and mythologies to justify that.
Comments:
Bravo! I just wrote a small piece about the American People’s ignorance and lack of ability to think for themselves.
It’s good to see you blogging again, Brian!
Posted by Sarah [URL] on 05/17/07
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Why Western Civilization Is Doomed…Again
Yesterday’s Washington Post reported that functional illiteracy in the District of Columbia hovers around 36%. In other parts of the United States, functional illiteracy among teenagers is estimated to be as high as 50%. (via MetaFilter)
Dear Harvey, Pete, Barry, Kevin, and every other weathermonkey on Boston-area TV: Enough is enough. The fucking blizzard was THIRTY-TWO YEARS AGO. It’s time to stop trotting out the same blurry videotape of cars stuck on Rt. 128 that is older than some of the people who are actually on your broadcast, just so we [...]
It’s going to be a long two months waiting for the iPad to actually ship so that all the tech bloggers and their hangers-on will stop writing so much speculative bullshit about iT and turn their attention iNstead to some other thing that’s going to Change Life As We Know iT. Since you cannot click [...]
Please, please, PUH-LEEZE stop talking about “What do we call the last decade?” Nobody could come up with an acceptable choice ten years ago, and nobody’s going to come up with one now. “Aughties” and “Naughties” are contrived and stupid, and so is the very idea that anything wraps up all nice and neatly into [...]
