News Cut: October 20, 2008 Archive

Metric football

Posted at 7:17 AM on October 20, 2008 by Bob Collins (3 Comments)

At one time, the United States was heading toward the metric system. A few mileage markers were changed. Somewhere in Massachusetts, there's still a sign to tell drivers that Portsmouth, New Hampshire is 35 km away. And decades later, most New Englanders still don't know how far away Portsmouth really.

Not long after Coke introduced the 2-liter bottle, cooler heads prevailed and eighths, sixteenths, miles, and gallons were saved from extinction.

This trip down memory lane is brought to you by northfield.org, which has a short piece today on the "metric football game" between Carleton and St. Olaf in 1977.

Posting here will be intermittent this week. I'm filling in for Jon Gordon on American Public Media's Future Tense this week, which requires me to think deep technical thoughts.

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The geography of U.S. presidential elections

Posted at 7:28 AM on October 20, 2008 by Bob Collins (5 Comments)
Filed under: Politics

There's blue American and there's red America (or a pro-America vs. anti-America if you're of that ilk) and you've probably noticed that there's a vast regional difference in the United States, and has been for a few decades. If you've got a couple of hours on your hands, here's a pretty interesting lecture on the geography of U.S. political elections. Even if you don't like maps, the instructor is pretty engaging.

(h/t: Open Culture)

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Ad wars: Apple edition

Posted at 9:21 AM on October 20, 2008 by Bob Collins (0 Comments)
Filed under: Marketing and advertising

Apple unveiled a new set of ads today in its long-running battle with Microsoft. At one time, we referred to this battle as Apple vs. the PC, or -- more accurately -- Apple vs. the IBM PC. Now it's a battle between hardware (Apple) and software (Microsoft).

Let's recap how this ad war has gone. Apple used the John Hodgman character to make PC a bad word. Microsoft responded with an ad campaign last month that makes PC not only a "good" word, but a symbol of diversity. Today's ad is Apple poking Microsoft for poking at Apple for poking at Microsoft.

It's a much more fun war to watch than Republicans vs. Democrats.

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A fine mess

Posted at 1:04 PM on October 20, 2008 by Bob Collins (7 Comments)
Filed under: Economy

"Right now would not be the time to balance the budget."

That's the kind of economic analysis that usually goes in one ear and out the other. And it did today, until I saw who said it to the New York Times: Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.

Consider that just over a week ago, she was throwing up her hands because neither Barack Obama nor John McCain would name a single sacrifice he would ask of Americans to help the country through the coming -- or already here -- recession. "They don't make any of the tough choices," she said. "Not even close."

But now, MacGuineas is advocating worrying about a balanced budget... later. The message seems to be that right now a balanced federal budget is not a responsible one.

Start spending.

And that's OK with Ben Bernanke, the architect of the Wall St. bailout package. Bernanke told the House Budget Committee the country's economic weakness could last for a while and it was the right time for Congress to consider a new package, something along the lines of the rebate checks we got -- and spent -- earlier this year. President Bush gave it lukewarm approval without flat-out rejecting the idea.

"This is a fine mess," Oliver Hardy used to say. Up until fairly recently, we were supposed to be concerned about the debt we're leaving our children. Now, kids, you're on your own. We gave you the Internet. What more do you want from us?

If you only had two choices: A harder struggle now, but a budget deficit that would be less crushing to the next generation or an easier economic time of it now, causing a harder struggle for the next generation, which would you choose?

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Crime wave

Posted at 3:49 PM on October 20, 2008 by Bob Collins (4 Comments)
Filed under: Surveys and trivia

In days gone by, I joked with Mary Lucia of the Current that all the world's strange things happen in Oklahoma. These days, it's Ohio.

Dateline: Blue Ash, Ohio. (Begin sound of Dragnet theme here). The cops surrounded -- I might be embellishing this a bit -- the home of Edna Jester.

"Give the football back," a cop on a loudspeaker says as the simultaneous sound of rifles being cocked (are rifles cocked? I don't know, I don't own a gun.) pierces the calm Ohio air.

"You'll never take me alive, coppers" the old biddy shouts as she knocks the stained glass portrait of Boomer Esiason out to get a more tactical look at the situation.

In suburban Cincinnati, where they've had 8 property crimes all year, Edna -- did I mention she's 89 years old -- is Public Enemy #1.

Some kids kept kicking a football into her yard, she kept it, and the police arrested her.

"It's the only way to get through to these kids," she said.

Film at 11.

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The things he carried

Posted at 5:37 PM on October 20, 2008 by Bob Collins (0 Comments)
Filed under: Crime and Justice

A few years ago, my sister visiting me from Vermont, had a potential problem when heading back home. Vermont doesn't have photo IDs to show the security agents along with her boarding pass. And she had a bag full of knitting with, of course, knitting needles. I was sure she'd be spending another night at Casa News Cut after being turned away, but she had a pretty good plan. "I'll find a security agent who looks like a grandmother and knits," she said.

She got through faster than I ever did.

Though it impressed the heck out of me, apparently it wasn't such a big deal. Anybody can get through security at Minneapolis St. Paul International Airport, suggests an article in this month's The Atlantic magazine.

In Minneapolis, I littered my carry-on with many of my prohibited items, and also an Osama bin Laden, Hero of Islam T-shirt, which often gets a rise out of people who see it. This day, however, would feature a different sort of experiment, designed to prove not only that the TSA often cannot find anything on you or in your carry-on, but that it has no actual idea who you are, despite the government's effort to build a comprehensive "no-fly" list. A no-fly list would be a good idea if it worked; Bruce Schnei­er's homemade boarding passes were about to prove that it doesn't. Schnei­er is the TSA's most relentless, and effective, critic; the TSA director, Kip Hawley, told me he respects Schnei­er's opinions, though Schnei­er quite clearly makes his life miserable.

"The whole system is designed to catch stupid terrorists," Schnei­er told me. A smart terrorist, he says, won't try to bring a knife aboard a plane, as I had been doing; he'll make his own, in the airplane bathroom. Schnei­er told me the recipe: "Get some steel epoxy glue at a hardware store. It comes in two tubes, one with steel dust and then a hardener. You make the mold by folding a piece of cardboard in two, and then you mix the two tubes together. You can use a metal spoon for the handle. It hardens in 15 minutes."

Jeffrey Goldberg also used fake boarding passes, made by an acquaintance on a laser printer. But it's not just our local airport, according to his article.

The reaction of the people in charge? A spokeswoman characterized the article as "more of an entertainment piece than a treatment of security. ... It's absurd to think that we take things from people because of what they wear," according to the Star Tribune.

She acknowledged no level of security can provide 100% protection.

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