Funk Babblings

I almost let this topic go by, but news came today that keeps it from being completely stale.....

( The 2007 Boston Mooninite Scare )

Sometimes schneier reads more like an absurdist-humor blog than a security-issues blog. Today he linked to the tragic tale of an artist unable to ship his empty (but labeled) containers.

The labels on the empty containers include one for rocket fuel ("type: infinite improbability"), as well as some for nitrogen ("78.084% pure") and neon ("0.0018% pure"). The idea of shipping this sort of hazardous material frightened the FedEx courier.

There may be some hope for the courier, however. Philosophically, if not intellectually. He said the bottle of "certainty" just sounded too suspicious.

Those of us in the Great Lakes states can easily forget that we're actually living in border states -- Canada is just across the lake.

With that in mind, I was interested to learn that not only will passports be required (rather than just drivers license and birth certificate) to cross the Canada border by air starting in 2007, and by land starting in 2008, but that the passport requirement is not planned to apply to crossing by ferry or private boat. There are a LOT of private boats crossing between the US and Canada on the lakes every day.

If I were the type of person to be paranoid about terrorist attacks, I might start worrying about attacks on Cleveland -- or the Davis-Besse nuclear power plant. Instead I'm more interested in the quickest and easiest way to flee the country if and when necessary. Well, I'd also just like to go see Toronto sometime.

Still gotta find my birth certificate though. And I've been intending to get a new passport anyway for a year now; the one I got when I was 17 is long-expired, and I'm hoping to avoid a passport with an RFID chip.

You've just gotta love MIT.

On the Effectiveness of Aluminium Foil Helmets: An Empirical Study

Abstract:

Among a fringe community of paranoids, aluminum helmets serve as the protective measure of choice against invasive radio signals. We investigate the efficacy of three aluminum helmet designs on a sample group of four individuals. Using a $250,000 network analyser, we find that although on average all helmets attenuate invasive radio frequencies in either directions (either emanating from an outside source, or emanating from the cranium of the subject), certain frequencies are in fact greatly amplified. These amplified frequencies coincide with radio bands reserved for government use according to the Federal Communication Commission (FCC). Statistical evidence suggests the use of helmets may in fact enhance the government's invasive abilities. We theorize that the government may in fact have started the helmet craze for this reason.

(seen on pandagon_net)

Update: In related news - BYU professor thinks bombs, not planes, toppled WTC (his paper here). Any analysis should probably focus on the WTC-7 building, which wasn't hit by planes, but it's more fun to note his previous research, Evidence for Christ's Visit in Ancient America.

mephron tells us that gaming books are subject to confiscation on the New York Waterway ferry. (Unless you fight it, of course.)

How long until we get to return to sanity in this country?

Lately I've been really amazed at how little spam makes it to my inbox. (Knock on wood...) I use a Bayesian filter, bogofilter, plus some additional filtering to get rid of virus attachments and a particular spammer that's good at getting around Bayesian filters (though I think my filter is finally getting trained well enough on those).

I have gotten some fax spam recently though. No, the laws against that haven't eradicated it. At least there was an 800 number to get off the list; it felt good that it might be costing them a bit of money for me to make that call, even if calling them only verifies that I received their spam so they send more.

Anyway, today I got a new one in email. Well, sort of new. We've all seen the "419 scam" in which some Nigerian supposedly needs help to discreetly transfer a lot of money. This one was similar, but instead of Nigeria it purports to come from a U.S. Army officer in Iraq, claiming to be trying to help an Iraqi businessman move millions of dollars out of Iraq. If I had more time on my hands I might actually mess with this one like some people do.

Do people actually fall for this stuff?

Yesterday I realized just how much my awareness (paranoia?) of scams has invaded my psyche. ( Scam dream.... )

Found at Daily Kos....

George W. Bush's concessions to terrorists since 9/11:

1. Keeping the citizenry in a state of fear
   
2. Making the citizenry less free
   
3. Starting an ill-conceived holy war
   
4. Alienating our country from its allies
   
5. Allowing Osama bin Laden to remain at large
   
6. Letting the Saudis off the hook for their role in terrorism
   
7. Engineering the most effective recruitment strategy since the Hitler Youth by inspiring innumerable peoples across the world to hate us so much that they actually join al Qaeda
   

And now a Republican Senator from Arkansas has introduced a bill to remove all the sunset provisions from the Patriot Act, giving permanence to the second item. On the other hand, senators on both sides are working to scale back the Patriot Act.