The Windkey and the Lamplighter

I’ve seen a number of others commenting on this anniversary of the
day Boston was shut down by a bomb scare. Here’s one example; you can
find others in the Herald or statist blogs.

On this day last year, we had the Boston bomb scare. Harmless devices
turned into a pretty good scare in Boston. The good thing is that
police and other authorities responded as if the devices were IEDs.

They were up for over a week before police and other authorities
responded. Had they been IEDs, we’d have been in serious trouble.

Boston authorities failed to do anything useful to solve the conjectured
problem, but did spend piles of cash and reputation on a false positive.
According to these articles, those piles were wasted: they’d spend them
on a similar false positive today. That is, they’d waste resources
acting without getting an expert to evaluate the devices quickly.
They’d waste further resources persecuting the vandals responsible as if
they were terrorists, prosecuting based on the city’s mistakes instead
of the citizens’ crimes.

There’s nothing to complain about in the actions of the officers on the
scene. They did hard jobs well. The real bomb hoax was perpetrated by
their bosses and commanders back at City Hall.

The good thing is that many people learned not to be scared of the
unusual. I hope for more mooninite signs and more blinky vests at the
airport. I hope for a society that’s hard to scare. I hope Boston
authorities will stop collaborating with terrorists.

Refuse to be terrorized.

Jack Nicholson can’t believe he’s still alive, so he’s remaking As Good as It Gets with Morgan Freeman playing Helen Hunt.

This article is a few months old, but Adams has an amusing perspective on his unsurprising inclusion on terrorist watch lists. This came to my attention because of the new TSA emphasis on pseudo-science "micro-expressions".

The Economist ran a correction on page 101 of the 3 November issue. I
know they’re known to lean towards the Right—quite far in most
cases, by standards that include Hugo Chavez in the mean. They lean
blindly in a few cases, I suppose. But I had no idea that they were
this conservative:

Apology: Augustus Caesar In our review last week of Lucien
Polastron’s book on libraries we said that Augustus had destroyed
the Alexandrian library in 48BC. Since the lad, then called
Octavian, was only 15 at the time, he obviously didn’t. And Julius
Caesar, who did, hadn’t actually meant to. We apologise to Mr
Polastron, the many well-educated readers who have complained, and
to Augustus, now divine.

No wonder they’re so suspicious of Christian influence in government.
Clearly, they’ll throw us all to the lions, and are opposed to
Christianity’s tax-heavy policies—after all, the founding prophet
said "Give to Caesar!"

In High School, I spent a few very pleasant weekends at the Thayer Hotel on the campus of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. This past week let me revisit those old stomping grounds. All the stonework is the same, and the knickerbocker-clad Hudson Highlands are immortal. My goodness has the security posture changed, though. The highways of the last century were built for gates that no longer admit visitors.

Shamus Young, the author of the [just-finished] adaptation
DM of the Rings, has started a new web comic. The first page of
Chainmail Bikini had me skeptical at the beginning, then laughing out
at the tag.

Jackie Chan is a tricky, tricky man. We just finished watching
Operation Condor 2: The Armour of the Gods. It had far less Nazi
gold than I’d remembered. Turns out I was remembering Armour of God
II: Operation Condor. Whoops. They’re even closely titled in the
original. Can you tell Fei ying gai wak from
Long xiong hu di? Me neither. We watched the latter. The former
has the Nazis, the wind tunnel, and the gold. The latter has monks
and Miss Spain 1979.

If you think that’s bad, check out how many other "Operation Condor"
movies are listed by IMDB.

Kat has learned to make Cappucino. I’ve still got to learn how, but in the mean time I sure can’t complain about the results.

They have this in the specialty pasta section at Star Market. I think
it’s tomato and spinach flavored.

Komodo Dragons aren’t usually what comes to mind when I consider a smoothly decafinated blend.