Preston L. Bannister { random memes }

After 9/11 we heard “who could imagine such an attack” from quite a lot of public figures. In fact there were quite a lot of folks who could imagine exactly such a threat, and were trying to guard against just such an occurrence. Perhaps if we had spent the bit necessary on the good folks who knew what job needed doing before 9/11, then there is a good chance the hijacking would have failed. Perhaps we would not have the TSA pissing away billions on the bunch of silly schemes today.

Ex-employee says FAA warned before 9/11
From 1995 to 2001, Bogdan Dzakovic served as a team leader on the Federal Aviation Administration’s Red Team. Set up by Congress to help the FAA think like terrorists, the elite squad tested airport security systems.

In the years leading up to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Dzakovic says, the team was able to breach security about 90% of the time, sneaking bombs and submachine guns past airport screeners. Expensive new bomb detection machines consistently failed, he says.

The team repeatedly warned the FAA of the potential for security breaches and hijackings but was told to cover up its findings, Dzakovic says.

Eventually, the FAA began notifying airports in advance when the Red Team would be doing its undercover testing, Dzakovic says. He and other Red Team members approached the Department of Transportation’s Office of the Inspector General, the General Accounting Office and members of Congress about the FAA’s alleged misconduct regarding the Red Team’s aviation security tests. No one did anything, he says.
via Cryptome

Good bet that Dzakovic is credible as we have heard this story many times before. Airport security has always been a bit of a (bad) joke.

While I can account for how votes are collected at my polling place, I really do not know anything about the upstream process. After I turn in the votes collected in my precinct(s), how secure is the process from that point on? At the end of the election day I am far too tired to hang around and see where the votes go from there.

So the following bit from a local political weblog is of interest – and encouraging.

OC Blog: From The Correa Campaign…
As to the other missive about the signatures, it is unfortunate that someone has chosen to raise this issue and attack the credibility of the Orange County Elections operations and safeguards. Had they spent the last week and a half at monitoring the process, they would have discovered like we did that the County does in fact have multiple steps of review in place, and that every absentee and provisional ballot is individually reviewed for both completeness and yes, the signatures on the ballot envelopes are matched to their affidavits of registration.

If the signature validator had any question whatsoever, they attached an electronic challenge to the ballot and envelope and sent it on up for further review. At that point, the signature went through several additional reviews where it was either found to be legitimate and placed back in the ballot pipeline or sent to the challenge room where attorneys and staff for both camps would review each and every ballot envelope. At this point, both camps found agreement on most signatures, and where disagreement occurred, the Registrar himself provided the final word on whether the signature was valid.

All in all, a clean process that went well for all involved.

I would still like to follow the process through someday. Given an occasional need to evaluate software security, I long ago developed that nasty, suspicious, nearly paranoid state of mind needed on the occasion to look for threats and weakness.

Like many other American citizens I am not satisfied with much of our political process. How do we end up with so much junk in politics? Each major election we are asked to vote for folk we don’t know into positions of power. We try and make value judgments based on what is really to little information (or too little truth).

I admit (in part) to making the problem worse. At one time (or more?) we were asked if we wanted to make more positions elected, and I voted in favor. It sounded like a good idea at the time. Fewer chances for political appointees in exchange for favors (usually dirty). The result is ballots with long lists of names – far too many to look at closely.

Back in 1776 the population of the US was about 2.5 million. That means each member of the 435 member House of Representatives (assuming the number was the same then?) would represent about 5800 people (and less than a 1000 voters). With numbers like that my small local suburb would get three representatives. Odds are I would know a lot more about the folk wanting to be my local representative.

There are two political figures I have seen locally. In both cases the first-hand impression gathered seems to have proved accurate.

Maybe the main failing of our country’s founders was in not accounting for the effect of massive population growth. Maybe what we lack is true local representation. What if we could vote for one representative who would represent 5-10 thousand people to city, state, and federal government? Certainly we would be far more likely to know something of the character of our representative. Before we had to elect separate representatives for city, state, and federal government – as each had to physically travel to a different place to perform their role, and travel took a lot longer.

Could a Congress with 30,000 representatives actually work?

Pulling back a bit – even local city governments seem to have a fair amount of funny business. Are we seeing another example of the same problem – too few truly local representatives? The writer below is talking about Santa Ana, a city of at least 340,000 people.

Pulido fears ward-specific elections because he doesn’t want to lose power
The truth about ward-specific elections is that they allow ANYBODY to make a reasonable run at the city council. That is what Ream and Pulido fear the most. Up until this year they have absolutely controlled most of the outcomes of our local elections by raising thousands of dollars from special interests and public employee unions and electing only those who agree to be Pulido hacks. This year we figured out, inadvertently, how to defeat the Pulido puppets by splitting the vote. Never again will Pulido be able to use his machine to keep us down. If we can pass a ward-specific ballot measure, we will be able to make sure that henceforth only those who are truly known in their wards, and in the city, will be able to prevail. Pulido won’t be able to elect carpetbaggers from Huntington Beach, and empty suits who do nothing to improve the city or their neighborhoods.

All we are asking is that the voters be allowed to decide for themselves if they want ward-specific city council elections. What are Pulido and Ream afraid of? They are afraid of losing power. And yet that is coming to pass anyway…

Was thinking this morning about how a Congressman had to maintain two residences – one in their home district and one in Washington DC. Seems that long-term congress-critters get to be more of DC than of the region they nominally represent. The culture of DC is much centered around political power, lobbying, and hangers-on of various sort.

I have long thought that keeping the majority of the national government all in one place was a mistake. On the one side, a single small nuke could wipe out Congress, the White House, and a fair number of federal agencies. On the other hand, email and video conferencing largely obviates the old need to physically meet.

The Internet was originally created by the military as a communications network that could potentially withstand a nuclear attack. The network was hoped to survive the destruction many nodes – and certainly the loss of any one node. The same principle could be applied to the federal government. Congress does not need to all be in one place. Federal agencies could be distributed across the country.

Aside from protection against attack, there is a second possibly more important benefit. Washington DC is the home to lobbyists of all sort – a source of slight (or great) corruption. By distributing the government across the country, this makes the job of a lobbyist rather harder (at least for under-the-table dealings). Perhaps by breaking up Washington DC we could end up with slightly cleaner government.

Just a speculation …

Heard on NPR this morning that Bush was giving a speech in Vietnam. Considering what the war in Iraq just cost the Republican Party in the just-past election, this struck me as somewhat amusing. For the full measure:

Bush finally makes it to The Nam
” Back in the mid-1960s, George W. Bush had an invitation from Uncle Sam to join the U.S. military and, like his father at a similar age, be sent to fight a war. He could have led an infantry platoon in The Nam. He declined, instead going to Yale, pledging Skull & Bones, and going to Harvard Business School. He eventually joined the Texas Air National Guard, protecting Galveston from an invasion by the Viet Cong.

If he had gone through infantry combat, he might have been not so foolish as to send American ground troops to conquer and occupy Iraq.”

In the speech Bush said something like “If we don’t quit, we win.” Typical political nonsense – bound to be true for some definition of “win” and “quit”.

Not exactly new (wikipedia page) – amusing none the less.

This last election there were are fair number of folk who came into my polling place who were marked on the roster as “AV” (meaning “absentee voter”), but who claimed not to have received their absentee ballot.

Now I have not thought anything odd of this before. Perhaps the RoV (Registrar of Voters) mailed the ballot to the wrong address – voters move and often forget to notify the RoV. Perhaps the ballot was lost in the mail (though odds of this are probably low). Voters appear on the roster that have moved out or died (not unusual in number). Voters appear at the polling place who have moved in and believe they are registered, but are not on the roster (they are allowed to vote – tagged as “provisional” so the RoV will verify). The “absentee” voters may have misplaced their ballots. Collecting votes is not a perfect process, and you have to expect some human error.

Many of the “absentee” voters who show up at the polling place – saying they did not receive their ballot – are unsure if they can vote (they can). I have to assume a fair number of the “absentee” voters with lost ballots do not vote.

If you knew which voters you did not want to vote, and you could arrange to “lose” absentee ballots (anywhere between the RoV and where the voter picks up their mail) … you could probably change the election numbers somewhat.

More likely this was simple human error – but I cannot rule out the possibility of malice.

Listening to an older NPR program – a couple of doctors trying to sell diet books – served as a reminder of why precisely my respect for the “nutritional community” seems to drop a notch every year. In part as over time I have gotten better at picking out a sharp (or not so sharp) mind out of a forest of words. Listening to the radio program, after mentally pruning out the excess verbiage – neither the “low-fat diet” doctor or the “low-carbohydrate” diet doctor impress me as anything near first-rate minds.

This is not surprising. I saw the weeding-out process applied to pre-med students while in college. What you largely get are folk able to grind forward in a single direction, without variation or creativity.

What this gets you is a large number of “studies” performed by guys with “doctor” in their title. When you look closely at the methodology of their study … you find stunning gaps. You very often find the “controlled study” is not at all well controlled (at least not by standards derived from studying Physics).

Back in high school did a lot of running (a 120 pound kid eating 11,000 calories a day), and after did a lot of cycling. Did long distance riding (30-70 miles a day) and events like one day 100 and 200 mile rides. Diet was absolutely crucial to success, and boiled down to the following observations as to which foods made the best fuels:

• Sugar is good only for a short-term boost – maybe 30 minutes. Good if you screwed up and let your blood sugar drop, and useless otherwise.
• Meat, fats, and oils digest too slowly and are not a good source when lots of energy is needed.
• Carbohydrates are your main fuel – crackers and bananas (washed down with copious water and some fruit juice) you can eat and burn while riding all day.

Afterwards, when much less physically active, it seemed logical to cut out the fuel – the carbohydrates – leaving mostly slow-burning foods (meat, fats and oils) in the diet. I had a hard time understanding why the “nutritional community” was recommending low-fat high-carbohydrate diets. It seemed counter-intuitive. Since your body tends to digest carbohydrates more quickly, you end up hungry between meals, which makes it harder to resist impulse eating.

Heard on NPR from a nurse who switched from the low-fat to low-carbohydrate diet: ” Carbohydrates made me hungry. ”

Later I switched my diet to low in carbohydrate with most calories coming from lean meat and oils (olive, canola, etc.). I found with the slower to digest foods that I was not getting hungry between meals, and it was much easier to limit my intake.

You want my entirely non-professional dietary advice for typical minimally active suburbanites?

• Sugars are pure, absolute, unadulterated dietary evil – fruit sugars a bit less so. My bet is that we will eventually figure out that sugars killed more people than tobacco.
• Simple carbohydrates (white bread, white rice) are evil most days. Unless your day is going to be physically very active – stay away.
• Carbohydrates in general are fuel. If you are going to be active, you might eat more. Otherwise you want very little.
• Lean meat is good. Oils are generally good (fats liquid at room temperature). Fats solid at room temperature are probably bad.
• Salad with a bit of oil is good (small carbo with slow digesting oil).

… but I am not a “professional” …