Monday, April 22, 2013
Feds Delay Policy to Allow Small Knives on Planes
[ed. Sigh... bitching about the government is like bitching about the weather. Are there any terrorists stupid enough to try replicating 9/11 Terrorist 101 techniques with so many other vulnerable targets available - chemical plants, oil refineries, dams, shipping ports, sewage treatment facilities, internet server farms, etc. (not to mention Wall Street fiber optic cables)? C'mon. Will every marathoner now have their shoes checked before racing? (and what about those "water bottles" filled with who knows what?]
Airline passengers will have to leave their knives at home after all. And their bats and golf clubs.A policy change scheduled to go into effect this week that would have allowed passengers to carry small knives, bats and other sports equipment onto airliners will be delayed, federal officials said Monday.
The delay is necessary to accommodate feedback from an advisory committee made up of aviation industry, consumer, and law enforcement officials, the Transportation Security Administration said in a brief statement. The statement said the delay is temporary, but gave no indication how long it might be.
TSA Administrator John Pistole proposed the policy change last month, saying it would free up the agency to concentrate on protecting against greater threats. TSA screeners confiscate about 2,000 small folding knives from passengers every day.
The proposal immediately drew fierce opposition from flight attendant unions and federal air marshals, who said the knives can be dangerous in the hands of the wrong passengers. Some airlines and members of Congress also urged TSA to reconsider its position.
The delay announced by TSA doesn't go far enough, a coalition of unions representing 90,000 flight attendants nationwide said Monday.
"All knives should be banned from planes permanently," the group said in a statement.
Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., who opposed the policy, said TSA's decision is an admission "that permitting knives on planes is a bad idea." He also called for a permanent ban.
Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass., another opponent, said he will continue to push TSA to drop the proposal entirely.
"People with radical ideas can use everyday objects to cause great harm," Markey said. "If there is an opportunity to decrease risks to Americans, we have a duty to protect our citizens and disallow knives from being taken onto planes."
by Joan Lowy, AP | Read more:
Photo: Gene Blythe, AP
When Children Fly the Nest
I want to talk about children leaving home. Not running away from home, though that happens, or kicked out from home. But about the good moment when the time is right and off they go.
As it happens, my own 18-year-old son is getting ready to pack his suitcase and head to college in the fall. When I say pack his suitcase, I really mean it.
When he was born, one of his godfathers came over from London and gave the infant boy a beautiful, antique turn-of-the-century trunk, covered with faded steamer stickers and already filled with judicious presents for his leaving, such as Trumper's extract of limes and a little black book embossed with a gold title announcing that it was for the phone numbers of blondes and brunettes.
"He'll keep putting things he needs in here, and when he leaves home, he'll be ready," said the godfather, whose gift showed him to be both a romantic and a realist. He probably saw the light shining in our eyes at the baby's presence, and knew that he might need a nudge to get out - or rather that we would, to let him.
Well, the day has arrived, almost, and I won't pretend I like it.
The thought of his leaving home is almost unendurable for me. It's partly because we have a kind of all-day radio sports phone-in relationship. The morning usually begins with an exasperated conversation about Chelsea's latest episode of over-spending and the evening usually ends with another about the difficulties of ice hockey's Montreal Canadiens, our two shared sporting obsessions.
And now, I know, that long, continual conversation is ending. Soon, I'll call him on the phone and start: "Hey, do you see what Abramovich…" and he'll cut me short: "Dad, I got to run… Let me call you back?" Two or three days later, he will.
I suspect he will return one Christmas soon with an icy, exquisite, intelligent young woman in black clothes, with a single odd piercing somewhere elegant - ear or nose or lip - who will, when I am almost out of earshot, issue a gentle warning: "Listen, with the wedding toasts - could you make sure your father doesn't get, you know, all boozy and damp and weepy?" My son will nod at the warning.
I am blessed to still have his little sister at home, a 13-year-old who speaks a strange abbreviated Manhattan lingo. "Ily," for instance, means "I love you", which she utters at rapid machine gun-speed from her downturned head, while her thumbs are flashing over the keyboard of her phone, continuing text exchanges with five other 13-year-old girls.
She is like a cross between Lieutenant Uhura on Star Trek and a Gatling gun, spitting out communications with the cosmos. But soon enough will come her message too: "C U ILY".
What I wonder about is why we love our children so asymmetrically, so entirely, knowing that the very best we can hope for is that they will feel about us as we feel about our own parents: that slightly aggrieved mixture of affection, pity, tolerance and forgiveness, with a final soupcon - if we live long enough - of sorrow for our falling away, stumbling and shattered, from the vigour that once was ours.
by Adam Gopnik, BBC | Read more:
Photo: Thinkstock
How did the Baby Catalog Know?
Staring back at me was a little face surrounded by products for making that little face happy. This was it, the first real evidence that the world knew about our impending parenthood: a baby catalog, Right Start. And it was right on time. She was three months pregnant then, and we were finally allowing ourselves to imagine that this fetus might become a baby, and that that baby might desperately need any number of products that Right Start could sell us. Paging through the catalog, we realized to our dismay that whoever had sent us this thing knew us. They'd nailed our demographic precisely. They even knew what kind of convertible car seat we'd want! Who were these people, or should I say, machines?!
Because that's where my mind went immediately. I remembered Charles Duhigg's blockbuster story about how Target aggressively datamined for prospective parents. We were a high-value target, and clearly some data had given us away. I wanted to know what had happened, and I began a slow investigation.
First, I tweeted at Right Start (@RightStart), "We got a catalog before we had actually publicly told anyone about [the baby]. And I'm curious about the data behind that." To their credit, they got right back to me and asked for the "source code" on my catalog. It was right there are on the back of the catalog: S1303400. That was the first clue.
With that little code, Right Start's representatives went back to their database and found out that our data had come from a company called Marketing Genetics. "They provided us your info based off of past buying behavior," Right Start told me.
Marketing Genetics! This was getting good. Did they already know that our child was so genetically gifted that they were farming out our data to people who could supply what our kid needed (diapers, chess board, violin)?
by Alexis C. Madrigal, The Atlantic | Read more:
Image via:
You Are Listening To: Boston
[ed. I wish I'd thought of tuning into You Are Listening To: Boston during the recent manhunt and lockdown. The scanner traffic must have been intense.]
Photo: Waterfront Skyline by Muffet
Sunday, April 21, 2013
Trust Me
[ed. Is this a great country or what?]
They are declaring that they are not ordinary corporations at all. Instead, they say, they are something else: special trusts that are typically exempt from paying federal taxes.
The trust structure has been around for years but, until recently, it was generally used only by funds holding real estate. Now, the likes of the Corrections Corporation of America, which owns and operates 44 prisons and detention centers across the nation, have quietly received permission from the Internal Revenue Service to put on new corporate clothes and, as a result, save many millions on taxes.
The Corrections Corporation, which is making the switch, expects to save $70 million in 2013. Penn National Gaming, which operates 22 casinos, including the M Resort Spa Casino in Las Vegas, recently won approval to change its tax designation, too.
Changing from a standard corporation to a real estate investment trust, or REIT — a designation signed into law by President Dwight D. Eisenhower — has suddenly become a hot corporate trend. One Wall Street analyst has characterized the label as a “golden ticket” for corporations.
“I’ve been in this business for 30 years, and I’ve never seen the interest in REIT conversions as high as it is today,” said Robert O’Brien, the head of the real estate practice at Deloitte & Touche, the big accounting firm.
At a time when deficits and taxes loom large in Washington, some question whether the new real estate investment trusts deserve their privileged position.
When they were created in 1960, they were meant to be passive investment vehicles, like mutual funds, that buy up a broad portfolio of real estate — whether shopping malls, warehouses, hospitals or even timberland — and derive almost all of their income from those holdings.
One of the bedrock principles — and the reason for the tax exemption — was that the trusts do not do any business other than owning real estate.
But bit by bit, especially in recent years, that has changed as the I.R.S., in a number of low-profile decisions, has broadened the definition of real estate, and allowed companies to split off parts of their business that are unrelated to real estate.
For example, prison companies like the Corrections Corporation and the Geo Group successfully argued that the money they collect from governments for holding prisoners is essentially rent. Companies that operate cellphone towers have said that the towers themselves are real estate.
by Nathaniel Popper, NY Times | Read more:
Photo: Kate Brumback/Associated Press
A Model for Sushi Lovers
Japan has just arrived on store shelves of model and toy collectors a model that mimics a typical tuna on the work table of the fishmongers in the market of Tsukiji in Tokyo . The model perfectly replicates the various cuts that precede the arrival of sushi and sashimi in restaurants. The Tuna (maguro called in Japanese) measures 33 cm and is 12 cm high and 7.5 cm wide, the table is 195 mm long, 10 cm wide and 7cm high.
Just to make things even more realistic, in addition to the table and a replica of the Maguro bocho (the famous knife to cut the tuna), the box of this figure reproduces exactly those used in Japan for the transport of fish (with the inside polystyrene). Too bad for the price: 29,000 yen (about 240 Euros) for a gadget collector are certainly not affordable for all lovers of raw fish ...
by Frankie, Hobby Media | Read more:
h/t Boing Boing
Granddogs
Like every proud grandmother, Donna McCabe of Whidbey Island, Washington, carries a brag book of photographs of her grandchild, Audrey, in her handbag, and is always swapping news of her escapades with friends and other family members. McCabe isn't the slightest bit fazed that her grandchild happens to have four paws and a tail.Audrey is an exquisite Italian Greyhound, with delicate features just like her namesake actress, Audrey Hepburn. Her "grandmother" dotes on her.
Family dynamics today are more complex than just Mom plus Dad plus two children. Many people are divorced or opt for a single lifestyle. Others remain childless, by chance or by choice. It is a lifestyle that makes close family relationships the exception rather than the norm. Into this void step our dogs, ready and willing to accept all offers of adoration and spoiling.
More than simply companions, dogs are considered children in many households. So it follows that a fur kid's family tree branches out to include aunties, uncles, cousins, and, of course, the ultimate dispenser of spoiled affection-grandparents. (...)
Typically, grandmoms seem to take center stage in talking about their granddogs, but Al Cartwright of Nassau in the Bahamas was quick to step up to the plate and talk about his amazing bonding experience with his granddog, Quinn, a 10- year-old chocolate Labrador.
"We rode out a bad hurricane on the island together," he says fondly. "Both my wife, Carol, and Quinn's pet parents, Kelly and Robert, were away when the storm warning became a reality. Quinn and I took care of each other. He was wonderful company. He's a gentle dog and I love being around him. He loves to show off his toys and never forgets our birthdays, sending presents and cards. I treat him just like I would a grandson."
"My parents are very loving people," says Kelly Meister. "I am sure if there was a real grandchild in the family, it would inch up above the Crown Prince but Quinn would be none the wiser."
by Sandy Robins, Modern Dog | Read more:
Photo: Lucile by markk
Biting Elbows
[ed. Warning: extreme simulated violence (do not watch if you are the least bit squeemish) - but very inspired videography (and the music ain't bad, either.]
The Hole in the Bucket
In the 1990s, millions of Americans learned the accounting program Quicken, avidly followed the tips offered by Jim Cramer and the Motley Fool, and employed legions of tax and financial advisers and online tools to help them figure out whether they should convert to a Roth IRA and how they should take advantage of the new “529” college savings accounts. In the last decade, millions more have turned to outlets like HGTV to learn the ins and outs of flipping houses, consolidating credit card debt with a home equity loan, and combining a medical savings account with a high-deductible insurance plan.
Who in the 1950s ever worried so much about managing money?
And yet here we are today. According to a recent study by the Employee Benefits Research Institute, fully 44 percent of Baby Boomers and Gen-Xers lack the savings and pension coverage needed to meet basic retirement-age expenses, even assuming no future cuts in Social Security or Medicare, employer-provided benefits, or home prices. Most Americans approaching retirement age don’t have a 401(k) or other retirement account. Among the minority who do, the median balance in 2009 was just $69,127. Meanwhile, the college students who graduated in 2011 started off their adult lives encumbered by an average $25,000 in student loans.
What went wrong? We can all come up with scapegoats, of course. It’s common to hear, for example, that America became a nation of impulse shoppers and spendthrifts over the last generation. But like a lot of conventional wisdom, this consensus isn’t just wrong, it’s mean. The average American household actually spends significantly less on clothes, food, appliances, and household furnishings than did its counterpart of a generation ago. There is, however, a deeper story to tell—one that is still largely unacknowledged in our political debates.
by Phillip Longman, Washington Monthly | Read more:
Image: uncredited
Smaller
The disposable diaper and the meaning of progress.
The best way to explore the mystery of the Huggies Ultratrim disposable diaper is to unfold it and then cut it in half, widthwise, across what is known as the diaper's chassis. At Kimberly-Clark's Lakeview plant, in Neenah, Wisconsin, where virtually all the Huggies in the Midwest are made, there is a quality-control specialist who does this all day long, culling diapers from the production line, pinning them up against a lightboard, and carefully dismembering them with a pair of scissors. There is someone else who does a "visual cull," randomly picking out Huggies and turning them over to check for flaws. But a surface examination tells you little. A diaper is not like a computer that makes satisfying burbling noises from time to time, hinting at great inner complexity. It feels like papery underwear wrapped around a thin roll of Cottonelle. But peel away the soft fabric on the top side of the diaper, the liner, which receives what those in the trade delicately refer to as the "insult." You'll find a layer of what's called polyfilm, which is thinner than a strip of Scotch tape. This layer is one of the reasons the garment stays dry: it has pores that are large enough to let air flow in, so the diaper can breathe, but small enough to keep water from flowing out, so the diaper doesn't leak.Or run your hands along that liner. It feels like cloth. In fact, the people at Kimberly-Clark make the liner out of a special form of plastic, a polyresin. But they don't melt the plastic into a sheet, as one would for a plastic bag. They spin the resin into individual fibres, and then use the fibres to create a kind of microscopic funnel, channelling the insult toward the long, thick rectangular pad that runs down the center of the chassis, known as the absorbent core. A typical insult arrives at a rate of seven millilitres a second, and might total seventy millilitres of fluid. The liner can clear that insult in less than twenty seconds. The core can hold three or more of those insults, with a chance of leakage in the single digits. The baby's skin will remain almost perfectly dry, and that is critical, because prolonged contact between the baby and the insult (in particular, ammonium hydroxide, a breakdown product of urine) is what causes diaper rash. And all this will be accomplished by a throwaway garment measuring, in the newborn size, just seven by thirteen inches. This is the mystery of the modern disposable diaper: how does something so small do so much?
Thirty-seven years ago, the Silicon Valley pioneer Gordon Moore made a famous prediction. The number of transistors that engineers could fit onto a microchip, he said, would double every two years. It seemed like a foolhardy claim: it was not clear that you could keep making transistors smaller and smaller indefinitely. It also wasn't clear that it would make sense to do so. Most of the time when we make things smaller, after all, we pay a price. A smaller car is cheaper and more fuel-efficient, and easier to park and maneuver, but it will never be as safe as a larger car. In the nineteen-fifties and sixties, the transistor radio was all the rage; it could fit inside your pocket and run on a handful of batteries. But, because it was so small, the sound was terrible, and virtually all the other mini-electronics turn out to be similarly imperfect. Tiny cell phones are hard to dial. Tiny televisions are hard to watch. In making an object smaller, we typically compromise its performance. The remarkable thing about chips, though, was that there was no drawback: if you could fit more and more transistors onto a microchip, then instead of using ten or twenty or a hundred microchips for a task you could use just one. This meant, in turn, that you could fit microchips in all kinds of places (such as cellular phones and laptops) that you couldn't before, and, because you were using one chip and not a hundred, computer power could be had at a fraction of the price, and because chips were now everywhere and in such demand they became even cheaper to make--and so on and so on. Moore's Law, as it came to be called, describes that rare case in which there is no trade-off between size and performance. Microchips are what might be termed a perfect innovation.
In the past twenty years, diapers have got smaller and smaller, too. In the early eighties, they were three times bulkier than they are now, thicker and substantially wider in the crotch. But in the mid-eighties Huggies and Procter & Gamble's Pampers were reduced in bulk by fifty per cent; in the mid-nineties they shrank by a third or so; and in the next few years they may shrink still more. It seems reasonable that there should have been a downside to this, just as there was to the shrinking of cars and radios: how could you reduce the amount of padding in a diaper and not, in some way, compromise its ability to handle an insult? Yet, as diapers got smaller, they got better, and that fact elevates the diaper above nearly all the thousands of other products on the supermarket shelf.
In the past twenty years, diapers have got smaller and smaller, too. In the early eighties, they were three times bulkier than they are now, thicker and substantially wider in the crotch. But in the mid-eighties Huggies and Procter & Gamble's Pampers were reduced in bulk by fifty per cent; in the mid-nineties they shrank by a third or so; and in the next few years they may shrink still more. It seems reasonable that there should have been a downside to this, just as there was to the shrinking of cars and radios: how could you reduce the amount of padding in a diaper and not, in some way, compromise its ability to handle an insult? Yet, as diapers got smaller, they got better, and that fact elevates the diaper above nearly all the thousands of other products on the supermarket shelf.
by Malcom Gladwell (2001), Gladwell.com | Read more:
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