There's no place like home

So of course she wrote a kickass angry nerdcore (is that redundant?) song about it.

Details here.

And checkout her new tattoo. That's hardcore nerd.

Thanks to BoingBoing for the link.

Bruce Schneier has an excellent column on "Cover Your Ass" security, which is pretty much all the airline and homeland security BS.

Since 9/11, we've spent hundreds of billions of dollars defending ourselves from terrorist attacks. Stories about the ineffectiveness of many of these security measures are common, but less so are discussions of why they are so ineffective. In short: much of our country's counterterrorism security spending is not designed to protect us from the terrorists, but instead to protect our public officials from criticism when another attack occurs.

...

Airplane security seems to forever be looking backwards. Pre-9/11, it was bombs, guns, and knives. Then it was small blades and box cutters. Richard Reid tried to blow up a plane, and suddenly we all have to take off our shoes. And after last summer's liquid plot, we're stuck with a series of nonsensical bans on liquids and gels.

Once you think about this in terms of CYA, it starts to make sense. The TSA wants to be sure that if there's another airplane terrorist attack, it's not held responsible for letting it slip through. One year ago, no one could blame the TSA for not detecting liquids. But since everything seems obvious in hindsight, it's basic job preservation to defend against what the terrorists tried last time.

The Wood Whisperer is Marc Spagnuolo, a Gen-X wood worker who has a weekly(?) podcast on wood working.

It's pretty amusing, but I wonder how he can afford all that nice equipment in his garage.

I searched the archives and am working my way forward from episode 1 (there are 11 currently.)

There is also some other useful information on the site. I think this might go into my daily read list.

Hmm. Norway, Canada, New Zealand. The list of countries I might move to is getting longer.

This is a letter from a priest in New Zealand objecting to the claim that New Zealand is a Christian nation!

If my resistance to deem New Zealand to be a Christian nation makes me a traitor, as Brian Tamaki suggests, take me to the Tower, or the New Zealand equivalent, for it would be greatly preferable to living in such a country.

You might think, then, that I am one of the 48.8 per cent of non-Christian New Zealanders.

I am not. I am an Anglican priest serving an Auckland church. And no, I'm not Bishop Richard Randerson under a nom de plume.

As an immigrant from America I know what it means to live in a Christian nation. That's why I left. New Zealand's respect for human rights is why I chose to live here as a permanent resident.

Before Christians hasten to denounce my position, take a close look at the only Christian nation. To be fair it should be described as a Fundamentalist Christian nation.

Such Christians, in my experience, imagine that no faith is more loving or forgiving than theirs, while hating and devaluing all other beliefs. They are totally intolerant of criticism, especially of the Bible they hold inerrant and the doctrines they draw from it.

This is a wonderful letter outlining what is going on here in the US.

You can follow up reading that with a listen to this NPR debate about "Is America Too Damned Religious?". I'll have to listen to this.

h/t to PZ Myers for this.

Finally, an answer to that age-old question: What Would Jesus Drive?

Apparently a Ford Pickup Truck. While drinking Jack Daniels and shooting a .45.

This is a pretty awesome video.

God's only kid
needs a ride that won't skid
Ford is what Jesus would drive

Twelve disciples won't fit in a Pacer
Gun rack don't fit no Subaru
So if you're a truck buyer
Be like your Messiah
Only Ford pickups will do

Man, this is a gem. And she's pretty hawt.

Is it unclear to me why they are drinking milk though...

Brent Beach has an article in FineWoodworking #184 about sharpening planes and chisels with sandpaper. I've been doing this for a while, with mixed results.

The article had some tips I'm going to try, and also a link to Brent's website for more information.

And man, is there more information. Tons of information. More than you'd ever need to know about sharpening.

It's a great resource.

In an easy to understand flowchart form.

I started reading some Larry Niven short stories to Steph last night. The first story was "Bordered in Black" and we got about a third of the way into it. As I was reading it to her I remembered the ending. It will be fun to watch her reaction.

The story is about the first hyperspace ship and there is a bit in it about what you see out the window of the ship in hyperspace.

The answer is "nothing" and it totally freaks out the astronauts.

She couldn't understand why that would be so weird, so we had a nice discussion about what it would be like to look out her bedroom window and see "nothing". It took a few tries to explain what "nothing" would be like and when she got it, she got a little weirded out.

It was pretty funny, you really have to pay attention when you are reading Niven and she made me backtrack a few times.

Larry Niven is one of my favorite authors and I love hard science fiction. Larry Niven's Known Space universe is one I'd like to live in.

This made me laugh today:

"You should go to Vista."

"So you like Vista?"

"Not really, no. I run a Vista simulator."

"Virtual Server?" the Boss asks.

"Nah, I just turned on all the flashy crap in XP, changed the background image, took some memory out of my box and clocked down the CPU. Then broke Media player. Works like a charm."

From BOFH episode 6 in The Register.

I'm at the RSA Security Conference this week and tonight was the Codebreakers Bash - a huge party.

This conference spares no expense. It's the biggest security conference going. And this party was amazing.

The conference itself fills up the Moscone Center in San Francisco, which is a pretty big convention center.

But the Bash was held in a totally different convention center, and it filled that up too.

They had two stages setup, one with a bad 80's cover band (man, they murdered a lot of songs) and one with Renaissance type entertainment. Jugglers, singers, etc.

They had tons of food, and open bars.

And they had lots of stuff to do. You could:

• Make a mask
  
• Get a balloon hat
  
• Watch a puppet show
  
• Get a tarot reading
  
• Work on a paint-by-number version of a large painting
  
• Get your picture taken with the Venus on the Half Shell
  

It was an amazing party.

And I left my camera at the hotel. What was I thinking?

I feel really dumb.

But if I get the chance, I'll be attending this conference again. And bringing my camera to the party!