All posts by Chris

wanted: mayor

Whew! That caught me by surprise. How was I to know that the “mayor of San Diego resigning”:http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/11485487.htm would be national news?

My favorite part:

_”Councilman Michael Zucchet, the city’s deputy mayor, will become acting mayor. Zucchet, who faces a federal trial next month for allegedly accepting bribes from the owner of a strip club, defended the mayor as an honorable man whose resignation took courage.”_

I’m relieved to know the city will be in good hands.

because reading is fundamental(ist)

The blogosphere is (justifiably) all a-twitter because Ross Mayfield was told that “air passengers are only allowed a maximum of two books on flights”:http://ross.typepad.com/blog/2005/04/books_banned_on.html starting April 14.

The problem isn’t a matter of 2 (or 4) books, of course. That’s just one silly example. The real issue is this note on the “Transportation Security Administration”:http://www.tsa.gov/public/interapp/editorial/editorial_1012.xml site:

_To ensure everyone’s security the screener may determine that an item not on this chart is prohibited._

Note that there’s no mention of how to challenge (or even report) a mistaken declaration, either at the time or after the fact. So, if the _ahem_ well-trained and capable TSA staff decide that your knitting needles or eyeglass screwdriver are _verboten_ (which they “aren’t”:http://www.tsa.gov/public/interweb/assetlibrary/Prohibited_English_4-1-2005_v2.pdf), then you have no recourse but to give them up. (Chant with me, everyone: “unreasonable… searches… and seizures…”:http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/data/constitution/amendment04/)

our bold atomic future blah blah blah

WorldChanging has a good overview of the “arguments for and against nuclear power”:http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/002147.html as a solution to the current (and near future) oil/global warming/environment crisis. My personal view is that nuclear power can be useful in a few isolated cases, but improving efficiency and developing distributed alternative energy (solar, wind, geothermal) is a better use of our time and effort.

Oh, if only we could harness the mighty power of Internet debate!