Since everyone appears to think they’re somehow experts on the subject, here are my predictions for the upcoming Presidential Elections pre-game rally - the conventions.

• Hillary Clinton will try to steal the nomination for Democratic Presidential candidate at the convention.
• John McCain will announce Joe Lieberman as his running mate at some point.

There. With a side note that it’s a pity there isn’t a Paris Hilton/Stephen Colbert ticket. The political system is a joke, so the pair of them are far more qualified!!

Comments

• August 16, 2008, hank_reardon writes: Here is my prediction, There will be a cyanide attack during the dmc Bush will declare martial law bush will stay

I was looking at the comments spam my system has blocked recently, and noticed this wonderful comment posted:

This is similar to comment spam but avoids some of the safeguards designed to stop the latter practice.

Umm … Wrong on both counts.

Almost as hilarious to see are these comment spam attempts:

I have always wanted a compendium of novena prayers. Thank you for sharing all these prayers with us. It brings joy and happiness to everyone. I know, I do feel that way.

I like this website. This website helped me with prayer learning. Good job. Thank you. Please provide more French prayers. Bye-bye.a

I think their prayers of being able to link to their crap sites have been proven to be ignored. Maybe they just went to the wrong church - the same one this guy does?

I thank the Lord for giving us the gift of brilliant preachers!l

Finally, there’s this gem:

Thanks so very much for taking your time to create this very useful and informative site. I have learned a lot from your site. Thanks!!t

And thank you for taking your time to send a spambot on a wasted mission. Hopefully, you’ve learned that you’re really just wasting your spambot’s time and energy. Have you considered learning something marginally useful instead - such as sticking your head in a bucket of water whilst parking cars at the Restaurant at The End Of The Universe?

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More proof that the universe has a sense of humour:

The State of Georgia has passed a law banning the sale of “pot candy”, marijuana-flavoured sweets.

The name of the man who is the main driving force behind the bill?

Senator Doug Stoner

Tempering the hilarity factor of this are the reported death threats sent to State Representative Judy Manning, apparently tracing back to the UK.  What idiot who isn’t even affected by this thinks banning a candy is sufficient justification to send death threats over?

I’ll admit it - I don’t actually like most “comedy” shows on TV. This might be the result of being as old as I am, and being raised on “The Greats” such as Monty Python, but I cringe a lot of the time.

Having said that, the occasional skit hits me in the funny bone, and this one from MAD TV is one of them:

[There is a video that cannot be displayed in this feed. Visit the blog entry to see the video.]

Strangely however, it’s not the political aspect that amuses me - rather it’s more the play on Apple’s attempt to put an i at the beginning of everything.

Apple’s i* has become a part of modern language, the same way web searches have become “Googling”.

I wonder if I can get copyright on iBrand?

Or, if previous experiences with crowds are anything to go by, at the very least loses all common sense and intelligence, and becomes totally oblivious to their surroundings.

Yep, we have the Pope coming to visit.  Staying true to form, as with any time something memorable occurs, everyone’s running around like headless chickens.

Now, admittedly, the DC area tends to run around like headless chickens when more than 3 snowflakes fall, 5 raindrops fall, or some “professional” sportsdrone we’re supposed to have heard of shows up, but this time it’s the worst example of decapitated poultry behavior I’ve ever seen - even down to the “most powerful man in the world” (George W Bush, allegedly) playing chauffeur to the guy.

For people with disabilities, it’s going to be an interesting time.

In the Chinese sense.

The Metro region is going to see a huge influx of tourists and others - so going back to past experience, several things will occur.

1. Whole hordes of people with perfectly working legs will suddenly discover a phobia of escalators, and stream lemming-like into the very small elevators at every MetroRail station.
   In the process, they will assume their need to get to street or mezzanine level is far more important than the need of people in wheelchairs to do the same.
   The zombie-like stares such step-phobic people will aim towards the hapless wheelies prevented from getting on the elevators will terrify small children.
2. Service animals will wish they had, indeed, both their tails docked and that someone had invented steel-toed paw-boots.
3. Service animals will be petted more in the next week by total strangers than they have been in their entire lives by their handlers, their handler’s families, and their own mothers.
4. Blind people will get dirty looks aimed their way by oblivious people who seem incapable of noticing the cane swinging until it hits them in the kneecaps.  For some reason, such oblivious people feel safer doing so on the assumption a blind person won’t notice.
5. Deaf people will be envied by many for not having to listen to the noise of so many people who either assume the person stood next to them is deaf, or just have no volume control to begin with.

Thankfully, people with disabilities have the same opportunity to exact some measure of satisfaction as any other resident of the area does on this horde of tourists:  When they ask for directions, tell them they need to get off somewhere “better” to avoid the crowds.  For example, every local knows Shady Grove Metro station is far closer to Nationals Park than the Navy Yard station.

Actually, I feel sorry for the MetroRail Station Managers - they’re not allowed to give such “helpful” directions to hordes of clueless idiots wandering through.  For some obscure (and possibly perverse) reason, they’re required to be “professional” and actually help these people!

Ahh, the sacrifices they make!

Don’t get me wrong, I know a load of those descending on the area are filled with religious zeal, and quite probably are really nice people.

Most of the time.

But when there’s a huge crowd, people’s manners tend to go out the window, and it’s very hard to remember isolated instances of civilized behavior when surrounded by throngs of the ignorant and oblivious.

The Pope showing up is a “once in a lifetime” event for most people, and they’ll be damned (literally?) if they’re going to let anyone else get in the way of seeing it.

The true measure of a culture is how it behaves in times of stress or emotion, and whilst Ratzinger will never be even close to a John Paul II, the position he holds still carries some odd sense of awe in itself that has people beginning to stop thinking rationally.

This is actually a great time for someone like myself, who revels in “people watching”.  If there’s ever a chance to observe the “human condition”, this is one of them.

Thankfully, it also means we only have to put up with this whole circus for a few days, then we can get back to “normal”.

But for the interimn, if you’ll excuse me I need to see if I can find Ben Hur hubs and a very loud air-horn for The Tank

Comments

• April 15, 2008, MadBudgie writes: Yes, this Thursday will overwhelmingly prove the adage "Never underestimate the stupidity of people in numbers"
• August 25, 2008, nativedancer5 writes: Okay when your done with those hubs I need them down here.
• August 29, 2008, Moonwolf writes: For you, we could always put scythe blades on your running boards :)

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… But not as we know it.

British Airports Authority (BAA) spent £4.3 billion on creating their brand spanking new Terminal 5 (T5) at Heathrow Airport in London, England. After months of preparation, including “live” testing of operations, it went operational today to much fanfare.

And promptly fell into total chaos.

The most embarrassing failure? The vaunted baggage handling system, supposedly designed to process over 12,000 pieces of luggage every hour - apparently, the workers were unable to log in to the system, resulting in flights being cancelled, and several that weren’t left with passengers but without their bags.

This is incredible borkage for British Airways (BA), which already is reported to have the second worst record when it comes to misplacing baggage. BA has exclusive use of the new Terminal 5, so I wonder how today’s travesty is going to be recorded in their metrics?

BA (and BAA) played down the whole thing, with Heathrow’s Logistics Director saying there was bound to be a “bedding in period” - perhaps not the best phrase to describe when referring to airports, given the number of people sleeping on benches because of delayed flights most of them have.

Whilst any major operation is bound to have a problem or two, an entire baggage handling system failing, despite claims of testing before the opening of the new terminal, seems to be in keeping with Heathrow’s usual level of (in)efficiency. All the baggage handlers who were unable to log into the system only just discovered this, today?

What are they going to do when they start getting regular arrivals and departures of Airbus A380s and Boeing 787 Dreamliners, with the increase in passengers per-plane those will bring? Throw up their hands once more, offer a half-hearted “mea culpa” whilst trying to gloss over the implications this level of failure offers of their abilities, and hope no-one notices?

BAA/BA have had months of testing, months to train people, and still their system came crashing to the ground on its very first day. Why weren’t they ready for today, why did they have people without sufficient training working airside, and why is no-one bothering to ask them to explain events?

BAA wants to expand Heathrow to add a third runway (in the process destroying the village of Sipson) - If they can’t even get the infrastructure working on the first day of the new terminal being operational, I dread to think just how badly they can bork that project as well!

Given the British predilection for giving the appearance of accessibility whilst avoiding anything to do with providing accessibility, I can’t help but wonder how many people with disabilities were left stranded by this wholesale failure of T5s infrastructure without any recourse too. Baggage going missing for someone without disabilities is bad enough, but was any of the baggage that was unable to be checked in wheelchairs, or other essential items?

When she opened T5, the Queen called it “a 21st Century gateway to Britain”.

It just seems people will have to wait until the 22nd century before their baggage catches up I guess …

My advice? Book your flight to Dublin Airport instead - Ireland’s a nicer place to visit anyways
[Updated 3/27/2008 @ 1803 EST]

It seems checking in baggage at T5 is suspended until Friday, according to the BBC News Online website. There’s no word about what happens to inbound baggage though - I imagine those using British Airways on flights from overseas will be prevented from checking in their baggage. This should make for one cute nightmare for those returning from holidays - where are they going to leave their bags in the meantime?

[Updated 3/27/2008 @ 1911 EST]

Yep, the glorious British attention to accessibility does seem to be at work, with this news (again, from the BBC News Online website):

One passenger in a wheelchair was stuck on a flight arriving into T5 from Glasgow for more than an hour - and then when he was transported to the terminal he realised he could not get up the kerb.

“I couldn’t even get into the building without getting up a step,” Matt Duffy told the BBC.

“It is totally unbelievable as far as I am concerned.”

Oh come on, it’s perfectly believable!

I just wonder if BAA managed to finagle themselves an exemption from the seemingly useless and practically toothless “Disability Discrimination Act” similar to the ones bus and rail operators managed to obtain, meaning BAA wouldn’t have to actually care if they have kerb cuts or not.

Comments

• March 28, 2008, MarkHB writes: ...and I'm meant to be flying out of there early next month.

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The fourth (and final) season of Battlestar Galactica returns to the Sci-Fi Channel on March 4th, after a horribly long delay (not helped, I think, by worries over the writer’s strike). Normally, such a long time means you might be forgiven for being somewhat confused about “the story so far”, but it looks like some clever person has come up with a solution to the problem.

[There is a video that cannot be displayed in this feed. Visit the blog entry to see the video.]

Now, I have no idea who came up with this but … someone at SFC should consider showing that during the build-up to the premiere of season four, because that has to be one of the coolest summaries I’ve ever seen!

Not to mention, the funniest too
I’ll freely admit, I love SFC’s Battlestar Galactica - it almost makes up for the hideously stupid decision they made to pull Farscape from their line up (almost). Thankfully, they seem to have learned from the lessons Babylon 5 followed, taking it towards an ending rather than struggling week after week to come up with something new.

So, April 4th, don’t call me between 10 and 11pm eastern, I’ll throw something heavy at you.

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Associated Press reported a few days ago on the US Government’s “Cyber Storm” exercise, and noted this:

In the middle of the biggest-ever “Cyber Storm” war game to test the nation’s hacker defenses, someone quietly targeted the very computers used to conduct the exercise.

The surprising culprit? The players themselves, the same government and corporate experts responsible for detecting and fending off attacks against vital computer systems, according to hundreds of pages of heavily censored files obtained by The Associated Press. Perplexed organizers sent everyone an urgent e-mail marked “IMPORTANT!” instructing them not to probe or attack the game’s control computers.

So Homeland Security got a bunch of hackers and others together, gave them a “secured” sandbox to play in, told them to wreak havoc, and were somehow surprised that some bright spark decided to hack the system?

It would seem to me that the system being hackable would be a warning sign in and of itself, let alone wondering why the hell someone didn’t see this coming!

If the system was being hacked, it would have made much more sense to throw the geeks responsible for the system’s design at the problem to see how they could handle compromises, since black hats are unlikely to respond to an email (regardless of an “Important!” subject line prefix) asking them to stop should any of the scenarios being explored come true.

A long time ago, in a previous life, I remember quite fondly the military’s preferences for “structured” exercises - scripted in advance, everyone plays their part, the outcome almost always pre-determined.  I remember even more fondly the preference we had for buggering those plans up and doing things that weren’t in the scripts, and the reactions of those higher-up the pecking order who complained bitterly of “unfairness”.

The Department of Homeland Security should take the true lesson of Cyber Storm on board - You can’t predict, you can’t control, and if the much-vaunted yet vaguely-ephemeral threat of cyber-terrorism ever occurs, it’ll be in an area you least expected it (but should have!).

Like giving a bunch of hackers access to a secured system, telling them to have fun, then being amazed that they “cheat”.  That was kind of the idea, wasn’t it??

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OK, this happened almost two years ago, but I only just found it, and it’s hilarious!

I’m talking about “Improv Everywhere“’s visit to Best Buy in NYC.  Around 80 people were all alerted to participate in the mission, with simple instructions:

In order to participate you must arrive adhering to a very specific dress code:

1) Blue Polo Shirt. Short sleeved. Any brand. Preferably with no logo. As Close to Royal Blue as possible. As close to this exact shirt as possible.

2) Khaki Pants. Any shade of khaki is fine. No shorts.

3) Belt. Any belt is fine.

Other Instructions:

-If possible, please wear black shoes. This is not required, but please wear them if you have them.

For those of you who live on a different planet, this happens to be the same “uniform” worn by the salesdrones at Best Buy.

For some obscure reason, this cracks me up on so many levels.  The first, of course, is thinking about the head scratching the staff (especially management) must have been going through, for what was at the end of the day a bunch of people just standing around not posing any threat.

But it also makes me smile that a bunch of people in a city that has arguably been one of the hardest hit psychologically in recent years (9/11 anyone) came up with such a simple and harmless way to actually find something so simple to laugh about.

If the darkest moments in recent history have accomplished anything, it’s the reaction of so many to try to find something to laugh about so readily - especially something this harmless.

We live in a world that spends all its time wringing its hands in vicarious glee at the misfortunes of celebrities like Paris Hilton or Britney Spears, where it feels that only in seeing someone else in misery (or worse, helping the process along, a’la ‘Dr’ Phil)  can people feel better about themselves.  This sort of thing goes some way to reminding us all that there’s fun to be had out there that doesn’t involve putting someone else down.

Some killjoys on the IE site posted comments after the event criticizing the participants.  I hope that the participants read those comments and blew huge loud messy raspberries at the commenters.

Charlie Todd (Founder of Improv Everywhere), if you’re reading this: Nice job

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I love the quality of grammar in the media:

WASHINGTON (CNN) — In first-ever tests for commercial airplanes carrying passengers, as many as three American Airlines jets will be equipped with a shoulder-fired missile defense system.

You just know some bright spark is going to have read this, and think there’s now going to be a way for an air marshal to stick their head out of the window to shoot a missile at someone/something.

The really frightening part? I bet someone could send a proposal in to the Pentagon suggesting just that and get a grant to investigate the potential!

Comments

• January 5, 2008, Philip. writes: Thought I would pop in and say hello :-)
  
  I've linked this to my blog :-)

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