Comedy Central pulls Scientology episode from reruns

Comedy Central has pulled the "Trapped in the Closet" episode, which criticizes and exposes Scientology, from reruns. Rumor has it that Tom Cruise threatened not to do publicity for the movie "Mission Impossible 3," which will be released this summer, unless it was pulled. As Paramount, the distributor of the Cruise film, and Comedy Central are both owned by Viacom, this has some plausibility.

A Cruise representative denied the rumor, phrased in a way that may have been crafted to be literally true but misleading (a method frequently used by George W. Bush, as documented in the book All the President's Spin).

(Via Dispatches from the Culture Wars.)

UPDATE (March 18, 2006): Trey Parker and Matt Stone have declared war on Scientology:

Matt Stone and Trey Parker, creators of the animated satire, are digging in against the celebrity-endorsed religion after a controversial episode mocking outspoken Scientologist Tom Cruise was yanked abruptly from the schedule Wednesday - with Internet rumors it was covert warfare by Cruise that led to its departure.

"So, Scientology, you may have won THIS battle, but the million-year war for earth has just begun!" the "South Park" creators said in a statement Friday in Daily Variety. "Temporarily anozinizing our episode will NOT stop us from keeping Thetans forever trapped in your pitiful man-bodies... You have obstructed us for now, but your feeble bid to save humanity will fail!"

Punishing the Poor

Matt McIntosh at Catallarchy points out that the effective U.S. tariff rates on imports are significantly higher on the poorest countries. For example, Bangladesh paid about the same amount in tariffs on exports to the U.S. as France ($331 million vs. $330 million), despite only exporting $2.53 billion in goods to France's $30.023 billion. That's a 14.1% tariff on Bangladesh, where the per-capita GDP is $370, versus a 1.1% tariff on France, where the per-capita GDP is $24,170.

By abolishing tariffs, we could instantly provide significant benefits to the poorest countries, as well as to U.S. poor, by reducing the cost of goods like clothing.

Hypothetical Nanofactory Animation

Over at Multipolarity Memes there’s a post about a short (though large), 3D-rendered, animation of a hypothetical nanofactory.

Now, I’ll be the first to admit that I’m no expert at this stuff, but I did take some intermediate chemistry and physics classes in college, so the animation immediately raises a number of questions in my mind; viz.:

• At that size, can they realistically assume that the envisioned structures will be as rigid as they make them out to be?
• What about Brownian motion?
• What about transfer of heat—especially given that there are, presumably, chemical reactions taking place, and these reactions will involve energy transfers?
• What type of bonding is happening at the transfer points? Chemical reactions don't happen magically—and they don't happen without some energy input or energy release—neither of which are being obviously represented in the video.

It's a pretty fantasy, but how realistic is it, really?

The Department of Homeland Security gets an F in computer security

For the third year in a row, DHS gets an F for protecting its computer systems:

Most federal agencies that play key roles in the war on terror are doing a dismal job of protecting their computers and information networks from hackers and viruses, according to portions of a report to be released by a key congressional oversight committee Thursday.

The Department of Homeland Security, which is charged with setting the government's cyber security agenda, earned a grade of F for the third straight year from the House Government Reform Committee. Other agencies whose failing marks went unchanged from 2004 include the departments of Agriculture, Defense, Energy, State, Health and Human Services, Transportation, and Veterans Affairs.

The House Government Reform Committee is expected to award the federal government an overall grade of D-plus for computer security in 2005, a score that remains virtually unchanged from 2004.

Several agencies saw a considerable drop in their scores. The Department of Justice went from a B-minus in 2004 to a "D" in 2005, while Interior earned failing marks after getting a C-plus in 2004.

The scores are "unacceptably low," committee Chairman Tom Davis (R-Va.) said in a statement. "DHS must have its house in order and should become a security leader among agencies. What's holding them up?"

The annual report bases the grades on the agencies' internal assessments and information they are required to submit annually to the White House Office of Management and Budget. The letter grades depended on how well agencies met the requirements set out in the Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA).

The FISMA program is based on compliance with NIST computer security standards.

Formation of the Arbonian sea

BLDGblog has some great photos of the rifts opening up in the ground in central Ethiopia, where parts of the Afar triangle have already sunk to more than 100 meters below sea level. What's now a 37-mile-long fissure will apparently take a million years to reach full ocean status.

Skeptics Circle #30

The 30th meeting of the Skeptics Circle is up at Paige's Page.

Targeted bioweapons

Worried about biological weapons that can be specifically targeted to, say, disable the ability to store memories, cause the autoimmune system to attack myelin (i.e., mimic multiple sclerosis), or target specific ethnic groups? If not, you might be after you read this article from Technology Review. Unfortunately, some of these things may even be feasible to produce with old technology that is easily available--and if they aren't now, they will be.

(Via Bruce Schneier's blog.)

Spammed by the Arizona Republican Party

I don't know how they got my email address--I've never been (and never will be) a registered Republican.

From: "Chairman Matt Salmon"
To: [my email address]
Subject: Arizona Republican Party Roundup - March 15, 2006
Date: Wed, 15 Mar 2006 10:53:37 -0600

Attention Republican Clubs and Organizations - Submit your events to
events@azgop.org

In This Issue:
Chairman Salmon on the Death of State Senator Marilyn Jarrett
Capitol Update
Kyl Immigration Provisions Moving Forward

...

Paid for by the Arizona Republican Party

(602) 957-7770

Not authorized by any candidate or candidate committee.


----------------------------------------

This email was sent by:
Republican Party of Arizona
3501 N 24th Street
Phoenix, AZ, 85016, USA

The actual email came from ExactTarget.com, whose anti-spam policy says:

Anti-SPAM at ExactTarget

ExactTarget believes, practices, and requires its clients to practice only permission-based e-mail marketing. Our clients certify that they will use our software only to send e-mails to customers and prospects that have directly consented (opted-in) to receive their e-mail. They are forbidden to transmit unsolicited commercial e-mail (spam) via our system.

Members Agreement

Our clients agree not to use our system to send unsolicited e-mail. For any opt-in list of e-mail addresses used in ExactTarget's system, clients agree to provide us with the source of the e-mail addresses, the method used to capture the data, and verification of the consent to receive e-mails from such client. We also encourage our members to respect their customers' time and attention by controlling the frequency of mailings to individual e-mail addresses.

Our clients certify that they will not use rented or purchased lists, e-mail append lists, or any other list that contains e-mail addresses captured in any other method than opt-in. The use of opt-out lists is prohibited in our system. ExactTarget retains the right to review client lists and e-mails to verify that clients are abiding by the privacy and permission policies set forth herein. However, our clients are ultimately responsible for compliance with our policies.

I don't think there's any way my email address would have ended up on their list except by email appending.

I've complained to them and to ExactTarget's abuse address, asking both for an explanation and what they're going to do to rectify the situation. My guess is that they will continue to spam for the Republicans--in which case they deserve to be added to anti-spam blocking lists.

BTW, for anti-spammers, the originating MTA was mta.emailgop.com (207.67.38.104), on Time Warner Telecom's network. The IP block is SWIP'd to TW Telecom, and TW Telecom's rwhois shows it assigned to Exact Target. The company has had a few previous incidents with spamming, but the blog of Chip House, their VP of Privacy and Deliverability, endorses decent principles.

UPDATE: "Nate Romance" of Exact Target responded to my complaint, stating that:

At ExactTarget we take these complaints very seriously and we work hard to ensure that our clients send mail only to people who have asked to receive mail. Clients who do not adhere to our policies face an escalating series of penalties, including but not limited to: chargeback fees, mailing restrictions, and termination. Our Privacy Policy located here:

http://website.exacttarget.com/exacttarget_company_privacypolicy.asp

and our Anti-SPAM policy located here:

http://website.exacttarget.com/exacttarget_company_antispam.asp

will provide you with additional information and should answer any questions you might have.

Additionally, we will investigate this issue with our client, and determine what we can do to ensure that it does not persist. In the meantime, I have added your email address ([address deleted]) to our "Master Unsubscribe List" which will ensure that you do not receive email from the Arizona Republican Party or any other client of ExactTarget.

Thanks for bringing this matter to our attention and we apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.

Please let me know if there are additional items I can assist you with.

Virus propagation via RFID tag

Ed Felten writes about a new paper that discusses the possibility of RFID tags being used to exploit flaws in RFID reader software to propagate a virus. The paper, authored by Melanie Rieback, Bruno Crispo, and Andy Tanenbaum of Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam, includes a description of a proof-of-concept the authors developed. By including a SQL injection flaw in the reader software they wrote, and RFID tag containing appropriate malicious code, the reader then propagated the malicious code by writing it to new RFID tags. If such a flaw exists in real reader code, the potential exists for a virus to be transmitted from reader to reader via RFID tags, with each infected reader writing the virus out to additional tags.

BTW, this is the same Andy Tanenbaum who wrote the classic textbook Operating Systems: Design and Implementation and developed Minix, which inspired Linus Torvalds to create Linux.

Rieback gave a talk at last year's "What the Hack" hacker conference in Amsterdam on "Fun and Mayhem with Radio Frequency Identification."

Create your own police department

Bruce Schneier reports on a case of "police department privilege escalation," where, because California allows transit companies to create their own police departments, Yosef Maiwandi was able to do so. He created the San Gabriel Valley Transit Authority, a nonprofit operating out of an auto repair shop that gives bus rides to disabled people and senior citizens. He then created the San Gabriel Valley Transit Authority Police Department, and made Stefan Eriksson a deputy police commissioner of their anti-terrorism division, and gave him business cards.

Eriksson is the guy who went drunk driving in a million-dollar Ferrari Enzo that crashed into a telephone pole in Malibu--he claims he was the passenger, but no other driver has been found.

UPDATE (March 19, 2006): There's now video that shows Eriksson and another person--Trevor Karney--in the Ferrari.