21 airports fail bomb screening test

Investigators for the General Accountability Office conducted tests at 21 airports to test screeners' ability to detect bomb components powerful enough to blow up the trunk of a car. They successfully got the parts past security screening at all 21 airports.

The TSA responded by saying that the tests "failed to consider the full array of air travel security measures." That response doesn't seem to be to the point--the parts were successfully smuggled past security checkpoints, meaning that there was no effective countermeasure in place.

The U.S. Air Force's institutionalized Christianity

Jeff Lowder reports on a new lawsuit against the U.S. Air Force for religious discrimination:

The 12-page court filing says guest speakers at conventions of Air Force recruiters in 2003 and 2005 told Burleigh and other recruiters that "they needed to accept Jesus Christ in order to perform their job duties" and "to use faith in Jesus Christ while recruiting."

When the plaintiff resisted his superiors' efforts at proselytizing, he became the target of lower performance ratings than peers who attended religious activities such as prayer groups and church.

This is following a previous lawsuit last October by Mikey Weinstein against the U.S. Air Force regarding institutionalized Christianity at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs:

Over the past decade or more, the suit claims, academy leaders have fostered an environment of religious intolerance at the Colorado school, in violation of the First Amendment.

Weinstein claims that evangelical Christians at the school have coerced attendance at religious services and prayers at official events, among other things.

Lowder's blog post also reports on the creation of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation to combat these unconstitutional practices in the military. This foundation was started by the same Mikey Weinstein who filed the October 2005 lawsuit. On the advisory board is Pedro L. Irigonegaray, who did an excellent job cross-examining witnesses who promoted intelligent design at the Kansas Kangaroo court hearings last May.

Cory Maye Update: Radley Balko visits Mississippi

Radley Balko has visited Prentiss, Mississippi, and has returned with photos of the duplex (inside and out) where the raid occurred, some interesting information about what happened to the drug dealer, Jamie Smith, who was the target of the original raid, and details about the firing of Bob Evans, the public defender. He also interviewed one of the two black jurors, and finds that she wasn't sure Maye was guilty and didn't seem to have much understanding of her responsibility as a juror. The more facts come out, the worse it looks for Prentiss officials and law enforcement.

The Creationists' Miss Information: Nancy Pearcey

Jeff Shallit reports on Nancy Pearcey, a young-earth creationist who used to be a regular contributor to the Bible-Science Newsletter (and some of those pieces became part of the intelligent design textbook, Of Pandas and People, published by the Foundation for Thought and Ethics). Jeff checked out her 1994 book, The Soul of Science: Christian Faith and Natural Philosophy, co-authored with Charles Thaxton (who was also the co-author of The Mystery of Life's Origin, the first book from the FTE). He shows how her book gives a simple, short, clear, and straight-forward description of information theory, which suffers only from being completely wrong.

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.