Boston police arrest MIT student for blinking nametag

Boston authorities have filed another set of bogus "hoax device" charges, against Star Simpson, a 19-year-old MIT student who was wearing a sweatshirt with a homemade electronic nametag stuck to the front of it. The device was made of a breadboard with LEDs and a 9V battery, and Simpson was also holding "a lump of putty" in her hands, as she was waiting at Logan airport for a friend's flight to arrive. She explained that she made the device for career day because she wanted to stand out. She was released on $750 bail and will have to appear in court on October 29 on charges of "possessing a hoax device."

The Boston Globe's article says:

Outside the terminal, Simpson was surrounded by police holding machine guns.

"She was immediately told to stop, to raise her hands, and not make any movement so we could observe all her movements to see if she was trying to trip any type of device," Pare said at a press conference at Logan. "There was obviously a concern that had she not followed the protocol ... we may have used deadly force."

Catch that last part--the police might have killed her for wearing an LED nametag.

AP and Information Week reported the device as a "fake bomb." It doesn't look at all like a fake bomb--if there was intent to do anything of the sort, I suspect it was to show how ridiculous the Boston authorities still are after the Mooninite scare. Would a jury decide that a reasonable person would think it was a bomb?

(Via Bruce Schneier's blog.)

UPDATE (September 21, 2007): I think this case is less absurd than the Mooninite one, where the devices were clearly professionally made to look like light-up cartoon characters. Questioning her was appropriate, but I don't think charging her was unless there is some evidence of intent to commit a hoax that hasn't yet been reported.

Bruce Schneier has previously reported a list of "terrorist dry run" items that TSA issued warnings about, in which each case actually had a valid explanation (though we still haven't seen what the explanation was for the "wire coil wrapped around a possible initiator, an electrical switch, batteries, three tubes and two blocks of cheese").

Odd, unexplained items are deserving of questioning and scrutiny, I think we can all agree.

UPDATE: Boing Boing has more details.

Who called the housing bubble and who didn't

It's interesting to look back at old blog posts and comments to see who correctly identified that we were in a housing bubble and who inaccurately denied it.

Jane Galt (Megan McArdle) at Asymmetrical Information called it correctly, way back in January 2004.

I called it in September 2004, suggesting a drop in "the next year or two." The peak for Phoenix was in the fourth quarter of 2006, so I was pretty close, but I expected the drop to come a bit earlier than it actually did.

Economist Tyler Cowan was still in denial in April 2005.

In the June 2005 issue of Business Week, Frank Nothaft of Freddie Mac and James F. Smith of the Society of Industrial and Office Realtors said that the housing bubble was bunk and they saw no possibility of national price declines in the future. Dean Baker of the Center for Economic and Policy Research called it a bubble. Mike Englund of Action Economics fell somewhere in between, saying that "It's bubble behavior" but "not clear that the recent price gains in the housing market are a bubble."

Economist Edward Stringham told me he didn't think there was a housing bubble in November 2005.

Economist Greg Mankiw hinted that he thought there was a bubble in June 2006.

In the Fall 2007 issue of USAA Magazine, just delivered to my home yesterday, an article titled "Real (Estate) page turners" quotes "The Apprentice: Season 3" winner Kendra Todd, author of Risk and Grow Rich: How to Make Millions in Real Estate:

Ms. Todd disagrees with those who say there has been a bust for real estate. "What's dropped in some areas is market expectations more than market values," she argues.

I think Ms. Todd should start working on her manuscript for Risk and Grow Poor: How to Lose Millions in Real Estate. Of course, I doubt she makes most of her income from real estate investing, rather than book sales and her hosting of HGTV's "My House Is Worth What?"

Republican San Diego mayor signs resolution for gay marriage

The Republican mayor of San Diego, Jerry Sanders, has signed a resolution supporting gay marriage, stating that:

"In order to be consistent with the position I took during the mayoral election, I intended to veto the council resolution. As late as yesterday afternoon, that was my position.

"The arrival of the resolution -- to sign or veto -- in my office late last night forced me to reflect and search my soul for the right thing to do.

"I have decided to lead with my heart, which is probably obvious at the moment -- to do what I think is right, and to take a stand on behalf of equality and social justice. The right thing for me to do is sign this resolution.

"For three decades, I have worked to bring enlightenment, justice and equality to all parts of our community.

"As I reflected on the choices I had before me last night, I just could not bring myself to tell an entire group of people in our community they were less important, less worthy or less deserving of the rights and responsibilities of marriage -- than anyone else -- simply because of their sexual orientation.

"A decision to veto this resolution would have been inconsistent with the values I have embraced over the past 30 years.

"I do believe that times have changed. And with changing time, and new life experiences, come different opinions. I think that's natural, and it's certainly true in my case.

"Two years ago, I believed that civil unions were a fair alternative. Those beliefs, in my case, have changed.

"The concept of a 'separate but equal' institution is not something I can support.

"I acknowledge that not all members of our community will agree or perhaps even understand my decision today.

"All I can offer them is that I am trying to do what I believe is right.

"I have close family members and friends who are a member of the gay and lesbian community. Those folks include my daughter Lisa, as well as members of my personal staff.

"I want for them the same thing that we all want for our loved ones -- for each of them to find a mate whom they love deeply and who loves them back; someone with whom they can grow old together and share life's experiences.

"And I want their relationships to be protected equally under the law. In the end, I couldn't look any of them in the face and tell them that their relationship -- their very lives -- were any less meaningful than the marriage I share with my wife Rana. Thank you."

(Via Donna Woodka's blog.)

British bands banned from U.S. visits

It's becoming a problem for newly popular British bands to tour in the United States, because they are being denied P-1 visas unless they can prove that they have been "internationally recognized" for a "sustained and substantial" amount of time.

Recently the band New Model Army, which has actually been around for decades, were denied visas to perform in San Francisco at the DNA Lounge.

I hope this doesn't happen to Sprint's WiMax plans...

Municipal wireless has been a failure. The City of Tempe projected 32,000 users, but only had 600 at its last published count, which was back in April 2006. It's also failing in Philadelphia, Minneapolis, Portland, Chicago, and Taipei.

(Also see Technology Liberation Front, which makes the same point.)

UPDATE (November 8, 2007): Sprint and Clearwire have scrapped a plan to jointly build out their WiMax networks, and it looks like Sprint may scale back its own WiMax plans, as well.

Moody's revises its housing price predictions

Last October, I reported that Moody's was predicting that the Phoenix housing market would see price declines of 9.3% between the first quarter of 2006 and the second quarter of 2008, which I called "wildly optimistic."

Now Moody's has issued a new report which claims the Phoenix housing market will see price declines of 17.8% between the second quarter of 2006 and the second quarter of 2008--they've doubled the percentage of drop for a time period that's three months shorter.

I'm guessing this will be closer to accurate--but still shy of the mark, unfortunately.

The report also predicts a drop of 11.7% for Tucson, lower than October's prediction of a 13.4% drop.

Lessons for information security from Multics

Bruce Schneier brings attention to a 2002 paper by Paul Karger and Roger Schell (PDF) about lessons learned from Multics security that are still relevant today, and Multicians come out of the woodwork in the comments.

Karger and Schell were part of the Air Force "tiger team" that ran penetration attacks against Multics in the 1970s. They were successful, which ultimately led to a Multics security enhancement project, the result of which was that Multics was the first commercial operating system to obtain a B2 security rating from the National Computer Security Center. I played a small part in that project, fixing some bugs and helping to run tests of Multics' Trusted Computing Base (TCB).

Wilkinson critique of framing

Blogger Will Wilkinson has posted a lengthy critique of George Lakoff's "framing" arguments that the Democrats have lost elections because the Republicans have changed the meanings of words. He cites the work of social psychologist Jonathan Haidt to offer a different conclusion:

Haidt’s research leads him to posit five psychological foundations of human moral sentiment, each with a distinct evolutionary history and function, which he labels harm, reciprocity, ingroup, hierarchy, and purity. While the five foundations are universal, cultures build upon each to varying degrees. Imagine five adjustable slides on a stereo equalizer that can be turned up or down to produce different balances of sound. An equalizer preset like “Show Tunes” will turn down the bass and “Hip Hop” will turn it up, but neither turn it off. Similarly, societies modulate the dimension of moral emotions differently, creating a distinctive cultural profile of moral feeling, judgment, and justification. If you’re a sharia devotee ready to stone adulterers and slaughter infidels, you have purity and ingroup pushed up to eleven. PETA members, who vibrate to the pain of other species, have turned ingroup way down and harm way up.

Rather than recommend that liberals fake religiosity, he offers a different suggestion:

Democrats can try to appeal to religious American voters by giving some ground in the culture wars. But it seems unlikely they will find an effective balance. There is no point conceding stuff too trivial to really matter, such as school prayer, and comically pretending to be moved by the pure and the foul. And there is even less point in nominating religiously convincing candidates who really do believe embryos have the spark of divinity, that gay is gross, etc. Socialized health care isn’t worth it.

Democrats should play to their own moral-emotional strengths, not apologize for not having different ones. Haidt’s early research on moralized disgust shows that its cultural manifestations vary. The Japanese apparently find it disgusting to fail their station and its duties. And here at home, formerly “repulsive” practices, such as interracial marriage, have become mere curiosities.

...

Democrats shouldn’t cater to and reinforce sensibilities that both hurt people and hurt the Democrats’ prospects. Religious doctrine and religious feeling can and have been trimmed and shaped over time to accommodate the full plurality of liberal society. Illiberal patterns of feeling bolstered by religious sentiments, like disgust for homosexuality, can be broken through slow desensitization, or a shift in the way the culture recruits that dimension of the moral sense. In dynamic commercial societies, this happens whether we want it to or not. But we have something to say about how it happens. The culture war is worth fighting, one episode of Will & Grace at a time, if that’s what it takes.

Liberals must understand the profundity to others of feelings that are weak in them, but shouldn’t pretend to feel what they don’t. They can lead as well as follow. And it remains true that all Americans, conservative and liberal alike, are wide awake to the liberal emotional dimensions of harm and reciprocity. The American culture war is about how thoroughly the liberal sentiments will be allowed to dominate. If a thoroughly liberal society is worth having, liberals will have to spot the points of conflict between the liberal and illiberal dimensions of the moral sense, drive in the wedge, and pull out all the rhetorical stops—including playing on feelings of quasi-religious elevation and indignant moral disgust—to make Americans feel the moral primacy of harm, autonomy, and rights. When the pattern of feeling is in place, the argument is easy to accept.

I find Wilkinson's reasoning to be sounder than Matt Nisbet's and Michael Shermer's.

Mirrors without glass

Daniel Rozin's Weave Mirror uses 768 motorized C-shaped prints in what appears like a basket weave patterned screen, each of which can rotate independently to change its shade, producing a grayscale image of whatever is in front of it.

Photos and video at Engadget.

This reminds me of Julius Popp's Bitfall, which draws images with falling water drops.

How to avoid advancing the gay agenda

Ed Brayton has an excellent post at Dispatches from the Culture Wars, from which I've borrowed the title of this post, in which he points out that anti-gay bigots like the American Family Association who want to boycott corporations that have gay-friendly policies have their work cut out for them now. The Human Rights Campaign's Corporate Equality Index has been released, and the number of companies scoring a perfect 100 has gone up from 138 companies last year (and a mere 13 in 2002) to 195 this year. Where Donald Wildmon's AFA protested against Ford Motor Company, a perfect scorer on the index, for its advertising its cars in gay magazines, they now have 194 other such companies to boycott.

Ed writes that, if you want to avoid advancing the gay agenda, you have to avoid nearly every major airline and automobile manufacturer, major retailers, most consumer products, major financial institutions, major health insurance providers, most pharmaceuticals, and even most American beer brands. As commenters point out, even some of the exceptions he lists as possible candidates don't work (e.g., Volvo is currently owned by Ford, and K-Mart is owned by Sears, and both Ford and Sears scored 100 on the index). Commenters also point out that the major technology companies that make the Internet possible are high scorers, and that the most common piece of software on mail servers, sendmail, was developed by a gay man.

Read Ed's piece for his list, and don't miss the comments.