Homeland Insecurity, Voodoo Economics and Ground Zero
The Atlantic Monthly has impressed me tremendously over the past three issues. I picked it up because of an excellent three-part article on "Unbuilding The World Trade Center" which is soon to be released as a book. It is the best non-fiction writing I have read in a long time. I know you think you've heard and read it all, but it's a genuinely different look at Ground Zero and the deconstruction, and a surprising case study on organic power, chaos authority and the triumph of true talent & contribution over traditional hierarchical organization and bureaucracy.
Then there was a truly remarkable article in the current issue by Joseph Stiglitz (a former chief economist of the World Bank, a former chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, and a member of the Cabinet under Clinton, received the 2001 Nobel Prize in Economics, currently professor of economics and finance at Columbia University and the author of "Globalization and Its Discontents"). Stiglitz manages to blast (and occasionally praise) everyone from Ronnie to Dubya, including Bill, in a hard look at the economic underpinnings of the boomtime 90's, including how a few lucky mistakes helped the boom, and how unchecked deregulation in telecom, finance and energy fucked a lot of things up. And is still (cf. Worldcom, AT&T, AOL, Merrill Lynch, Smith Barney, California, Reliant, Enron, et al) doing so. Economics even I can understand written by a guy who has every right to be full-on bafflingly obtuse.
But David's post on airport security loopholes made me recall the excellent article from last month, on Homeland Insecurity. It is really something I can sink my teeth into--as security, and the silly window-dressing we have applied to fixing it, is near to my heart (see my rant on the topic from last January). It is the first honest look at what we are doing wrong that I have read in a major publication. Charles Mann's writing is crisp and compelling, his sources (including Bruce Schneier) are impeccable and the story is easy to follow. So easy, it makes you wonder what the idiots in charge are doing...
Back to Baze's airport safety comment a few weeks ago...
Baze had mentioned the security at the airport, and I had commented that no attacker is going to use the same MO twice.. A letter writer to the Austin Chronicle seems to feel the same way. Look in the Postmarks column and look for the phrase "How Safe Are We?" The transportation bureaucracy is ultra slow to figure this out, and I doubt that they ever will. Its so much easier to harrass the passengers than to take a look at who's taking out the trash, bringing in the products, or mowing the grass on the airfield.
I almost forgot. You know how you always see fast-food billboards along major highways, promising "Easy-Off/Easy-On" so you can duck off the interstate and grab a fat-filled happy artery meal and be back on the road in nothing flat? Well I swear, as I headed up I-85 toward I-77 I saw the billboard:
Three Convenient Locations!
Easy Off - Easy On!
Bible Factory Outlet
Watch For the Signs! What do they sell? Seconds? Typos? "Jebus saves." Or maybe "The Greeks Shall Inherit the Earth." I'm going to get some new testamints in case my mouth gets dry on the road.
And by the way, what the hell is up with the I-77 interchange with I-81? For several miles, as I squinted into the setting sun (in the West, for those of you who are not campers) the highway signs told me I was on I-77 North AND I-81 South. Nice going Eisenhower...
