See SPOT fail. Fail, SPOT, fail...

See SPOT fail.  Fail, SPOT, fail...  Reason's J. D. Tuccille tears into it.  The bureaucracy is like a living being.  TSA is doing its best to keep this worthless program, despite the utter lack of evidence that it actually, like, accomplishes anything...

The GSA study referred to can be found here; it's an interesting read.  Here's it's conclusion (in its entirety):

TSA has taken several positive steps to validate the scientific basis and strengthen program management of BDA and the SPOT program, which has been in place for over 6 years at a total cost of approximately $900 million since 2007. Nevertheless, TSA has not demonstrated that BDOs can consistently interpret the SPOT behavioral indicators, a fact that may contribute to varying passenger referral rates for additional screening.  The subjectivity of the SPOT behavioral indicators and variation in BDO referral rates raise questions about the continued use of behavior indicators for detecting passengers who might pose a risk to aviation security. Furthermore, decades of peer-reviewed, published research on the complexities associated with detecting deception through human observation also draw into question the scientific underpinnings of TSA's behavior detection activities. While DHS commissioned a 2011 study to help demonstrate the validity of its approach, the study's findings cannot be used to demonstrate the effectiveness of SPOT because of methodological limitations in the study’s design and data collection.

While TSA has several efforts under way to assess the behavioral indicators and expand its collection of data to develop performance metrics for its behavioral detection activities, these efforts are not expected to be completed for several years, and TSA has indicated that additional resources are needed to complete them. Consequently, after 10 years of implementing and testing the SPOT program, TSA cannot demonstrate that the agency's behavior detection activities can reliably an d effectively identify high-risk passengers who may pose a threat to the U.S. aviation system.

Ouch...

Bullshit!

Bullshit!  Penn & Teller on the war on drugs...

ObamaCare debacle update...

ObamaCare debacle update...  Because just once a day isn't enough to keep up with the churning cascade of debacle debullition...

The three burials of ObamaCare.  Twice before we've tried to kill it.  This time, let's use a silver bullet!

ObamaCare costs more if you're married.  Oh, isn't this just lovely!  Now we've got the bureaucrats providing incentives for people to get divorced...

ObamaCare, deconstructed (video at right).  And a fine job they did, too!

Oops, there goes another ObamaCare promise...  Dave Carter at Ricochet speaks to the Obama voter.  His lede:

By chance, have you had enough yet?  Many of you have either lost your jobs or you've had your hours reduced.  Millions of you are seeing your insurance policies go up in a fireball before your very eyes, like a KISS concert only instead of singing, "I Stole Your Love," the front man now sings, "I Stole Your Heath Care."

But I don't want you to feel gullible.  I think, under the circumstances, something approaching totally bamboozled would be understandable, ... or snookered, or hoodwinked, or hornswoggled, swindled, fleeced, scammed, deluded, stung, bent, folded, spindled and mutilated perhaps, broken into tiny dehumanized pieces to be redesigned into an academic's experimental idea of a perfect society certainly, … but not gullible.

In what became the longest instance of political foreplay in contemporary American history, the President whispered utopian nothings in your ear, caressing your hopes while dreamily promising  that millions of people would get something for nothing and you wouldn't have to pay for it.  You could say he was being coy, but that would be on the order of saying that the Titanic took on just a little added moisture.

If you set the bar low enough ... even the government can make it over.   We find out now that the administration's goal for healthcare.gov is for 80% of people attempting to buy insurance to actually make it through.  Worse, we find out that this goal has just been set – before that, there were no goals.  As I read this piece, I was trying to imagine Jeff Bezos' reaction upon discovering that someone working at Amazon had set the bar that low...

ObamaCare may wreak havoc on liberal agenda: Shields and Brooks.  Oh, dang, I'm completely out of popcorn!

Toe the line, you shlubs!  The Washington, D.C. insurance commissioner questioned the viability of Obama's proposed “fix”.  One day later, he's out of a job.  Don't you dare question The One!

“We all knew.”  Those are the words of Senator Gillibrand, D NY (at right), upon being asked if she was misled by Obama's “If you likeyour plan...”  promise.  We all knew.

   Rope.
   Tree.
   Congresscritter.
   Some assembly required.

ObamaCare debacle update...

ObamaCare debacle update...  Because Sunday morning just wouldn't be the same without it...

“Modified rapture” is how Neo-Neocon describes her reaction to recent events in ObamaCare-land.  She makes some interesting, and sobering, points...

Will Liberalism implode?  I don't know, but the simple fact that someone is asking that question out loud puts a big grin on my face!

Game over?  So asks Dana Milbank, ordinarily a reliable lefty writer.  It's clear from the piece that he believes the answer is “yes, game over”.  If this is actually all a dream I'm having, then please let me sleep some more...

Stop digging.  Start over.  That's the headline on an unsigned editorial by The Chicago Tribune.  Yes, that newspaper – the Obama hometown that has previously worshiped every single move of The One, and defended him from all comers.  That newspaper.  Here's there conclusion:

But in this country we don't change bad laws by presidential fiat. We change them by having Congress rewrite them or by starting from scratch. Obama doesn't want to reopen this law for fear that Republicans and some Democrats will substantially rewrite it. But that's what has to happen.

We understand why the president and leaders of his party want to rescue whatever they can of Obamacare. On their watch, official Washington has blown the launch of a new entitlement program ... under the schedule they alone set in early 2010.

What we don't understand is their reluctance to give that failure more than lip service. Many of the Americans who heard their president say Thursday that "we fumbled the rollout of this health care law" would have been pleased to hear him add: So we're admitting it. This law is a bust. We're starting over.

Wow.  Just wow!

Hold them accountable.  That's the theme of yesterday's weekly Republican radio address (video at right).  Obviously the Republicans see political advantage for themselves in this mess, and of course they're going to exploit it.  My problem with the Republicans is that I've only heard a few of them propose healthcare reform that I could support, so I'm not sure that what they come up with would be substantially better than ObamaCare.  But if repealing ObamaCare is the first step, then I'm all for it!  The conclusion of their address:

Throughout the health care debate, Republicans have proposed dozens of solutions designed to help control costs and improve quality – without surrendering control of your personal health care decisions to nameless bureaucrats in Washington. Now is the time to enact those common sense ideas.

But none of this will occur unless the American people hold those who supported ObamaCare accountable – and do so with a very loud voice. Democrat Senators must help Republicans pass legislation to limit the damage of ObamaCare. If not, those who choose to ignore the plight of millions of Americans should be replaced next November by those who will act.

150 million year old seawater...

150 million year old seawater...  Now that's an ancient aquifer!

It's amazing what a little prosperity can do!

It's amazing what a little prosperity can do!  Somehow the progressives always miss this solution to the ills they purport to want to cure...

Pahoehoe...

Pahoehoe...  The Hawaiians call this slow, thick, viscous form of lava “pahoehoe”.  It leaves a characteristic pattern of “feet and toes” that are very easy to walk on – after the lava has cooled, of course!

You'll want to watch this one full screen... 

Big ball of mud...

Big ball of mud...  What's the most common, most successful software architecture in the world?  Why, it's the big ball of mud (also known by many other less polite names)!  Every experienced software engineer knows the truth of this.  It is the de facto standard of software architecture.  Every single commercially successful software product I've ever had the privilege to look closely at is, under the covers, one gigantic ball of mud.  It's as if you looked under a bridge and found that it was held up by enormous piles of twigs tied together with shoelaces, duct tape, and used chewing gum.  Every such software product has dark corners in its code where people fear to change anything, because nobody knows how it works.  Or areas where the complexity is so high that it would take days to acquire an understanding deep enough to successfully extend or repair it.  Every one contains layers and layers of software that works around problems in other layers, or covers up the problems of a lower layer while making new problems of its own. 

The one thing I have never seen is a commercially successful software product whose code is pristine and beautiful.

Why is this?  Why are all these software products such a disaster under the covers, in their code?  This fascinating and entertaining paper (at least, if you're a programmer) by Brian Foote and Joseph Yoder delves into exactly that question.  It jibes nicely with my own experiences, where the big ball of mud emerges from the tension between the business need to make the software do something useful as quickly as possible, and the engineering need to make something beautiful, fast, and reliable.  This tension leads to innumerable small decisions in favor of expediency and against the engineer's better judgment.

One of the reasons I'm enjoying the programming I'm doing now, in my retirement, is that this tension is completely removed.  I am free to make the best code I know how to make, no matter how long it takes me.  In my current project, for example, I've already spent a month on a problem that I don't imagine any company I've ever worked for would have allowed me more than a day or two – and I'm not nearly done!  But I'm also not making a big ball of mud.  I'm making something much more beautiful than that.  At least to me :)