I'd love to see this option in Google Maps!

Hey, don't mock your rock. You never know when you need to ward away tigers!

More seriously though, part of the issue of gauging the "success" of TSA is that we don't know how many potential plots they stopped from even leaving home to attempt it. How effective was the security theater in convincing potential terrorists to "just stay home".

I see 2 possible answers to that question: Pessimistically, if those terrorists really wanted to do it, no amount of security theater is going to stop them. On the other hand, those that were really more on the fence, they probably decided to stay home instead. In that sense, it would be argued that the security theater works, and also we can't really gauge the level of that success.

The data points that we actually do have to gauge the "success" of TSA are skewed. All we see are the times when weapons are caught going through the scanning (call them partial successes) and when they slip through and either the passengers tackle them to the ground or they're successful in their mission (TSA failures).

Really, the only way we could truly gauge success would be to compare our airport system to the same system without TSA. We could try to compare to that of other countries, but then some would cry foul saying "That's not America, we can't accurately compare." Also, we (America as a whole) are too risk averse to try and see what happens if we actually stopped enforcing airport security. Honestly, I think the real risk is negligible, but we live in a world where we've been scared into thinking that any Arab-looking man is a potential terrorist... Bin Laden has won.

We really need to find some way of assessing how much the threat of security theater deters attacks, and how much the threat of passengers beating you up stops attacks. Honestly, real airport security should be self enforced, but we're stuck in a society where we depend on authority figures. The average American is lazy enough to prefer someone in a uniform to keep us safe over having to fight for him/herself. Because of that, we revert to allowing our higher ups to push us around, believing that what they do helps keep us safe from the terrorists.

"They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." - Benjamin Franklin

Oh, don't worry, Homeland Security wants TSA to set up security stations for bus and train terminals too!

Well, it looks like market forces have now determined the price of privacy (or the cost of convenience and expediency in privacy lost, depending on your priorities)...

Would the evidence be admissible in court though? I mean, the 4th Amendment still carries some weight in this day and age...

But Facebook is the tool/medium through which the analysis is being conducted. Thus part of the point is the fact that Facebook can now be used to do these kinds of analyses/social observations/stalking.

It may not rigorously accurate (biased sample pool, etc), but the observations are still interesting to note...

Human biology drives males to that one particular spot. Otherwise, we'd all be extinct...

How about Suzette ?

It was really funny to read that comment especially after I just finished reading this article on the misinformed believing lies over the truth.

Instead of going all ape-shit and complaining that the Texas School Board is re-writing history for all of the US, boycott those texts and go for something more balanced. You don't *have* to buy those textbooks, you shouldn't sacrifice quality education just to save money. The texts used by Texas public schools have such a large influence on other states' curricula because they all buy those texts, so all those consumers are partly to blame for Texas's influence. If you don't like what they're putting out, you don't have to buy it. If the Texas School Board feels that education in Texas should be taught a certain way, that's their prerogative (insofar as what kind of powers were given to them when they were elected/appointed to the board).
To sum up, Texas School Board can "screw over" the education in Texas if they want. Everyone else can choose whether or not to follow suit. Texas is not responsible for the curriculum in California, and they're actually taking that to heart.