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Comment Re:drugs and explosives (Score 1) 221

by JayBat (#43010523) Attached to: Helena Airport Manager Blocks TSA From Taking Full-Body Scanner
Oh, they've found them all right. There's been more than one US soldier that apparently wanted to take home some C4 as a souvenir, and TSA has found a tape-wrapped water bottle full of flash power (i.e, a plastic pipe bomb).

I'm not surprised they catch the C4 My wife frequently travels with chocolate fudge in her carry-on (she has co-workers that *really* like this one particular fudge), and unfrozen gel icepacks in checked baggage (post half-marathon icedown). Both almost always get handchecked. We know to pack both of those at the *top* of the bag for easy access.

-Jay-

Comment Re:KKK to TSA (Score 2) 826

by JayBat (#41102331) Attached to: Booted From Airplane For Wearing Anti-TSA T-shirt
You're a little short on reading comprehension, there, cupcake. Go back and RTFA.

TSA had no problem with Arijit and his wife, and properly passed them right through the checkpoint and on to their gate. It was an idiot Delta gate agent, most likely aided by one or more idiot Delta passengers that decided that Arijit was the wrong color errr, I mean, a threat to safety.

Thereafter, like-minded idiots where found from many different organizations (if you were there, *you* could have volunteered!), but TSA behaved professionally throughout from Arijit's description.

Comment Dose from CT scans is vastly larger... (Score 4, Informative) 138

by JayBat (#39961073) Attached to: FDA Cracking Down On X-ray Exposure For Kids
The radiation dose from a properly functioning backscatter xray full-body scanner is about 0.6 Sv. The dose from a properly functioning chest CT scan is about 7mSv, 10000x larger.

(Doesn't change my opinion that all full-body airport scanners are a waste of money, and xray backscatter scanners in particular should be banned.)

But the FDA is right to focus on over-prescribed medical xray procedures.

Comment You have no idea what you're talking about (Score 1) 1127

by JayBat (#39118683) Attached to: Hunters Shoot Down Drone of Animal Rights Group
They bring farm-raised pigeons out to the "hunting site" in cages. Now, they could just stand around the cages and blow the shit out of the pigeons and be done with it, but instead, they consider it "sporting" to stand around the cages, then open the cage doors, and *then* blow the shit out of the pigeons. These people are sick little fucks.

Comment Bingo. (Score 1) 1127

by JayBat (#39118637) Attached to: Hunters Shoot Down Drone of Animal Rights Group
Not only that, but the mighty hunters in question knew exactly how fucked-up their little party was, and were so ashamed of what they were doing that they A) stopped just because some PETA folks were watching, and B) took pot-shots at the RC helicopter. Manly men, to be sure. -Jay-

Comment Re:What I heard recently (Score 1) 233

by JayBat (#38081216) Attached to: TSA Puts Off Safety Study of X-ray Body Scanners
Yes, I get the feeling that TSA and/or the airports and/or ??? are realizing that using backscatter x-ray scanners is a bad idea.

My home airport, PDX, just announced they'll be fully deploying new scanners just in time for the holiday travel season (joy), and they are mm-wave RF. The waste of time and money still pisses me off, but at least I don't have to go through the PITA of opting out for safety reasons now.

Comment Re:Opting out (Score 1) 264

by JayBat (#37926888) Attached to: How X-Ray Scanners Became Mandatory In US Airports
Your friends' argument is bogus; they don't need to worry (much) about what happens the the damn thing is working correctly; what matters is what happens when it is broken.

I go ahead and use the millimeter wave scanners and opt out of the backscatter x-ray scanners.

That's based not on civil liberty, but on safety. There's really not much the mm-wave scanners can do to you if they fail; the hardware just isn't there to give you the microwave popcorn treatment no matter what breaks. On the other hand, a broken backscatter x-ray scanner could hit you with an x-ray hot-spot and do serious damage.

-Jay-
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Today's Children Are Officially Potty Mouths 449

Posted by samzenpus from the kids-say-the-#@^*est-things dept.
tetrahedrassface writes "When the Sociolinguistics Symposium met earlier this month swearing scholar Timothy Jay revealed that an increase in child swearing is directly related to an increase in adult swearing. It seems that vulgarity is increasing as pop culture continues to popularize vulgarities. The blame lies with media, public figures, politicians, but mostly ourselves. From the article: 'Children as young as two are now dropping f-bombs, with researchers reporting that more kids are using profanity — and at earlier ages — than has been recorded in at least three decades.'"
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Snails On Methamphetamine 93

Posted by samzenpus from the escargot-on-ice dept.
sciencehabit writes "Science answers the question: What happens when you put a snail on speed? From the article: 'The results suggest that meth improves memory, something that has been previously observed in creatures with large, complex brains like rats and humans. But since the snails store their memories in a simple, three-neuron network, the team hopes that studying the meth effect in these gastropods will help pinpoint how the drug's memory magnification powers work.'"
GNU is Not Unix

FSF Asks Apple To Comply With the GPL For Clone of GNU Go 482

Posted by timothy from the y'know-fellas-the-license dept.
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "The Free Software Foundation has discovered that an application currently distributed in Apple's App Store is a port of GNU Go. This makes it a GPL violation, because Apple controls distribution of all such programs through the iTunes Store Terms of Service, which is incompatible with section 6 of the GPLv2. It's an unusual enforcement action, though, because they don't want Apple to just make the app disappear, they want Apple to grant its users the full freedoms offered by the GPL. Accordingly, they haven't sued or sent any legal threats and are instead in talks with Apple about how they can offer their users the GPLed software legally, which is difficult because it's not possible to grant users all the freedoms they're entitled to and still comply with Apple's restrictive licensing terms."
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Scientists Discover Booze That Won't Give You a Hangover 334

Posted by samzenpus from the go-ahead-and-have-another dept.
Kwang-il Kwon and Hye Gwang Jeong of Chungnam National University have discovered that drinking alcohol with oxygen bubbles added leads to fewer hangovers and a shorter sobering up time. People drinking the bubbly booze sobered up 20-30 minutes faster and had less severe and fewer hangovers than people who drank the non-fizzy stuff. Kwon said: "The oxygen-enriched alcohol beverage reduces plasma alcohol concentrations faster than a normal dissolved-oxygen alcohol beverage does. This could provide both clinical and real-life significance. The oxygen-enriched alcohol beverage would allow individuals to become sober faster, and reduce the side effects of acetaldehyde without a significant difference in alcohol's effects. Furthermore, the reduced time to a lower BAC may reduce alcohol-related accidents."
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NASA Tests Flying Airbag 118

Posted by samzenpus from the drop-the-cloud-anchor dept.
coondoggie writes "NASA is looking to reduce the deadly impact of helicopter crashes on their pilots and passengers with what the agency calls a high-tech honeycomb airbag known as a deployable energy absorber. So in order to test out its technology NASA dropped a small helicopter from a height of 35 feet to see whether its deployable energy absorber, made up of an expandable honeycomb cushion, could handle the stress. The test crash hit the ground at about 54MPH at a 33 degree angle, what NASA called a relatively severe helicopter crash."

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