TSA = Totally Stupid Administration

I have blogged on numerous occasions about the utterly inane and incompetent Transportation Security Administration.  Here are two more horror stories:

They asked him to empty his pockets, and he had some English-Arabic flashcards in them, as he’d been learning Arabic for three years and was a Middle-Eastern Studies major. After discovering the flashcards, the TSA agents kept him in the screening area for a half hour...

TSA supervisor: “You know who did 9/11?”

George: “Osama bin Laden.”

TSA supervisor: “Do you know what language he spoke?”

George: “Arabic.”

TSA supervisor: “Do you see why these cards are suspicious?”

Via BoingBoing, whence the image credit.  And this "security" travesty comes via J-Walk:

This happened to Bob Thomas, a 53-year-old officer in Camden's emergency crime suppression team, who was flying to Orlando in March with his wife, Leona, and their son, Ryan.

Ryan was taking his first flight, to Walt Disney World, for his fourth birthday.

The boy is developmentally delayed, one of the effects of being born 16 weeks prematurely. His ankles are malformed and his legs have low muscle tone. In March he was just starting to walk [with leg braces]...

The alarm went off.

The screener told them to take off the boy's braces.

The Thomases were dumbfounded. "I told them he can't walk without them on his own," Bob Thomas said.

"He said, 'He'll need to take them off.' "

Ryan's mother offered to walk him through the detector after they removed the braces, which are custom-made of metal and hardened plastic.

No, the screener replied. The boy had to walk on his own...

Incredible.

Addendum:  Nathan offered this additional example of utter crass insensitivity by a TSA employee.

Yet another TSA horror story

The Transportation Security Administration must be staffed by the largest group of incompetents in the federal government (and that's saying a lot); one could maintain an entire blog just devoted to TSA mixups. Here's a story out of Orlando that caught my eye this past week -

James Hoyne, 14, has a feeding tube in his stomach and carries a back-up in a sealed clear plastic bag. Hoyne said two weeks ago a TSA officer insisted on opening the sterile equipment, contaminating his back-up feeding up tube which he later needed."I said 'Please don't open it' and she said 'I have to open it whether you like it or not. If I can't open it, I can't let you on the plane,'" Hoyne said of his conversation with the TSA screener.

How is a fork like a lightsaber ?

Both are considered risks to aircraft security, as explained in an Ask The Pilot column at Salon:

Safely assured of a top spot in the Hall [of Shame], or so I thought, was the time I had a butter knife confiscated by overzealous TSA guards. I mean, what could be more ridiculous than taking a butter knife from a uniformed, on-duty pilot?

Answer: confiscating a fork from a uniformed, on-duty airline pilot.

It happened the other day in Mexico City, at the special crew inspection checkpoint at Benito Juarez International Airport. Yes, I’m dropping the “American” part and changing the name to the “Security Hysteria Hall of Shame,” since, as you’ll see, we are not the only ones who have lost our minds...

Every day, hundreds of thousands of stainless steel forks, not to mention knives, are handed out to passengers in the forward cabins of airplanes. (And why not? The hijacking paradigm exploited on Sept. 11 no longer exists.) Yet on-duty pilots are not allowed to carry them through the checkpoint?...

This is the lunatic world of security we now live in: one of blind adherence, stripped of reason and logic, in which even the stupidest policies are enforced to the letter of the law...

One day, flying from Dallas to Jacksonville, Fla., Goldring and her toddler son were refused passage through the TSA checkpoint because they boy was carrying … get ready now … his Star Wars lightsaber. A lightsaber, if you’re not familiar, is a flashlight with a plastic cone attached — or, perhaps more to the point, a toy in the shape of a make-believe weapon from a galaxy, and a line of reasoning, far, far away.

“I believe it was green,” says Goldring, “indicating my son’s future Jedi path. We were told by the TSA professionals that the saber, which technically is something that does not exist, was a weapon. We were escorted out of security and sent to the ticket counter, where I had to fill out paperwork in order to check the lightsaber in as baggage.”..

Like I said, you can’t make this up.

The saddest part is that few people seem to care. We grumble, we gripe, and sometimes we laugh, but there is little if any organized push to change this madness, neither by citizens nor their elected leaders. In the end, we get what we deserve.

Is it acceptable to "pat down" women and children ??

In his blog for The Atlantic, James Fallows makes note of a curious conflict of ethics and pragmatism raised by a letter from and Army sergeant serving in Afghanistan:

A US Army staff sergeant, now serving in Afghanistan, writes about the new enhanced pat-down procedure from the TSA. Summary of his very powerful message: to avoid giving gross offense to the Afghan public, and to prevent the appearance of an uncontrolled security state, the US military forbids use on Afghan civilians of the very practices the TSA is now making routine for civilian travelers at US airports...

At no time were we permitted or even encouraged to search children or women. In fact, this would have been considered an extreme violation of acceptable cultural practice and given the way word travels here, been a propaganda victory for the Taliban.

Yet somehow the TSA is engaged in this at home while my unit and I spent our tour unable to safeguard ourselves equally in an environment where the Taliban have often disguised themselves in burkas and used children as both spies and fighters...

Further details and discussion at The Atlantic.

Major security breach at the TSA

I promised I would post any more rants about the Transportation Security Administration, but this just can't be overlooked. Remember as you read this notice posted at Slashdot that the TSA is part of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and is "responsible for security in all modes of transportation..."

"A laptop containing the unencrypted security data for 33,000 travelers using the Clear system was stolen at San Francisco International Airport on July 26, according to CBS5 Television. The Clear system allows travelers who register and pay a $100.00 annual fee to speed through airport security by using a smart card at special kiosks in some airports. TSA has suspended new registrations in the system, which is run by a private contractor, Verified Identity Pass, Inc., a subsidiary of GE. The laptop was apparently stolen from a locked office at SFO. The company has now decided that it might be a good idea to encrypt the data in their systems. They are in the process of notifying customers that all of their personal data, including name, address, SSi number, passport number, date of birth, etc. has been compromised."

Any raging and ranting I might offer has already been posted at the Slashdot thread, but let me quote this pertinent observation:

Yea, and this also brings some interesting light to the issue with "If you have nothing to hide, why don't you want to provide us with your [biometrics|passport|id|*]" argument.

Refusing to give away address, email, phones, SSID along with fingerprints is almost considered a crime in itself right now, since if you are not planning on terrorist activities, you don't have anything to hide, have you!?

But here, perfectly innocent people suddenly have all their personal information spread to criminal groups or whoever end up being the buyer of this information.

95-year-old woman in wheelchair has to remove her adult diaper for a TSA inspection

Here's a summary of the story, from the Northwest Florida Daily News:

Jean Weber of Destin filed a complaint with the Department of Homeland Security after her 95-year-old mother was detained and extensively searched last Saturday while trying to board a plane to fly to Michigan to be with family members during the final stages of her battle with leukemia.

Her mother, who was in a wheelchair, was asked to remove an adult diaper in order to complete a pat-down search...

Weber’s mother entered the airport’s security checkpoint in a wheelchair because she was not stable enough to walk through, Weber said... She said her mother was first pulled aside into a glass-partitioned area and patted down. Then she was taken to another room to protect her privacy during a more extensive search, Weber said...

She said security personnel then came out and told her they would need for her mother to remove her Depends diaper because it was soiled and was impeding their search.

Weber wheeled her mother into a bathroom, removed her diaper and returned. Her mother did not have another clean diaper with her, Weber said.

I have a 92-year-old mother, somewhat impaired, who is reluctant to make a final plane trip to see her 93-year-old sister because of the hassles of air travel.  Reports like this one totally enrage me.  I know the counterargument, elucidated in the article by a TSA spokesman:

Koshetz said the procedures are the same for everyone to ensure national security. “TSA cannot exempt any group from screening because we know from intelligence that there are terrorists out there that would then exploit that vulnerability,” she said.

It's the same mindless logic that punishes children for having an aspirin at school or requires a grizzled octagenarian to show an I.D. in order to purchase a bottle of wine.  Americans are increasingly being forced - and conditioned - to accept the pronouncements of bureaucrats without question.

Via Reddit, where the story has garnered over a thousand comments.

The "no-fly list" is a joke

Well, it's not a joke to the approximately one million innocent people whose names are of foreign extraction or are similar to the names of suspicious people. But it is a joke in terms of actually preventing determined people from flying.

A security technology expert has written a piece for the L.A. Times detailing how anyone can bypass the photo ID check and can board a plane, even if their name is on the no-fly list:

How to fly, even if you are on the no-fly list: Buy a ticket in some innocent person's name. At home, before your flight, check in online and print out your boarding pass. Then, save that web page as a PDF and use Adobe Acrobat to change the name on the boarding pass to your own. Print it again. At the airport, use the fake boarding pass and your valid ID to get through security. At the gate, use the real boarding pass in the fake name to board your flight...

This vulnerability isn't new. It isn't even subtle. I first wrote about it in 2006. I asked Kip Hawley, who runs the TSA, about it in 2007. Today, any terrorist smart enough to Google "print your own boarding pass" can bypass the no-fly list... The no-fly list is a Kafkaesque nightmare for the thousands of innocent Americans who are harassed and detained every time they fly. Put on the list by unidentified government officials, they can't get off. They can't challenge the TSA about their status or prove their innocence...

But even if these lists were complete and accurate, they wouldn't work. Timothy McVeigh, the Unabomber, the D.C. snipers, the London subway bombers and most of the 9/11 terrorists weren't on any list before they committed their terrorist acts. And if a terrorist wants to know if he's on a list, the TSA has approved a convenient, $100 service that allows him to figure it out: the Clear program, which issues IDs to "trusted travelers" to speed them through security lines. Just apply for a Clear card; if you get one, you're not on the list.

Found at the something-interesting-every-day blog at J-Walk.

Further confirmation of "security theater" at airports

The Airline then encodes that information in a barcode that is on the boarding pass it issues. The problem is, the passenger and flight information encoded in barcode is not encrypted in any way. Using a web site I decoded my boarding pass for my upcoming trip...

What  terrorists or really anyone can do is use a website to decode the barcode and get the flight information, put it into a text file, change the 1 to a 3, then use another website to re-encode it into a barcode. Finally, using a commercial photo-editing program or any program that can edit graphics replace the barcode in their boarding pass with the new one they created. Even more scary is that people can do this to change names. So if they have a fake ID they can use this method to make a valid boarding pass that matches their fake ID. The really scary part is this will get past both the TSA document checker, because the scanners the TSA use are just barcode decoders, they don’t check against the real time information. So the TSA document checker will not pick up on the alterations. This means, as long as they sub in 3 they can always use the Pre-Check line.

Additional details at the Puckinflight aviation blog

Luggage thieves working with the TSA

They both say there are organized rings of thieves, who identify valuables in your checked luggage by looking at the TSA x-ray screens, then communicate with baggage handlers by text or cell phone, telling them exactly what to look for...

More details at the link, but it's all so depressing. Can we get rid of the TSA now, please?

Should you take a starter pistol on your next airline trip?

It's a sad but well-known fact that baggage handlers frequently steal items from bags checked during air travel.  The Wall Street Journal highlighted the problem in an article last month.

...baggage handlers were caught rifling through suitcases in the belly of airplanes in Hartford, Conn., pocketing laptops, cameras, iPods, GPS units, jewelry, watches and earrings...

Authorities attribute an escalation to the sour economy and to tighter security around cargo, which historically has been a target for thieves. Passenger baggage is now easier pickings. In addition, cost-cutting at airlines and police departments has reduced patrols and enforcement, officials say...

Both airline workers and TSA screeners have access to checked luggage, and it's often impossible to tell who is responsible unless a thief is caught red-handed...

Several years ago Cory Doctorow cited a suggestion that your bags would be better protected if you pack a gun.

A "weapons" is defined as a rifle, shotgun, pistol, airgun, and STARTER PISTOL. Yes, starter pistols - those little guns that fire blanks at track and swim meets - are considered weapons...and do NOT have to be registered in any state in the United States.

I have a starter pistol for all my cases. All I have to do upon check-in is tell the airline ticket agent that I have a weapon to declare...I'm given a little card to sign, the card is put in the case, the case is given to a TSA official who takes my key and locks the case, and gives my key back to me.

That's the procedure. The case is extra-tracked...TSA does not want to lose a weapons case. This reduces the chance of the case being lost to virtually zero.

It's a great way to travel with camera gear...I've been doing this since Dec 2001 and have had no problems whatsoever.

I wonder if that method is still valid and useful.

More nonsense re airport "security"

Although the X-ray and metal detector rigmarole is mandatory for pilots and flight attendants, many other airport workers, including those with regular access to aircraft -- to cabins, cockpits, galleys and freight compartments -- are exempt. That's correct. Uniformed pilots cannot carry butter knives onto an airplane, yet apron workers and contract ground support staff -- cargo loaders, baggage handlers, fuelers, cabin cleaners, caterers -- can, as a matter of routine, bypass TSA inspection entirely... here's what one apron worker at New York's Kennedy airport recently told me:

"All I need is my Port Authority ID, which I swipe through a turnstile. The 'sterile area' door is not watched over by any hired security or by TSA. I have worked at JFK for more than three years now and I have yet to be randomly searched. Really the only TSA presence we notice is when the blue-shirts come down to the cafeteria to get food."

From the "Ask the Pilot" column at Salon, via BoingBoing.

TSA screening

With a twist...

The only bad thing on our trip was TSA was at the Savannah train station. There were about 14 agents pulling people inside the building and coralling everyone in a roped area AFTER you got OFF THE TRAIN! This made no sense!!! Poor family in front of us! 9 year old getting patted down and wanded. They groped our people too and were very unprofessional. I am all about security, but when have you ever been harassed and felt up getting OFF a plane? Shouldn't they be doing that getting ON???

Yet another TSA horror story

At what point does an airport search step over the line?

How about when they start going through your checks, and the police call your husband, suspicious you were clearing out the bank account?

That's the complaint leveled by Kathy Parker, a 43-year-old Elkton, Md., woman, who was flying out of Philadelphia International Airport on Aug. 8...

That same screener started emptying her wallet. "He was taking out the receipts and looking at them," she said...

In a side pocket she had tucked a deposit slip and seven checks made out to her and her husband, worth about $8,000...

She protested when the officer started to walk away with the checks. "That's my money," she remembers saying. The officer's reply? "It's not your money."

When she got home, her husband of 20 years, John Parker, a self-employed plastics broker, said the police had called and told him that they'd suspected "a divorce situation" and that Kathy Parker was trying to empty their bank account. He set them straight.

"I was so humiliated," she said...

Further details in Daniel Rubin's column at the Philadelphia Inquirer.  The TSA apparently does not deny any of the details; they claim they were justified in their actions because she looked nervous.

TSA = Taking Something Always

It wouldn't be hard to fill this blog with horror stories concerning this country's Transportation Security Administration. This Houston Chronicle article details some of the problems with theft from checked and carry-on baggage:

"When screeners inspected his wife's carry-on bag at New York's John F. Kennedy Airport recently, he claims her designer eyeglasses were swiped. "Great sleight of hand," he says. "We didn't even know they were gone until we got to Los Angeles."

...It doesn't help that hardly a week goes by without another story about alleged TSA pilferage making headlines. Here's one from a Miami TV station, where 1,500 items have been reported stolen at the airport since 2003. Here's someone who had his engagement ring filched by screeners in Los Angeles. Here's another one involving a 12-year-old's heartbreaking loss of $265 in birthday money..."

The article goes on to offer suggestions for avoiding theft, which basically boil down to "don't take anything with you."

Still yet more endless TSA nonsense

Is there any point in continuing to catalogue these egregiously nonsensical events?

As a federal agent, I'm authorized to fly armed, so on one trip, I was clearing through security, the airport cop had checked my ID and paperwork and approved me to pass through the checkpoint, but the TSA guy stopped me and said he needed to inspect my carry-on...

Well, he came up with my Leatherman knife (basically a fancy Swiss Army knife) and said that I couldn't bring it on the plane because knives are prohibited items...

I looked at him like he was insane and said, "Let me get this straight, you're letting me carry a loaded handgun onto the plane, but not a pocket knife? In what conceivable world does that make sense?"

He responded that per FAA rules, I was authorized as a federal agent to carry the gun on board but the rules don't mention knives except as a general prohibition for everyone.

Not wanting to lose a $30 knife, I asked to see his supervisor, figuring this was some low-level zombie unable to exercise basic common sense. But no, the supervisor said the same thing!

Yes, I know, the staff "have to follow strict rules" and can't make exceptions, but...

Via J-Walk.

Thanksgiving leftovers smörgåsbord

The bone disease rickets is becoming more common in middle-class children.  "It is thought extensive use of sunscreen, children playing more time on computer games and TV rather than playing outside, and a poor diet are to blame."

When President Obama admitted in November that the "had taken a shellacking last night" (in the mid-term elections), he was using a term that used to refer to getting drunk.  World Wide Words explains the etymology and current usage of the word.

There is an interesting argument in a Reddit discussion thread re agribusinesses patenting crops after manipulating their genes: "I guess I fail to understand how the removal of genes and the placement of them in other organisms counts as an invention or anything new.  It's like saying you've made a totally new brand of car by replacing the alternator with a different one from a different car.  'Isn't that really just a Toyota?' 'No way - the alternator is from an Audi.'"  Probably invalid argument, but thought-provoking...

During the midterm elections, a political consultant had a computer robocall thousands of homes in Maryland "suggesting that they "relax" because the race was over, even though polls were still open."  Details here and here.

111,111,111 X 111,111,111 = 12345678987654321.  Mathematically trivial, but interesting for children and others.

Scientists are offering an explanation for a "gigantic plague of rats" that happens on a cyclical basis in India.   It's caused by a 50-year cycle of the programmed death of bamboo forests...

A doctor in Miami is suing a restaurant for not explaining to him the proper method of eating an artichoke.  He ate the entire thing, and developed bowel obstruction from the indigestible leaves.   The restaurant asks "Are we going to have to post warnings on our menu they shouldn't eat the bones in our barbecue ribs?"

Techdirt reports that members of Congress are exempt from naked scans and intimate patdowns when they fly on commercial airlines.  " The NY Times notes that Speaker of the House John Boehner (who does regularly fly commercial) got to walk right by security and go directly to the gate. In defending this, Michael Steel, head of the Republican party pointed out that this is true of all Congressional leaders."

Another item re the TSA body scans:  "Michael Chertoff, while he was the Head of Homeland Security under Bush, advocated and pushed for installation and implementation of these new full-body scanners at our airports. Once he was out of "public service", Chertoff's consulting company (Read: Lobbying Company) landed as a client (Surprise!), Rapiscan, the company that makes the scanners."

Want more?  "The CEO of one of the two companies licensed to sell full body scanners to the TSA accompanied President Barack Obama to India earlier this month..."

The Skidmore-Southern Vermont basketball set a bunch of NCAA records last week when the game went into seven overtimes.  The teams scored 133 points just in the overtimes.  More stats at the link.

Mathematician/poet J. J. Sylvester wrote “Rosalind,” a poem of 400 lines "all of which rhyme with the title character’s name.  [He] recited “Rosalind” at Baltimore’s Peabody Institute. He began by reading all the explanatory footnotes, so as not to interrupt the poem, and realized too late that this had taken an hour and a half.  “Then he read the poem itself to the remnant of his audience.”

WTF screencaps from daytime television.

Kuriositas posts lots of interesting photo-rich articles.  Here's one about the Cave City of Vardzia.

The arsenic-based microbe in the news this week is called GFAJ-1.  The letters stand for "Give Felisa a Job."  The rest of the story is at The Wall Street Journal link.

Ron Paul's response to the Wikileaks Cablegate releases: "In a free society, we are supposed to know the truth. In a society where truth becomes treason, we are in big trouble."

The Pledge of Allegiance was written by a socialist. 

Photo found at Sweet Additions.

Welcome to the police state

"I was taking photos from my window seat of clouds… a very loud child seated a few rows in front of me annoying everyone for approximately two hours… the man seated next to the loud child had finally lost it."

At that point, the child's mother and the passenger were yelling at each other… "On instinct, I turned my video camera towards the altercation…”

Parver said she did not leave her seat or even stand up in it.

In the less than two-minute video, an off-screen man can be heard yelling at a woman to control her child and the mother responding also in anger…

Approximately 30 minutes after the dispute, Parver said she was approached by the flight crew who were asking passengers questions about the altercation. When Parver told them she had recorded the incident, they requested she accompany them to the back of the plane…

"After viewing the video, they demanded that I delete it," Parver said. "I asked, 'Why?' The head-stewardess went as far as to tell me that I had broken a law by using an electronic item during the flight…"

After refusing and returning to her seat, the crew asked Parver to return to the back of the plane again…

"This time they told me that the captain demanded that I delete the video…”

"I'm a rational, non-threatening 56-year-old grandmother who was complying with every request the flight crew made, other than delete two minutes of video," Parver said. "I knew I had done nothing wrong and that the flight crew was out of line to demand I delete a video."

Parver said she politely told the flight crew that she would accept being arrested since she did not believe she had broken any laws and returned to her seat.

A few minutes later she was given a yellow slip of paper notifying Parver to cease her illegal behavior or risk very serious repercussions with the phrase "Interference with an airline crew member" circled. The offense has a maximum punishment of $10,000 in fines and 25 years in jail.

"How could the flight crew falsely accuse me of a federal crime?" Parver said. "I only left my seat when I was asked to follow them. I only spoke when they spoke to me. I blocked no one. I never turned on a light. And I never brought my camera out again after receiving this notice…"

Parver said she was escorted off the flight by two police officers, a TSA agent and a JetBlue Airways representative in handcuffs…

"The police, a JetBlue rep and a TSA official all looked at the video and agreed that it was too dark to really see who was on it and that it clearly had been shot from my seat, so I had not interfered with anything that was going on," Parver said. "I assumed that was the end of it." At that point, the representative with JetBlue requested that she delete the video, Parver added.

"He informed me that if I didn't immediately delete it, I could never fly on JetBlue again," she said. "He said that he would be filing a report that would be shared with other airlines, and I might have a hard time getting any airline to let me fly."

Parver requested a written notice that she was going to be denied service from the airline, as well as possibly others. The representative and LVMPD officers then asked her to leave…

Parver then asked for everyone's name, when the officer told her to leave or be arrested, she said.

"I said, 'Then arrest me…'"

"When I tried to explain anything, I was told I could not talk, only he could talk," Parver added…

"This could have happened to anyone, but few would have stood up to the threats," Parver said. "This should never happen in America."

(Full story HERE. Discussion at the Consumerist.)

Super Bowl-of-links XXXXXI

After calling my first 50 linkdumps "smörgåsbords," I wanted to come up with a new name, but I haven't been able to do so yet.  For this week a wordplay on the "Super Bowl L" post will have to do.  And since this is #51, I'll put in 51 links.  Here we go...

Everything you've ever wanted to know about the retail business of ripening bananas is in a post at Edible Geography.

A list (and explanation) of 50 internet memes.

Six members of Walmart's Walton family have a combined net worth as great as that of the bottom 30 percent of all Americans.

A woman who was opposed to Obama's healthcare plan posts a public apology after she develops breast cancer and has to arrange payment for her treatments.

Craniopagus twins can see through each other's eyes.

Matt Taibbi discusses the UC Davis pepper-spray incident.

If there is a pandemic, Homeland Security is empowered to restrict internet access (also here).

Raw cookie dough is not safe for human consumption (because of E. coli, and about half of those affected require hospitalization).  Thankfully, however, cookie dough in ice cream is safe.

All of the most NSFW (not-safe-for-work) and NSFL (not-safe-for-life) links have been assembled in one post.  Not only do the links go to offensive material, but the description of the content of the links is also NSFW/NSFL.  Do not click unless you know you can handle the worst imaginable internet material emotionally.

Obama appears to have broken his promise to veto a bill that puts Americans at risk for indefinite detention without trial.

An interesting essay about Christopher Hitchens.

You can actually buy Soylent Green crackers.

In Michigan, Homeland Security grant funds were used to buy Sno-Cone machines - thirteen of them, at $900 each.

The history of SKYNET.

A truly remarkable weather photograph.

A woman's body was found in a Massachusetts public swimming pool two days after she had died.  The Mitford sisters would have been amused.

A column at Salon discusses how federal grant funds have been used to militarize American domestic police forces.  And, in a related story, FBI agents use a chainsaw to rip down the side of a house during a drug raid... on the wrong house (more examples at the link).

Thousands of artificial hip implants are failing (not being rejected, but mechanically failing).

A prediction that the Eurozone's single currency will collapse this year.

Stallion semen is being sold as an energy drink.  It costs $7.60, and is available in several flavors.

A gallery of incredible sand sculptures.

Time-lapse video of Moscow.

The International Children's Digital Library is a gateway to online books for children.

A child pulls out her little brother's loose tooth.  Quite a common experience; in the old days it was done by tying the tooth to a doorknob, then slamming the door.  This girl does it by tying a string to the tooth, then getting on her mini-motorcycle, then...

Millionaire Newt Gingrich explains that he's not "rich."

Mitt Romney has lots of "endorsers," at least 35 of whom received contributions from Romney's super-PAC.

A photo of a bizarre and decidedly grotesque body modification.

An Atlantic column reviews music site Pitchfork's listing of the top music singles for 2011, and examines the geography of where the music originated.  Joining New York, London, Los Angeles, Toronto, Seattle et al at the top of the charts was the city of Eau Claire, Wisconsin, and controlling for population, Eau Claire takes the top spot, with 1.2 hits per 100,000 population.  Madison, Wisconsin was #3 (Copenhagen in between, San Francisco #4, then New York and other cultural runners-up.)

If you have post-polio syndrome, or know someone who does, Post-Polio Health International has a useful website.

The stages of development from an egg to a chicken (photo set via the link at the top, for those unfamiliar with Reddit).

The dangers of genetically modified foods.

An unidentified woman planned to detonate a bomb in Moscow on New Year's Eve, but her plans went disastrously awry (for her), when a spam message on her mobile phone triggered her suicide belt.

Pix of the "crooked forest" at Gryfino, via a Google-translated page.

Security footage captures a US postal service worker throwing a package containing an old cuckoo clock over a fence.

A report that the theme music from the movie "Titanic" was playing on board the Costa Concordia when it ran aground. [has this been verified?]

In an effort to deter vandalism at remote sites, British authorities are pondering the use of bees as security devices (allowing beekeepers to keep hives at the locations).  Makes sense, though I would worry about the beehives.

I am unable to explain Hollis' paradox.  Anyone?

Roger Ebert offers what he considers to be the best films of 2011.

"Fathermucker" has been proposed as a term to replace "househusband" for a stay-at-home-father.

A judge rules that Americans can be forced to decrypt their laptops for police inspection.

Do not swallow Buckyballs.  The magnetic ones.  Doing so can be lethal if a couple attract each other across the walls of the intestines.

There is now a website entitled Dogs Against Romney, originating from an incident in which he reportedly transported a family dog in a carrier on top of the family car.

Another extreme example of body modification: Mexico's "Vampire Woman."  With video.

A basketball player who is 7'5" tall.  In high school.

A man in Chile has been arrested for stealing a glacier (bit by bit).  It's not a joke, actually.

A TSA agent stole $5,000 in cash from a passenger's jacket; the TSA counters that they hold their personnel to very high standards.

An explanation that using higher-than-recommended-level octane gasoline in your car not only doesn't get you better mileage, it may actually worsen performance.

"Nightline" reports that new performer James Deen has led to a "deeply disturbing trend" of teenage girls watching online porn.

How many stars can you name (other than the sun)?  The link goes to a list of about a hundred of the brightest ones, and they all have names.

An Olympic competitor...

... or, TSA Employee of the Month?

(credit to Reddit)

This is why children should play outdoors

"Hand print on a large TSA plate from my 8 1/2 year old son after playing outside."

Prepared by Tasha Sturm and posted at Microbe World.  Exposure to bacteria and other microbes is an essential element in the development of a healthy human immune system.

Via Neatorama.