Cory Doctorow is an entertaining speaker and is one of the few orators that can express coherently the issues of privacy and personal freedom in our increasingly digital times. Below is a recent talk he gave in which he says:

As a member of the Walkman generation, I have made peace with the fact that I will require a hearing aid long before I die, and of course, it won’t be a hearing aid, it will be a computer I put in my body,” Doctorow explains, “So when I get into a car – a computer I put my body into – with my hearing aid – a computer I put inside my body – I want to know that these technologies are not designed to keep secrets from me, and to prevent me from terminating processes on them that work against my interests.

Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn has released his new oversight report, “Wastebook 2011” that highlights over $6.5 billion in taxpayer dollars going to projects that are unnecessary, duplicative and low-priority.

This has been called “A Fun Look at Government Spending”. I’m not sure I had any fun skimming the 98 page document full of examples of how wasteful and inappropriate big brother is.

Here is an example from the report.

Creating a Smart Phone App for Picking Tennessee Farmers – (TN)  $181,966

Yes, there‘s an app for that, too. The Tennessee Department of Agriculture received $181,966 in taxpayer dollars to create an app for

 smart phones and tablets to help connect consumers with specialty crop producers.347 The marketing campaign is designed to help further its Pick Tennessee Products campaign and to help consumers find farmers through the online specialty crop directory. Pick Tennessee Products is a program aimed squarely at Tennessee residents in the hopes they will shop locally at Tennessee farms. The program‘s website, which can already be accessed by any smart phone, allows an individual to browse the program‘s listings and even order products online. Those so interested can also find the program on Facebook and Twitter @PickTnProducts), which provide access to social networks free of charge. In addition, the program allows anyone to aim their smart phone at ―quick response (QR) codes, which when instantly launches the program website on the phone. According to one report,  Once the code has done its job, shoppers can instantly access all the local farm-direct ingredients, artisan foods, gift baskets, and even Christmas trees listed at www.picktnproducts.org. While having even more avenues to access the program‘s website may be useful, it is hardly a pressing need. The app is intended to even further increase awareness about the variety of Tennessee agricultural products. Supporters hope that in the ―first six months of the App being used, it will be downloaded 10,000 times and 30,000 times within the first year.‖

The U.S. House of Representatives has the following to say about the TSA:

Since its inception, TSA has hired over 137,000 employees, grown into a mammoth bureaucracy
of 65,000 employees, spent almost $57 billion, yet has failed to detect any major terrorist threat
since 9/11, including the Shoe Bomber, the Underwear Bomber, the Times Square Bomber, and
the Toner Cartridge Bomb Plot. Congress created TSA to be a lean organization that would
analyze intelligence and set risk-based security standards for the U.S. transportation system.
Today, TSA suffers from bureaucratic morass and mismanagement. The agency needs to
properly refocus its resources on assessing threats and intelligence, instituting appropriate
regulations, and auditing and adjusting security performance. TSA cannot do this effectively as
a massive human resources agency.

Today, TSA‘s screening policies are based in theatrics. They are typical, bureaucratic responses to failed security policies meant to assuage the concerns of the traveling public.

The full report can be had HERE.

The report is great for those who did not already know its findings, so their education is important. However, I hope people will understand that the TSA is not a “safety” endeavor at its core. It is a planed desensitization of the people to an ongoing and increasing attempt at the removal of our rights. Don’t be fooled by the reports ulterior motive to distract you from the true cause of the TSA.

This is an excellent example of how powerful metadata can be easily parsed from the interwebs. It’s also really cool. Kudos to Eric Fischer and Mike McCandless for doing the work and to Google for making the CLD OSS.

Here are a few pictures and a video of the storm this October. It was the heavy wet snow that did the damage. We were without electricity, heat and water for 6 days. That’s unusual for our area of the country. We made do with the kerosene lamps and flashlights and used melted snow to flush the commodes.