Frayed Ends of Sanity

As usual, James Hetfield says it better than I could.

Turn Off The Blue Light

Rob Neyer on the Red Sox, a.k.a The Known Universe's Most Important Sports Team, failing to resign Victor Martinez, the ubiquitous V Mart who made this season so entertaining, at least if you were a Tampa Bay Rays baserunner. 4 Years and $50 million dollars, Detroit? For a catcher who can't, uh, catch? As the mighty Spongebob Squarepants once put it, good luck with that.

Something I Could Not Care Less About

..is airport security. Esquire has an excellent post up about the kerfluffle about the full body scanners and the attendant fuss they are creating. As I understand it, if you refuse the full body scan, which apparently makes you look like a naked ghost, you are forced into a full body pat down. All this has brought about all sorts of agita, including videos like that one.

Now, I don't care. I can't even afford to fly a paper plane. And, as the Podfather himself Adam Curry puts it, this is all security theater. It's not preventing anything. From the final paragraph of Esquire's take, about true security- genuine, boots on the ground, knocking on doors law enforcement style security:

"This is how genuine security is created in a free society: through investigation, through self-interest, through civic-mindedness, through individual awareness, and through respect for liberty and the common desire for it. We want as a people to be safe — to live in peace in order that we may pursue our happiness. We work to make it so. It wasn't the TSA that caught the shoe bomber or the underwear bomber. It was us, the passengers. How pathetic that those in charge of our security ignore all that in favor of the alternative: total control."