Smartphones Can't Be Searched Without Warrants, Except When They Are

I suppose I'm a Debbie Downer today, but the Supreme Court ruling yesterday giving privacy protections to smartphones and requiring warrants to search them ... seems just a little hollow and a whole lot of ironic.

Despite the ruling's support for privacy protections, there's a telling phrase in Justice Roberts majority opinion:

" These cases do not implicate the question of whether the collection or inspection of aggregated digital information amounts to a search under other circumstances."

Well. With reports that computer and mobile devices can be delivered with components which provide agencies access to every action, warrants may be moot. Then there's the commercial agencies which have provided spying tools worldwide:

"The new components target Android, iOS, Windows Mobile, and BlackBerry users and are part of Hacking Team’s larger suite of tools used for targeting desktop computers and laptops. But the iOS and Android modules provide cops and spooks with a robust menu of features to give them complete dominion over targeted phones.

They allow, for example, for covert collection of emails, text messages, call history and address books, and they can be used to log keystrokes and obtain search history data. They can take screenshots, record audio from the phones to monitor calls or ambient conversations, hijack the phone’s camera to snap pictures or piggyback on the phone’s GPS system to monitor the user’s location. The Android version can also enable the phone’s Wi-Fi function to siphon data from the phone wirelessly instead of using the cell network to transmit it. The latter would incur data charges and raise the phone owner’s suspicion."

The court seemed to indicate the larger issue of warrantless data collection will have to be taken up by Congress and policymakers rather than decided by lawsuits.

Still, the court's ruling is welcome - but enormous questions about privacy and security, for the individual and the nation, remain unanswered.

Congressional Folks Sway and Sort of Sing

With Congressional approval ratings hitting a low of 16%, the moment yesterday when House and Senate leaders held hands, swayed and sort of sang along to "We Shall Overcome" is quite bizarre.

The moment occurred during a ceremony commemorating the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Given the years of hostile refusals to work together, the song perhaps which might have been more akin to Congressional action is "We Shall Not Be Moved".

The First Baby-Boomer Horror Film Returns

"The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" was a raw, relentless assault on moviegoers in 1974. And it's still as grim and challenging today - forget those weak generic "remakes" of recent years. They are not worth ten seconds of your time. The original is being re-released in a new digital restoration in theaters this summer (slated for Nashville's Belcourt July 25 and seeing this one in a theater is an amazing experience, bested only by seeing it on a drive-in movie screen, the sounds of saws and screams echoing in mono sound across the parking lot.).

Here's the trailer for the re-release (maybe NSFW)

Writer John Bloom, aka Joe Bob Briggs, authored a terrific history of the making of the movie in this 2004 essay, go read it. Bloom keenly observes:

"Chainsaw was the first baby-boomer horror film, in which pampered but idealistic suburban children, distrustful of anyone over thirty, are terrorized by the deformed adult world that dwells on the grungy side of the railroad tracks. There had been other films that treated rural America as a place of seething, barely contained violence—notably Deliverance—but never one in which the distinction was so clearly made between an old America, of twisted, deranged adults, and a new America, of honest, right-thinking children."

And there's this:

"We had no prop man, so I found the props. We didn’t even have a chain saw. I found one. Of course, today I would know that if you’re making a movie with ‘chain saw’ in the title, you should have ten, not just one. But we had one. A McCollough. I had to take the teeth out of it so it wouldn’t hurt anyone. I remember we wrote a letter to McCollough, thinking they might want to invest in the movie. They never answered us.”

Bloom details the movie's connection to a wee baby Gwyneth Paltrow, director Sidney Lumet, and the resignation of President Nixon. Bloom of course is a horror/drive-in legend for his Joe Bob writings, and was even given a cameo in the 1986 sequel, the movie which also gave us Bill Mosely as Chop-Top and Dennis Hopper in all his bizarro glory as a Texas Ranger hunting down the cannibal family. But this sequel is more of a mash-up of Looney Tunes and Chainsaws.

The original is a take-no-prisoners descent into madness.

Director/writer Tobe Hooper did such a good job scaring the crap out of audiences and Hollywood, his career never really took off, despite his success with "Poltergeist". And oddly the formula he created for the independent (now mainstream) horror movie was copied and repeated to bring massive success to John Carpenter and Sam Raimi. But Hooper, the first to break thru so many barriers, was a casualty.

This Blog Under Attack

I've noticed that in the last few days, I've gotten thousands of hits on this page from China - thousands. Spam comments land constantly, so it isn't a bot, since any comment requires word verification. 

So that means actual persons are getting paid to visit and comment.

Today, I realized this all began about the same time our Governor went to China for "undisclosed business."

Coincidence? Maybe not.

Sen. Ramsey's Attack on the Supreme Court

Why is Lt. Gov. Ron Ramsey intent on taking out 3 members of the state's Supreme Court? Is it a political power grab?

The reasons appear quite murky and dubious, and the impact a high dollar political election campaign will have on the state's judiciary branch will likely diminish the role of our third branch of government. Slate offers a good perspective (hat tip to KnoxViews for the link):

"Three justices on the Tennessee Supreme Court are facing an election-year attack, not for any particular decision they have authored or even for any unpopular opinion they have espoused. No, in an ugly campaign in Tennessee that appears to be getting ever uglier, Senate Speaker Ron Ramsey, who is also the state’s lieutenant governor, is attempting to oust three state Supreme Court justices in their Aug. 7 retention elections, chiefly for the judicial outrage of having been appointed to the high court by a Democrat.

"When judicial races turn into spending races, what suffers most is not Democrats or Republicans, but judicial independence and integrity. As has been exhaustively chronicled by one nonpartisan study after another, judges don’t want to be dialing for dollars from the attorneys who litigate before them, and litigants don’t want to appear before judges who dial for dollars. All of the data shows that the effect is a decline in confidence in the independence of the judiciary and a spending arms race that spirals ever more out of control.

POSTSCRIPT: Whatever happened to the "laser focus" on jobs or education?

Where Are The Women?

I noticed an image of four film directors who have been the premiere filmmakers of the last few decades, Scorsese, Spielberg, Coppola and Lucas – which I liked for simply the way it looked and for the influence these fellows have had over movies. But the image prompted a friend to say that despite the radical changes these men made, they didn’t really provide much change for opportunities for women as filmmakers.

It’s a good point, to which she added that perhaps in decades to come we’ll see a collection of grey-haired ladies who have made movie history. I think it’s worth noting that an elite group of women have been crucial to the success of these fellows, though.

Scorsese has had one person, film editor ThelmaSchoonmaker, craft all his films into shape, from “Woodstock” to his current projects. His films have a total reliance on editing, providing the rhythms and structure that are seen as hallmarks to his work. Likewise, Spielberg’s first two film s, “Sugarland Express” and “Jaws” were edited by Verna Fields – let’s be honest, it’s the editing that makes “Jaws”.

But most consistently, he has relied on producer Kathleen Kennedy – from “E.T.” onwards, and she recently took the helm as the boss at Lucasfilm, and has control over all the upcoming “Star Wars” films as well. Kennedy’s work has garnered 120 Oscar nominations so far. Her credits are most impressive.

Yet, she is quoted on IMDB as saying:

“I don't think there's a great deal of discrimination -- although I'm completely perplexed and confused as to why there aren't more women. For instance, if we're looking for new, young directors, which is something we do all the time, we certainly never go look at films because they're directed by a man or a woman. We look at films because they are winning awards, they're good, and it has nothing to do with gender. And women certainly have equal opportunity to get into a university like UCLA or USC, to get into the film department, to take the same courses to allow them to make films, to deal with a whole gamut of subject matter, and yet I don't know what happens. There's something that happens in the process of getting there that seems to turn many women away.”

As for George Lucas – an interesting fact – his wife Marcia was integral to his earliest works, again as a film editor, for the “Star Wars” films, and on “Taxi Driver” with Scorsese. But, once the couple divorced in 1983, she left Hollywood and filmmaking. Scorsese’s wife Barbra Da Fina was also his producer from “Color of Money” to projects now underway – but they too divorced.

Coppola – well, that has brought us his daughter Sofia, a rising star director.

In truth, these four men did much (successfully or not) to mark the end of studio control and the rise of independent filmmakers, but they are certainly the Old Boys network leaders today. Fighting those powers, asserting control, all was a rather constant and often brutal struggle.

And let’s be honest too – when it comes to the forms of Western drama, women were just barely allowed onstage as late as the mid-late-1800s. That’s a huge hurdle to overcome. Oddly, back in the old Hollywood studio days, women were pretty much in charge of all film editing, as wage-workers mostly, since studio heads saw the job as rudimentary and lacking artistic merit.

Recently, film director Lexi Alexander has been writing about the lack of opportunities and challenges women face in today’s filmmaking world. She is tackling the problem head-on:

“Gender discrimination in Hollywood goes far beyond women simply not getting the gig. It is reflected in movie budgets, P&A budgets, the size of distribution deals (if a female director's movie is lucky enough to score one), official and unofficial internship or mentorship opportunities, union eligibility, etc.

“Women in Hollywood have no male allies. There are some who pretend to be on our side, but yeah, not really. They may say the right thing because, after all, they're liberals and that's a public image they'd like to keep up. Others may actually believe in gender equality, but are not willing to put up a fight for it that could sacrifice their own status or relationships.”

Here’s what I know for certain, no matter that much of the world can’t seem to grasp this idea: It’s a grave error to marginalize women, no matter what the field of endeavor. And changing this view is indeed a large obstacle.

Guns Yes, Cartwheels No and Donuts That Threaten Rainforests

Who knew?

Cartwheels at public meetings in Arizona - that is prohibited by law. One lone lady fights for her right to cartwheel.

Toting rifles into stores and restaurants, though, now that's protected speech and action.

A toy gun at school, brought by accident, reported to school officials by the boy who had it, that will get ya suspension.

And turns out that donut you just ate was made possible by deforestation.

Gov. Haslam Needs History Lessons

For some years I've been a fan of Betsy Phillip's writing, she's wicked smart and has a razor sharp style and calls out BS for what it is. I'm sure some readers get a little uncomfortable with her honesty and her views since she doesn't shrink away from tough issues. Her work at Pith In The Wind has been a must-read.

Example - her take-down of what she calls our "beloved rich-person governor", Bill Haslam. 

"He can't claim that things are worse now than it was 50 years ago, which anyone who's had a decent recent US history class would know is just laughable on its face, and expect that claim to have rhetorical weight AND to want more people to have the opportunity to have good educations. Governor Haslam, either you need a state full of people who don't know better to believe your campaign speeches or you can have an educated populace. But you can't have both."

Her post takes issue with this quote from The Gov:

"The Republican answer — I think, the smart answer — is to say we’re going to give everybody the opportunities that they deserve,” he said. “There’s some people who say ... we can just tax more people at the top end and that can help more people at the bottom end, (and) it’ll all work out.

"But we’ve been trying that for the past 50 years, with the Great Society and all of that. The problem has only actually gotten worse.”

That idea that Republicans are going to "give everybody the opportunities that they deserve" ... I don't think most folks see that as the role of government. Isn't it more "protect the opportunities" of state residents? And oh yes, 50 years have seen huge improvements in most every aspect of life for Tennesseans, not a spiral down into Doom and Gloom. Always defining lifestyles and politics as stuck in the landscape of Us vs Them circa 1960s is a losing and deceptive game for all.

Betsy's right - coming from a family worth a billion dollars, The Gov has a disconnect when it comes to income inequality - mostly because he just hasn't brought any wisdom to the issue. He's kept everything status quo, same as it ever was. Longtime party leaders are calling the shots and defining the state's policies. The Gov is just along for the ride and too often he sounds deeply misinformed.

10,000 Innocent Americans In Jail

"If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality." --- Desmond Tutu

Federal Judge Jed Rakoff has been crunching the numbers and says our judicial system is broken - plea deals may reduce the number of cases in courts but the reality is that thousands and thousands of innocent Americans are in jail. A recent interview with the Judge is here. Some excerpts:

"Nationwide, 97% of federal defendants plead guilty instead of taking their chances at trial.

How many innocent or partly innocently people are locked up on false plea agreements? Rakoff says estimates have ranged from 1% to 8% of the prison population. Even 0.5% would total more than 10,000 people, Rakoff said."

Judge Rakoff presented his perspective and how to improve the judicial system in a recent speech.

In a related note, writer Nell Bernstein warns the nation's juvvenile justice system is also broken, in her new book "Burning Down The House." After years of research and study, she says:

"One in three American schoolchildren will be arrested by the time they are twenty-three and many will spend time locked inside horrific detention centers that fly in the face of everything we know about how to rehabilitate young offenders. In a clear-eyed indictment of the juvenile justice system run amok, award-winning journalist Nell Bernstein shows that there is no right way to lock up a child. The very act of isolation denies delinquent children the thing that is most essential to their growth and rehabilitation: positive relationships with caring adults."

You Won't Believe What These 10 Bloggers Said!

And a fine Saturday morning to you, dear readers. Does it seem like I have not been writing? Sadly, this is true - I've not been writing and I fear I may be suffering from an affliction of age perhaps or of aging, which I shall try to explain. (NOTE: There is no list of what bloggers said in this post, I'm utilizing a click-bait post headline.)

News and information storms the world from every outlet, being shared and repeated and misreported and re-oriented, invented and re-invented, magical mathematical formulas hoovering up every nano-bit of content for global distribution and personal consumption - each keystroke and image commingling like turbo-charged teenage desires,captured and stored and re-visited and re-distributed .... the digitization of civilization means there is room on some remote server for your great aunt's collection of googley-eyed potato chips she's been "crafting" since all her kids grew up and left, just as every troll-fired insult, every secret, every wrinkle in Fame's fabric are all residing in numerical notations in vast continents and seas of data.

It sort of reminds me of the old-style tourist trap stores, where endless shelves of unspectacular crap are crowded with artifacts which no one really wants or needs - a mundane proof of life.

And yet here in this odd store, one could discover the works of poets and philosophers, of heads of state and victims of those same states, history, geography, science ... both real and unreal ... and then there are the commentaries of folks who have access to this tsunami of details. 

Outright lies, theories and fantasies endure among the eternal flow of what your child did or did not do, what you ate or did not eat, what you heard or saw or imagined you heard or saw, among the steady rain of outrages and screeds of the Offended. Petty cruelties live alongside endearing tales of pure goodness.

I've discovered that though I am (in digital terms) an old practitioner of online writing, I prefer to wait until I've found something worth saying, worth writing down for all or none to see and read.

The brittle and bitter and the superfluous all bellow for attention. My fingers poised above the keyboard - but what could I say? Some aspect or trend or idea strides across the digital landscape and I ponder what (if any) insight such items offer. The result is that I may decide not to add to the negativity swirling overhead, or to proffer some heartwarming tidbit, or simply to be satisfied that some other person has made note of the event.

And being somewhat non-young, I move and think slower than the hotshot young gunmen and gunwomen who stomp out into the streets for high noon showdowns. 

And so this post has an ambiguous ending -- did anything change? Was some realization made? You will have to return here to find out ... and I will be here.

High Schoolers Use 3-D Printer and Pythagoras to Solve Ketchup Mystery

Yeah, what goof off thing is this? It's a by-product of American education reform, STEM, which stands for Science, Technology, Engineering and Math. And two Missouri boys puzzled out why that first blotch of ketchup out of a container is always watery. Then they used a 3-D printer to fabricate a doo-hickey to prevent it from happening. That's Science!!!

All snark aside - consider this a crystal clear notice: all the good jobs in the next 30 years? STEM, people, STEM.

Now,  the story:


"The prompt was that they had to come up with something that was relevant to them. So we always start with the phrase, ‘it really bugs me when.’'"

"It is based on the pythagorean cup idea .."

So some teenagers using STEM methods and tech, use an idea from 500 BC. to solve a modern complaint. That sure sounds rather like Education.

Attention Knoxville - It's Your Fault

Dear Knoxville voters -

You really, really need to do better in choosing your representatives ... unless maybe you agree with Senator Stacey Campfield that signing up for health care is the same as participating in the Holocaust. The state's Republican Party says his comments are: " ... ignorant and repugnant."

Thank you,
 Ashamed Resident

Court Probes Smartphones, Crime and Privacy

The arguments Tuesday before the U.S. Supreme Court present very tough problems to resolve - should smartphones/cellphones/tablets always be searchable items by law enforcement with no warrant, or what, if any, restrictions, should be established.

The tech is way ahead of the law. And the court only has a few months to make a ruling - a ruling which I bet will get amended as laws and precedents start being created.

Via SCOTUSblog, some suggested reading:

Arguments:

"But, as the discussion went on, it seemed that there were two lines that would have to be drawn:  one, to define the kind of cellphone contents that were so private that they would be insulated from search; and, second, to define the limits of a search warrant so that the police stayed away from what was private.
The Justices seemed well aware that, even if they somehow were able to craft some Fourth Amendment limitations on searching cellphones, they still would have real difficulty in implementing those limits by telling a magistrate how to write a search warrant to guide the police.  “A warrant for what?” Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Antonin Scalia both asked. “What would police have to show [to get a warrant]?” Ginsburg added. 'Although there was a lot of talk about how to figure out what most cellphone users believed should be private among the contents on their devices, there did seem to be a rough consensus that they do believe that, to some hard-to-define degree."

Plain English:

"Going into the oral argument, both California and the federal government told the Court that, whenever police make an arrest, cellphones should be fair game for a search for all of the same reasons that police can search, for example, the arrestee’s wallet without a warrant.  But it’s hard to see five Justices voting in support of that rule, given the widespread skepticism that the argument met on the Court.  Justice Elena Kagan was one of the most vocal opponents of such a rule, telling California Solicitor General Edward DuMont that, following his logic, an arrest for a minor offense like driving without a seatbelt would allow police to look at every single e-mail on the arrestee’s phone, along with his bank records, medical data, calendar, and GPS data.  That, she suggested, “strikes me as a very different kind of world” from looking at someone’s billfold, given that “people carry their entire lives on cellphones.”  Justice Antonin Scalia later echoed this idea, calling it “absurd” that police should be able to search someone’s iPhone for that kind of minor offense.  Justice Anthony Kennedy, whom many often regard as a key vote on the Court, expressed concerns as well, telling Deputy U.S. Solicitor General Michael Dreeben (who argued on behalf of the federal government in both cases today) that “we are living in a new world,” in which someone arrested for a minor crime has her “whole life on [her] phone” and asking whether Dreeben could suggest some limits on the potentially broad sweep of the government’s rule.


'But even if California and the federal government seem unlikely to win outright, the chances that the Court will require police officers to get a warrant whenever they want to search an arrestee’s phone appear even slimmer.

Mr. Tiggles - The New Face of the NSA

We really don't  have much choice other than humor to challenge the status quo of constant surveillance. John Oliver interviews Keith Alexander of the NSA, and unveils the cuteification of secret data mining:

A Prime Selection of Long Reads

The "long read" nature of my writing style and my general slow, sometimes oh-so-slow, process could - to some readers- appear contrary to the popular binary wave patterns digital lifestyle blurring past us and around us. But hang in there kiddo, it's worth it.

So while I apologize for making you wait for a new post, I bring gifts, a prime selection of long reads - first up is an artist using photography and digital tech to create powerful images. Via Medium, their profile of Adam Maygur begins:

"Adam Maygar is a computer geek, a college dropout, a self-taught photographer, a high-tech Rube Goldberg, a world traveler, and a conceptual artist of growing global acclaim. But nobody had ever suggested that he might also be a terrorist until the morning that he descended into the Union Square subway station in New York.

At the time, Magyar was immersed in a long-running techno-art project called Stainless, creating high-resolution images of speeding subway trains and their passengers, using sophisticated software he created and hardware that he retrofitted himself. The scanning technique he developed—combining thousands of pixel-wide slices into a single image—allows him to catch passengers unawares as they hurtle through dark subway tunnels, fixing them in haunting images filled with detail no ordinary camera can capture."

Please oh reader, explore his images on Medium, as my humble but lovable blog cannot convey how fantastic Maygur's work is:

Maygur says at one point: These moments I capture are meaningless, there is no story in them, and if you can catch the core, the essence of being, you capture probably everything." A constant element in the my own writing/pondering about writing is about the nature of Art itself. By which I mean, what prompts the creation and execution? That leads us to an interview with Phillip Roth, the now-retired Phillip Roth, whose the hands down winner of, if not the long read, the long answer to press questions. And his mastery of language is impeccable. Below, Roth gives an assessment of America:

"Very little truthfulness anywhere, antagonism everywhere, so much calculated to disgust, the gigantic hypocrisies, no holding fierce passions at bay, the ordinary viciousness you can see just by pressing the remote, explosive weapons in the hands of creeps, the gloomy tabulation of unspeakable violent events, the unceasing despoliation of the biosphere for profit, surveillance overkill that will come back to haunt us, great concentrations of wealth financing the most undemocratic malevolence around, science illiterates still fighting the Scopes trial 89 years on, economic inequities the size of the Ritz, indebtedness on everyone’s tail, families not knowing how bad things can get, money being squeezed out of every last thing — that frenzy — and (by no means new) government hardly by the people through representative democracy but rather by the great financial interests, the old American plutocracy worse than ever. You have 300 million people on a continent 3,000 miles wide doing the best they can with their inexhaustible troubles. We are witnessing a new and benign admixture of races on a scale unknown since the malignancy of slavery. I could go on and on. It’s hard not to feel close to existence here. This is not some quiet little corner of the world."

I was deeply grateful to discover a 1999 essay om Stanley Kubrick's "Eyes Wide Shut" by Tim Kreider - grateful because it was a brilliant piece about why EWS is great and critics of the day so very wrong. Ignoring all of Kubrick's previous work is idiotic as he was likely the most thoughtful composer of film images ever to wield  a movie camera. I  too read the movie as a scathing critique of greed and corrupt depravity at the cusp of the 21st century, especially among the mega wealthy, and a critique of those who see themselves as above such lowdown behavior. At heart, their is a murder mystery in the movie and the resolution so typically Kubrickian - intriguing spaces for audiences to ponder on meanings and conclusions:

"The open-ended narrative forces us to ask ourselves what we’re really seeing; is Eyes Wide Shut a movie about marriage, sex, and jealousy, or about money, whores, and murder? Before you make up your own mind, consider this: has there ever been even one Stanley Kubrick film in which someone didn't get killed?"

Let's follow the questions about creating home to Tennessee, or at least the South. Located on the Tennessee River, the music recorded in the wee studios of Muscle Shoals are the very foundations of rock and roll and soul music. The 2013 documentary "Muscle Shoals" has been airing on PBS recently and its a solid 2 hours of artistic collaborations that made history,

Yes, I know, a movie is not a read. How about reading movies? Would that work? Actors in Hollywood have been staging live readings of movies, most recently the notorious script for Quentin Tarantino's western The Hateful Eight" - notorious because it got leaked online, which pissed him off so much he decided to not make the movie and sued Gawker for linking to the script. But actors are doing more scripts with all new casts:


"We started with The Breakfast Club," says Elvis Mitchell, the former New York Times critic who now curates film at LACMA. ... Imagine The Graduate without Dustin Hoffman or Anne Bancroft. Now imagine those roles being filled by Jay Baruchel and Sharon Stone (that was April's other live read),  all in a stripped-down environment with the actors sitting in a row at a table facing the crowd, with their character names on a card in front of them, like the US supreme court in session. The approach has produced some happy moments of inspired casting, such as Paul Rudd and Mindy Kaling in The Princess Bride, Seth Rogen as The Big Lebowski, The Usual Suspects with Dexter's Michael C Hall, and the pilot episode of Breaking Bad, which was vigorously rejigged with Rainn Wilson as Walter White and Mae Whitman an absolute riot as Jesse Pinkman (Bryan Cranston and Aaron Paul were among those cheering from the stalls). Other productions have included Ghostbusters, with Rogen, Jack Black and more Rainn Wilson, and a Boogie Nights do-over that was especially well received, with Taylor Lautner as Dirk Diggler and Don Johnson in Burt Reynolds' porn-impresario role."

The CIA, Howard Hughes, and the Secret Soviet Sub Salvage

Recent releases of once secret files reveal the details of a 6-year CIA effort to salvage a Soviet submarine dubbed Project Azorian. 

It's a heck of a story, and notable too for the formal non-answer reply to questions about policies and programs - "We can neither confirm or deny ..."

i09 has the story:

"Ultimately, the engineers opted for a plan that sounded like it was lifted from the plot of a James Bond film (actually, it did become the plot of a James Bond film). The plan involved three vessels: 1) An enormous recovery ship with an internal chamber and fitted with a bottom that could open and close. This ship would use a docking leg system that would, in effect, turn it into a stable platform for using a lifting pipe to raise and lower a 2)"capture vehicle" fitted with a grabbing mechanism that would be designed to align with the hull of the sub. The capture vehicle would be secretly assembled on a 3) massive barge with a retractable roof. The barge would be submersible, so that it could slip beneath the ocean, under the recovery ship, open its roof and deliver the capture vehicle — all the while remaining hidden from any potential reconnaissance."

Heartbleed: The Hack Catastrophe

The news that most websites were hit with a security hack made headlines this week, and there's a couple of layers of bad to report. Not only has the hack been running for years, repairs to patch the hole likely won't help.

I'll let the folks at MIT lay it out:

"A security bug uncovered this week affects an estimated two-thirds of websites and has Internet users scrambling to understand the problem and update their online passwords. But many systems vulnerable to the flaw are out of public view and are unlikely to get fixed.

"OpenSSL, in which the bug, known as Heartbleed, was found, is widely used in software that connects devices in homes, offices, and industrial settings to the Internet. The Heartbleed flaw could live on for years in devices like networking hardware, home automation systems, and even critical industrial-control systems, because they are infrequently updated.

"Cable boxes and home Internet routers are just two of the major classes of devices likely to be affected, says Lieberman. “ISPs now have millions of these devices with this bug in them,” he says."

And, like others, I have to wonder if this security hack originated in operations via national spying agencies. It surely appears the spies were using the bug.

Knox blogger Glenn Reynolds recently suggested 5 changes to privacy laws the nation should adopt. But it seems too little too late. 

If the MIT gang is right, protecting your info may be forever elusive. 

"Catastrophic" is the right word. On the scale of 1 to 10, this is an 11."

Memphis is Happy - Will The Rest of Tennessee Join In?

Outbreaks of Happiness have been reported all over the world, from Tokyo to London to Tahiti ..,

And recently it's hit Memphis - what about the rest of Tennessee?

Happy reported previously.

Tennessee Goes Goodfellas?

It surely does sound like a $300 million Goodfellas kind of move:

"Nice auto plant you got here, Volkswagen. Shame if anyone were to unionize it."

----

"But we also obtained emails that show that Senator Corker’s chief of staff was in direct contact with anti-union organizers who were brought in to fight the UAW. He then shared those emails with people in the Haslam administration who were in charge of the incentives."

Is Gov. Haslam the new Gov. Christie? Or are Haslam and Corker just a couple of Goodfellas?

The Movie You Are Too Scared To See

Ridley Scott and Cameron Diaz

More than once filmmaker Ridley Scott has defied Hollywood and audience expectations by bringing an unusual writer's work to the screen - Joseph Conrad ("The Duellists"), Phillip K. Dick ("Blade Runner") - and his film of writer Cormac McCarthy's first screenplay, "The Counselor", confounded critics and some audiences. But the film distills the grim and rare voice of McCarthy's take on crime, which isn't about car chases and wisecracking  buddy cops. It's a world with no heroes, no redemption.

McCarthy's story rolls out in the brutal world of drug trafficking, cartels and the barren borderlands. The cartels alone make the gangsters of American legend look like Boy Scouts. In this tale, a would-be drug deal goes bad and the cost is beyond horrifying. It's a predatory world, relentless and without morality.

It's daring, this descent into the darkness. It offers a femme fatale (Cameron Diaz) who devours everyone with pure ferocity. And perhaps it is much too honest - the viewer is without a safe haven, and most movies today just don't go there or close to there.

Scott had been trying to develop McCarthy's very dark Western novel, "Blood Meridian", into a film but Hollywood couldn't handle it - he says "It would have been rated double-X. It’s Hieronymus Bosch, the way McCarthy describes the first time you see several hundred horses with bones and feathers on them, and you can’t see a rider until you’re staring at the Comanche. It’s horrific. He writes in visual images which are spectacular, so it suits me down to the ground."

The truth, the reality of what's happening in the Southwest and Mexico as drug cartels slaughter their way to impossible wealth is hard to believe. And this film reveals what happens to a handful of people who venture into that wasteland. No romantic criminals here, no good guys rush in to save the day. 

"The Counselor" isn't a film for mainstream consumers - it's a complex and unflinching view of dark hearts in a sun-baked desert. It is one of the most haunting movies you'll ever see.

Double Secret Sex Probation

The first rule about sex education in state universities is - you can't talk about sex education in state universities.

Tennessee: Home of Lowest Wages

Sure seems debate about whether or not to increase the bottomed-out minimum wage takes place in a wacky fantasy world from a kooky Depression-era musical.

Tennessee now ranks in first place for the number of folks who earn the lowest wage possible - and some say raising that wage will bring on an Apocalypse. Truth is, more adults are on of this poverty train than teens, the wage buys less and less every day, and the state's economy won't grow because these workers have tiny buying power.

The fantasy makers won't tell you that historically, increases in the minimum wage grow an economy, rather than kill it. The denial song and dance routine we are given simply achieves one goal - workers are kept in poverty, income gaps grow, and economic growth only takes place at the very top.

Worried it might raise prices? Duh - have you bought anything in the last few months or years? Costs are always rising but wages are not. That's a doomed economy.

A Squeak Within The Roar

I toil with words and language, it's what I do. I write, I read, I arrange and rearrange the words looking for the combination which says "It" -- and "It" is always changing.

I'm often working to direct a play too, blending another writer's words with actors and other designers and artists in hopes of crafting a language of verbal and visual which an audience will enjoy on (hopefully) more than one level.

It's madness, really. The world around me provides fairly perplexed responses to such work. And it's work that's never really finished, I rewrite and refine always.

I've learned that being consumed with those constant word shufflings is fortunate in some ways - for instance, I've known since childhood the work I want to do. What drives me is not the approval of others, it's to connect clearly with those who read or listen, to share an experience.

But it is a kind of madness.

Currently, I'm working to direct 4 one-act plays for the Morristown Theatre Guild, and I am also acting in one of them, a play called "Universal Language" by David Ives. The plot of the tale is that I am attempting to con people into paying for learning a language which is total gibberish. My lines include such oddities as "gavotte kennedy doopferyu?" ... which roughly translates as "what can I do for you?"

The sounds and the intents of the words carry the meaning. And it's one of the toughest scripts I've ever tackled, and I often wonder if my brain is too rigid and old to accommodate such nonsense.

Like most folks, my brain is adjusting to text-speak and online language, which takes shortcuts and constantly creates new rules. The small notebook I always carry with me to jot down ideas and thoughts with pencil and paper seems deeply outdated. I carry a teeny computer device with me to also jot down ideas and search the worldwide web.

Madness.

Language and signs and symbols rise and converge and change and these threads of letters and words and ideas (hopefully) make some sensible cloth.

This blog and this post will likely make only a very small sound in the world of today and tomorrow. A squeak amid a cacophony. No matter. I'm stuck with who I am.

"Gavotte kennedy doopferyu?"

Four One-Act Plays In One Show

Once again I've been working with the Morristown Theatre Guild, directing this One-Act Showcase which opens next Friday.

The Guild is celebrating their 80th year with the start of this season - that makes them one of oldest businesses in East Tennessee plus the oldest community theatre in the state too.

The award winning shows in the Showcase include 3 one-acts from the collection "All In The Timing" by David Ives and a fourth one act, "Black Comedy" by Peter Shaffer.

Ives' plays include "Sure Thing", offering a young couple trying to make sure their first meeting gets off to a great start - no matter how many times they have to repeat and repeat what they say to each other; "Words, Words, Words" enacts the old saying that monkeys trapped in a room with typewriters will write a Shakespeare play - or can they?; and "Universal Language" takes audiences on a roller coaster ride when a woman tries to learn a new language that sounds like pure nonsense.

A final one act for the night is the award-winning comedy "Black Comedy" by Peter Shaffer (Amadeus, Sleuth). It's the story of what happens at a dinner party held during a power outage - the audience can clearly see the chaos, confused identities, and constant calamities taking place as the characters behave like they are in a darkened apartment in this wild physical comedy show. The story is set in NYC in 1965.

The four one-acts also focus on the very language of theatre itself and how time and place shape a story. An ensemble cast from age 17 to 60 tackle multiple roles and have made a very funny show.

Performances are March 14 -23 at First Presbyterian Church in Morristown and you can order tickets at 423-586-9260 and tickets will also be available at the door - show times are 8 pm on Friday and Saturdays, 2 pm on Sundays.

Two Kinds of Happy

There's a line in the movie "Tender Mercies" when Robert Duvall's character says "I don't trust happiness." It's a line which resonates often too well.

I don't know what to make of Happy. It throws me off. I surely like and aim for Happy, but it slips away. One must hold it lightly I suppose, and one must share it in order to make more of it.

It's tricky.

A few mega-tons of bad news, bad ideas and the actions of bad people can overwhelm Happy. Such badness might seem to beat Happy out of every soul. While pondering a response to all the negativity, I've decided to just whip up a bit of Happy to share today. Two kinds, in fact.

Both kinds are songs, new and not so new. First up, Happy as offered by Pharreli Williams and then a shot of Happy from the Rolling Stones. Happy is a challenge for me, but I keep trying. Here's to some Happy for you.

Counterfeit Meds in America

While outrage over antibiotics in chicken or beef grab headlines, critical questions about antibiotics and other meds taken by us human folk here in America point to an even more grim reality.

2004 saw the closure of the last American plant making such vital medicine. Fearing FDA oversight, companies fled overseas, so that today most antibiotics and key ingredients in other medicines are made in India and China - not a bad thing in itself, but now we find the meds you take may be fake at best, deadly at worst.

In truth many big pharma makers in India do a fine job. We know little about China since they won't let FDA folks examine their facilities.

Recent reports ( here and here) highlight deeply troubling trends:

-- The World Health Organization estimated that one in five drugs made in India are fakes. A 2010 survey of New Delhi pharmacies found that 12 percent of sampled drugs were spurious.

-- One widely used antibiotic was found to contain no active ingredient after being randomly tested in a government lab. The test was kept secret for nearly a year while 100,000 useless pills continued to be dispensed.

More tests of hospital medicines found dozens more that were substandard, including a crucial intravenous antibiotic used in sick infants.

-- India’s pharmaceutical industry supplies 40 percent of over-the-counter and generic prescription drugs consumed in the United States.

-- One federal database lists nearly 3,000 overseas drug plants that export to the United States; the other lists 6,800 plants. Nobody knows which is right.

Drug labels often claim that the pills are manufactured in the United States, but the listed plants are often the sites where foreign-made drug powders are pounded into pills and packaged.

-- Imports rule in America as we receive  80 percent of the seafood consumed in the United States, 50 percent of the fresh fruit, 20 percent of the vegetables and the vast majority of drugs, all originate overseas.