Some days being the obituary clerk really sucks

About a month ago I went to my every-two-months hair appointment. While there, Val my stylist told me all about the new woman she hired. Her name is Heather and Heather is everything my stylist could ask for...hard-working, proficient, stable, knows how to present herself in a professional manner...I thought she'd be a great person to have on staff.

Today I got a file full of obits to put in the system. Heather died in a car wreck on July 2.

I called Val. She is taking this hard.

Pa. waxing salon fires employee for refusing Brazilian waxing

Anyone here ever land a 747 at SFO?

We know the Asiana captain who crashed a 777 at SFO had landed the 747 at SFO successfully on numerous occasions. This means he knows what the sight picture out the windshield of a 747 should be.

If you were to position a 777 for a landing at SFO on the runway in question so that the sight picture out the windshield matched that of a 747, would you knock the tail off?

The most fucked-up name for a gun shop in human history

Reffett's Downtown Loan Company is a pawn shop in Moses Lake, Wash. Pawn shops usually sell guns, and this one is no exception. This one sells ammo, they're building an indoor gun range...they're doing well.

Unfortunately, this is their logo...

I have gone through the Snowden slides about as well as anyone could...

I conclude that everyone screaming about "illegal spying" is totally wrong.

Truly understanding what they're doing demands that you know a little about communications. Every electrical communication ever made has two elements. Signals intelligence personnel, or SIGINTers, call them "externals" and "internals."

Externals are things surrounding the communication. If it was a call by radio, the frequency, direction from you to the emitter (or emitters, in the case of a two-way radio link) and time of transmission would be among the externals. For phone calls, the phone numbers at either end, time of the call and the route the call took.

Internals are the contents of the call.

The NSA program looks at the externals of every telephone call that goes through communications circuits in the United States. It takes phone company logs and feeds them into a computer, which compares each phone call against a list of, IIRC, five hundred phone numbers from around the world that are known to belong to terrorists or people who actively aid and abet them. If someone was talking to one of those five hundred numbers, data about the call is presented to an analyst for further action. If a call was not to one of those numbers, the system just moves to the next one.

At this point you need to read United States Signals Intelligence Directive 18, which is at http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB23/07-01.htm. Turn to numbered page 7 (which is quite a ways in), and look at 5.4.

5.4. Nonforeign Communications
a. Communications between persons in the United States. Private radio communications solely between persons in the United States inadvertently intercepted during the collection of foreign communications will be promptly destroyed unless the Attorney General determines that the contents indicate a threat of death or serious bodily harm to any person.
b. Communications between U.S. persons. Communications solely between U.S. persons will be treated as follows:
1) Communications solely between U.S. persons inadvertently intercepted during the collection of foreign communications will be destroyed upon recognition, if technically possible, except as provided in paragraph 5.4d below.
2) Notwithstanding the preceding provision, cryptologic data (e.g., signal and encipherment information) and technical communications data (e.g. circuit usage) may be extracted and retained from those communications if necessary to:
a) establish or maintain intercept, or
b) minimize unwanted intercept, or
c) support cryptologic information related to foreign communications.
c. Communications involving an officer or employee of the U.S. government. Communications to or from...will not be intentionally intercepted... (this one I'm shortening up quite a bit because it's not of interest to us at this time, and if you really want to read it, it's there at the link I gave above.)
d. Exceptions. Notwithstanding the provisions of paragraphs 5.4.b and c, the DIRNSA/CHCSS (director of NSA/chief of Central Security Service) may waive the destruction requirement for international communications containing, inter alia, the following types of information:
1) significant foreign intelligence, or
2) evidence of a crime or threat of death or serious bodily harm to any person, or
3) anomalies that reveal a potential vulnerability to U.S. communications security. Communications for which the Attorney General or DIRNSA/CHCSS's waiver is sought should be forwarded to NSA/CSS, Attn: P02.

Processing and retaining all the phone-log data is very clearly within the powers granted by this section - specifically, retention to support cryptologic information related to foreign communications. And this USSID has been crawled through, repeatedly, by Justice Departments of both Republican and Democratic administrations, to ensure that it protects the Fourth Amendment rights of Americans.

You might point to the huge Agency data center being built in Utah. Before you start going "woo, woo, that huge building means they're recording all our phone calls," look at the size of the task before them. This isn't East Germany or socialist Poland, where you couldn't get a phone until someone in town who had one died because the frame at the dial central office was full four dictators ago. This is America, where five minutes and twenty bucks will put a prepaid cell in your pocket - and of that five minutes, four of them are spent opening the clamshell it came in. Americans make roughly three billion phone calls per day - ten calls per every man, woman and child who claims U.S. citizenship. Because the US has the communications backbone that it does, at least that many calls that neither originate nor terminate at a phone in the US pass through our network...so let's do this easy and say five billion calls per day are found on our wires. Each phone call has at least two phone numbers associated with it. If you do the math, you will find that the Agency must make 58 million comparisons between their terrorist database and the phone logs...every second. That doesn't count going back through the logs if they accidentally manage to find one to determine all the other people he called today. That's the simplest, quickiest sweep they can possibly do, and they have to do it 3600 times per hour, and 24 hours of the day. (Per day? Over 5 quadrillion comparisons are made.) Dude, you ain't gonna do five quadrillion anything on a laptop.

Snowden? I don't know. Maybe (probably? He's had jobs he had to bullshit his way into, and lying on a government employment application will get you a room next to Bernie Madoff) blackmail, possibly money - embarrassing the US this bad has to be worth large stacks of nonsequential twenties to someone - or, possibly, he could have always dreamed of just fucking the government worse than they've ever been fucked before. Greenwald is just a prat.

I better look at Mr. Clapper and his "the government isn't collecting on Americans." You must never, ever, ask a government official a question that has a narrowly-defined answer if you don't want the answer you're going to get. In the weird language SIGINTers speak, "collection" requires recording internals and retaining the recordings. (Think of the Monica Lewinsky thing, when the repukes were going apeshit over Clinton saying he hadn't had "sexual relations" with her. Turns out "sexual relations" requires acts be performed that Clinton didn't perform.) This isn't happening, at least not in the program detailed in those slides.

I'm waiting for travel restrictions on pregnant women

You know it's coming to a red state near you: first, pregnant women will not be allowed to seek abortion services across state lines; next, pregnant women will not be allowed to cross into a state that allows abortion services if there is a "reasonable chance" women will use those services; and finally, pregnant women will not be allowed to enter states that allow abortion services.

I wonder if the far right, who claims to love freedom, realizes how close what they are doing is to Ceaucescu's Decree 770.

As long as we're banning things that could cause pain...

The right-wing extremists that want to ban abortion claim the fetus feels pain during the procedure. They perform abortions under anesthesia and the theory that the fetus can feel pain is not proven, but that's what they say.

The theory that gunshot victims feel pain...well, that's not a theory. It hurts to get shot, and that is a known fact. Therefore, if we Must Ban Abortion Now because of a fringe theory that fetuses feel pain, we Must Ban Guns Now because of the established fact that getting shot hurts like hell.

Kraft Dinner question

Must it be made by Kraft to be called Kraft Dinner?

How not to supplement your VA disability benefits

According to a newspaper on which the ink's still wet, one Dane Lou Schumacher, a disabled veteran, of Bonner County, Idaho, was busted in 2012 after the cops raided his shop building and discovered more than 60 marihuana plants "in various stages of development" and nine pounds of salable marihuana.

He confessed to selling this to supplement his Veterans Administration benefits.

He was sentenced on Monday to suspended two-to-five-year concurrent prison terms, three years' probation, $500 restitution and 200 hours of community service. If he completes all the conditions of his sentence, his record will be expunged in four years.

Let's change up Ida's fun game a little

Some rich benefactor has promised to pay all your living expenses and bills, give you $100 per week stipend for incidentals, and give your boss money so you can work all the overtime you want.(Don't get stupid and say you'll work twelve hours a day with no days off. I've done it and it will ruin you quick.) In exchange, you agree to have all the money you earn for a period of one year into an interest-bearing account. On July 1, 2014, you can start using the money.

If you had a year's salary to do what you wanted, what would you do?