TSA's Obscene Security Procedures

It's been in the news the past few days that the TSA is adding a body scanner that basically shows the person without clothes. Airline passengers who don't want to be scanned in that way have to be groped. Kids aren't exempt from the scanning or the groping.

The level of paranoia was already ridiculous a few years ago - now it's beyond belief.

Doesn't the Department of Homeland Security know that there are hundreds of thousands of other targets that terrorists could attack?  Doesn't the DHS know that in other countries terrorists also blow up busses, night clubs, hotels, and government offices? Doesn't the DHS know that most Americans aren't out to get us? Doesn't the DHS know that states like California actually made it ILLEGAL for a landlord to demand verification of citizenship or legal alien status from tenants?

Real security experts agree that what the DHS is doing isn't really security, it's a facade of security. Someone coined the term "security theater" and I think that aptly describes what is going on. I don't feel any safer on an airplane now than I did the day after 9/11 or the day before 9/11.  So from now on I'm going to refer to the DHS as the DHS(Theater) or DHS(T).

Even if terrorists are plotting to hijack another airplane, I prefer to have armed guards on each flight than to be photographed nude or groped, since, of course, I'm not a terrorist.  

And by the way, those body scans ARE photographs. The image isn't "saved" or "printed" but it's still a photograph by definition. And since the person being photographed appears without clothes, they are nude photographs.

The terrorists are winning because, in a sort of blind collaboration with our own idiot politicians, they caused us to STAY in Afghanistan and to STAY in Iraq long past achieving our objectives in those places.  Because of the terrorists we created a Department of Homeland Security, even though we already have a Department of Defense, and we are allowing this new DHS(T) to actually terrorize Americans. A DHS(T) spokesperson is always saying "the threat is real" and so on. And we keep stripping off more clothes and getting groped in more places at airports.

I've been planning a family vacation to Hawaii in 2012 with my wife. When I heard about these new rules I talked to her and we agreed that instead of flying to Hawaii, we will take a cruise ship. We will drive 6 to 8 hours from our home to a port and then take a ship to Hawaii so we can avoid being violated at the airport. We will pay more for that vacation to avoid being violated at the airport.

And if we want to take another vacation to South America, or Europe, then we'll take a train to Canada or Mexico and then fly from there.

I think that a good defense should start with kicking out people we know aren't allowed to be here. Then it should continue with barring any rich Arabs from sending their kids here to college, and not sending any more aid to countries we know harbor our enemies.  Everyone should be aware of their surroundings and everyone should watch for suspicious individuals. Citizens should be allowed to carry weapons onto the airplanes with a special "airborne weapon license" that can be issued after some mandatory safety training and a fee. The more we know, and the more capable we are, the safer we are. When we abrogate our basic personal responsibility for our own safety, when we suspect everyone equally, when we allow the government to violate us so, we become sheep. When enough of us have become sheep it will be hard to convince the masses that we should go back to being people again.

We should REQUIRE landlords - anyone who leases or subleases a home - in every state to check the citizenship or legal immigrant status of their tenants. We should REQUIRE home sellers to check the citizenship or legal immigrant status of their buyers. And really that responsibility will fall on the licensed real estate agent, the bank loan officer, and the county clerk who records the transfer. Each one must check in case the others were taken out of the loop for some reason.  I know that even if we required that there would be a number of landlords or sellers/agents/bankers who don't check. But that will still make it easier for the INS to find the illegal residents.

We should REQUIRE law enforcement to immediately detain and deport any person who is proven to be here illegally.  We can offer a work program where anyone who wants to immigrate to the country can serve the country in some way - building roads and bridges, landscaping, or any other feasible job - while learning English and the American culture. After a certain amount of work, and after passing an English reading and conversation test, and after passing a written citizenship test, the immigrant would then be granted citizenship and could stay here freely.

We should REQUIRE all boys and girls of at least 18 years of age who have either finished high school or dropped out to serve the country in some way. Mix everyone up and give them different jobs so they meet other Americans from the rest of the country and they can work together and do something good as equals without segregation of any kind.

We should REQUIRE all high school students to be educated about government services available to them and about the importance of informed voting and where they can address their grievances and who they can turn to when they have problems.

We should REQUIRE transparency in all levels of government to eliminate corruption and rebuild trust with all Americans.

These steps would drastically reduce the chance that any American would become a terrorist. And that leaves only foreign terrorists as the ones to photograph nude and grope. And we can do away with the DHS(T), completely disband that organization, and let the Department of Defense perform its work of defending the constitution.

Intellectual Property Royalties of Researchers

Universities typically have a policy that assigns all rights to new invention to the university and provides a certain percentage of the university's royalties from licensing those patents to the inventors. Sometimes the policies also provide a percentage of the royalties to the department or the specific research lab where the research was done.

There have been a lot of disputes all over the nation for decades now about royalties due to university faculty and graduate students.  Sometimes an institution will try to retroactively change policies in order to retain more of its income for the current year by not paying out royalties that are due. Sometimes a dispute arises because the faculty or graduate student was hired for research and not invention so they try to patent and license the invention themselves and avoid sharing the royalties with the university. Sometimes the employee or graduate student moves on, finishing their research or invention elsewhere and not crediting the university at all for previous research they did while being on the university's payroll. Sometimes the university will decline to pursue a certain invention and only after the inventor makes it profitable with another business partner the university will sue the inventor for its share.

These disputes are common and, regardless of who is the cheater or the victim in each one, they cost the nation in lost productivity. Sometimes a researcher or inventor is told by an attorney to cease working on something while the case is being fought. Sometimes the university will deny access to the laboratory during the dispute. 

Universities are supposed to be centers of study and it's disturbing to think of them as places that sometimes try to cheat their own faculty or students or be cheated by their own faculty or students. 

The university as an institution is a special place that fosters synergy among people who are studying, teaching, and advancing the state of many arts and sciences. Because of this special nature, and because an academic life is so different from corporate life, I think that whether a person is employed by the university to do research, or grade papers, or clean bathrooms, any invention made by a person while participating in a university can be said to have been at least partially inspired by the environment. Universities try purposefully to recruit bright students and they entice them with rewards. Therefore, when those bright students come to universities and make innovations there, even though the students may be paying for the privilege of attending the university, those students still owe a part of their innovation to the university environment. 

I think a reasonable arrangement would be for the university to pay the inventor a share of no less than 10% of the gross royalty payments it receives for licenses of that inventor's work.  Some universities pay as much as 25%, and that's great if they can afford it. I think that if the invention is made after the inventor leaves the university but it is made in the inventor's field of research while at the university, it likely owes some of its existence to learning or research that happened while the inventor was employed by the university, and therefore the university deserves a portion of the royalties.  I think that the percentage due to the university should decrease with time to reflect additional work that the inventor is doing while employed by someone else and the fact that the university itself has more time to make something out of what was left behind using other researchers.

A schedule of royalties to the inventor that increases each year after leaving the university may be fair. For example, the inventor receives 10% while employed at the university, 15% the first year after leaving the university, 25% the second year after leaving, 40% the third year after leaving, 60% the fifth year after leaving, 85% the sixth year after leaving, and 100% the seventh or any subsequent year after leaving the university.  Those royalty amounts would be fixed amounts based on the year the the invention was licensed. So a patent obtained during a year when the inventor would receive 40% royalties would continue to pay 40% royalties to the inventor for the life of the patent. 

If the inventor leaves the university to join another university, the inventor should either obtain a release from the university for any further work in the inventor's field, or the two universities can share equally in the university's share of the royalties, or an accelerated schedule of splitting royalties between universities can apply only while the inventor is still at the second university.

I think that, if the university declines to pursue a patent for an invention, and the inventor made a reasonable effort to convince the university committee of the merits of of the invention and its profitability, then the university forfeits all rights to royalties from any resulting patents that are pursued with outside assistance or with the inventor's own funds. The refusal must be in writing and either disclaim the merits or the feasibility of the invention. Universities should have an obligation to either honestly pursue patents or issue complete refusal letters in a timely manner in order to avoid impeding national progress. 

My thoughts may be applicable to corporations, but I don't expect that corporate rules would be the same. Corporations can demand non-compete agreements from their employees that universities shouldn't demand. Corporations are about profit whereas universities are about learning. 

Fixing the Stolen Valor Act

The Stolen Valor Act was found to be unconstitutional because  it suppressed a mere personal expression.  In my opinion the First Amendment protects political speech, not unethical speech, so the Stolen Valor Act was ok with me. But anyway:

I read today that South Carolina state representative Chip Limehouse, from Charleston, introduced legislation in his state that would fine politicians who lie about their military records while campaigning in South Carolina. The first offense would cost them $10,000 and the fines would increase for each subsequent offense.

I think this is a good proposal. Politicians who lie about their service are essentially defrauding the public using false advertising to elect a candidate that may not have been elected otherwise. 

The proposal isn't perfect: politicians could still exaggerate their significance or accomplishments. However, I think it is a good first step. 

The next step should be to extend that proposal to include appointments as well.  Politicians will not be able to say, "well I was appointed not elected so I didn't mislead anyone" because their false statements may have mislead the officials who appointed them. So any person holding public office in the state is liable to pay the fine if they are found to have lied about their military service. 

I think this should be adopted and generalized as a federal law to punish lies about federal service of any kind, and that states should individually enact their own similar laws to punish lies about state and municipal service of any kind. 

With this fix, individuals not in public office who lie about their military service for whatever personal benefit can continue to do so as long as they don't run for or are appointed to a public office. At that time they would have to come clean or they would be liable under the fixed law to pay the fine if they are discovered. So free speech would be protected and the people would be protected.

School Bullies

We must not allow bullies in schools because they detract from the school's mission. 

Bullies are kids; kids have parents. Parents are responsible for their kids' behavior in school. 

Schools need to notify parents after each incident of their child bullying another child in order to give them an opportunity to correct the problem themselves. 

After each incident the school needs to escalate its involvement with the parents.  The first warning needs to include a tip sheet for teaching their kids not to bully other kids, as well as the consequences for the child and the parents if the child continues to bully other kids. By the way, the warning and related information needs to be communicated from the school directly to the parent by phone and registered mail, NOT sent via the child as a take-home note. 

The school's involvement with the parents should focus on educating the child and the parents on bullying and how to prevent it. This may involve discovering and solving any issues that are present in the child's home that foster or contribute to the bullying behavior. 

If educating and helping doesn't work, then punishments for the child and parents should start with effort or time-based punishments and then escalate to monetary fines and expulsion.  Effort and time-based punishments are fair across all economic backgrounds. They hit busy parents the hardest which is good because it will make those parents rethink how they spend their time, and hopefully lead them to invest their time in their children until the problem is solved.

Suspension should not be used because it provides a sort of vacation for the child which may actually be received as a reward, encouraging future bad behavior, and when a child is suspended too often he or she may fall behind academically and that pressure can also foster bad behavior. 

Consequences for subsequent incidents should include:

1. the child writing an essay about why it is wrong to bully

2. the parents writing an essay about what techniques they are using at home to teach the child not to bully others

3. the child attending counseling about his or her behavior for some minimum number of sessions

4. the parents attending a course on parenting specifically geared towards teaching their child not to bully

5. additional duties for the child at school, such as supervised cleaning or gardening

6. additional duties for the parents at school, such as road guard, cleaning, or gardening.

7. monetary fines for the parents - small enough to be affordable, large enough to get them motivated to spend time with their kids on modifying their behavior. The fines should be payable to the state, not the school.  The fines should increase with every subsequent incident. If the parents say they can't afford the fines, allow a payment plan. Any outstanding amount from any grade level starting at kindergarten must be reported to the state and the state should add it to the parent's next tax bill. This arrangement must be part of the enrollment contract.  

8. expel the child from school.  If the principal believes that no amount of fines will deter the bullying behavior, the best thing to do is to expel the child. The parents can then pay for private school or try home-schooling. If the child is expelled with fines outstanding, the state should add those fines to the parent's next tax bill. 

The point is that the state is providing free education for all children. In order to make it work, children need to behave appropriately at school. Teachers already do a lot to teach children how to behave at school but various factors at home can greatly affect their behavior. Parents are ultimately responsible for their children's education and behavior at school. If the child is causing a problem for other children at school, then parents need to fix it. If they don't, the problem needs to become their problem. It's not fair to the other children to suffer a bully. 

Separation of Church and State

We claim to separate church and state but we really don't.

Many parts of our state, beyond having their foundations in religious beliefs, have direct religious references. Our currency states "In God We Trust". Our state governments require citizens to get a marriage license. Our pledge of allegiance mentions God. The entire country operates around Christian holidays.

We did specifically forbid the government from promoting or favoring one religion over another, with the exception of the de-facto endorsement of Christianity, but that's more like a limitation rather than a separation.

If we wanted to construct a government that was truly separate from religion, how would we do it?

The main issue that comes to my mind is crime.  Governments create laws and people who break the laws must be punished. But is there a difference between committing a crime and breaking a law? Or between committing a crime and sinning? Is there such a thing as a victim-less crime? Are some acts crimes in one religion but not another? Is it fair for the government to pass laws that essentially echo the laws of a specific favored religion?

I think that because religions regulate behavior, it's not possible to construct a state that is completely separate from religion - the state needs to either adopt a specific religion (or atheism) and align its laws with it, or it needs to maintain a minimal set of laws to set a basic standard of behavior and then regulate the religions that can operate within this minimal framework.

Should religious institutions have the authority to punish their members for acts that violate the laws of their religion? What maximum punishment will the state allow?

What should happen if a member of one religion commits an act that hurts a member of another religion in some way, and the two religions have different positions on the act? What if the perpetrator's religion declares it allowed and the victim's religion declares it is not allowed? What if the opposite happens - the perpetrator's religion allows the action but the victim's religion forbids it? Should the state handle these cases or should there be a regulation on how they are handled and how disagreements will be resolved?

Don't Ask Don't Tell

If discussing sexuality is allowed in the military, will the government pay for gays & lesbians to have separate individual (not group) quarters and showers? Or will it, in the name of fairness and equality for all, completely abolish separate male & female quarters and showers?

Either way, it's completely unfair to force the military to deal with this issue when society at large still hasn't granted complete equality to gays & lesbians.

Congress must abolish the practice of marriage licenses and restore full authority over marriage to religious authorities.

Any two adults living together for at least a year and filing a joint return should get the same tax benefits from the IRS, and any adults filing a joint return and having custody of children should get the same benefits from the IRS.

The military must not be used as playground for social reformers. DADT allows the military to ignore the gay & lesbian issue until society resolves it, and DADT should stay in place until then.

Relativity of Simultaneity

So I read Relativity of Simultaneity on Wikipedia. The "train-and-platform" thought experiment is supposed to show how two events can appear to be simultaneous from one frame of reference while not appearing simultaneous in another.

Setup quote: "A popular picture for understanding this idea is provided by a thought experiment consisting of one observer midway inside a speeding traincar and another observer standing on a platform as the train moves past".

Observer on the train: "A flash of light is given off at the center of the traincar just as the two observers pass each other. The observer onboard the train sees the front and back of the traincar at fixed distances from the source of light and as such, according to this observer, the light will reach the front and back of the traincar at the same time."

BUT, I propose there's more to this observer-on-the-train scenario than was discussed. The observer can't actually know when the light hit the front and back of the traincar until the light reflects back from those surfaces and returns to the observer.  Therefore the observer's measurement of when the light reached the front of the car is the time it took the light to reach the front plus the time it took the light to return from the front to the observer.

Let the first observer in the traincar be oC and the second observer on the platform be oP.
Let rCF be the ray moving from the center of the traincar, the location of oC, to the front of the traincar.
Let rCB be the ray moving from the center of the traincar, the location of OC, to the rear of the traincar.

If the car is moving forward, then the front of the car is actually moving away from the light, and so the light rCF will take longer to reach the front of the car.  Let tF be the time required for the light to move a half-traincar-length in the same direction the traincar is moving. On the other hand, the light moving toward the back of the car rCB has less distance to travel because the back of the car is also moving toward the source of the light so it will get there faster.   Let tB be the time required for the light to move a half-traincar-length in the opposite direction the traincar is moving.

However, once the light moving forward rCF is reflected, it will have less distance to cover on the way back since the middle of the car is moving toward it,  and when the light originally moving toward the back rCB reflects it will then take longer to reach the middle because the middle will be moving away from it.

So the total time for the light moving toward the front to return to the observer is tF + tB,  while the total time for the light moving toward the back to return to the observer is tB + tF.  The total is the same.

The net effect is that the light moving forward and backward will appear to reach the ends of the traincar at the same time because the reflected light will reach the observer at the same time.

Now the observer on the platform: "The observer standing on the platform, on the other hand, sees the rear of the traincar moving (catching up) toward the point at which the flash was given off and the front of the traincar moving away from it. As the speed of light is finite and the same in all directions for all observers, the light headed for the back of the train will have less distance to cover than the light headed for the front. Thus, the flashes of light will strike the ends of the traincar at different times"

That's right, but that's not any different than the first half of the solution for the first observer.  Since the second observer is not moving with the train, the second half of the solution is different - the second observer will see light reflected from the back and from the front of the traincar toward him. The light reflected from the back will reach the observer first because it will have less distance to travel than the light that is reflected from the front of the traincar.

BUT, what isn't accounted for in the second observer's story is the fact that the in the second half of the solution, the light rays start at different distances from the observer.  This is because the light that moved from the center of the traincar toward the front actually moved more than one half traincar lengths forward before it reflected (let this be dF), and the light that moved from the center toward the back actually moved less than one half traincar lengths backward before it reflected (let this be dB).  So the rays of light are no longer the same distance away from the second observer when they reflect.

The ray reflecting from the back of the traincar will reach the second observer faster because it has less total distance to travel from its origin to the back of the car than the ray moving forward travels from the origin to the front of the car, and in addition because the car has been moving forward, the back of the car is moving closer to the second observer so that the ray moving toward the back has less distance to travel from its reflection point toward the second observer than the ray that moved toward the front does when it reflects.

So while the second observer perceives rCB first, he will also observe that the origination point of rCB is closer to him than the origination point of rCF, and if he calculates the time it took rCB and rCF to reach him from their origination points he will also note that rCB started moving toward him before rCF. And he will be correct, because if you recall from the first observer oC's story, rCB did actually reach the back of the traincar and reflected before rCF reached the front of the traincar and reflected.

In other words, the "simultaneous" nature of the two events reaching the second observer is a complete misconception. While the origin of the two rays at oC was simultaneous, their reflection times and locations sending them on their path toward the second observer oP were neither simultaneous nor equidistant from the second observer oP.

And let's consider a third story that wasn't mentioned on Wikipedia:  Let's assume that by some arrangement, the light originating at the center of the traincar the moment that oC and oP pass each other is equidistant from oC and oP.  This could be done if we acknowledge the traincar has width and we assume that the light source is on the platform side of the car while oC is standing in the center of the traincar length-wise but on the opposite side of the traincar, one traincar-width away from the light source, while oP is standing on the platform one traincar-width away from the light source as well.

In this third story, we consider the path of two additional rays of light:  rC traveling from the light source to the observer on the traincar oC, and rP traveling from the light source to the observer on the platform oP.  Obviously since the traincar is much longer than it is wide, rC will reach oC much faster than either reflected ray. And since light travels the same speed regardless of of the velocity of its source, rP will reach oP at the same time that rC will reach oC's original position, because oC's original position and oP are the same distance away from the light source.  Of course, because oC is moving forward with the traincar, it won't be at its original position when the light reaches it.  In fact, the ray of light rC that was headed from the light source to oC's original position will never reach oC, it will simply hit the side of the traincar behind oC.  Another ray of light, rC', headed at an angle somewhere between directly at oC and directly forward, is the one that will reach oC.  This ray of light rC' will travel a distance longer than one traincar-width to reach the forward-moving oC because it's moving along the hypotenuse of a triangle that has its right angle at oC's original position.  Because rC' travels a longer distance than rP, rC' will take longer to reach the first observer than rP will take to reach the second observer.

The origin of the light was simultaneous but the two observers will not observe the light at the same time because in fact it does not travel the same distance to them.  If they compare notes on the event they will be able to calculate the speed of the traincar by using their known starting locations and the times at which they observed the light rays rC' and rP.

This explanation works for any speed of the traincar from 0 m/s up to and including the speed of light.

At the speed of light, there are some interesting results: When the traincar moves at the speed of light then rF never reaches the front of the traincar and never reflects, and rC' also never reaches oC because they start at the same time from the same track position and they're both moving at the same speed c so rC' would end up missing oC, and oC will not see any beam of light at all from the source as long as he's moving at the speed of light.  Then again, as long as oC is moving at the speed of light, he won't be able to communicate with oP to compare notes on the timing of the light rays.  After oC slows down or stops, the light ray rC' will catch up with him and oC will have a time measurement to compare with oP. When they calculate the speed of the traincar, the result will be below the speed of light and this accounts for the moments in which oC was slowing or stopping from the speed of light to allow rC' to reach him.

My physics teacher in college convinced the entire class that time has somehow passed more slowly for the traveler, and this is the origin of science fiction tales in which a space traveler arrives at a distant future where the world has aged faster than he.  In reality, light takes longer to reach the traveler because it has to travel a much larger distance to reach him when he travels at nearly light speeds. Now, how might a traveler might cope with the fact that light doesn't even reach him from the other side of the traincar? I propose that the speed-of-light scenario isn't even possible, that only light can travel at the speed of light, and that if you want to travel at the speed of light, the universe won't let you be anything else but light.