I think this photo of Manarola, one of the five cillages of Cinque Terre, taken by stellarviewer, is very striking because of the dark clouds in the sky. What’s even more interesting is that the photo was composed using five different images, which may be why we get such an intense sky.
Have your own great travel shot you think would make for a great Photo of the Day? Submit it to the Gadling Flickr pool for consideration.
A program the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) began in 2006 that attempts to catch terrorists and other criminals by their suspicious behavior has been wrong over 99% of the time, according to the TSA’s own numbers.
The program, which trains TSA screeners to detect suspicious or odd behavior in passengers, has resulted in 160,000 stops of passengers, including pat-downs and in-depth questioning. Yet only 1,266 arrests were made out of those 160,000 stops, mostly for drug possession and carrying fake identification.
Unsurprisingly, many are critical of the “behavior detection” program, including Carnegie Mellon professor Stephen Fienberg, who calls the program “a sham,” and says, “We have no evidence it works.” Other scientists say that while objective observers may be able to detect nervous behavior, there’s no way to tell whether it’s because they’re planning a terrorist attack or traveling to have an extramarital affair.
TSA spokesperson Ellen Howe puts a more positive spin on the numbers, however. She says the program has been “incredibly effective” at catching criminals.
Indeed. Saying the program is “wrong 99% of the time” sounds so negative. Why not say it has a success rate of almost 1%?
Via Boing Boing [HT: The invaluable Agitator]
Where I’m sitting winter has arrived. Snow flurries and windchill. Brrrr. Now that winter looks like it’s settling in, let’s see if anyone has come up with places to that are warmer.
In case you’ve been time traveling and are confused, utility companies in Adelaide, Australia do not accept drawings of spiders as payment for utility bills. Read the article here.
I’m disappointed, of course, that artwork is still not accepted as currency. Just imagine the kind of economy we could build:
If someone rich was owed money by someone poor, the poor person could just draw a picture, and the rich person could hang it on their wall. Or, if a poor person wanted food, they could just draw a picture of the food they wanted and then leave the drawing on the shelf at the grocery store, confidently striding out the door with the item. But then, of course, rich people would want to pay for things with artwork, too, so eventually someone would have to judge how much each work of art is worth. Thusly, this new economy, which for just a moment teetered on the edge of communism, would become a dictatorship – unless, of course, there were some kind of international online community where everyone in the world could vote and value each piece of new art democratically. A new world economy would be born. What? It’s better than the one we have right now. . .
I think maybe David Thorne traveled to the future.
A Japanese man named Hiroshi Nohara has decided to take full advantage of his tourist’s visa in Mexico City and has moved into the airport. He’s been living there for two months, and the initial avoidance from the locals has recently turned into a curiosity.
Nohara, who can’t explain why he decided to live in the city airport, has been getting by on free donations from local fast food stands and kind visitors. Apparently he was gaining so much notiriety with the local media that he’s even being sponsored by a few of the stands who give him free hats and shirts to wear. Now, as a tourist attraction in and of himself, people stop by the airport just to take their picture with him.
Meanwhile, Mexican officials can’t do anything to remove him from the airport as it’s a 24/7 facility and technically he’s there legally. His tourist visa runs up in March.
Until then, make sure you stop by on your connection to Acapulco and get your photo taken with Mr. Nohara. It’s a limited edition engagement so your photo will be worth millions on Ebay someday.