Wednesday, January 02, 2008

Items of Interest

-- George Orwell must be spinning in his grave. The TSA has now implemented another of the practices that Orwell predicted. Are you ready for facecrimes?

Via webranding at dailykos

Transportation Security Administration (TSA) screeners are learning to recognize a special set of forbidden facial expressions. If your face slips into one of these during a TSA inspection, you will be taken aside and given a more detailed screening...

Let me quote from George Orwell's, Nineteen Eighty-Four (Part 1, Chapter 5):

He did not know how long she had been looking at him, but perhaps for as much as five minutes, and it was possible that his features had not been perfectly under control. It was terribly dangerous to let your thoughts wander when you were in any public place or within range of a telescreen. The smallest thing could give you away. A nervous tic, an unconscious look of anxiety, a habit of muttering to yourself—anything that carried with it the suggestion of abnormality, of having something to hide. In any case, to wear an improper expression on your face (to look incredulous when a victory was announced, for example) was itself a punishable offence. There was even a word for it in Newspeak: facecrime, it was called.

-- The Army's Other Crisis - TeacherKen has an excellent diary on "The Army's Other Crisis", a lengthy and worthwhile article published by the Washington Monthly, subtitled "Why the best and brightest young officers are leaving".

If you only have time for the short version, check out TeacherKen's diary. But it is worth it to read Andrew Tilghman's entire piece.

-- Have time for a chuckle? You can't go wrong watching Josh Marshall announce TPMtv's First Golden Duke Awards.

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