I don't know, but . . .

by Patrick van Horne and Jason A Riley

How can you predict dangerous situations before they go bang? This book was highly recommended by several folks. The first chapter annoyed me--you don't have to give a sales pitch when you've already sold the book.

Bottom line: They provide some categories and things to watch for, but the only way to apply them is to spend time watching the people around you in order to get a baseline to work from. My neighborhood isn't yours--there are about 5 languages within half a suburban block. It would be quite different just across the highway in the apartment complex, and neither resembles Afghanistan.

Once you have trained yourself to see things, and know what to expect, you can spot the anomalies.

I had our kids read The Gift of Fear by Gavin de Becker. I don't know if it helped.

Update: I forgot to mention--the authors say 10 years to become expert, based on Gladwell's 10,000 hour rule. I assume that means a) less than ten years and b) native talent can make it even faster.

by TL CR The author is British, and the book badly needed proofreading, but on the whole the advice is sensible, and explains why some things are important. I think it would be better paired with the book in the next post.

A largish proportion of the complications in data archiving and retrieval had to do with authentication and privileges (those are not the same animal). I was a little surprised at the bank yesterday.

I'll omit identifiers.

I've been the treasurer of an association for a few years, largely because I was willing to take the not-very-onerous job. A new and more experienced volunteer appeared, and the minutes of the meeting approving a new treasurer were finished. So the old and new treasurer trooped down to the bank.

The bank's small business rep was new to me and I to the rep, but the rep took me at face value, and the minutes at face value. The rep wanted the ID of the new treasurer, but seemed quite content to remove one of the signatories on an account without reference to either my ID or my signature, and add a new signatory without authenticating the minutes.

I pulled out my drivers license anyway, part way through the exercise, to show that I was the person registered in the account and referenced in the minutes. I hope it was a learning experience.

Maybe my honest face was good enough.

Althouse noted that RFKJr complained that the JFK assassination records haven't been released. Biden decided to maintain secrecy, as did Trump before him. "National security"

Naturally, most comments speculate about embarrassment to people who want to hide our government's stupidity or culpability. One sympathizes; the government seems to generate surpluses of those.

“When everyone is dead the Great Game is finished. Not before."

60 years is quite a while. I assume all the most deeply involved players, known and unknown, are either dead or far into at least their 80's and not active movers and shakers any longer. I'd think that close enough for Kipling's rule to apply.

Given that very different presidents were persuaded that there actually were national security interests at stake in revealing all the evidence and ways it was acquired, let's pretend that's true. What sort of reasons could there be?

One obvious reason isn't quite so critical now that the Soviet Union is no more, and since 9/11 told of one limit. Suppose Oswald was closely enough directed from Moscow to lead people to believe this was ordered by the Kremlin. We obviously didn't go to war over that, but we don't want the discussions about that to become public (or even be discussed much)--how much can an enemy get away with before we go big?

Others pointed out that individual spies of the time are no doubt dead, but the channels they used may still exist. It seems unlikely, given the number of moles we've heard about, but weirder things have happened.

Or perhaps it is very simple: the default of generations advisors has been "We might use that method again someday, so keep it secret".

If the interlocks are broken, it does not matter whether someone has been monitoring who went in and out of the radiation area. When it is time to button up and turn on the beam, a search team goes in to make sure nobody was left behind. (And sometimes the safety officer hides a dummy in the experimental hall, to keep the search team on their toes.)

If the package seal is broken on the gauze pads, the burden of proof that the contents are safe is on the person providing the material. The surgeon needs a clear chain of possession and observation with trusted agents.

The default assumptions change when security is broken. If a cracker gets into your computer system, you assume that he has everyone’s password, and left nasty files behind. I can assure you that getting that cleaned up is a lot of work.

If ballots turn up outside of the regular procedures designed to prevent fraud, or are brought in from outside those procedures, the default assumption is that they have been tampered with. The burden of proof is on the election commissioner to prove that they are not. If she fails to provide clear chain of possession and observation by the required neutral observers, the votes are tainted. If the ballots are not collected and processed in the prescribed way by the prescribed deadline, the votes are tainted.

You cannot readily estimate the effect of tampering, and all votes are questionable. You can’t just scale the numbers and say "Instead of 150 votes for the Whigs and 50 for the Tories we’ll count 75 for the Whigs and 25 for the Tories," because tampering is intended to change the balance. On the other hand, this is not adequate to prove that the vote was tampered with, so absent incriminating evidence nobody is going to go to prison.

Holding new elections in Broward for the local elections seems like a no-brainer. The state-wide elections are another matter—the partisans know how many votes they need to arrange for, and will carefully make sure they have them. It may be that a new state-wide election is needed.

I have been dubious of early voting--when you hold ballots for that long guaranteeing neutral observation and possession is hard--and I consider e-voting an invitation to disaster. "There are lots of very smart people doing fascinating work on cryptographic voting protocols. We should be funding and encouraging them, and doing all our elections with paper ballots until everyone currently working in that field has retired." Messes like this do not encourage me.