Computer security expert Bruce Schneier writes about what last week’s foiled terrorist plot and the reaction to it says about the state of airport security:

Today’s the big day in Connecticut: will Joe Lieberman officially fall from his party’s good grace? And if so, was it the situation in Iraq? Are the Democrats in CT simply sick of his hubristic respect for the Bush administration? Either way, an interesting situation has developed: the Lieberman campaign is claiming that their website is down because of a DOS attack. One blogger thinks that they’re overreacting.

Music video for Thom Yorke’s “Harrowdown Hill”, a song about the mysterious death of UN Weapons Inspector David Kelly. The video uses quite a bit of tilt-shift photography.

snakesonablog has posted video of the Samuel Jackson, David Ellis, and Jules Sylvester interviews I took part in at Comic Con 2006. That’s the lead actor, director, and snake handler, respectively, for Snakes on a Plane. I participated in the videos labeled “Blogger Roundtable.”

Some of you know that I’m working on a ballot initiative campaign in Nevada to tax and regulate marijuana. If this is an issue you care about, now would be a good time to help us out with a donation, during our July donation drive. We’re trying to raise $5000 by the end of the month, and we need 2K more. Help us build the Stratosphere! (You’ll see what I mean if you click the link.)

New Hampshirites seem really, really angry that the DNC has recommended having the Nevada caucus held after Iowa’s but before New Hampshire’s primary. Why Nevada? It has a strong labor contingent. Still, why does New Hampshire feel it has a God-given right to have one of the first cracks at choosing the presidential nominees?

Here’s an interesting idea of how to get rid of the Electoral College in place of a national popular vote without amending the Constitution. The basic idea is to have an interstate compact where participating states promise to give all of their electoral votes to the winner of the popular vote. As long as the states involved have more than 270 electoral votes, it would be enough to make the Electoral College obsolete. (So, e.g., if the largest states in the Union participated, you’d only need 11 to make the compact.) (via pw)

Jordan Ellenberg asks: “Does one Israeli death really equal equal 47 Americans?” Death analogies can be interesting (when not flippant), but I think Ellenberg is right that it’s better to view dead people in numbers, rather than in percentages, unless something close to genocide is taking place.

So I just got back into town after my three-day trip to San Diego for the Comic Con convention. It was my first time there and thus I was new to the overwhelming crowds, the elaborate costumes, the excessive nerditude, and the long lines. On Friday morning, I participated in round table discussions with Samuel Jackson, Snakes on a Plane director David Ellis, and snake handler Jules Sylvester. At some point in the near future, I will post video of those discussions. In the meantime, here are some things I found out:

Good Samaritans beware. The Las Vegas City Council has banned providing free food to the indigent (i.e., the legal definition of the poor) in city parks, so as to eliminate mobile soup kitchens that are frequented by the homeless. As a Nevada ACLU lawyer told me, if you’re planning to have a picnic with some friends, make sure you inspect their financial statements first. Jesus would be run out of this city.