Neither “incent” nor “incentivise” are words. “Motivate” is a word. There is no verb form of “incentive.”

I use a Garmin GPSmap 396 coupled with a hockey puck sized XM Radio receiver in my airplane. The combination gives me NEXRAD weather radar in near real-time, with my current position and course superimposed. It has proven invaluable in keeping me safe and well clear of thunderstorms. Recently, the weather got “flakey,” sometimes I would receive it and sometimes not. On an August flight back from Wisconsin, when I was flying along the front edge of a line of rain and thunderstorms, the NEXRAD radar vanished and I could not get it back. After experimenting on several follow-up flights, I determined that the problem was heat related: when the XM receiver had been on for 30-40 minutes and got hot, it stopped working.

I called Garmin and asked whether they wanted the XM receiver back with or without the GPS unit and how much it would cost to repair/replace it. The Garmin rep, for whom American English was clearly his primary language, asked what model antenna I had and I told him that it was the old, original GXM 30 and that it was almost four years old. He immediately offered to replace it with a new GXM 40 for free under warranty. (I looked it up later; the GXM 40 retails for $268.) I shipped my broken receiver to Garmin on Wednesday and had the replacement on my doorstep on Friday. That’s amazingly awesome service, Garmin. Thank you!

I just phoned XM Radio to have the old receiver removed from my account and replaced with the new receiver. I got a woman who spoke English with such a thick accent that I had trouble understanding her. She then informed me that this “service” would cost me $15. Excuse me? Garmin just replaced a very expensive piece of broken equipment at their expense and XM wants to charge me $15 to type an eight letter radio ID into their computer?!?! Talk about petty. Worse, she then tried to “up-sell” me to a lifetime music subscription for “only” $399.99. I was flabergasted but did manage to recover my voice and tell her how angry I am that, after paying them $75 per month for weather, XM has the gall to charge me  an additional $6 for music. Truly apalling.

Garmin: I have had several of your products over the years. All have performed wonderfully. This is the first time that I have had to work with your customer service and I am thoroughly impressed. You’ve got a very, very happy customer who will certainly return to purchase more of your products.

XM Radio: The aviation weather “service” that I receive from you is overpriced and the additonal charge for music is insulting. I have had to make several calls to your customer service over the last four years and every one has been, without exception, infuriating. Were there any alternative source of cockpit weather data, I would drop you in an instant.

In plain language: According to the Obama administration, if the US government spies on you and you do not like it, there is nothing you can do about it. You cannot even sue in federal court.

Details in the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s article, In Warrantless Wiretapping Case, Obama DOJ’s New Arguments Are Worse Than Bush’s.

Sad as that is, it’s the Department Of Justice’s second argument that is the most pernicious. The DOJ claims that the U.S. Government is completely immune from litigation for illegal spying — that the Government can never be sued for surveillance that violates federal privacy statutes.

This is a radical assertion that is utterly unprecedented. No one — not the White House, not the Justice Department, not any member of Congress, and not the Bush Administration — has ever interpreted the law this way.

Trite though it may sound, it is not safe to assume that “we’re from the government and we’re here to help you” is anything  short of misleading. We emperil ourselves if we allow the executive branch to place itself outside the system of checks and balances of the judicial branch.

This web site, and the others for which I am responsible, now display a warning similar to this when visited with IE6:

Sample IE6 warning message

For more information, see Moving Past Internet Explorer 6.

• AirTran Airways ejected nine people from a flight (including two women and three children, ages 7, 4, and 2) because two of the men in the group discussed the proximity of their seats to the engines.
• Amtrak police arrested photographer Duane Kerzic for refusing to delete pictures he had taken of Amtrak trains. Kerzic took the photos while standing on the public platform of New York’s Penn Station. He was trying to enter Amtrak’s own Picture Our Train photo contest.

AirTran has since apologized to the people who were removed from the flight and given them full refunds. Amtrak has changed Kerzic’s arrest charge to trespassing.

We all know the old joke: Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get you. As a society, we seem to have taken this to heart… and it is wrecking our quality of life. Our paranoia is making people miserable while neither saving lives nor improving safety. If we want to keep people alive, to improve the level of safety in our lives, we are working way to hard in much the wrong areas.

Here is one example. I am quite sure that you can think of dozens more.

In 2001, just 2,976 Americans died from the terrorist attack using airliners. I say “just,” though this is a terrible trajedy, because 17,448 people died from alcohol related traffic fatalities in the same year. Worse, the drunk driving deaths go on year after year after year: 17,419 more people in 2002; 17,013 people in 2003; 16,694 died in 2004; 16,885 in 2005; and 16,005 in 2006.

That’s about 101,000 dead from drunk drivers and about 3,000 dead from maniacs in airplanes.

What the heck are we doing? How can anyone, in good conscience, profess that all of this paranoia is about saving lives?

The beginning of the new year is a good time for resolutions. Let’s resolve to set aside our paranoia and turn our attention and our resources to things which can actually make our lives better. We live in a bountiful world, courtesy of a loving G-d and the the loving attentions of our fellow human beings. Let’s enjoy it.

I am going to dress up as a voting United States citizen.

Yup; you read that right. I am going to dress up as a voter because voters are so potentially dangerous that several school districts (Ft. Zumwalt, Francis Howell, and Wentzville) have canceled classes on election day, November 4. I blogged about this last February, in Paranoia is Not Safety. Since then, I forgot about it, figuring that this was so ridiculous that nothing would come of it. Wrong!

When I look around my county, I see students coming into contact with voters all over the place all the time: in stores, in shopping malls, at movie theaters, on sidewalks, at public libraries, in public parks, etc. Of course, no one recognizes these voters as the predators that they are because 364 days of the year, the voters are cleverly disguised as ordinary people including trustworthy neighbors. Thank goodness that for one day of the year, all of these perpetrators are unmasked and gather at polling places so that we can keep our children away from them.

Someone should make a list of all of these voters. If it is not safe to let our children be in the same building with them on November 4, I cannot imagine how it would magically become safe on November 5. If any of the school teachers, administrators, and support staff happen to vote, by no means should they be allowed back into the schools the day after election day. Someone should also check for 18 year old voters who are still enrolled in high school, a particularly pernicious bunch. These heinous fiends intermingle with teenagers on a daily basis and might never be spotted if we do not catch them at the ballot box.

Here are a few tidbits from “Several Schools to Close on Election Day,” published in the Suburban Journal, October 29, 2008, page C1. I cannot link to the article because it did not appear in the on-line edition of the paper.

Fort Zumwalt School District Superintendent Bernard DuBray said,

They’re expecting a huge turnout. We’re concerned with that kind of turnout about the security in the building, so it just made sense to close the schools.

What kind of turnout is that, Dr. DuBray? Do voters become a marauding pack above a certain critical mass? Is there evidence of such behavior? Has it been observed in the wild?

Rich Chrismer, director of elections for St. Charles County responded to phone calls from people “wondering why he would allow strangers to vote in a school building” by getting the superintendents “to agree to shut down their schools on November 4.” Mr. Chrismer, did you ever think to point out that these voters are not strangers? Did you mention that the voters are people who live within the same voting district as the school? Did you tell the callers that these voters live in the same neighborhoods as the kids who attend the schools?

[Added 11/4/08] I sent a copy of this posting to Dr. DuBray. He was kind enough to reply and point out that the newspaper misreported this item. All of his schools are closed on election day. The make-up day is Friday, November 7. It gets more absurd: The same Dr. DuBray who decided that voters are too dangerous also decided that they are not too dangerous if the students have already missed a day of school recently. Some of the Ft. Zumwalt schools will hold classes on November 4 because they had been closed on October 9 and those students need to make up the day. Are the voters dangerous or not, Dr. DuBray?

This foolishness will not stop until we citizens, that would be you and me, loudly voice our opinions. We deal a hard blow to our children and ourselves and our country when we pretend that students need to be physically separated from American citizens exercising the right to vote.

• Fundamental Christian Americans know what is right, not just for America but for the whole world.
• The laws of the USA should reflect fundamental Christian beliefs (e.g., anti-abortion and anti-gay marriage).
• The United States of America has a moral obligation bring its vision of “right” and “truth” to everyone in the world.
• The ends justify the means (witness the Iraq war and trumped up security theater which does little to actually enhance our national security).

Selection of Sarah Palin as vice presidential candidate illustrates this brilliantly. She is certainly pro-life and very Christian. She is also powerfully driven to realize her visions for the city and state which she has governed. She is such a “babe” that one of my neighbors actually has a sign in the front yard reading, “I (heart) Sarah.” Is that supposed to be a good reason to vote for someone???

Palin comes with a bunch of political baggage neatly summarized by an email written by Anne Kilkenny which is circulating on the internet. In all my years dealing with email, this is the first chain letter which I remember being objectively verified as factually accurate. Even with all of Palin’s bizarre and sometimes illegal behavior, McCain chose her as his running-mate. Why? I think because what she did is less important to McCain than that she follows his “platform” as I wrote it.

Do I want a president who will tolerate a VP who has knowingly violated Alaska ethics act to try to get someone fired? No.

Do I want a president who will tolerate a VP who creates the political and legal turmoil which is coming to light these days? No.

Read Goldberg’s entire article on airport security at The Atlantic’s web site.