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Okay, it’s not a draft.  Instead, the military is recalling inactive personal with time left on their service.  It’s not a draft, but it is a worrying sign.  First, because it means that the military is not getting enough volunteers.  Second because it means our military is running thin.  The former is bad because it means people don’t believe in the wars we are fighting.  The latter because it means that we are more vulnerable to attack.

I just remember when Bush said that we would have an all-volunteer army.  I wonder for how long.  I also wonder if they will keep the Army draft free, but let the Marines, Navy, and Air Force draft people .

Arkansas has a constitutional provision preventing atheists from holding off or testifying in court. The exact provision is Article 19, Section 1 and reads:

No person who denies the being of a God shall hold any office in the civil departments of this State, nor be competent to testify as a witness in any Court.

Besides being a potential violation of the United Stats Constitution (Article Six), it’s a poorly written amendment.

First, it doesn’t indicate which version of God a person needs to believe in. Clearly it’s for a Judeo/Christian version, but as the law stands now, believers in the Flying Spaghetti Monster would fall under acceptable. This ambiguity applies only to the atheist and not other non-Christian worshipers (Wiccan’s can run).

Secondly, it offers an out for anyone not wanting to testify in court. Suppose I’m called in to court on a case. I don’t want to perjurer myself, so I claim a “Atheist Exemption” which prevents me from testifying. Now it becomes the burden of the state to prove I am not an atheist. How can they do that? Do they bring in church records showing my past involvement? Couldn’t I just easily claim that I had recently “lost the faith”? It becomes an impossible task to prove that I believe something at that moment, only that I believed in something in the past. Then again, I used to believe in Santa Clause. Further, I have to wonder the ramifications of this amendment in civil suits. If someone attempts to sue an atheist, the atheist can’t appear in court to defend themselves. Does that mean they automatically win or lose or is their case hampered because of their (lack of) religious believes.

This is one of those stupid laws that came into existence because people wanted to exclude those that were different. It has nothing to do with protecting the state. Voters have the right to vote for someone for any reason, including their religious affiliation or lack there of. An atheist may never be elected to office in Arkansas, but that should be the prevue of the voter and not a state requirement.

Oh, and apparently I can’t engage in dueling in Arkansas.

There’s a disturbing trend that had been bubbling for a long time: religious profiling. The UK is mulling over using religion as a criteria for extra screening at airports. This disturbs me because there are only two real ways of identifying someone of a particular religion. Either you assume everyone of a particular ethnicity (Arab) is of that religion or you start tracking people religious choices. Neither is very effective.

If you assume someone of an ethnic origin is of a particular religion, then you are going to miss members of the religion from other ethnicities. Islam is one of the fast growing religions in the world and any ethnicity can subscribe to its tenets.

The other option is to require that the government starts tracking people’s religious either through registration or through covert methods. That means that either you require registration of people religion by law or you start covertly spying and cataloging people. Both cases scare me as they become opportunities for corruption.

Ultimately what it comes down to is that people are scared and they want life to fall into neat little buckets. They want Muslims to look like people from the Middle East; they want terrorists to only be Muslims. What the scared don’t realize is that that’s not how life works. There are Caucasian Muslims and there are non-Muslim terrorists. All actions like this do is further polarize the world.

The purpose of terrorism is cause fear among the general population. This fear is meant to change a behavior (drive an agenda. Without the fear, terrorism can not work.

The question I ask is, have the terrorists achieved this goal? Have they instilled enough fear in the general population to enact a change in behavior? It appears so.

With the recent planned attacks, the terrorists have gotten the government to completely change how people fly. People are now restricted to taking (my comments italicize):

• Pocket-size wallets and pocket-size purses plus contents (for example money, credit cards, identity cards etc.) but not handbags.
• Travel documents essential for the journey (for example passports and travel tickets). Don’t try taking your student ID or library card.
• Prescription medicines and medical items sufficient and essential for the flight (e.g., diabetic kit), except in liquid form unless verified as authentic. After all, those pills could be used as a weapon. More importantly, what’s to prevent me from creating my own false prescription bottle? And how do they verify medications at authentic?
• Spectacles and sunglasses, without cases. Beware the man with the sunglass case! Before I had laser surgury, I had a pair of $600 glasses that I only needed to wear while reading or working on the computer. Are they saying I need to keep them on at all times?
• Contact lens holders, without bottles of solution. What about fluid in the contact case? Or are people suppose to store the contacts dry?
• For those traveling with an infant: baby food, milk (the contents of each bottle must be tasted by the accompanying passenger). In other-words, the child must be the “poison taster”. Because, you know, terrorists wouldn’t sacrifice a kid. And sanitary items sufficient and essential for the flight (nappies, wipes, creams and nappy disposal bags).
• Female sanitary items sufficient and essential for the flight, if unboxed (e.g. tampons, pads, towels and wipes). Because boxes could be used as a weapon. More importantly, the plastic used to wrap the “female sanitary items” couldn’t be opened and then resealed.
• Tissues (unboxed) and/or handkerchiefs. Beware the box. The box is bad.
• Keys (but no electrical key fobs). Because the terrorists might carry plans on how to blow up a plane?
• All passengers must be hand searched, and their footwear and all the items they are carrying must be X-ray screened. Boy’s get searched by boy searchers and girls get searched by girl searchers. And the searchers can’t be gay.
• Push-chairs and walking aids must be X-ray screened, and only airport-provided wheelchairs may pass through the screening point. Actually, this one makes a bit of sense.

In other-words, you will not be allowed to take any of the following:

• Laptops or PDAs
• Bottle of water
• Pen and paper
• Book
• Crayons, coloring book
• DVD/game players

Further, any liquids discovered must be removed from the passenger, so that bottle of Gatorade is now considered a weapon. This is all on the UK side and an apparent over-reaction to a terrorist plot. On the US side, the TSA has set up some of it’s own rules, including:

• Passengers are not allowed to have gels or liquids of any kind at screening points or in the cabin of any airplane. Again, that bottle of water must be dumped. But you can easily buy another bottle at the stores in the terminals. But those can’t be brought on the plane. Hmm, seems like a good deal for the store owners.
• This includes beverages, food, suntan lotion, creams toothpaste, hair gel, or similar items. Those items must be packed into checked luggage. Beverages bought on the secure side of the checkpoint must be disposed of before boarding the plane. So that sandwich you were going to eat on the plan must now be packed away. In other-words, it’s just like the movie theater’s: no food or drink allowed unless it’s bought in flight.
• There are several exceptions to the new rule. Baby formula, breast milk, or juice for small children, prescription medications where the name matched the name of a ticked passenger, as well as insulin and other essential health items may be brought onboard the plane. Again, since it’s impossible to fake a prescription or for a terrorist to sacrifice a child, these steps will keep you safe.

Basically this is an over-reaction to a terrorist plot. Looking at the list of newly unacceptable items, there are some loopholes. What’s to prevent a terrorist from putting explosives in the juice for the small child or creating a fact prescription bottle? Rite-Aids bottles differ from Albertson’s, so there’s no standard way of labeling a bottle. Further, TSA isn’t checking the medication, just the bottle, so I could easily press explosives into a pill shape and stick it into one of my old prescription bottles. People are scared and they want something done about it, even if it’s just a band-aid.

So, our behaviors have changed. We are now afraid of terrorists. So again, I wonder. Have the terrorists achieved their goal?

In my high school geography class when the teacher got to the subject of cleavage, he would start the lecture by asking one of the girls in the class if she knew about cleavage. My how times have changed. Not only has the threat of a sexual harassement suit eliminated such embarrassing rituals, students apparently won’t be allowed to show any cleavage in some Texas schools. I wonder if it’s true everything in Texas is bigger.