Today, DHS’s Napolitano’s response to the crotchbomber: “We’re looking to make sure that this sort of incident cannot recur.” But the TSA’s response to Abdulmutalib’s attempt makes one thing clear: We must stop pretending the TSA is making us safer.

Security expert Bruce Schneier nails the core incompetency: “For years I’ve been saying ‘Only two things have made flying safer [since 9/11]: the reinforcement of cockpit doors, and the fact that passengers know now to resist hijackers.’”

http://gizmodo.com/5435675/president-obama-its-time-to-fire-the-tsa

What happens at the moment when we slip from life…to the other side? Is it a moment? If it is a moment, when is that moment? And what happens afterward? It’s a show of questions that don’t have easy answers. So, in a slight departure from our regular format, Radiolab brings you eleven meditations on how, when, and even if we die.

My favorite idea presented is that we die three deaths. One when our physical body dies, one when we are buried, and finally when our name is spoken for the last time.

Listen up here: http://www.wnyc.org/shows/radiolab/episodes/2009/09/18

Gary Ribble would not be able to read this story if not for people like you.Ribble, who has chronic lymphocytic leukemia in addition to severe diabetes and impaired hearing, needed new eyeglasses last spring but couldn’t afford them after losing a job he’d held for more than 40 years.

Then he found out about the Modest Needs Foundation. The grass-roots charity pools thousands of small donations to help people get through short-term financial crises. Donors direct their dollars to the requests they want to fund.

Read more at: http://www.cnn.com/2009/LIVING/12/22/pennies.from.heaven/index.html

If the course of human history is any model, then the wheels are already turning on Earth’s sixth mass extinction, thanks to habitat destruction, pollution and now global warming, a scientific analysis of millions of years of data revealed Friday.

The study of the fossil and archaeological record over the past 30 million years by UC Berkeley and Penn State University researchers shows that between 15 and 42 percent of the mammals in North America disappeared after humans arrived.

Mark from Mark’s Daily Apple has put together a clear and well-researched article on the correlation between brain tumors and cell phones.

Even if a study indicates that heavy cell phone users have three times the risk of developing brain cancer, that would mean a man’s chances over 60 years would jump from 0.206% to 0.621%, and a woman’s from 0.156% to 0.468%.

READ THE WHOLE ARTICLE

Every 20 minutes we lose an animal species. If this rate continues, by century’s end, 50% of all living species will be gone. It is a phenomenon known as the sixth extinction. The fifth extinction took place 65 million years ago when a meteor smashed into the Earth, killing off the dinosaurs and many other species and opening the door for the rise of mammals. Currently, the sixth extinction is on track to dwarf the fifth.

Well that’s good news.

READ MORE.